Another amateur mistake. This is irrelevant. The fact that people have been mistaken about what actually counts as justice is no argument against the concept justice being a moral and legal concept or against it having objective meaning.
Oh, is this the same sort of argument that money is the root of all evil? Nihilists love bringing this up, as if it matters. Trouble is, a morality of non-interference is pretty much disqualified from being a nexus of pain and suffering…
-Jon
What is a morality of non interference? Like Schopenhaurian resignation.
The NAP, what else?
-Jon
At what point do I defend others, complete strangers, from aggression by others, when I am not being aggressed against. If I am restricted by principle, but their suffering makes me suffer, isn’t that a nexus of pain? Or is it the principal itself that does not create pain.
You’re grasping at straws now, and to show how ridiculous this is, I can just posit, what if nihilism caused me psychological damage? How, then, is it “better” (by what standard?) than any moral system? You are, of course, free to defend anyone you wish - the only problem is they may not want you to. Deal with it.
-Jon
Nihilism is not a “moral system” to begin with. Or is that just semantics?
A standard that I judge it by is from a pessimistic point of view of life. Since all morals have been violated in history, and since science has eliminated religion as a “physical” doctrine, any moral system held will create pain and disappointment when violated or rationalized away. He who hopes nothing shall never be disappointed.
Of course this varies from what philosophy of life you believe in. I tend to look at it from an Epicurean point of view.
Do you think we need to add a philosophy forum or section, like we have Economic, History, and General?
Yeah, then you’re just making a general argument against optimism which does not apply to morality specifically, but rather anything that aims to bring about change. My point was that it is misleading to say moral systems must entail misery, as contrasted with nihilism, which is a different argument altogether.
I think all we need to is expand the political section to include philosophic debates, as it already serves this purpose.
-Jon
Oh, the evolution myth ?
Snarky.
people feeling they did something wrong not because they were told so, but because of ‘something’ within themselves, which is usually referred to as conscience. Such a natural phenomenon doesn’t seem to square well with amoralism, does it ?
Genes propigate themselves, they aren’t built around individual happiness and only partially reflect division of labor. Humans are intellectually malleable on top of this, other people and their perceptions figure very deeply into our own estiamtion of the relative value of things, including our own actions.
Furthermore The ‘case for amorality’ or rather the ‘Egoism: The Case Against Morality’ to be George Smithesque, is based on deductive logic and facts like methodological individualism, the uniqueness of perspective, the relation of values to individuals and individuals to reality. Whether or not some person has some sort of feeling or another for whatever reason no more fails to ‘square with amorality’ than it fails to square with economics. Amorality is a fact of human existence, whatever peculiar feelings people have for whatever reason can be precisely as arbitrary as their circumstances. Which is, in fact, exactly what a strictly ‘amoral’ view would expect.
Yes, I know La Boetie. I also understand that people who like philosophy have a tendency to think that ideas are oh so important.
The State only exists because people believe it has a moral legitemacy. The amount of passive evasion people could engage in, and its multiplication in size by the very fact of mass evasion, would collapse the state. The wealthier and more technologically dependent the STate, the faster it would collapse.
Okay, now what about the system of ‘rational’ ideas which delegitimizes all aggressive violence and favors no arbitrary group but all individuals ?
As far as your final question, I have no idea to what it refers.
And we probably agree with respect to logic and methodological individualism, but, Why do you feel the need to make a case for amorality ? (if that’s what you are doing)
Maybe there’s some misunderstanding with respect to the meaning of the word “moral” ?
adj : of, pertaining to, or concerned with the principles or rules of right conduct or the distinction between right and wrong;
It seems to me that some people are concerned with the distinction between right and and wrong, and so these people are concerned with morality. And so for these humans morality instead of amorality, is a fact.
That’s plainly wrong. If I let the state rob me is because I can’t fight back, not because I think they are morally legitimate - I think just the opposite is the case - and I don’t think I’m the only one who believes that. If taxes were not compulsory only a minority of true believers in socialism would pay them.
Sorry, I had in mind a remark from Rollins who said something like “morals are just a device to further the interests of some groups at the expense of others”. Also, Andrew said that Jews were killed in the name of ‘morality’(??) Well, libertarian morality seems to be the opposite of that.
Personal Message sent.
And we probably agree with respect to logic and methodological individualism, but, Why do you feel the need to make a case for amorality ?
Likely we do, which is why I hold the Austrian school is such high regard; I reached both of these ideas independently and - like the Austrians - have been arguing with everyone and his grandmother defending them. I believe that amorality is correct. More exactly, I do not believe any values or imperatives exist outside of an individual’s consciousness and that all he is ‘bound’ by are the facts of reality. I think morality has numerous logical errors as a concept and that every branch of ethical and moral studies I am familiar with has additional errors in itself. Some moralists claim that my egoistic views are moral or that some kinds of morality are compatible with my views. Insofar as this is correct I think that it is no longer ‘morality’ in the traditional sense, and can not make the same claims that ‘ethics’ and ‘morals’ typically do.
If you’re asking why I argue it so vehemently it is because I am of that subset of humans who is both skilled and interested in analytic considerations that I will promote them at my own expense and against social pressures. On another level I think morality is used to control people. I think it is a dangerous error from an individual and universal point of view. I think it (incorrectly) subjects individual values and ideas to irrational commandments. I very much to value individualism as a principle and a practice and I believe that the denigration of self by means such as morality is a prime cause for human repression and ‘psychological’ irrationalism. The fact that I empathise very keenly with individuals subject to this, and typically value those who are willing and able to define their own values based on their own understanding - consciously, without self-deception - are generally the most productive and tolerable people. My desires and motivations extend well beyond this, I am sure.
You might have very similar motivations in promiting libertarianism. I don’t know. What I do know is that I have no found an argument that can meaningfully define and defend morality against violation when an individual (by his own judgement) sees following morality as against his own best interest. And this is only the tip of the iceburg. And I do not believe it is going to happen. For the same reason you don’t believe that the law of marginal utility will ever be violated or the calculation argument against socialism will be refuted. I believe I have reached defensible certainty and, while open to counter-evidence, I certainly don’t expect counter-evidence. I mainly survey the moralist-ethicist camps to refine and express my own views.
of, pertaining to, or concerned with the principles or rules of right conduct or the distinction between right and wrong
When I talk about morality or ethics I mean the principles of morality as well as the idea of right and wrong independent of a specific person’s specific values. I do not deny that people hold ideas about what people ‘ought’ to do. I do not deny that people are concerned with distinguising right-action and wrong-action. But I don’t think it is logically coherent to claim that a thing is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ outside of a specific individual’s desired ends and his action’s ability to achieve them. I do not think an action or outcome can be judged by some impartial third standard of morality, because I believe values are inherently individualistic and specific. I do not think it is logically coherent to tell a conscious actor that he ‘ought’ to do something without an appeal to values he holds and ends he desires. Technically, this isn’t even possible.
It seems to me that some people are concerned with the distinction between right and and wrong, and so these people are concerned with morality. And so for these humans morality instead of amorality, is a fact.
I will thus accept that people engage in ethacizing and moralising behaviour - behaviour aimed at promoting and understanding certain values and standards. That sort of ‘morality’ does exist. I say that they are commiting logical errors when they think of values as outside specific individuals, or above his own desires. And in the sense that they say, “This is moral” I say, “Nothing is moral” or “morality is nonsense”. To the extent that people are talking about ideas people have and act upon about morality, and to the extent which they discuss ‘moral’ topics I certainly do not deny it but I deny that it is valid and meaningful to discuss things in such a manner.
I had in mind a remark from Rollins who said something like “morals are just a device to further the interests of some groups at the expense of others”. Also, Andrew said that Jews were killed in the name of ‘morality’(??) Well, libertarian morality seems to be the opposite of that.
I think Rollins means that morals are propagated on-high by such interests, that morals got their cultural inertia because certain people benefitted materially from it (whether or not the person practicing actually believes it). Think of the same statement about the State. The government is just a device to further the interests of some groups at the expense of others. But this does not mean that everyone either benefitting or defending the State philosophically is consciously and intentionally promoting this, it is a well known fact that people like to justify things to themselves perhaps more than to others. That’s my view but, though I don’t live far from Rollins, we haven’t spoken and thus I can not garuntee that is what he meant.
Libertarian morality, in some extents, is the morality which least calls upon individual self-sacrifice and irrational appeal. But I won’t say that morality isn’t special-interest. I have a special interest in the promotion of libertarian ideas, and I believe that your emotional and intellectual commitment is motivated by similar feelings. Furthering libertarian morality might seem the opposite of taking advantage of an individual, and I posit that in practice the two conflict for most people only near barbarism. But even here Rollin’s view is supported, for certainly specific agents of the state might even be imperiled by a general acceptance of libertarian morals. One might not have much sympathy for tyrants and killers, but it can not be denied that our interest (the reason we promote libertarianism, whatever it may be) conflicts with their interest (statism). Beyond that what’s wrong with morality isn’t that it’s used to justify certain interests (that is merely a reason it exists) but that it is false, that no actual given individual can logically be bound when it contradicts his own ends. When it concurs with all his interests it is superfluous at best.
I would prefer that libertarianism be the morality of the world (if I had to pick one for everyone aside from ‘serve Ricky’). But I hold it is false, I think it is detrimental to truth (as all errors are, especially when unconfronted) and that its appeal depends upon historical, habitual and biologically-originated errors rather than reason as such.
I agree with you, as far as the impossibility of normative statements without referring to the values and ends of a moral agent. However, I would argue that there are values and ends that are held by all individuals, whether they are aware of it or not. This doesn’t mean that they are independent of a specific person’s values; it means that, because of inherent facts of human nature, all individuals hold that end. That means that normative statements can be made that apply to all human beings. Human flourishing has both specific and universal characteristics.
Also, for an argument that praxeology requires an ultimate end, see Roderick Long’s Wittgenstein, Austrian Economics, and the Logic of Action.
Um…Aristotelian virtue ethics is not an impartialist ethics.
These too:
Douglas Rasmussen, “A groundwork for rights: Man’s Natural end”
Douglas Den Uyl, “In Defense of Natural End Ethics”
Although one really should read their book Liberty and Nature.
I agree with you, as far as the impossibility of normative statements without referring to the values and ends of a moral agent.
Glad to see not everyone thinks I’m insane.
However, I would argue that there are values and ends that are held by all individuals, whether they are aware of it or not. This doesn’t mean that they are independent of a specific person’s values; it means that, because of inherent facts of human nature, all individuals hold that end.
I agree that it is possible that some values are held by all human beings. But I do not believe that universality is sufficient to ‘prove’ morality. I am not opposed to theories of universally held values or the reasoning out of these implications. I simply say that ‘morality’ as it is understood generally and especially as it is preached by the majority of self-proclaimed moral theorists (Tibor Machan to cite one) either explicitly or implicitly argue that moral ‘facts’ are above and imposing upon an individual. Value issues aside, one can easily see the absurdity of an individual having the idea that an idea which he has is superior to other ideas whether he likes it or not. Obviously, it all hinges on ‘whether he likes it or not’ both in theory and practice. And the universality of some given value does not mean it does not contradict with the values of others. When and if such a conflict arises, whether from differences in human nature or the existence of a non-human actor, one can not make rational statements that said actor ought ‘not’ have done it.
Beyond this, I simply do not accept that many of the standards posited as ‘universal’ are in fact universal. Although it is not a deductive argument in itself, I would observe that it is rather odd that everyone keeps supporting Libertarianism with two-dozen contradictory basis’ and two-hundred contradictory interpretations of its practice. Without getting into the specific issues of each doctrine (Long’s included), the fact that so many libertarians doubt many theories and yet accept another one as true an brilliant within ethical argumentation seems to indicate a desire to ‘justify’ to other people, by standards-of-social-appeal-cum-‘morality’, what one has believed all along. I happen to believe this error has persisted in libertarianism for the same reason religion persisted in the Enlightenment; the desire to appeal to a common convention (moral sentiment) and the association of this convention with legitimacy.
I don’t believe anything is good, evil, right or wrong in absolute. I believe it is inaccurate to tell people they ‘ought to’ be moral if they have a contradiction. I believe that ideology, of which morality is a component, is almost always the tool of oppressors and that a useful lie is more dangerous than a devastating truth.
I wish to express that I myself am no ‘nihilist’ in the broader sense and I am not bothered in the slightest by the inability of the libertarian system to ‘prove’ itself this way. I do not find amorality to be dangerous and most will agre that those you might describe as ‘evil’ have certainly gotten far more mileage out of morality in defending their shenanigans than anyone has ever gotten away with by claiming his actions were neither right nor wrong. I think the problem people have fitting into the wonderful civilization trade can bring about is fostered by error, by ignorance and by man’s unconscious and fundamental weakness to social influence which allows these ideas to go unconfronted.
My insurrectionist/agorist views are predicated both upon individual responsibility (in an epistemic and causual sense) as the basis of all social relations and I do not believe that any survival oriented (much less social) animal could find the State to be a desireable institution to develop, much less subordinate one’s own interests to. I think that if the present run of humans were rid of psychological issues that exist behind error, even in ignorance, an amoral self-interest would be sufficient to defeat the State. I believe that human beings without ideological/moral ideas are likely to organize along libertarian lines for a number of reasons. The division of labor makes the most callous and anti-social man a gainer from property while the merest ‘moral’ dogma will turn a lover of humanity into a sentimental butcher. To believe in a good outside of one’s own is not only to commit an intellectual error but to leave an epistemological precedent for further error. Worry over individual susceptibility to non-libertarian incentives absent morality seems hardly to compare with all that has been done in the name of morality. A comparison of private crime to government action should provide sufficient evidence.
I can not absolutely prove that universal egoism would lead to a libertarian society, but of course neither can the libertarian rule out crime in a libertarian society. In all cases what depends is whether individual people’s values wind up on the plus or minus side of property violation.
Keep on arguing your theories. Keep developing libertarian theory, because it’s a great conflict-resolution system. It’s the only consistent rules by which to arbitrate between people. But I encourage every libertarian to closely consider whether moral arguments are any more valid than supernatural or consensus fallacies. I encourage the consideration that what you often call ‘moral’ is really just a well developed system of deciding objectively between disputes over the uses of scarce resources. I think that most everyone wants this, whether or not they are consciously aware of it. And those who don’t? I don’t call them evil. I don’t call them ‘rights violators’. I don’t object to their behaviour because it is an act of aggression. I object to them because I value my life, the lives and well being of others and the society which all violence - especially legitamized violence - endangers.
I hope this wasn’t too long or repetitive, or my style to cryptic.
I know. But I find its notion of ‘ultimate aim’ to be unjustified because all ultimate aims are facts of perception. Value is something which is a property of our makeup (and thus ideas). It may be anything logically consistent. We can, in principle, imagine a conscious actor whose ‘ultimate’ and proximate aims were both logically consistent and possible yet contradictory to every posited ‘virtue’ (ultimate and proximate) which any given branch of Aristotileanism presents. I simply do not believe that human beings possess a meaningful ‘ultimate’ standard which we can deduce from, that if such ends could be meaningfully defined they could easily be imagined to be contradicted by some being with another set of ends and that no logical case could possibly be made which regards other human beings (or other rational beings) as having a special relationship to the individual. I tend to disagree with a lot of premises and conclusions within schools of Aristotileanism.
Individually, values are facts, are not subject to refutation and need have no reference to the existence, disposition or relationship between oneself and other sentient/valueing beings. To suggest that all non-Aristotiliean ultimate aims (and subsidiary virtues) are either self-contradictory or impossible is absurd, just as it is to treat human beings as though they possessed a uniform nature. Humans possess the capacity to reason, and reason can not provide ultimate values. Even if all ultimate values were universal to all existing humans one can not rule out the fact that they could change, nor the existence of non-humans with other ultimate values. An ultimate end in ‘psychic profit’ or what have you ultimately depends for its achievement on psychological facts, power and environment.
No meaningful statements can be made about the way one ‘ought’ to interact with other people than the way one ‘ought’ to interact with rocks. The regard of sentient beings with especial respect has much behind it, but the ultimate existential fact is that your well being is seperate from the well being of others. The fact that your perspective is yours proves this definitively. Other individuals have precisely the same value as anything else, whatever we actually value them for. There is no reason to ‘assume’ that I ought to construct (much less follow) special rules between myself and another.
And I would agree with them.
Agreed.
Of course, that’s also true. Now, statists claim they have the ‘right’ to kill people who don’t agree with them, no ? Have our friendly statists explained where does this ‘right’ come from ?
Statists also claim that government is moral and that it logically follows, dissidents are immoral. Statists use that language, so in my opinion, it makes sense to answer them using the same terms…and it makes sense to provide an alternative ‘moral’ theory which at least is consistent and more ‘universal’.
Of course, that’s also true. Now, statists claim they have the ‘right’ to kill people who don’t agree with them, no ? Have our friendly statists explained where does this ‘right’ come from ?
Of course I agree, Statist ‘morality’ isn’t even internally consistent. Not only is it fallacious with reference to reality, it can’t even make sense of itself. I think this is one reason why the variations among Statists are so profound and minute, because every individual and group of individuals will take different premises and contradictions more or less seriously. This is why I also think that non-libertarian radicals (even radical statists) are not only more consistent internally but closer to libertarian analysis in many areas. No Nazi would deny that the State is essentially force, though they would justify it with certain principles. The Democrat won’t even do that much. He justifies the state by, in effect, denying that it is force - which is clearly silly. No serious political philosopher has ever claimed the State was anything but an institution of violence or coercion. Of course, no serious political philosopher is actually read. What we get are watered down bite-size chunks with plenty of ideological sugar coating.
Statists also claim that government is moral and that it logically follows, dissidents are immoral. Statists use that language, so in my opinion, it makes sense to answer them using the same terms…and it makes sense to provide an alternative ‘moral’ theory which at least is consistent and more ‘universal’.
I both agree and disagree with this viewpoint. On the one hand the Statist use words in totally crazy ways that effectively destroy their ability to communicate ideas, and the integrity of communication is very important from a philosophical standpoint. On the other hand, statists and other irrational groups such as religion do use some of these terms - duty, justice and a number of collectivist words - in an internally consistent way. They do have a meaning, even if that meaning is not connected to reality. This is why I recognize the internal consistency of libertarianism and reasons it works to resolve disputes but reject any attempt to categorize it as ‘ethical’. I do not run around refuting Deities in order that I may proclaim my doctrine the “Really true religion”. Religion isn’t true, ethics aren’t true, duty doesn’t exist. To label my ideas as a species of ideas, which they are fundamentally opposed, is inaccurate and confusing. To add to this it also gives the tendency for libertarians, erudite or not, to view libertarianism in an ideological way the same way a Statist views the government. These things ‘command’ us and even if we should all die of starvation we ought to follow them. Rand and Block are both examples of this; these sorts of claims are prima facie nonsense.
I also object to libertarianism being cast as ‘political philosophy’ or a ‘political theory’. Again, it’s like calling atheism a religion. Nobody who knows what words means could deny that it’s a problematic label at best, and to those outside of the intellectual tradition it’s almost purposefully confusing.
Well, to me ethics is just a more fancy name for morality. Now, if you want to avoid claiming that libertarianism is objectively good, or that it is an objective standard, that’s fine. I don’t want to force my moral standard on others. But what am I supposed to do when others try to force their standards on me ?
True, but libertarianism would drastically minimize life-boat scenarios, so libertarianism doesn’t really ask for self-sacrifice. Yes, you can argue that for people who like to take advantage of their neighbors libertarianism tries to impose an ‘unnatural duty’…
A wants to kill B, for fun. B doesn’t want to be killed of course. But B has no “right to self-defense” because that would spoil A’s fun and impose an arbitrary duty on A. Does seeing things this way make sense ?