RE: ReACTIONary, what is your evidence that moral duty exists?
I was not bringing up an issue of existence, but a definitional, not an evidential, issue. It is a definitional issue that makes a difference, however.
I maintain* that any discourse concerning morality is concerned with defining, legitimizing, or advocating some conception of duty, and duty is the background presupposition for such a discussion. It is something like theology and theism, which are, necessarily, all about God or some such conception. If you enter into a dispute over the reality of God ("exists" is not quite the right word) then you are not engaging in theology. Such discussions are, of course, worth having and are legitimate, but they are not theological in nature, strictly speaking. If you want to doubt duty, you are doubting morality itself, just as an atheist is doubting theism rather than engaging in theology.
The reason that it makes a difference is that "duty" may become a Smuggled Concept®* that lies behind discourse that superficially denies duty. I see this happening all the time in libertarian discussions. This, then, may become the basis of a "transcendental demonstration" of the necessity of duty to such discourse. Aristotle demonstrated the transcendental necessity of "A is A" by noting that you cannot sensibly argue against it without assuming that it is true. Similarly, it is Transcendentally Stupid®* to argue vigorously for some conception of individual rights, liberty, justice, etc. and at the same time maintain that the concept of duty is fundamentally illegitimate.
Let's move from the transcendental to the existential. Of course we should not pretend that we can infer from "what is" that "which ought to be". However the "operational existence" and importance of duty in human life easy to empirically observe. Let's ask why. We are often told, after Aristotle, that man is a "rational animal", and often told further, that rationality is our "unique" mode of survival and thus our "defining characteristic." Speaking from memory (you may correct me if I am wrong) what Aristotle said has been variously translated not only as "rational animal", but also as "speaking animal" and "political animal." All, I believe, are correct, and ultimately interrelated.
To put it into contemporary biological terms, humans are recognized to be "social animals," and while we are not uniquely social animals, our survival (and, truth be told, our rationality itself) as humans depends on our social nature. Since evolution has formed us as social animals, it would be expected (if not known certainly) that some biological mechanism exists within us to reinforce and to insure that our social nature is expressed and maintained. It would seem that regulative drives, emotions, inclinations and aversions would have to exist within the individual in order to bring about our social existence, especially in a "state of nature." Thus we speak of the "moral sentiments" such as guilt, resentment and the sense of duty. "Regulative ideas" such as a system of ethics would be a natural extension of more primitive regulative emotional experience, and perhaps a necessary extension for a rational animal that also maintains a social nature.
*I'm only maintaining what I have understood others to maintain. There certainly isn't an original thought in what follows.
*The concept of a Smuggled Concept® is a wholly owned concept of Ayn Rand. Not used by permission.
*The concept of Transcendental Stupidity® is a wholly owned concept of Immanuel Kant.
Friday, February 6, 2009
Who is John Rawls?
RE: I am not familiar with Rawls' work. Could you perhaps provide me with a good link so I can see what you're talking about?
Here is a wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Theory_of_Justice. I'm not sure it is a good overview. Here is my own, but from memory, so it may not be fully accurate:
John Rawls was a Harvard philosophy professor who advanced, in his seminal work A Theory of Justice, and latter in his last work Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, a conception of justice that incorporates and respects Western liberalism's concern not only for liberty but also for equality. He takes a two-tiered approach, proposing and defending two principles of justice, the principle of liberty / freedom, and the difference principle, which is the principle of equality. The first principle, liberty, takes strict priority over the second principle.
The first principle is familiar to all libertarians - basically that freedom be extended to all equally in so far that any one particular freedom does not interfere unreasonably with any other. This is familiar to us through the Bill of Rights and other privileges and immunities defined in the constitution. Included in his conception is a reasonable right to personal private property.
The second principle is the difference principle. It states that all positions and offices be open to all based on ability, and that differences of reward, power or privilege be designed as incentives that work toward the advantage of the least privileged and accomplished among us. However, the principle of freedom has PRIORITY over the principle of difference such that NO privilege, power or reward may deprive anyone of their rights, even if it were of net benefit to society as a whole.
One problem that libertarians would face in evaluating Theory is the strong tendency to interpret it as an apology for contemporary welfare-state capitalism. It is not, but it is very easy to get that impression. In Justice as Fairness he explicitly faults Theory for not being more explicit on this point and states outright that welfare state capitalism is unjust.
Robert Nozick, his colleague at Harvard, wrote Anarchy, State, and Utopia (I am told) as a response to Theory. In his works after Theory, Rawls sometimes alludes to and offers polite and deferential criticism of Anarchy. In Justice as Fairness, Rawls uses the NBA draft system to illustrate a point, a referential retort to Nozick's use of Wilt Chamberlain as an example in Anarchy.
There are several aspects of Rawls' theory that libertarians may find interesting:
* First and foremost is the priority of liberty. Unlike utilitarianism, Rawls does not allow any compromise of liberty that is not for the sake of liberty itself. Liberty may not be compromised simply to increase social well being.
* Not only does Rawls maintain the priority of liberty, but he also maintains the priority of the RIGHT over the GOOD. His theory of justice is not teleological. He does not try to define an "ultimate good" and then insist that society be ordered towards serving that good. Instead, he FIRST defines and defends a conception of justice and then allows each individual to pursue her own conception of the good within that framework. In his work Political Liberalism he develops this aspect of his theory a little more fully by considering the possibility that multiple comprehensive doctrines (religions, philosophies, worldviews, etc.) may form an "overlapping consensuses" regarding the principles of justice, which would then form the basis of a stable, pluralistic society that respects all reasonable beliefs.
* Rawls' conception of justice is contractual in nature, in the tradition of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau. He basis his defense of it on what would be agreed to by rational persons out of concern for their own self interest in an artificial setting termed the "original position." The concept of an "original position" is inspired by the traditional notion of a "state of nature" and, perhaps, by game theory. In the end he hopes that any reasonable, rational person may think it over for himself and discover that, under similar circumstances, she, too, would agree. The conceptualization of the original position and the deliberative procedure it embodies is modeled on Kant's generative categorical imperative procedure for the testing of moral precepts, and it is this that gives his argument its rigor.
Here is a wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Theory_of_Justice. I'm not sure it is a good overview. Here is my own, but from memory, so it may not be fully accurate:
John Rawls was a Harvard philosophy professor who advanced, in his seminal work A Theory of Justice, and latter in his last work Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, a conception of justice that incorporates and respects Western liberalism's concern not only for liberty but also for equality. He takes a two-tiered approach, proposing and defending two principles of justice, the principle of liberty / freedom, and the difference principle, which is the principle of equality. The first principle, liberty, takes strict priority over the second principle.
The first principle is familiar to all libertarians - basically that freedom be extended to all equally in so far that any one particular freedom does not interfere unreasonably with any other. This is familiar to us through the Bill of Rights and other privileges and immunities defined in the constitution. Included in his conception is a reasonable right to personal private property.
The second principle is the difference principle. It states that all positions and offices be open to all based on ability, and that differences of reward, power or privilege be designed as incentives that work toward the advantage of the least privileged and accomplished among us. However, the principle of freedom has PRIORITY over the principle of difference such that NO privilege, power or reward may deprive anyone of their rights, even if it were of net benefit to society as a whole.
One problem that libertarians would face in evaluating Theory is the strong tendency to interpret it as an apology for contemporary welfare-state capitalism. It is not, but it is very easy to get that impression. In Justice as Fairness he explicitly faults Theory for not being more explicit on this point and states outright that welfare state capitalism is unjust.
Robert Nozick, his colleague at Harvard, wrote Anarchy, State, and Utopia (I am told) as a response to Theory. In his works after Theory, Rawls sometimes alludes to and offers polite and deferential criticism of Anarchy. In Justice as Fairness, Rawls uses the NBA draft system to illustrate a point, a referential retort to Nozick's use of Wilt Chamberlain as an example in Anarchy.
There are several aspects of Rawls' theory that libertarians may find interesting:
* First and foremost is the priority of liberty. Unlike utilitarianism, Rawls does not allow any compromise of liberty that is not for the sake of liberty itself. Liberty may not be compromised simply to increase social well being.
* Not only does Rawls maintain the priority of liberty, but he also maintains the priority of the RIGHT over the GOOD. His theory of justice is not teleological. He does not try to define an "ultimate good" and then insist that society be ordered towards serving that good. Instead, he FIRST defines and defends a conception of justice and then allows each individual to pursue her own conception of the good within that framework. In his work Political Liberalism he develops this aspect of his theory a little more fully by considering the possibility that multiple comprehensive doctrines (religions, philosophies, worldviews, etc.) may form an "overlapping consensuses" regarding the principles of justice, which would then form the basis of a stable, pluralistic society that respects all reasonable beliefs.
* Rawls' conception of justice is contractual in nature, in the tradition of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau. He basis his defense of it on what would be agreed to by rational persons out of concern for their own self interest in an artificial setting termed the "original position." The concept of an "original position" is inspired by the traditional notion of a "state of nature" and, perhaps, by game theory. In the end he hopes that any reasonable, rational person may think it over for himself and discover that, under similar circumstances, she, too, would agree. The conceptualization of the original position and the deliberative procedure it embodies is modeled on Kant's generative categorical imperative procedure for the testing of moral precepts, and it is this that gives his argument its rigor.
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