We must learn to speak the different moral languages of freedom or we will remain divided, scattered, and confused as the powerful keep us under cloven hooves.
That said, the notion that coercive force must not be initiated really does, somehow, need to be an axiom. I agree that we must, as a species, move past the notion that there is 'one true way.' Way past! But that one axiom does, somehow, need to be a universal rule.
I have sought to justify it differently from others. I root it in the absence of ontological (birthright/automatic) authority. (Setting aside parental authority, which is the result of natural facts), I contend as a core premise that no one has ontological authority over any other. No one is born with the right to rule. All authority must thus either be granted or imposed.
If we accept that, and we accept the definition of authority in premise 1 (which I contend is a reasonable definition), we can do this:
1. Authority is the license to compel actions and choices.
2. No one has ontological authority over others.
.˙. No one has the ontological authority to compel the actions and choices of others.
We might also do it this way, since compelling the actions and choices of others generally requires coercive force:
1. Authority is imposed upon the unwilling by coercive force.
2. No one has ontological authority.
.˙. No one has the ontological authority to impose coercive force upon the unwilling
Since we want to add moral weight to these facts, we can next do this…
First, we acknowledge the existence of free will. Whatever its limitations, only you can think, act, and choose for you. It is exclusive, inalienable, personal control over your thoughts, choices, and actions. So…
1. Exclusive, inalienable personal control over thoughts, choices, and actions (free will) grants to each individual exclusive, dispositive decision-making power over his own body and life.
2. The primary characteristic of property rights is exclusive, dispositive decision-making power.
.˙. Free will grants to each individual property rights over his own body and life.
This gives us self-ownership, which is naturally exclusive and inalienable. Then…
1. Self-ownership is violated by the initiation of coercive force.
2. No one has the ontological authority to impose coercive force upon the unwilling
.˙. No one has the ontological authority to violate the self-ownership of the unwilling.
Thus, we have a moral defense of the NAP, and of rights (which are, in essence, expressions of self-ownership).
If Hume has a problem with any of this, he can feel free to call my office.
As Hume is long dead, I will have to be a sorry replacement. I worry that Kant cannot ride in to the rescue. The problem with this line of thinking is that it cuts both ways. No one has any ontological rights claim, either, much less magical moral prohibitions on others' behavior. The only relevant ontological question is whether a person or group threatens or coerces you and can systematically get away with it (i.e. we let them). You pay your taxes? You have your answer. You can appeal to glass sculptures hanging on sky hooks all day long. Such spells work on very few people. After all, there's a group of screeching harpies over there yelling something about your greed. Behind them, men with guns are being paid not to give a shit about anyone's lack of ontic justification.
Another way of putting this is that the NAP must function as a pledge -- an agreement by the remnant. Then, we have to fight for that pledge on multiple fronts in solidarity.
I definitely agree that none of my logic produces claims that repel rights violations like the Enterprise's shields fending off photon torpedos. We must use protective force to defend the claim.
But don't we want to feel supremely confident in the justice undergirding that deployment of protective force? Does my logic at least serve to create that confidence in us?
I am a moral antirealist, so I come at these matters in an entirely different way. That said, you have inspired me to try to articulate just how I come at these issues.
I've noticed something interesting with premise one. Have you noticed that fear is increasingly being used as a form of persuasion? The pandemic showed us that artificially inflating the threat of climate change to the point that it represents an existential threat to humanity by 2100 was not an isolated incident. The same sort of fear exaggeration occurred during the pandemic, where elderly and vulnerable people should have really been told to completely isolate from all indoor human contact and everyone else should have been told to go about their business as usual, taking rational precautions (in effect, the Great Barrington Declaration).
The problem with fear amplification is that it can lead to more coercion than persuasion, invoking social enforcement mechanisms which quickly turn to political demands to curtail the free choice and liberty of others, paving the way for authoritarianism. I also think the misguided use of fear as a form of persuasion is inherently polarising and, ultimately, counterproductive. If you are lucky, affluent and well-educated, then it highly likely you will want to take more drastic authoritarian action on climate change, because not only will any hardships incurred for you personally be significantly lessened, but you can also derive social status for self-sacrifice. If you're comfortable, then your friends will likely applaud you for switching to a plant-based diet, if you are blue collar and male, then the likely response from your friends and coworkers will be ridicule. This is a general tendency, overall those who are in worse position socioeconomically (other than students), are going to feel a greater fear of other people trying to impinge upon their ability to live, rather than merely scrape by, than they are any external fear amplified problem.
Here's the problem. Nobody gave genuine persuasion a chance. Exactly how many free days of annual leave do you get from your employer for adopting socially responsible modes of transport to work, like ride shares? Given that most corporations espouse the notion that they desperately want to help with climate, this should be a no-brainer. Similarly, the school run should be targeted for persuasion. It's a significant part of all carbon costs associated with road transport, and a huge contributor to congestion. Worse, it's bad for kids. With the exception of chronic bullying, the admittedly occasionally unpleasant prospect of travelling to school with one's peers every school day is actually good for kids, because all those minor negative interactions which occur with some frequency on buses actually build emotional resilience, ensuring that kids who spent their time on the bus with the jocks and the mean girls will have better mental health and be happier than the kid who insisted upon being driven to school, with perhaps a friend or two.
Here's the problem. People are heterodox. So is economics. Here in the UK, the government has recently tried ULEZ- a London-based scheme which claims to want to get people into more climate efficient cars, but also hopes to convince fewer people to use their cars. In principle, this might sound like a good idea. In principle. In practice, it's been a disaster for many. Despite every effort to create provisions to help the economically vulnerable, it's not working. Home-based physio or masseuse services are down, reflecting people forced to live with chronic pain. If you are a roofer or a house painter you've been forced to pass the costs onto the customer. It's been particular problem for the home-based care industry, elderly and vulnerable people are being left to fend for themselves.
Overall, it's been a disaster for the High Street (Main Street). It's only accelerated the shift to Amazon, for everything. A surprisingly large number of people will decide to stay home and order online, if the cost of a weekly in-person shop increases by only £10. Local centres of commerce are quickly being hollowed out by the process- businesses shuttered, with civic centres becoming ghost towns. It only takes 10% of population unwilling or unable to get on a bus and local centres of commerce become post-commercial wastelands, like their industrial predecessors.
Plus, coercive fear as a form of persuasion really isn't going to work. This is one of many issues which shifts the Overton Window to the Right. Cambridge, England is a university town. All it took to turn the local council from Labour to Conservative was a concerted attempt to get people out of their cars and into public transport.
Let's try real persuasion, with incentives which ask corporations to put their money where their mouth it, rather than utter bland platitudes. Fear dressed up as persuasion is not at all persuasive when the very real sacrifices they are being asked to make will generate real suffering for others.
I often talk about the 'moral multiverse' to emphasise some of the points you make here.
Ooh, I like that.
Yes, multiple languages and vectors = good.
That said, the notion that coercive force must not be initiated really does, somehow, need to be an axiom. I agree that we must, as a species, move past the notion that there is 'one true way.' Way past! But that one axiom does, somehow, need to be a universal rule.
I have sought to justify it differently from others. I root it in the absence of ontological (birthright/automatic) authority. (Setting aside parental authority, which is the result of natural facts), I contend as a core premise that no one has ontological authority over any other. No one is born with the right to rule. All authority must thus either be granted or imposed.
If we accept that, and we accept the definition of authority in premise 1 (which I contend is a reasonable definition), we can do this:
1. Authority is the license to compel actions and choices.
2. No one has ontological authority over others.
.˙. No one has the ontological authority to compel the actions and choices of others.
We might also do it this way, since compelling the actions and choices of others generally requires coercive force:
1. Authority is imposed upon the unwilling by coercive force.
2. No one has ontological authority.
.˙. No one has the ontological authority to impose coercive force upon the unwilling
Since we want to add moral weight to these facts, we can next do this…
First, we acknowledge the existence of free will. Whatever its limitations, only you can think, act, and choose for you. It is exclusive, inalienable, personal control over your thoughts, choices, and actions. So…
1. Exclusive, inalienable personal control over thoughts, choices, and actions (free will) grants to each individual exclusive, dispositive decision-making power over his own body and life.
2. The primary characteristic of property rights is exclusive, dispositive decision-making power.
.˙. Free will grants to each individual property rights over his own body and life.
This gives us self-ownership, which is naturally exclusive and inalienable. Then…
1. Self-ownership is violated by the initiation of coercive force.
2. No one has the ontological authority to impose coercive force upon the unwilling
.˙. No one has the ontological authority to violate the self-ownership of the unwilling.
Thus, we have a moral defense of the NAP, and of rights (which are, in essence, expressions of self-ownership).
If Hume has a problem with any of this, he can feel free to call my office.
As Hume is long dead, I will have to be a sorry replacement. I worry that Kant cannot ride in to the rescue. The problem with this line of thinking is that it cuts both ways. No one has any ontological rights claim, either, much less magical moral prohibitions on others' behavior. The only relevant ontological question is whether a person or group threatens or coerces you and can systematically get away with it (i.e. we let them). You pay your taxes? You have your answer. You can appeal to glass sculptures hanging on sky hooks all day long. Such spells work on very few people. After all, there's a group of screeching harpies over there yelling something about your greed. Behind them, men with guns are being paid not to give a shit about anyone's lack of ontic justification.
Another way of putting this is that the NAP must function as a pledge -- an agreement by the remnant. Then, we have to fight for that pledge on multiple fronts in solidarity.
❤️❤️❤️🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥❤️❤️❤️
I definitely agree that none of my logic produces claims that repel rights violations like the Enterprise's shields fending off photon torpedos. We must use protective force to defend the claim.
But don't we want to feel supremely confident in the justice undergirding that deployment of protective force? Does my logic at least serve to create that confidence in us?
I am a moral antirealist, so I come at these matters in an entirely different way. That said, you have inspired me to try to articulate just how I come at these issues.
"I am a moral antirealist"
—Maybe it depends on what the definition of "real" is. The ways in which these moral principles manifest in the world seem pretty real to me!
"You have inspired me to try to articulate just how I come at these issues."
—Looking forward/LMK.
"Real" as in metaphysical/ontological. I am a moral antirealist in one of these three ways, though I dither about which one: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-anti-realism/#ArguForAgaiMoraAntiReal
Well, you'd better decide, so you can know >exactly< why you hate the whole middle section of my book! 🤣
An interesting essay.
I've noticed something interesting with premise one. Have you noticed that fear is increasingly being used as a form of persuasion? The pandemic showed us that artificially inflating the threat of climate change to the point that it represents an existential threat to humanity by 2100 was not an isolated incident. The same sort of fear exaggeration occurred during the pandemic, where elderly and vulnerable people should have really been told to completely isolate from all indoor human contact and everyone else should have been told to go about their business as usual, taking rational precautions (in effect, the Great Barrington Declaration).
The problem with fear amplification is that it can lead to more coercion than persuasion, invoking social enforcement mechanisms which quickly turn to political demands to curtail the free choice and liberty of others, paving the way for authoritarianism. I also think the misguided use of fear as a form of persuasion is inherently polarising and, ultimately, counterproductive. If you are lucky, affluent and well-educated, then it highly likely you will want to take more drastic authoritarian action on climate change, because not only will any hardships incurred for you personally be significantly lessened, but you can also derive social status for self-sacrifice. If you're comfortable, then your friends will likely applaud you for switching to a plant-based diet, if you are blue collar and male, then the likely response from your friends and coworkers will be ridicule. This is a general tendency, overall those who are in worse position socioeconomically (other than students), are going to feel a greater fear of other people trying to impinge upon their ability to live, rather than merely scrape by, than they are any external fear amplified problem.
Here's the problem. Nobody gave genuine persuasion a chance. Exactly how many free days of annual leave do you get from your employer for adopting socially responsible modes of transport to work, like ride shares? Given that most corporations espouse the notion that they desperately want to help with climate, this should be a no-brainer. Similarly, the school run should be targeted for persuasion. It's a significant part of all carbon costs associated with road transport, and a huge contributor to congestion. Worse, it's bad for kids. With the exception of chronic bullying, the admittedly occasionally unpleasant prospect of travelling to school with one's peers every school day is actually good for kids, because all those minor negative interactions which occur with some frequency on buses actually build emotional resilience, ensuring that kids who spent their time on the bus with the jocks and the mean girls will have better mental health and be happier than the kid who insisted upon being driven to school, with perhaps a friend or two.
Here's the problem. People are heterodox. So is economics. Here in the UK, the government has recently tried ULEZ- a London-based scheme which claims to want to get people into more climate efficient cars, but also hopes to convince fewer people to use their cars. In principle, this might sound like a good idea. In principle. In practice, it's been a disaster for many. Despite every effort to create provisions to help the economically vulnerable, it's not working. Home-based physio or masseuse services are down, reflecting people forced to live with chronic pain. If you are a roofer or a house painter you've been forced to pass the costs onto the customer. It's been particular problem for the home-based care industry, elderly and vulnerable people are being left to fend for themselves.
Overall, it's been a disaster for the High Street (Main Street). It's only accelerated the shift to Amazon, for everything. A surprisingly large number of people will decide to stay home and order online, if the cost of a weekly in-person shop increases by only £10. Local centres of commerce are quickly being hollowed out by the process- businesses shuttered, with civic centres becoming ghost towns. It only takes 10% of population unwilling or unable to get on a bus and local centres of commerce become post-commercial wastelands, like their industrial predecessors.
Plus, coercive fear as a form of persuasion really isn't going to work. This is one of many issues which shifts the Overton Window to the Right. Cambridge, England is a university town. All it took to turn the local council from Labour to Conservative was a concerted attempt to get people out of their cars and into public transport.
Let's try real persuasion, with incentives which ask corporations to put their money where their mouth it, rather than utter bland platitudes. Fear dressed up as persuasion is not at all persuasive when the very real sacrifices they are being asked to make will generate real suffering for others.