A while back I published a blogpost here about the individualist American strain of SF and the more cosmological perspective of the British strain. I just published and expanded and revised version at The Libertarian Standard, working in more explicit libertarian observations.

That was to be the subtitle for my chapter in Open Court‘s recent addition to their Popular Culture and Philosophy series, Transformers and Philosophy: More Than Meets the Mind. Alas, no subtitles made it into the book.

I have received official permission to provide a pdf copy of my chapter, “Freedom Is the Right of All Sentient Beings,” on my website. Technically, I don’t think I really need legal permission; I don’t recall signing over to Open Court the copyright that federal law automatically vests in me as the author. Anyway, download it from that link and enjoy!

The chapter title comes from a quote by Optimus Prime in the first of the recent live action movies. The chapter itself is kind of a condensed and lite version of the Aristotelian-liberal theory of virtue ethics and natural rights explained in more detail in my dissertation, applied to the transformers and to artificial intelligences more generally.

The “final” issue of the Journal of Libertarian Studies is finally available online, although it looks like there will be one more final issue for all the other accepted but unpublished articles. This is the Atlas Shrugged Symposium issue, the last issue edited by Roderick Long, and I’m proud to say it includes an article by me. Head on over to the Mises blog and check out Jeff Tucker’s announcement. You can also download my article, “Atlas Shrugged and the Importance of Dramatizing Our Values,” directly.

I decided to rename my blog “Is-Ought GAP: The Cure for Oughtism,” simultaneously turning separate eristic jokes by Stephan Kinsella and another libertarian on their heads. Stephan, who believes the alleged is-ought gap is unbridgeable, jokingly suggested I title my blog “Is-Ought GAP” during an argument; the other guy was calling the belief in objective morality “oughtism.”

The following are some excerpts from two sections of one chapter of Veatch’s For an Ontology of Morals: A Critique of Contemporary Ethical Theory. Veatch calls the mentality he describes the proofreader’s mentality because it allows him to make good use of an analogy (see below), but I think “scientistic mentality” is more appropriate and informative.

Veatch starts with the following quotation from Hume:

But can there be any difficulty in proving, that vice and virtue are not matters of fact,. . . Take any action allow’d to be vicious: Wilful murder, for instance. Examine it in all lights, and see if you can find that matter of fact, or real existence, which you call vice. In which-ever way you take it, you find only certain passions, motives, volitions and thoughts. There is no other matter of fact in the case. The vice entirely escapes you, as long as you consider the object.

After quoting from the Trial of Socrates, and before that from Pride and Prejudice, as illustrations:

Now surely no one can consider this account which Socrates gives of his own behavior without recognizing that here was indeed a man of no ordinary worth – brave, but without being in the least ostentatious about it; and with a real sense of justice, from which he was not to be deterred by either threats or blandishments, be they from the Left or from the Right. How then could Hume possibly maintain that you have but to consider a man like Socrates, admitted to be virtuous, to examine his character and behavior in all lights, and you will find that his virtue entirely escapes you? Could it be that Hume was somehow strangely value-blind, or, perhaps, virtue-blind? Or must we not rather explain it by saying that when Hume claimed simply to look at the facts and to find no values in them, he was but displaying what we might call a sort of proofreader’s mentality? It’s as if he had so trained himself as to be able to read letters, words, and sentences, but without heeding the sense or meaning of what is being said at all. Not that such sense and meaning are not there; instead, it’s just that the proofreader in reading an author has no particular eye for the sense, but only for the typographical errors. And so analogously, when Hume insists that, in examining an action admitted to be virtuous or vicious, such virtue and vice entirely escape him, this surely betokens no more than that Hume has no eye for values, not that such values are not really there in the facts at all.

And here’s part of Veatch’s explanation for the mentality (although something is being lost by my not quoting the entire section dealing with the explanation, or indeed the entire book):

The explanation is not far to seek, given the particular ontological account of nature and character of objects that we have here been putting forward. For the so-called properties of an object, in addition to being just what they are as such, are also actualities of prior potentialities in the object. Indeed, in this latter respect, they even have the character of “perfections” answering to that appetitus for completion and fulfillment that any potentiality simply is. Any particular property, ‘a’, in addition to being just itself, namely, ‘a’, is at the same time something desireable, when considered in its relation to the appetitus of a prior potentiality. But so also is it something intelligible when considered in relation to a possible knower or knowers. And no less is it an effect when considered in relation to the causes that produced it. Accordingly, all of these further features of ‘a’ that are, as it were, supervenient and characterize ‘a’, just insofar as it stands in relation to other things – to causes, to prior potentialities, to knowers, etc. – may, of course, be abstracted from ‘a’ so that ‘a’ may be considered just in itself.

Nevertheless, the mere fact that something may thus be considered in abstraction from certain of the features that pertain to it by no means implies that that thing can actually exist in abstraction from such supervenient aspects, or even that one can fail to see that the thing has these, the minute the thing is considered not in abstraction but in its concreteness. Right here, then, would appear to be the source of Hume’s mistake and of his unfortunate blindness. For the mere fact that objective facts can be viewed in abstraction from the values and disvalues that pertain to them certainly does not mean either that they must be so viewed or that values and disvalues are not factual and objective.

(It should not be necessary to point out but will be pointed out anyway that Veatch does not take this to be a one-shot, knock-down argument against Hume; he has others. And these are, of course, merely excerpts from the full argument.)

This disorder, no offense to all those poor deficient souls who suffer from it, might also be called “oughtism” as a play on words with the disorder “autism.”¹ Accordingly, “oughtism” may be defined as “a brain developmental, or just a mental, disorder characterized by an impaired ability to recognize and understand natural values/norms/oughts.”

“Oughtism” may be defined as “a brain developmental, or just a mental, disorder characterized by an impaired ability to recognize and understand natural values/norms/oughts.”

The cure for oughtism lies in developing an understanding of (neo-)Aristotelian philosophy. I may go into more detail on these issues in a later blogpost, but this should suffice to explain the blog title change. However, you are invited to read chapter 4 of my dissertation and the relevant sources I cite therein.

This is the paper I presented at ASC, chapter 5 of my dissertation.
After much too much procrastination the rough draft is finally
finished and it’s uploaded to my website. I’m sure it’s in need of
revision so constructive comments, suggestions and criticisms are
welcome.

During December 27-30, 2007 I attended the annual eastern division meeting of the American Philosophical Society. There I offered comments on Roderick’s paper, “Inside and Outside Spooner’s Natural Law Jurisprudence,” presented as part of the Molinari Society Symposium. I have been remiss in procrastinating on typing up and posting my comments. So now, fully a month later, here they are.

I understand the purpose of Roderick’s paper to be to reconcile two seemingly contradictory positions or theories on the relation between liberal legal norms and positive/customary law apparently held by Lysander Spooner before and after the Civil War, respectively.

For those who have themselves been remiss in reading Spooner – shame on you! ;o) – Spooner’s arguments against slavery, militarism, gender inequality, plutocratic privilege and the monopoly state, and his defense of free markets as against the corporate-capitalist wage system, are primarily based on legal reasoning.

Roderick points out that in Spooner’s prewar writings he appears to critique and interpret positive laws from norms arising within it. In contrast, in his postwar writings, he seems to reject positive law entirely from an external critique grounded in natural law. Roderick points out that both positions considered separately, and on their face, might seem absurd. Roderick argues persuasively instead that both approaches are actually manifestations of a single and attractive natural law theory. The differences between them arise merely from a shift in emphasis.

The cause of the shift is unknown, and there may be more than one, but one can speculate that disgust with both sides over the war was a major contributing factor. Positive law, as embodied by the Constitution, had either failed to prevent the grave abuses of the past seventy years, including the war, or it had in fact authorized them. Either way, these facts were a clear indictment.

Roderick further points out that even in his prewar writings Spooner held natural law to be an external constraint on positive law, but he often preferred to interpret positive law documents on their own merits. Moreover, Spooner could invoke natural law on positive law grounds in the form of libertarian legal norms applied more consistently than is usually the case.

Roderick argues intriguingly that the foundation of Spooner’s natural law theory seems to be that some degree of reliance on libertarian principles is necessary in order to have a workable social order. So the greater the reliance the better the social order functions, and the less the worse. The distinction between Spooner’s “immanent” and “external” approach blurs with the understanding that the nature and content of natural law emerges from the requirements of law as such. In other words, as Roderick formulates the argument: “legal institutions cannot function without these natural law principles, so these natural law principles are to be regarded as part of law as such” (p. 31).

There is an issue on which I do not think Roderick is entirely successful, however, and that is in reconciling Spooner’s pre- and post-war positions on the status of positive law. Roderick says that the difference is not so great as it might appear; however, the difference being not so great does not eliminate the difference entirely. Prewar Spooner accepted some role for adding specificity to natural law and thereby creating additional obligations. Postwar Spooner held that positive law adds nothing to natural law. Long explains that the new positive law obligations can just be seen as applications of prior natural law obligations, and this is true as a matter of reducibility to the ultimate source of obligation. However, this is no justification for doing away with positive law entirely. Positive law does add specificity to, and other obligations not present in, natural law alone, even though we are only obligated to obey the positive law because of a more fundamental natural law obligation.

A case in point being our customary moral and legal obligation in America to drive on the right side of the road. Natural law does not specify which side of the road we ought to drive on. It does specify that we ought not to recklessly endanger the lives of others. Given that driving on just any part of a road we like will endanger our own lives and the lives of others, it makes sense that sticking to one side or the other will serve to minimize this risk. Which side we drive on is morally arbitrary before it is picked, but once a particular side becomes customary then we have a moral and legal obligation to drive on that side. So we have here two obligations, the one not to recklessly endanger the lives of others and the other to drive on the right side of the road, the one general and the other specific, with the latter being dependent upon the former for its moral and legal force; but the latter was not present in the natural law from the beginning and only arose as a matter of custom to fulfill a particular need. One might further distinguish between these two obligations as the former being a general principle while the latter is a particular or specific rule.

I have a few other minor quibbles with Roderick’s otherwise excellent paper. Regarding the first, a reader not familiar with Spooner may read the first few sections of Roderick’s paper and assume there is something of a controversy over how to interpret Spooner on these two seemingly incompatible approaches. However, Roderick cites no examples of such misinterpretations of Spooner. Then, when such a reader gets farther into the paper he might wonder what all the hubbub from the first few sections was about, i.e., why or even whether there is even any controversy at all, so easily and elegantly does Roderick resolve the apparent quandary. Indeed, the careful reader familiar with a number of Spooner’s major pre- and post-war writings, but not having a comprehensive knowledge of Spooner’s writings and of writings on Spooner, might well wonder the same thing. I myself am one of these carefully reading Spooner-philes not familiar with all of Spooner’s writings or all writings on Spooner. I wonder if there are any published examples of misinterpretations of Spooner related to the subject of this paper. If there are, I think some of them should be mentioned. If there are not, well, the paper still performs a valuable service in clearly, concisely and elegantly explicating the theory of natural law underlying Spooner’s two approaches. I have no disagreements with Roderick’s presentation and interpretation of Spooner, the sole exception being that which I discussed in the two previous paragraphs.

The second minor quibble pertains to something I would have liked to see in the paper, and that is perhaps a brief sketch of how Spooner’s theory of natural law could be grounded in a eudaimonist virtue ethics, in human nature. This would be useful, in particular, for those not familiar with how it might be done. I’m not sure if this would make the paper too long, or take it too far afield from its primary purpose, but I offer it as a suggestion nevertheless.

~*~

For a direct link to Roderick’s paper, click here. Charles Johnson’s paper “A Place for Positive Law: A Contribution to Anarchist Legal Theory,” presented on the same panel, is also a recommended read and a nice complement to Roderick’s paper.

Well, I’ve finally completed the first draft of my first dissertation chapter, chapter two (chapter one being the introduction which I will write later). This is the central chapter of the dissertation. I’m hoping to get it published as a separate journal article as well. The working title is “Eudaimonia, Virtue, and the Right to Liberty.” Comments welcome. For more information about my dissertation, see this post.

Abstract
The paper is a dissertation chapter. It seeks to build on the work of Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl in developing an Aristotelian liberalism, which holds that the right to liberty is a metanormative principle necessary for protecting the possibility of self-direction, a necessary condition for all forms of eudaimonia (human well-being, flourishing, happiness). Contra Rasmussen and Den Uyl, however, it will be argued that rights are first and foremost a set of interpersonal moral principles the respecting of which is a necessary and constitutive part of human flourishing. The natural right to liberty is a normative safeguard for that feature common to all forms of human flourishing and necessary for moral agency as such: self-direction. For an action to count as virtuous, and therefore constitutive of a life of well-being, it needs be chosen not only because it is right and good but chosen freely and because we desire it. As rational, political, and social animals we ought to conduct our common affairs through public discourse, rational persuasion, and voluntary cooperation rather than through violence or the threat thereof. Liberty and respecting the equal liberty of others are thus essential and constitutive parts of one’s own eudaimonia. Rights-violating behavior not only infringes on or destroys the moral agency of the patient but also harms the well-being of the agent.

I have uploaded a brief essay giving my interpretation of the relationship between values and virtues in Rand’s though. It was written to fulfill the writing assignment of the TAS/TOC 2007 Grad Student Summer Seminar I attended in August. Enjoy.

A couple of weeks ago I successfully defended my dissertation research proposal. The dissertation’s working title is “Aristotelian Liberalism: An Inquiry into the Foundations of a Free and Flourishing Society.” If you’re interested, you can read the proposal here (pdf).

The Epigraphs
Freedom is, in truth, a sacred thing. There is only one thing else that better serves the name: that is virtue. But then what is virtue if not the free choice of what is good?
− Alexis de Tocqueville

The practical reason for freedom, then, is that freedom seems to be the only condition under which any kind of substantial moral fibre can be developed.
− Albert Jay Nock

The Abstract
My dissertation seeks to build on the recent work of Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl in developing an Aristotelian liberalism. They argue that the right to liberty is a metanormative ethical principle necessary for protecting the possibility of self-direction, which is central to and necessary for all forms of eudaimonia (human flourishing, well-being, happiness). Contra Rasmussen and Den Uyl, however, it will be argued that rights are also, and more fundamentally, a set of interpersonal ethical principles the respecting of which is a necessary and constitutive part of eudaimonia. The dissertation will attempt to show that not only does a neo-Aristotelian philosophy provide (classical) liberalism with a sounder foundation, it also provides liberalism with the resources to answer traditional left-liberal, postmodern, communitarian and conservative challenges by avoiding some Enlightenment pitfalls that have plagued it since its inception: atomism, an a-historical and a-contextual view of human nature, license, excessive normative neutrality, the impoverishment of ethics and the trivialization of rights. It will be further argued, however, that there is still an excessive focus on the State and what it can and should do for us; and that the focus needs to return to the notion of politics as discourse and deliberation between equals in joint pursuit of eudaimonia and to what we as members of society can and should do for ourselves and each other. In order to fully answer left-liberal, postmodern, communitarian and conservative challenges it will be necessary to elucidate the ethical and cultural principles and institutions that are necessary for bringing about and maintaining a free society that promotes human flourishing, and this can be done without endangering liberalism’s commitment to liberty and pluralism.