Typically we would conceive objective as referring to something in the domain of “public” observation; as referring to something observable to others. Or, if objective here means only objective to the agent, then we would want to clarify the precise sense of the term in this context.
Typically this would be the “subjective” or agent-relative aspect of action. But if the idea of subjective isn’t meant here, we would want to clarify that for the purposes of discussion.
Here, this could mean that “all individuals act,” so that what is universal to human beings is the attribute of goal directed activity. Or, it could mean that aside from goal directed activity, there are further particulars (preconditions) that are necessary for flourishing. But then, we would want those particulars to be enumerated so they could be rationally assessed, and also, we would want to know whether those particulars are agent-relative (subjective to the individual) or “objective” (in the domain of observation).
If the theory has particulars in mind, eventually those particulars will have to surface. Eventually the vague ideas which are objective natural end, specifics differing from person to person, and universal preconditions, will have to be clarified if the theory is going to be understood as more than an argument for a concrete social-political arrangement.
It is a very good point, and an argument against approaches that focus just on the moral patient, as Veatch, Rasmussen, and Den Uyl do. Long and Plauche have also recognized this. I would respond by saying that non-aggression is itself constitutive of flourishing, as part of the virtue of justice. Peaceful cooperation and exchange are a potential that greatly increase the scope of human flourishing, as compared to that of animals incapable of rational communication.
Adam, you bring up excellent points, in this and other threads, but I only really have time to respond to one right now:
The specifics of an individual’s eudaimonia are decided, in large part, by the individual who’s eudaimonia we are talking about. And much clarification on what actually constitutes these ideas has been done by the Aristotelian libertarians.
While keeping fully in mind the respect due you as someone who is familiar with many aspects of libertarian ethics theory and one who shares the libertarian core value of opposition to government coercion, I must insist that your reply to me above, even in its brevity, is an example of the unclarity that seems to be characteristic of the Aristotelian approach to libertarian ethics.
You write:
“The specifics of an individual’s eudaimonia are decided, in large part, by the individual who’s eudaimonia we are talking about. And much clarification on what actually constitutes these ideas has been done by the Aristotelian libertarians.” (my underline)
If you had written “specifics” where you wrote “ideas,” your reply would have been more clear. But you chose to write “ideas” instead.
I believe it is entirely inaccurate to hold that the idea—that what constitutes an individual’s happiness is subjective to the individual—is an idea that has been clarified by Aristotelian libertarians. It is much more accurate to hold that this idea has been clarified by Austrian libertarians.
One of the most influential Aristotelian libertarians of the modern era (libertarian in the broad sense), Ayn Rand, was unambiguously opposed to the idea of the subjective basis of the happiness of the individual. She did not seek to “clarify” this idea, she sought to destroy it.
(I am an admirer of Ayn Rand as a novelist, including The Fountainhead among my favorite books.)
So I cannot agree with the gist of your reply that Aristotelian libertarians have done much to clarify the essential idea of subjectivism.
If you meant to say “specifics” where you instead wrote “ideas,” then I believe another serious theoretical and scholarly problem arises for Aristotelian libertarian ethicists. The problem I refer to has to do with the fact that when Aristotelian libertarians (and objective ethicists generally) argue the generalcase for the existence of particular objective values or particular norms, they often fail to make the case for those particular objective values or particular norms in the same book or essay. They generally make the general case in one book or essay, and refer the reader to another book or essay for the particular objective values or particular norms.
You can see this pattern in a few passages typical of the natural law, normative value, and objective value approach:
"A full-scale defense of Natural Law theory, however, is a task beyond the scope of this article; so I will confine myself to responding to some of the most common objections I’ve encountered within the libertarian community to the notion of Natural Law (and the associated concept of natural rights).” (Roderick Long, “The Nature of Law,” Part IV: The Basis of Natural Law)
“We will not get into the sticky process of arguing for a certain conception of natural rights from this position, for we have already indicated what we believe this to look like elsewhere…” (Douglas B. Rasmussen, “A Groundwork for Rights: Man’s Natural End”)
“The present work attempts to fill this gap, to set forth a systematic ethical theory of liberty. It is not, however, a work in ethics per se, but only in that subset of ethics devoted to political philosophy. Hence, it does not try to prove or establish the ethics or ontology of natural law, which provide the groundwork for the political theory set forth in this book. Natural law has been ably expounded and defended elsewhere by ethical philosophers. And so Part I simply explains the outlines of natural law which animates this work, without attempting a full-scale defense of that theory.” (Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty, p. xlviii)
These are examples where the natural law, or objective value, or normative ethicist is making his general case, but referring the reader to another work or group of works, implying that there are particular values or norms in those other works that are objectively valid or universally valid for all human actors. Your brief reply above is of the same nature. It implies that in other books and essays, scholars have arrived at objective ends or objective values which are universally valid for all men at all times and places. (this in contradistinction to happiness or eudaimonia understood in the purely formal sense as the attainment of that which the individual subjectively desires or values)
If universally valid particular values or norms have indeed been discovered by libertarian ethics scholars, there seems to be no reason why in principle, those universally valid values or norms can’t be listed or enumerated in the same book or essay where the general case for their existence is being made. But in the literature I have sensed a general aversion to joining the general case to the specific values or norms in the same book or essay.
The concrete political arrangement each natural law scholar is arguing for is clear either by his explicit declaration or by the larger context of his work. So it is understood that the libertarian natural-law scholar is proposing a particular vision of libertarian society as a universally valid end. But the problem is, though proving this may be his ultimate goal, that he has failed in doing so is implied by the fact that his proposed method of establishing universal ends can’t be used to establish any other universally valid ends other than the concrete political arrangement which he set off to prove in the first place. The method of reasoning employed only arrives at a political end (the particular political end desired by each natural law scholar), but is not capable of being utilized as a rational framework for arriving at universally valid ends besides the one particular political end. This leaves the obvious impression that the rational framework being proposed does not provide us with a method of establishing universal ends of human action, but rather is only a “justification” for the particular society desired by the libertarian scholar in question. In a word, the natural law, or objective value, or normative ethics rational framework, is a way of justifying the individual scholar’s desired political arrangement, but it is not a theory applicable to human ends generally.
This is why in my post above I wrote that the ideas of Aristotelian eudaimonia ethics will have to be clarified if this theoretical approach is going to be considered more than an argument for a concrete social-political arrangement.
Mises and other so-called advanced utilitarians are very clear on the issue of ends. They claim that ends are not rationally assessable. Aristotelian eudaimoniaists claim that Mises is wrong, and that the ends of human action are rationally assessable. While what you write above may constitute an adequate reply from the point of view of Aristotelian eudaimonism, from the point of view of Misesian praxeology, it constitutes a failure to produce the ends which eudaimoniaists claim have been rationally assessed as universally valid for all men at all times and places.
Once again, the challenge I’m making is probably not one that hasn’t been adressed, so excuse any ignorance on my behalf. But as I see it you’re making to points:
Any coercion on my behalf will work, directly, against my own flourishing since the virtue of justice is part of my flourishing,
Any coercion on my behalf will work, indirectly, against my flourishing since the division of labour and the economic benefits require peaceful cooperation. Greater wealth can “help”, so to speak, one flourish (I know Veatch makes a similar point in his Human Rights: Fact or Fancy?)
Let me begin with point 2. Whilst I agree with this as far as it goes, I’m not sure it’s a point in your favour. I mean, yes, the division of labour can only really fully develop under certain institutional arrangements and this will help my flourishing. But it may just be that it will still work in my favour to steal, murder or whatever else because any impact it may have on society’s ability to produce wealth will be unnoticable. As for the first point, I don’t really know how to answer it (although, it does seem very ad hoc), but I’m not really sure it’s valid in all cases. Certainly there are people who simply lack the ability to certain emotions that murder or theft may cause, for these people I don’t think it would make any sense to say “you shouldn’t murder because it will mitigate against your human flourishing” because it just won’t. This said, I don’t think you’ve touched my original point, which is that murder and theft aren’t objectively bad, they’re just not particularly good for certain individuals. At most what you can say is that one shouldn’t (shouldn’t used in a rather idiosyncratic manner) murder because I don’t think it’ll work out for you. At which point the potential murderer can turn around and say “well, I’ve done my cost-benefit analysis and it seems like a pretty good idea to me”.
Thank you Adam and Giles for your thought-provoking responses. I’m working on replies to both of you, but I am trying to cut down on my forum time now that class has started, so it may be a few days before I have responses that adequately answer the issues that you have both raised.
It seems Veatch is strawmanning Hume. He uses the quote of Hume’s to characterize him, as being, due the “proofreader’s mentality”, curiously unable to see virtue, vice and value which others can see so plainly; it’s as if to say, “Silly Hume, the vice in willful murder may entirely escape him, because he’s trained himself not to see it.” Veatch even characterizes Hume as someone who wouldn’t find any virtue in the character of Socrates.
This strawman is made possible by the fact that Veatch doesn’t quote Hume’s full argument on the matter. Here’s the last sentence Veatch quoted following by the rest of the argument (emphasis added):
“The vice entirely escapes you, as long as you consider the object. You never can find it, till you turn your reflection into your own breast, and find a sentiment of disapprobation, which arises in you, towards this action. Here is a matter of fact; but `tis the object of feeling, not of reason. It lies in yourself, not in the object. So that when you pronounce any action or character to be vicious, you mean nothing, but that from the constitution of your nature you have a feeling or sentiment of blame from the contemplation of it.”
So, Hume does recognize virtue, vice, and value. And presumably he would be disgusted by a willful murder and be inspired by the courage of Socrates. He is simply saying that the value implied by such disgust and inspiration would reside in his heart’s response to the murder and of Socrates and not within the qualities of the objects themselves.
[/quote]
[quote="Geoffrey Allan Plauche"]
Lilburne,
I'll admit the full quote complicates the picture somewhat, but I do not think it seriously affects Veatch's point. Notice that Hume says he can only recognize the goodness or badness of something by the way he feels and he has to deliberately turn inward to examine that feeling. This fits with Veatch's characterization of the proofreader's mentality such that __Hume has so trained himself that he cannot recognize virtue and vice *when he sees it*.__ [bold mine]
You say that Hume’s feelings, apart from reason and the nature of the thing in question, do constitute a recognition of virtue and vice but I think Veatch would deny that it does. [bold mine] For Hume, it is merely a recognition about how he feels about something, not about what that something actually is, and it is only due to one’s feelings that we can call anything virtuous or vicious. It’s just emotivist “Yaying” and “Booing” borrowing the trappings of moral language.
[/quote]
Plauche looks fairly cornered here. He's really going to argue that Veatch's characterization of Hume hinges on the *timing* of Hume's recognition of virtue? And in the next bolded part, he seems to avoid saying what he himself feels, perhaps because he realizes Veatch's characterization may be problematic.
Bottom line: Veatch says Hume doesn't recognize virtue, but he apparently does. Plauche implies that emotional approval and disapproval of an act are not "moral," because they are not inherent in the act being judged itself. He seems to imply that something can be inherently right or wrong independent of anyone's feeling on the matter. I'd like to see Plauche then define "right" and "wrong" in a way that allows this to be possible, without referring to other ill-defined notions (or by defining those secondary notions clearly).
Seems a simple enough request merely to define the terms one is using in one's theory with some reasonable degree of precision, just enough so that they cannot be easily misinterpreted. Is anyone equal to it?
As for poor Hume and his pseudo-philosophical ramblings…
It seems that at least in that paragraph Hume believes in moral realism, common sense and reason - and he’s criticizing moral skeptics. Of course, in the next page he’s going to contradict himself - Hume is not noted for his consistency or clarity of thought…
But I guess it’s great material for semantic trolls and other ‘philosophers’…
(Note to others: the quotes in AJ’s post are an exchange between Plauche and myself in the comments of his “Cure for Oughtism” post.)
To be fair to Plauche, I don’t think he’s referring to timing when he says, “he cannot recognize virtue and vice when he sees it”. I think what he’s saying is akin to, “he wouldn’t know virtue and vice if it bit him on the nose.”
But I do think he, like many moral objectivists here, is groundlessly defining virtue and vice as necessarily objective. When he says,
You say that Hume’s feelings, apart from reason and the nature of the thing in question, do constitute a recognition of virtue and vice but I think Veatch would deny that it does. For Hume, it is merely a recognition about how he feels about something, not about what that something actually is, and it is only due to one’s feelings that we can call anything virtuous or vicious.
it seems rather like insisting that Hume cannot recognize beauty, since Hume accepts that it only lies in the eye of himself, the beholder.
If you weren’t so obtuse in insisting that the only possible conception of morality is an objective one, you would realize that Hume is criticizing skeptics of subjective morality, as can be seen in this sentence (emphasis added)…
Let a man’s insensibility be ever so great, he must often be touched with the images of Right and Wrong; and let his prejudices be ever so obstinate, he must observe, that others are susceptible of like impressions.
That’s odd. I thought infinite entropy was the objective natural end. So, to expedite this we should burn human beings to convert them to thermal energy.
It’s as if we are reading two totally different transcripts with these comments you both have made, AJ and Lilburne, which asserts the epistemological gap (not referring to the being-ought gap) between what you read and what I and others are reading.
What I see significant in the passage by Plauche in response to Lilburne is that Hume is recognizing how he feels, ok, but without intellectual apprehension he wouldn’t know in his mind what those feelings are and he wouldn’t know (Plauche above AJ quoted): “what that something actually is”. Whether it is such and such a feeling or a baseball bat coming at me. It may be emotionally painful or induce fear, but not knowing if it’s one or the other or even a baseball coming and to store these experiences in memory and quite possibly reasoned so I don’t have to experience that a baseball bat hitting somebody is not good over and over again is to rely upon feelings only. So if I can’t gather that being with a certain group of people who continually hit others with baseball bats - if I can’t apprehend what leads to being around such people, then I wait for my feelings to blindly guide me as Hume would want. “when he sees it” involves a reasonable recognition unless the person wants to go on repeating experiences based on how they feel without foresight and intellectual apprehension to see it coming so as not to have to painstakingly repeat what a person and people come to know is bad or good thus to avoid such actions by deduction especially when the knowable truths provide theoretical reasons that when A is done B will happen. It’s a quite simplistic A - B scenario but such scenario’s are based upon simplistic notions in which more complicated extracts can be theorized.
In other words, I have no clue what you guys are going on about and you might not understand me either thus the epistemological gap where in the apprehension of something it can be known and an epistemological continuation gathered, but your still going on about how you feel - not on what you know about such feelings. The gap is your arbitrary delineation I’d say.
And note Plauche isn’t the only one that has gathered this about Hume. I quoted Rommen who is in the company of plenty of others who have noticed Hume rejects the intellect and therefore how does Hume himself even know what he’s talking about.
There is a distinction between the state of the universe in the deep future and the telos of a human being. You are conflating two senses of the phrase “objective natural end”.
It depends on what we are talking about. I don’t think I deliberated enough on this point. The first time I mentioned epistemological gap I was referring to differing theoretical considerations, different theories in general. So the knowledge a person would have provided by differing theories can lead to various results but from what I noted in this discussion it has lead to (1) quite a different perception on what Plauche has said in his response. It seems to me AJ made a number of conclusions about the response without any “tying” of what AJ had said and what Plauche had said. I didn’t see any line by line quoting of Plauche and then a response by AJ to that quote of Plauche’s. AJ more or less seemed to be merely trying to reword Plauche’s response in AJ’s own words. But somewhere along the way AJ"s ‘translation’, so to speak, made a leap that after I read AJ’s response it left me wondering, “What was AJ reading?” (2) a rather impasse between the two epistemologies, not on explanatory power, but rather upon differing interpretations of human nature where Plauche is using a particular epistemology that differs from say AJ’s and Lilburne’s. I mean that’s why one perceives Hume one way and the other - another way.
At such impasse’s sometimes it comes down to which theories are being more fruitful and that depends on the participants. If AJ and Lilburne find their epistemologies to offer fruitful knowable truths then one can hardly say that abandoning such a science/theory would be pertinent at such a point. It’s still providing knowledge. People are learning from it. The same holds true for the neo-Aristotle (or what have you) science/theory. I have personal reasons why I choose the Natural Law path. Are AJ and Lilburne upon the same path? Would they say that? I don’t know for certain merely because I don’t want to think or speak for them. Then it turns into, if they say yes, more a case of various theories within the same field, such as Standard Theory, Quantum Theory, etc… within the larger field of physics. Some overlap, but various paths to explore. That’s why I state these epistemologies differ, but obviously I don’t want to abandon mine nor they theirs. They are both obviously fruitful for differing reasons. But we may continue arguing on the particulars of each position and maybe it’s a dialogue on what each position actually means or maybe it’s an philosophical argument based on established conclusions that each side tends to disagree with. For me, as long as I’m finding truth then I keep going and thus I’ve always had difficulty labeling what I stand for in stereotypical generalities, like this is Plauche’s position, Aristotle’s, Hume’s, etc… cause I’m merely weeding out what I find to be false and sticking with what I think is true. (It’s also why I steer clear of the thin-thick delineation of libertarian for a libertarian can like various positions and I think if a libertarian is for peace, then I am one, but I still don’t think that makes me thin or thick or even libertarian in total for I think of myself as human with various likings and dislikings. I mean my wife and I make our son sit at the dinner table and finish eating some food before going off to play. Does that make me a thick libertarian now?)
The arbitrary mention here, differing from the epistemological differences that I referred to above in which we may have two different theories of thought leading to two different perceptions of life - this arbitrariness differs from that above due to the so called being-ought (is-ought) gap. I think the gap is arbitrary in the sense that it’s not universally necessary. It’s more a preference closer to liking chocolate ice cream rather than vanilla, but in this case it’s an arbitrary preference that can’t reasonably establish a truth or falsity because it rejects reason to begin with. The gap was (is) a decision therefore not based on a principled assertion but more because somebody wished it so.