by Vabadus (promoted from comments)
The results are in: Scotland has rejected independence. I am pleased.
As an Englishman, my concerns throughout this debate have been solely about what will be best for England after the referendum. In the event of a yes vote, the influence of the Labour Party would have been considerably attenuated in the rest of the United Kingdom. Its chances of winning a General Election would have seemed very slim indeed, and the Conservative Party would have had a guaranteed win for many years.
Under ‘normal’ circumstances, I would welcome this. But the Conservative Party no longer espouses conservatism. Without the threat of losing power to Labour, largely because UKIP has been a prickly thorn in its backside, the Conservatives would not be forced to move to the Right or adopt any euroskeptic measures, such as the crucial in/out referendum. In fact, with the Conservative Party reinvigorated after the depletion of Labour MPs following a yes vote from Scotland, UKIP itself would automatically be weakened as a political force, plus many of its former Tory Party would simply return to the fold.
So, for this reason if no other, I was hoping for a Scottish no vote — oddly, we need both the Labour Party and UKIP to be strong enough to attack and squeeze and scare the Conservative Party. Only this way, with being booted out of office by Labour as a real possibility it can smell under its nose, will it be possible to set internal party debates raging and aim for some kind of reactionary outcome, whether it be by a complete realignment of the Conservative Party or by a good split down the middle that will kill the modern-day face of the party.
I am actually rather astonished that prominent libertarians, including those here at the Libertarian Alliance, have not seen this from a pro-English perspective. Some go as far as believing it will be better for Scotland too, which is ridiculously naïve. Naturally, I have no objection to secession in principle, but this referendum was not about independence in the abstract; the Scots were voting yes or no to the Scottish National Party’s White Paper. No libertarian can find common ground with that. I do not buy the idea that all secession is a good thing, rather in the same way that Sean Gabb does not always think that all freedom, denuded of context, is propitious (he opposed the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 while being supportive of legalising gay marriage in principle — the difference between which is similar to that between the Scottish 2014 referendum and secessionism in principle). Scottish independence — yes, but not yet.
Praise where praise is due, the exciting thing about the previously unimagined strength of the yes vote is that further devolution and decentralisation, for England and Wales as much as Scotland, is now a done deal. We have reached the cusp of irrevocable constitutional change, and a devo-max solution would be much more beneficial at this stage to all constituent nations of this country.
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Exactly. Add this to John Kersey’s article on the lack of any preparation for independence and you have a uniquely sound analysis of the referendum and all the rest of it.
Disagree with the analysis. It’s the Labour dominance that drags the Tories to the Left, onto the “winning” ground. A Scot-free England would have shifted right.
Nonetheless I am pleased that the Union has survived. But it’s the bad outcome for right wingers. I am not a right winger myself, but shifts to the right benefit Libertarianism indirectly since currently Libetarian policies are associated with conservatism, so it’s the bad outcome for Libertarianism.
The problem now is the dogs’ breakfast that Cameron is about to make of the constitutional arrangements; they apparently intend to keep Scots in Westminster, politely excusing themselves from some votes. The idea is ludicrous. Scottish MPs helping form majorities, Scottish ministers, even a Scottish Prime Minister, ruling over England and enacting legislation over England that does not cover “devo max” Scotland, raising our taxes, deciding on apportionment of those taxes. Quite indefensible.
And a terrifying narrative of Gordon Brown as the saviour of the Union, apparently directly lifted from Abraham Lincoln. We can only hope he soon visits the theatre.
Ian – Since no one appears to have thought through any of the procedural matters involved in breaking up the United Kingdom, yesterday’s vote was probably the best outcome. However, the issue won’t go away. So far as I can tell, every district registered at least a third for separation. There will be another round of whining up there, and, in due course, another referendum.
Two things now to be done. First, the people we pay to run the country should see which way the wind is blowing and prepare some proper contingency plans. Next time, the Scotch vote, everyone should be aware of what comes next. Second, whatever enhanced powers and financial bribes must be delivered, it’s time to press for the Scotch grip on English politics to be removed. I believe Mr Dave has already made some ambiguous declarations on this point. English MPs need to insist on the removal of all but half a dozen Scotch MPs from the Commons.
If the second of these things is done, the Union might shamble on for another generation. If it isn’t, prepare for a crisis of legitimacy. I took part yesterday in a playground meeting of the parents in my daughter’s school. The unanimity of opinion was impressive.
The interesting point for me is that nobody seems to be asking whether those who voted for the Union were asking for more Alex Salmond (“Devo Max”) or to avoid more Alex Salmond (Independence). There is an awful lot of jumping to conclusions going on.
I do not know “Vabadus, ” perhaps he is real (it is possible), but my reply will not be about “Vabadus” (even if he is real), but rather about Sean Gabb himself.
Sean Gabb is upset today (as Sean Gabb supported a “Yes” vote – i.e. wished to break up the United Kingdom) – and upsetting Sean Gabb is normally a good thing (indeed it could be argued to be a sacred duty – considering the vile forces he is allied with).
As for an Englishman only caring about England – this is a double error.
First it rejects the British tradition – that goes back long before 1707.
Is there no loyalty to the first Queen Elisabeth (mindful of her grandfather’s Dragon Banner) and her regard for Wales – for example personally ordering a Welsh Bible to be produced by Mr Morgan.
This ethnic English nationalism (Black Flag stuff) is nothing to do with the real England – the England of the first Elisabeth, or Henry V on St Crispin’s Day, or with Enoch Powell (a man with a Welsh name whose loyalty was to the Queen and to the United Kingdom – both of which Sean Gabb despises).
The Germans-in-the-great-forests idea is naught to do with the real England (any more than it is with the real United Kingdom). Is not C.S. Lewis (a man of Welsh forefathers, “Clive Staples Lewis”, and born and bred in Ulster) part of the real England? Is not former Bishop Ali of Rochester (in Kent) – born and bred in Pakistan.
“Folk” is NOT “Volk” – the depraved false “patriotism” of (for example) the 1930s “Right Club” (who, like Sean Gabb, sneered at Winston Churchill – for example for being “half American” anti Americanism, like anti Semitism, being a sure sign of a beast) with their support for Fascist Italy, National Socialist Germany and the Empire of Japan (to which they gave British military secrets) is nothing to do with the real England (any more than it is with the real United Kingdom().
The Second Error.
The second error is to deny that “English” (as well as “British2) moral and political principles are UNIVERSAL.
Again the idea that right and wrong (good and evil) are simply a matter of geography, or race, is nonsense (WICKED nonsense).
As Edmund Burke (born and bred in Dublin – and more English than Sean Gabb will ever be) put it in a letter to a lady “they [the Indians] have none of your lilies and roses in their faces [i.e. they are brown – not “white”], but they are made in the image of God, just as much as you are”.
“Geographical morality” or morality based on ethnic group (or “race”), or “historical stage” is NO MORALITY AT ALL.
Those who care ONLY for England – do NOT care for England. They do not know England who only England know. And they do not care for England who care only for England.
As Tolkien put it in the “Lord of the Rings” (a book that I suspect that Sean Gabb has read – as he clearly models himself upon Saruman) ……
“Good and evil have not changed since yesteryear; nor are they one thing among Elves and Dwarves and another among Men. It is a man’s part to discern them, as much in the Golden Wood as in his own house”.
No “geographical morality” and no “ethnic morality” (the only answer that “ethnic morality” deserves is the answer the London hangman gave to the guards at Belson – eight of them each day).
Herder with his idea that different races had fundamentally different moralities was not a thinker in the English tradition (not in the Western tradition) and nor was Hegel with his “historical stages” with fundamentally different laws of right and wrong.
Good and evil are universal (in both time and space) – and it is the job of a human being to use his or her reason to discern them and to CHOOSE (knowing that he or she is free to do otherwise) to support right against wrong.
The Class War sentiments of so many of the “Yes” campaign (attacking “the landlords” and “big business” and claiming that some of the oldest families in Scotland were not “really Scottish” because they do not support “Social Justice”) were and are evil.
It is the job of a human being to oppose evil – whether it is in England, Scotland or anywhere else.
Paul, good and evil are not universal. If they were, everyone would agree on them. Raving on about them as if they are doesn’t help us understand anything about what they mean. Moral codes vary widely, in time and space. Even no two individuals within one culture precisely agree, and there are often great differences of opinion; this is the lesson of subjective value. You can’t just apply it to economics. Values are all subjective. The myth that there is an objective standard that is “discovered” is nothing more than a myth. People invent morals. They argue them. They change them. They don’t find them hiding under a stone or written in the stars. It just isn’t true.
Ian. It’s moral relativism that is causing so much confusion and ‘evil’ in the world today. I believe there is a good case for a universal ethical standard. Put simply, you wouldn’t want to have your personal possessions taken away from you (unless of course they are a burden), therefore it would be hypocritical to take someone else’s. You can build a whole secular ethical system of principles from this simple method. But where it goes wrong in society is that we have certain groups who exclude themselves from the same standards they impose on everyone else (i.e., taxation, TV licencing, money printing, etc.).
I don’t think there is any ideology or political theory immune from hypocrisy. Fiscal conservatives, for instance, bang on about the horrors of the welfare state or minimum wage, yet fail to discuss the ramifications of corporate welfare, government contracts or bailouts etc.. You’ll find that 99.99% of the population have no real ‘principles’ – only really a set of self-serving ‘preferences’. For to not be a hypocrite, you have to apply standards universally and consistently. What is denied to one, has to be denied to all groups. What is permitted for one, has to be permitted for all. The consequentialist argument is often used by those in power to justify double standards.
https://freedomainradio.com/old-free/books/FDR_2_PDF_UPB.pdf
I think a reasonable argument could be made that it’s moral absolutism causing the misery in the world today. Political Correctness is an absolute moral code. Islam is an absolute moral code. Add in some moral relativism, and you don’t get “you do not obey the objective morals, so I cut your head off”, you get “you do not obey the same morals as me, that’s cool, each to his own, see you later”.
The advantages are obvious. The old Common Law (mostly) didn’t get involved with ethics or morals, it just said people couldn’t interfere with each other (either the person, or their property). It was when they started larding moral laws into it that it all went pear-shaped. In other words, the Common Law was relativist. We’re in a mess because of moral objectivism.
I would say that PC fascism or Islamic extremism are closer to moral hypocrisies than moral absolutisms. PC fascists never impose cuts on their OWN departments, the same way you never see an Islamist cut off his own head :-).
The moral relativism which I was referring to is the “do as thy wilt” mentality that prevails today: “If I like it then it must be good”, regardless of who is forced to pay for it in the long run…
I can never understand why anyone who doesn’t want everyone to “do as they wilt” would be a libertarian. What’s the point of liberty if you don’t like people actually exercising it?
According to several reports on the sorry state of education in America, a great many high-school graduates think that George Washington fought in the Civil War.
And there is a rather determined group of people who insist that the Holocaust never happened and is some kind of hoax.
But neither of those things is true.
The truth of a statement of purported fact, the correctness of a belief or an understanding, is what it is, whether true or false, regardless of whether anybody believes it or not.
It is “universally” correct that George Washington did not fight in the Civil War. Similarly, the Holocaust really did happen, even if various groups of people don’t believe it and despite the fact that various people, while admitting that it happened, have severe disagreements about how many people were put to death. The Holocaust happened, regardless of whether one is living in Canarsie or Kathmandu.
Also, a pound of feathers does not weigh less than a pound of lead, regardless of who thinks it does or why he thinks so.
Paul says,
The fact that there is disagreement about “right” and “wrong” results from several factors, one of which is the difference in definitions that different people or groups have in mind, and another of which is the practical reasons for which the “right vs. wrong” are being considered at any given time, and one of which is disagreement about the fundamental nature of reality itself, and of our place and part and nature in reality. Which is to say that the meaning that those particular noises have for different people depends in part on their philosophy.
But none of that affects the fact that murder, for instance, really is wrong, morally wrong, for all persons in all times and places; where, by “murder,” I mean deliberate unjust killing of a human being. This is a universal principle not because everyone agrees with it, but because it is always true.
As Paul says, the point is to reason out what the ideas of “right” and “wrong” mean (as they pertain to morality).
In any of the sciences there is ongoing debate about what statements are true, meaning always and universally true, and what are not. The mere fact that there is disagreement about the truth of X does not mean that there is no theory of X that is true, or as close to true as humans can come.
The fact that Islamic jihadists believe it is right and just to kill all the Jews does not mean that it IS right and just to kill all the Jews. It just means that they have a false theory of right and wrong.
Julie, with all due respect all you’ve done there is make a list of assertions of your own beliefs. None of it justified philosophically. In particular you’ve defined murder by weaselling in “unjust” killing. The problem there is what defines unjust. Popular definitions of “just” include-
The person is not a member of the tribe. (Most stone age tribes raid and kill members of other tribes. Chimpanzees do too).
The person has committed an act which is considered seriously against the rules of the tribe. (Numerous law codes).
The person is morally repugnant. (Killing of homosexuals, sexual transgressors including honour killing of daughters, “perverts”, people who eat unclean foods, heretics).
The person is a member of another group who are an existential threat to the tribe. (This justifies the Holocaust).
The person has previously significantly insulted the killer. (Revenge killings. Routine in most primitive tribes. Continued in the West until recently as duelling).
Sacrifice.
Population control by killing infants. (Commonplace historically).
Sufficient provocation. (“Crime of passion” defence. Modern feminist justifications for premeditated killing of abusive husbands).
And, the biggie: “We are in a state of war, and the King has told me to kill as many of those other buggers as I can”.
And a bunch more I can’t remember right now.
“In particular you’ve defined murder by weaselling in “unjust” killing.”
Surely definitions like “unjust” are purely academic and attacking them is wordplay? As I’ve already asserted, by universal ethical standards, such a killing would be ‘unjust’ because the perpetrator wouldn’t like it done to them (or their loved ones)… I’ve heard your kind of argument before, and with all due respect, I feel it just serves to further muddy the waters towards better ethical practices. There seems to be a stronger case than ever to build a secular ethical system of principles. Without it, all we have is the current philosophy of “might makes right” (or outdated religious morality) that prevails in society today.
With all due respect, JerikoOne, this stuff is fundamental to philosophy and handwaving it away because it gets in the way of personal certainty does nobody any favours. Human beings like to believe that their own preferences are universals- you only have to watch an Apple User fulminating against rival products to see that- but that doesn’t make it true.
Saying you want “better” ethics forces the philosopher to ask, “How are you defining, ‘better’?”. Everyone has a different definition. Some disagree more than others; but even people who congregate in a movement because they think they share values usually find that they don’t, and they have to compromise. This is why political and religious movements schism all the time. Because one man’s socialism is not another man’s socialism, and one man’s libertarianism is not another man’s libertarianism.
So this stuff isn’t some kind of academic wordplay. It is really important. The question of why we believe what we believe can’t be dismissed by a declaration of certainty. Only when we acknowledge the reality of humanity’s subjective value nature, can we then attempt to build a system of living around that. It is when we do not acknowledge that that we descend into tyranny, because we believe that those who disagree must be wrong, so we can start oppressing them as an objectively justified act, and even killing them (see list of justifications for murder, above).
You seem to be constructing a strawman. It is well documented that traditional morality was for the benefit of the rulers only, and that this needs to be acknowledged before any serious debate about ethics can begin. And I’ve already stressed that most people have no real values, only a set of preferences. I never clamed that ‘universally preferable behaviour’ was an absolute, it is only the building blocks towards building a better society which is constantly evolving.
“How are you defining, ‘better’?”.
Isn’t our current state of living universally ‘better’ (i.e., prosperous, happy, safer) than the bloodshed and slaughter of the past. Should we throw all this away because a handful of sociopaths would benefit from the old arrangement?
By whom? Karl Marx? Eric Hobsbawm?
Isn’t it equally plausible to say that previous moral codes were simply reasonably functional for the societies that generated them? Like, trying to stop your daughters sleeping around is a good idea when you’ve got no contraception or antibiotics? And telling people not to kill each other over minor insults helps maintain social calm? And promoting the virtue of dying for the society ensures it can defend itself from attack?
A lot of people would disagree with you. They hate modernity, they hate capitalism, they hate consumerism, they think society was better before all your “better” made it “atomised” and “consumerist” and “individualistic” and “lacking in spirituality” and all sorts.
The thing is, it doesn’t matter what you or I think is “better”. The philosophical question is where you get that “better” from. And as David Hume showed over two centuries ago, you can’t actually do that.
No Ian. All you’re doing is muddying the waters and strawmanning. Only a psychopath would want to go back to the rule of tooth and claw, or a time when having this discussion would guarantee a death sentence. People who like to inflict harm on others don’t like it being done to them, therefore their personal morality isn’t universal or consistent. But as already stressed, you CAN build a system of secular ethics that IS both universal and consistent. It is merely taking the non-aggression principle a step further.
The purpose of my comment was NOT to present a complete and flawless moral philosophy, commencing from the fundamental postulates of existence, its nature, and the nature of mankind within it. Quite a few well-known philosophers in various traditions world-wide have had a go at this, with varying degrees of success, and mostly it has taken hundreds of pages of dense prose where there has been an attempt to be rigorous. Where the pages are fewer, they’ve suffered contemptuous scorn for lack of rigor.
Rather, my purpose was to point out a fallacy: the fallacy of believing that the truth of an alleged fact depends upon whether everybody world-wide agrees that the fact is true. This is as much the case for theories as it is for statements about directly-observed events or objects.
But these theories do not exist innately within all persons, and not everyone comes to the same conclusion about them. These inconvenient facts do not disprove a correct theory. It doesn’t matter how many or which people agree that the Stork brings babies; babies don’t come form the Stork, and that’s flat.
The way to get to a true theory about some aspect of reality is to reason carefully about the observations made and the experiences undergone by oneself and others. This can be an ongoing process of years or of millennia, and while it continues there will be dissension and disagreement; but the dissension and disagreement during the process of working out the theory do not disprove the truth of some part of it. Not when the theory is about how the physical world works (physics, chemistry, biology), and not when the theory is the theory of morality.
Truth is not something that depends on universal acceptance of it.
And I keep poiting out that declaring something true doesn’t make it true either, no matter how much you (or anyone else) personally believe it Julie.
No no no, that’s the kind of Aristotelian nonsense that had Ayn Rand disappear up her own backside. I think that’s half the problem with Libertarianism. We can’t seem to get beyond Ancient Greece. I sometimes feel amazed that my fellow Libertarians aren’t still arguing that stones fall because it is their nature to fall.
Ian, I hate threading. I have just responded by, I hope, focussing more clearly upon my issue — which is not the one you’re addressing. But just exactly where it is, I can’t say. I much prefer the system of chronological presentation.
However, you complain that I didn’t explain “justified” in the definition of “murder.” I shouldn’t have thought that was necessary when addressing a libertarian crowd that includes you, who are not exactly new to the main concepts of libertarianism. Sigh … OK.
See if this rings a bell: The use of force by person B against person A is justified if and only it is undertaken in defense of self or others, in response to force initiated by A or to the credible threat of it.
By “justified killing,” I mean the usual understanding: In the short form, it is killing in self-defense or in the defense of others, where the threat is credible (which includes the situation where the guy is already shooting at you).
I use the “short form” because Common Law, legal and moral philosophies, and Just War theories abound in trying to define precisely and accurately what constitutes a “credible threat”; and because metaphysics and theories of values also are involved.
But we — you, Ian, and Paul, and I, and probably most of the others hereabouts — have a good enough sense of what constitutes murder in the real world that I’m sure the Short Form conveys the idea clearly enough.
And I just gave a list of perfectly reasonable (to various people) justifications for killing. You’re never going to convince somebody who disagrees with you that you are right if your argument includes starting with the assumption that you are right.
Also Julie, if you just want to post at the bottom of the thread instead of threading, that’s fine by me and I’ll follow suit.
Moral codes do vary widely, but that should not be conflated with moral relativism, nor should it mean that there is anything wrong with stating that moral code A (such as one which allows people to keep slaves or commit human sacrifices to the gods) is not grossly inferior to moral code b (such as one that respects notions of individual rights, voluntary consent, etc. Otherwise, one ends in a nihilistic wasteland, where only those with the biggest clubs and the most guns prevail. (This, by the way, is one of the reasons why after a lot of thought I have decisively rejected anarchism.) The universality of notions of good and evil is hardly a massively controversial statement since in practically all human societies that have been observed, matters such as murder, theft and lying are regarded as wrong, even though the treatment of said varies. Come to that, the human need for art and some sort of spiritual fuel is pretty well-nigh universal.
Tom,
You can’t justify a declaration of fact on the basis that you find it unpalatable. “A is true because A implies B and I disapprove of B”. I could point out that most societies in history have positively applauded killing, so long as it is of members of the outgroup; the idea of moral universalism in particular is rather recent and rare. The Bible’s “Thou Shalt Not Kill” only applied to Jews, and didn’t apply to Jews either if they committed heresies, or disobeyed their parents, etc etc.
This is what Hume was getting at; our morals are dependent on our sentiment, and then the question becomes what forms our sentiment. Some might be nature, some might be nurture, some might be the result of reasoning; but the idea that there is a universal code out there that applies to all times, places and cultures that just needs to be “discovered” is demonstrably untrue; and saying that one finds it “self evident” doesn’t alter that.
Perhaps the best way to demonstrate that is that even when two persons agree that actions A and B are wrong, they are likely to disagree about how wrong and whether A is worse than B or vice versa. Some people think rape is worse than murder. Some people think murder is worse than rape. This is obviously the same mental system as the rankings in marginal utility theory in economics. By ranking things differently, we come up with different desirable actions. One man would kill to preserve his nation, another would let his nation fall rather than kill. No amount of logic will prove which is the superior choice, because it’s down to the subjective value of the nation over the individual. Which is where Ayn Rand’s attempt to anchor an objective moral system on self preservation as the highest value fell over; she might feel that way, but most other people don’t, and would indeed think such a value system immoral.
I’m not asserting that moral codes don’t differ: I said that in my previous comment. My point is that there are, despite this variety, common points that does suggest a fairly constant aspect to human nature, from which one can deduce, and discover, principles of how to live. That doesn’t remove the need to apply principles in new or innovative ways. But moral notions like integrity, honour or productiveness aren’t just invented out of thin air, either: they come from considering the facts of reality by creatures who have the capacity to choose among alternatives. Hume would have agreed as would the other great figures of the Anglo-Scottish Enlightenment.
I am, perhaps sort of, partly, a bit, relieved that the Scots have decided to stay on….for now…. This is despite my earlier and rather irate posts suggesting they can “take a walk if they feel like that”, and so on. The whole sorry mess has its root cause in the self-regarding venality of the modern British PoliticalEnemyClass: mindful only of its gravy-trains to looted wealth and the irreversible cementing-in of their hegemonic power.
The frantically huckstering, almost hysterical bidding-auction set off by LibLabCon the other day, in the face of a possible secession and the loss of all that “influence” – not to mention a stack of LibLab seats – bordered on pornography. It showed “who those dudes’ thoughts are with” right now. Worst of all, they were doing it with other people’s money.
The part of the analysis I disagree with is that the Tory party will now buckle down and address “The West Lothian Question”. It will do nothing of the kind: (1) The LibDems won’t let it do any such thing, and (2) Ed Miliband will fight it tooth and nail knowing that if it succeeded he can’t get any bills thrown out.
The Political Class knows very correctly that the masses’ attention-span is short: short enough so that all this hoohah will have been forgotten in under ten days, and it’ll be business as usual.
David – You may be right. Still, at least we can ask for contingency plans to be made for the next time there is a vote in Scotland.
Quite right. It wasn’t thunk through at all.
My problem, with which I abide all the time, is that I can never ascribe that level of sheer stupidity and cack-handedness to our ideological enemies.
I used to have occasional arguments about this, regarding “The Average Soviet Soldier”, with our Officers in the Regiment in which Judy Tame and I both served for a brief time.
Just to continue the off topic discussion on morality-
I think my problem here is that it seems to me that many libertarians don’t seem to realise that if you are a moral objectivist, liberty becomes philosophically indefensible. To illustrate this, consider what I think of as “The Automatic God Problem”.
Let us presume that God exists and is as broadly described; particularly that He is omniscient (knows all), ominpotent (totally capable of any act) and perfectly good. Now this means that for any decision point God will know (a) what the most moral action is (b) be empowered to perform that action and (c) must perform that action. He must perform that action because if He performs another action, He is being less good, and He is required to be perfectly good by definition and the only way to satisfy that requirement is to do the most good thing. He cannot avoid performing that action because He has unrestrained power. He cannot be uncertain as to what the most moral action is because He knows everything, in infinte detail, in all places and times, past and future; like a hypothetical perfect chess player He can foresee every possible chain of consequences of His actions and thus determine precisely which is the most good.
We should note at this point, that this covers all possible action choices, in all things. Every choice, however trivial, will trigger a chain of consequences and every consequence has some value of goodness; even the apparently trivial such as choosing whether to eat chocolate or strawberry ice cream for dessert will ripple out to affect the lives of every human being, ultimately, and thus help or hinder to different degrees God’s necessity of achieving the perfectly good. It might be only one part in a trillion’s difference of goodness between the choices, but God can discern that with absolute reliability, even if we cannot.
The first interesting conclusion from this (for those interested in the question of Free WIll) is that God himself cannot have any free will. He cannot do “other than he did” without breaking one of His defining criteria (omniscience, omnipotence, goodness). He is unavoidably reduced to an automaton. Another Metagod as infinitely knowledgable as God could unnerringly predict, 100% of the time, what God will do. God just sits there all day like a fairground fortune telling machine, acting in a 100% predictable fashion. His capacity for free will is zero.
The second interesting conclusion though is what this means for humanity. If we presume an objective code of goodness (our objective moral code) we must accept that for every possible choice- however trivial such as choosing dessert- there must be a right choice which is the most good, which is inherently the superior one which ought to be chosen by every moral human. The only reason we can find for justifying doing something would consist of one or more of (a)ignorance (b) incapacity or (c) badness.
The problem with (a) is that every moral objectivist believes with certainty that they are not ignorant regarding at least some moral standards; they have certainty in this regard. (b) Can be answered by seeking something to extend one’s power. The State is a popular answer here. Maybe you cannot achieve a moral outcome alone, but with the power of the State behind you, you can do so. Answer (c) is inherently unjustifiable. If you believe that goodness is self evidently better than badness, there is no justification for allowing it.
This is why we live under increasing tyranny in the real world. Moralists are certain that they can answer (a). They have the State as an answer to (b). This only leaves Libertarians with (c); and this is precisely how our opponents perceive us; that our arguments for liberty are the demand to be allowed to make the “less good” or “bad” choice. No wonder they won’t listen. Who wants to give others the right to do evil? Is it any wonder that we lose the argument?
It is interesting to observe that many Libertarians, like Progressives, believe in the progressive revelation of morality; that there is a certain moral code, that humans simply did not know it or observe it in the past, but that it becomes steadily more and more revealed through moral progress. It obviously makes no sense for a conservative to believe this, since they are asking for a return to an inherently “less morally enlightened” standard- and yet bizarrely many do. The reason that the modern State extends into more and more areas of our lives is that it is the tool of power (point (b)) which enables the imposition of a certain moral standard (point (a)) and of course in doing so must prohibit the choices which are bad (point (c)).
If you really believe in objective morality, then like the Automatic God, there is only one possible choice you can make in any situation. You do not need any liberty. Liberty is a positive harm, since it enables badness. This is of course the ideology which rules current society and which Libertarians are supposed to be arguing against.
But, I would contend, it is impossible to have any philosophical justification for arguing for liberty withoutn embracing humanity’s subjectivism, for two reasons. The first being that it is the correct description of human nature, and secondly because if you don’t, you haven’t got a leg to stand on in an argument. Which is the main reason we lose all the time.
On the other hand,
is perfectly true (although you haven’t defined “subjectivism,” so I’m assuming I know, at least broadly, what you mean by the word).
And this bloody comment was supposed to follow the one below, time-stamped 9:42 pm. Just in case it leaves persons feeling “WTF is this about?!”
I’m going back to my old system of never threading anything.
Oh horsefeathers. “Life is an engineering discipline: There are always trade-offs.©,™.” Even if someone believes there exists a God both omniscient and omnipotent (a logical impossibility: Such a God could both do and not do the same thing in the same sense and at the same time), no human is omniscient. We can only do the best we can with what (information or knowledge) we have, and we are always going to have decided on what is best on balance, in this real world of ours.
Therefore “If you really believe in objective morality, then … there is only one possible choice you can make in any situation” is simply not true. There is nothing in the concept of objective morality that eliminates the possibility of situations where Solution A is in harmony with one part of it and Solution B with another.
Just as in engineering — say in building a bridge — one is always faced with choosing (or devising) a design based on tradeoffs required by applications of true physics (“objective physics”) to the actual situation in designing a bridge to carry THIS weight and amount of THIS kind of traffic at THIS particular point across THIS particular river. (This list of requirements is not exhaustive!)
Julie-
“Omnipotent” assumes that God can do anything possible, not logical impossibilities like A and Not A in the same sense and time. God can raise Lazarus from the dead, He cannot both raise and not raise Lazarus.
I think I (at least by implication) covered this. God can still identify which out of A and B is the greater good. Since God is by definition Universal, we must effectively conclude that He is the ultimate Benthamite Utilitarian (although seeking the maximal “good” rather than “happiness” as with pure Benthamism). God can certainly identify trade offs, but the three characteristics (perfect knowledge, perfect capability and perfect goodness) ensure that He can always identify the most good choice. Just as a consumer in the economy makes multiple trade-offs but selects nonetheless one most optimal product.
But the point of my comment was not a discussion of God; God in this thought experiment just acts as a hypothetical Gold Standard who always gets it right. The point is that if one accepts an objective morality, the only justifications for liberty of choice are ignorance, incapacity or evil. None of which can hold up as a defence of liberty for its own sake. Since nobody would accept a “right to do evil”, then as society becomes (a) more knowledgable and (b) more capable, the sphere of liberty must reduce. It is this logic that the Progressives are pursuing to its logical endpoint and, if you are a moral objectivist, you are obligated to pursue it with them.
You can argue that their particular moral position is objectively incorrect (this is parameter (a)) but this would only allow you to impose a different moral position, not justify liberty on the (particular) issue. So, that comes to my general point that liberty is only compatible with a subjective morality, which is of course entirely consist with the (correct) Libertarian/Austrian view that the only theory of economic value consistent with free markets is a subjective one. Which is why we say there is no “just” price and no “fair” wage.
Well, whether or not God is, and if he is then whether or not He is omnipotent, and if He is and He is omnipotent then just what is the nature of His omnipotence, has exercised theologians and Christian philosophers, for roughly two millenia. (SF writers have a go at it from time to time also.) As usual, it depends (though not solely) on definitions. For instance, perhaps God’s omnipotence lies in the fact that He (and only He) has the power to raise Lazarus OR not to raise Lazarus (as opposed to doing both, and simultaneously besides), whereas we mere mortals have no choice in the matter: We cannot raise Lazarus. (Unless our initials are R.A.H.) I don’t think you & I are going to settle this issue once and for all tonight even though I admit that we are both Great Brains.
On the other hand you can argue that omnipotence means real omnipotence, and that God’s power is not thwarted by such trivia as what we consider, in our inferior, merely-human logic, to be contradictory. “Omnipotence” means, by definition, that God is ALL-powerful; if that is literally true, then He has the power to overcome contradictions, or to dispel them perhaps. Whereas to say what amounts to “Omnipotence means that God can do whatever He can do” doesn’t really increase our understanding *g*.
If there really were an all-powerful God, He would have to have decided to forgo ever exercising his power to cause contradictions, and to engage in contradictory acts. One could argue that He has in fact done exactly this, it seems, so that the Reality in which we find ourselves is rational, logical, non-contradictory, dependable, and reasonably understandable. In fact this could be taken as the ultimate proof of God’s beneficence.
As for the rest … later on perhaps. –Well, except for this: You say, between A and B God can “identify which is the greater good.” But look at this simple example. Your dog Missy has presented you with identical twins just a couple of weeks ago. Your house catches fire and for whatever reason you can save Sassie OR Lassie but not both. As far as you personally can tell, they are both sweet and charming and equally attractive and healthy and you adore them equally. But according to your theory, God can identify whether it is the greater good to save Lassie or instead to save Sassie. And if, as you later say, “God” is meant as a stand-in for some (presumable all-wise) adjudicator of what is objectively moral, then you must believe that it is for some reason objectively moral to save the one AS OPPOSED TO saving the other.
What I gather from this analysis, which I freely admit may be incorrect — although if I thought it is I wouldn’t present it — is that I don’t quite see what you’re getting at, or perhaps it’s that I don’t see just what you understand to be “objective morality.”
Julie, I did point out that I wasn’t intending a theological discussion, and thus defined what I meant by omnipotence. It’s not even central to the discussion, because an omniscient God can know what the best action is, always, regardless of whether He can act upon it or not. So we can if we like just drop the omnipotence if it makes things clearer. (a) and (c) are the key elements; these allow him unerringly to know what is Most Good.
With the two dogs, God having a literally universal view, can indeed tell which one to save, since they will both have slightly different effects on future events. Any omniscient moralist can make the same choice. One dog’s salvation will make for a slightly better future outcome than the other. It may be one part in a trillion of “goodness”, but the omniscient moralist can see that, and choose accordingly.
By “objective morality” I simply refer to the view often expressed by many people, including here, that there is some set of morals which are objectively correct, and which are revealed to us by consideration, rather than morals being a matter for individual opinion. Bear in mind that this includes not just the rules themselves, but a specification as to their relative importance (that is, a value ranking). Thus, two persons who know this objective moral code 100% would not only agree that, say, rape and murder are wrong, they would agree which is worse, and relatively how much worse (or could measure them both in some absolute unit of moral goodness/badness, if the code is cardinal rather than ordinal).