Robert, you’re being a prick. You’re deliberately baiting people and disrupting a conversation that doesn’t include you. Please quit.

Ampersand:

The advantage of your kind of personal attack, Sally – that is, making up bullshit about the person you’re attacking – is that it’s impossible to disprove. I know, because I live in my own skull, that I get pissed off at both misogyny and at anti-fat attitudes. But there’s no way for me to prove it.

I don’t think I’m more rational and restrained than “women,” and of course I’ve never said anything of the kind. I don’t think that “women” as a class are any less rational and restrained than men. (I do think I’m more restrained than many internet posters, regardless of sex.)

Amp, I don’t think that everything that’s been said about your weblog or your moderation policies is fair, but I don’t think that examining your own private reactions or beliefs is the end of the story here. Whether or not, in your own head, you get at least as mad about misogyny as you do about anti-fat attitudes, and whether or not you say “I’m more rational than women” to yourself when you make your remarks, it might turn out that your public remarks and public actions come off to other people as selective or patronizing, without your intending to come off that way. Couldn’t it?

mythago, this doesn’t have to do with my personal preferences. As it happens I like kids a lot and I’d be glad to help out; that’s why I framed it as a hypothetical to be supposed. What I’m concerned with is how we ought to treat people who don’t happen to be interested in volunteering.

That said:

Unfortunately, Rad Geek, you live in a society that has a minimal level of communal support—you know, tax breaks for charity, funding for soup kitchens, and so on.

I can’t see how this appeal cuts any ice at all. I was also born into a society where heterosexual marriage is widespread, where homophobia is widespread, where a minimal level of sexist jokes, are widespread, etc., but that’s not an argument for sexist jokes or homophobia, and it’s not an argument for forcing me to get heterosexually hitched either. Why should the fact that I was born into a society where people carry on a certain way affect whether or not (1) I ought to support them carrying on that way, or (2) I ought to be forced to carry on that way myself?

Even if you think all poor people should curl up and die, you still have to pay taxes that go to feed poor people.

I’m aware that I am. I’m questioning whether forcing people to contribute to causes they don’t support is right, not whether it is done.

You might say that if I’m taking advantage of communal support that I’m unwilling to contribute to later, then that’s at least a vice on my part. Perhaps that I’m, say, selfish or ungrateful. Maybe so, but I don’t think that just pointing this out:

If this makes you curmudgeonly, do consider that you’ve been the benefit of ‘public good’ projects—if not directly, then indirectly.

… proves that to be the case. I wasn’t asked whether or not whether I wanted to benefit from various cooperative or tax-funded projects, so I don’t see how I have even any prima facie moral obligation to support them now. Let alone an enforceable debt to them.

Robert:

I would suggest that. Although I don’t much like the communal child-raising pipedream, if that were the mechanism we selected as a society, you would owe it support and fealty. … Otherwise, get out. If you won’t support society’s requirement to transmit itself through time, then you don’t deserve to participate in the side benefits that such societies tend to provide. Go live in the woods and be a lonely hermit.

If you want to voluntarily dissociate from childless people who don’t support the raising of other people’s children (by whatever means is prevalent in a given community), then you are of course free to do so. I don’t see, however, where you think you get the right to tell me whether or not I can live on my own land (which happens to be in the middle of a city, not in the woods), or whether or not I can interact with and trade with other people who happen not to share your views (most shopkeeps don’t care very much whether or not their paying customers are sufficiently child-friendly, and while I happen not to be a child-hating curmudgeon, I know plenty of people who wouldn’t hold it against me if I were).

If you’re just suggesting that I have a right to be a sour child-hating curmudgeon, and you have a right to ostracize me and encourage your neighbors to do the same, then we’re in agreement (although I think the reasons you’re suggesting for the ostracism are rather silly). But if you’re suggesting that you have a right to force me to move out, or to force other people not to interact with me, then I have to wonder what you think gives you the right to treat me and them that way.

Maia:

Just for the record under my red nightmare no-one would be required to work doing child raising. It would just be one of the many forms of work that people would do.

Well, that’s fine. I don’t have any problem with it, then. I think it sounds pretty nice, in point of fact.

My concern is with the phrase “collective responsibility.” People sometimes use “responsibility” to mean something that you can choose or not choose to take on; sometimes they use it to mean something that you are required to do, and can be forced to do, whether you like it or not. And when they start talking about how X or Y is a “collective responsibility” a lot of times they mean the latter rather than the former (since it suggests that you’re talking about a burden for everyone to bear, instead of something that they willingly choose to take on because they want to do it). Why not talk about child-rearing being something “open to all,” or something “everyone can help out with,” instead of a “collective responsibility”?

La Lubu:

I don’t know what Maia is envisioning when she refers to the collectiveness of child-rearing, but I’d like to see some acknowledgement of the necessity of certain institutions needed to simultaneously raise children and keep a roof over one’s head

I would too, and I happen to dislike sour child-hating curmudgeons on both an individual and societal level (although not because I think they’re somehow ungrateful; the problem with them is that they’re generally petty and mean).

My question isn’t about the ends to be achieved; it’s about the means used to achieve them.

beachcomber:

I agree that there should be some collective responsibility for raising and nurturing children. I think society would benefit hugely from abandoning the unworkable nuclear family model and moving towards something more communal in terms of child care.

Let’s suppose that I’m a sour old curmudgeon and I’ve decided that I don’t want to have any kids of my own, or to play any role in helping to raise other people’s kids.

Are you suggesting that I should be forced to support your communal child-raising collabo?

Sophist: “It’s not about acting ladylike, it’s about presenting a united front.”

I was under the impression that feminism was a movement, not an underground conspiracy. These kind of calls for Bolshevik party discipline frankly make me pretty squeamish even independently of feminist concerns about “ladylike” manners, etc.

In any case, one of the topics usually at issue in these debates (as I think ginmar and others have pointed out) is whether some feminists’ efforts really are or are not being supported, and whether the terms of “unity” in some spaces are fair ones or whether they reflect various forms of privilege. Just appealing to “unity” when that’s itself part of the contested territory isn’t going to do much of anything for anybody.

Admittedly I haven’t been following every post, but I don’t think that anyone on any side of the various debates has yet accused another participant of being, say, a CIA infiltrator aiming to destroy or co-opt the feminist movement.

There is such a thing as destructive in-fighting, but I think that, as unpleasant as some of these arguments have been, they’ve really been pretty mild, as these things go.

DSH: As the cynics of ancient Greece and Rome (also known as “skeptics” and “pyrhonnists”) demonstrated, knowledge and reason is always contingent, never necessary.

Here’s a condensed version of popular old chestnut:

1. If there is a greatest prime number, then there is a natural number N that is the product of all the prime numbers.

2. If there is a natural number N that is the product of all the prime numbers, then N+1 is a natural number.

3. If N+1 is a natural number, then there is at least one prime number P that divides N+1. (By the fundamental theorem of arithmetic.)

4. If there is at least one prime number P that divides N+1, then P does not divide N. (Impossibility of dividing 1.)

5. If P does not divide N, then P is not prime. (Defn. of N)

6. If there is a greatest prime number, then there is a number P which is both prime and not prime.

7. There is no number P which is both prime and not prime.

8. Therefore, there is no greatest prime number.

It seems to me that, having this argument in hand, I know that there is no greatest prime number, on the basis of a deductive argument (by reductio).

Are you suggesting that the Pyrrhonians and Hume demonstrated (a) that “there is no greatest prime number” is true only contingently and not necessarily? Or (b) that I don’t actually have knowledge about whether there is or is not a greatest prime? Or (c) something else?

Help me out here.

On Wittgenstein and Kripke:

DSH: As Wittgenstein monumentally said, “use determines meaning.”

Actually, he didn’t say this. Here’s what he said: “43. For a large class of cases—though not for all—in which we employ the word meaning it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language game.” (Boldface mine.)

DSH: Language rigidly designates what I have picked out to be highly variable; by language I can mean the same thing through different experiences. “Use determines meaning,” and Kripke’s insight, “meaning determines use.” It’s a game of language. … But I can relate experiences through my use of language, and by language “fix” the referent. Reason? We’re playing the same “language game.” Hence, essences are metaphysical nonsense. Not only do they not “exist,” but there’s nothing to “know.”

This is not what Kripke says.

Kripke specifically argues that natural kind terms such as “rose” pick out their referents on the basis of naming a kind which can be identified by an essence. He suggests that the essences can often be investigated by natural science (e.g. it is essential to roses that they are members of such-and-such a biological taxon; it is essential to gold that it is element Au). He explicitly denies (in his discussion of Wittgenstein and Strawson in Naming and Necessity) that “family resemblances” explain how names or natural kind terms work.

Kripke is rather notorious among contemporary philosophers for being a scientific essentialist. Why are you invoking him here in an attempt to argue against essentialism? Do you think that Kripke has unwittingly given an argument against essentialism in spite of himself? If so, you ought to at least note that that is what you are doing. Or are you trying to do something else? If so, what?

DSH: I concede I over-condensed G.E.Moore, and you rightly identify him and his notion of the naturalistic fallacy as more concerned with “the good” than the “is” vs. “ought” distinction. It’s good to bring this point out, although I’m not sure what it adds.

My primary point is that you are running together three different issues that are in fact separate (the alleged naturalistic fallacy, the alleged is-ought gap, and the alleged fact-value distinction). Speaking as if they are all the same thing drastically oversimplifies intellectual history — which is a problem for you, specifically, because a lot of the argumentative force throughout your remarks rests on appeals to an alleged consensus among philosophers about what has been proven, demonstrated, is plausible, etc. You need to be much more careful if you are going to try to rest on these kinds of appeals to the consensus of philosophers rather than a critical explanation of some particular argument or another.

My secondary point is that you’re mischaracterizing Moore’s view. Moore does not accept the “fact-value” distinction. He considers “X is good (as an end)” to be a statement of fact which is either true or false, depending on whether or not X has or has not got the objective property of intrinsic goodness, and he took ethics to be a theoretical science that aims at asserting all those propositions about goodness that agree with the facts and denying all those that do not. He considered this property to be “non-natural” (which he characterizes in PE 26 as meaning that it does not exist in time and is not an object of study for the natural sciences or psychology). He was rather famous for believing this in the early 20th century because many other philosophers (emotivists, prescriptivists, other objectivists who were mystified by what “non-natural” properties were, etc.) disagreed with him. In PE he spends a bit of time on the objectivity of the good; in Ethics he spends two long (and very good) chapters on it. This isn’t a matter of “over-condensation” on your part; you just stated something about his view and his arguments that is flatly false.

It’s also specifically important to recognize that Moore’s discussion in PE Chapter I is focused on an issue of definition and not of inference because both the characterization of the fallacy that Moore offers and the argument that he gives for its fallaciousness depend on a particular view of language and definition (specifically, the idea that all terms are either simple or complex, with simple terms admitting of no definition and complex terms being definable entirely in terms of simple terms) that has been widely criticizedin Analytic philosophy since 1903 (Wittgenstein was one of the first to criticize it; see the remarks on the Theatetus in PI 46 et seq). Unless you intend for your comments to turn on an extremely controversial view of language now regarded by many philosophers as outmoded and wildly oversimplified, you’re better off sticking to Hume’s authority and not Moore’s.

DSH: (2) Moore was vitriolic in his contempt for the natural law, for simplicity’s sake = Suarez’s account, but I agree it wasn’t his locus. (See, Chap. IV of PE).

I don’t know where you’re finding this in Chapter IV, which deals with what Moore calls “Metaphysical Ethics” and explicitly distinguishes from “Naturalistic Ethics” (with which he deals in Chapter II and Chapter III). In PE 74-76 he accuses Kant of confusedly treating moral laws as if they were (1) analogous to “natural laws” (which Moore consistently uses to mean a universal truth about what in fact happens in nature) and (2) analogous to laws in the legal sense of command. The closest he comes to any discussion of natural law theory (vitriolic, contemptuous, or otherwise) is his discussion of Stoic ethics (along with a mention of Rousseau) in PE 27). But his objection here has nothing to do with a fact-value distinction; it has to do with a spat over the meaning of the term “natural” (and one in which I think Moore is actually rather obviously being unfair to the target of his criticism).

DSH: I concede I have no use for Moore’s or Murdock’s locus on the “good” for the same reason I can’t get my arms around “justifiable.” What in the world can “good” possibly identify that’s ethically meaningful?

Well, Moore’s answer would be that it identifies goodness, and there’s an end on’t. His suggestion is that you either grasp the concept or you don’t, and if you don’t, there isn’t anything he can to do explain it to you, other than to keep pointing to cases and hoping that you begin to cotton on to it.

Whether Moore is right about this or not, the important question for you is, why would you invoke Moore’s authority if you think that he is fundamentally wrong? Why mention the naturalistic fallacy if its explicit concern (the meaning of the term “good”) is something that you have no use for and doubt the meaningfulness of?

DSH: Important: Don’t confuse Strauss’s “natural rights” for “natural law.”

The notion of “natural rights” is not limited to Strauss or Straussians. (Strauss actually is primarily concerned with tracing the idea of “natural right,” singular, which he identifies with the tradition of “natural law.”) The phrase “natural rights” was used extensively before Strauss hit the English-speaking intellectual scene; for a few aleatory examples of pre-Straussian and non-Straussian usages, see Sam Adams (1772), New Hampshire state constitution (1783), T. H. Huxley (1890), H.L.A. Hart’s “Are There Any Natural Rights?” Philosophical Review 64 (1955), etc. Jefferson’s claim of “inalienable” or “inherent and inalienable” rights with which we are endowed by virtue of our equal creation is generally taken to have been considered straightforwardly synonymous with a doctrine of “natural rights” (as mentioned by Adams et al.) in the milieu in which Jefferson was writing.

DSH: Which raises the issue of “natural law.” The Stoics, Aquinas, Suarez, Locke, et alia, all had slightly different versions of it.

Very different, actually; Locke’s view, in particular, represents a radical departure.

DSH: But it’s news to me that Aristotle subscribed to the “natural law.”

I don’t think I claimed that he did. What I said is that he claims to ground ethics in (a particular sort of) natural facts, which is a different claim (a very different one, actually). The most famous text in regard to this claim is probably NE I.7, where Aristotle suggests that eudaimonia, and thus a characterization of the good, is to be found by considering the characteristic function of a human being. For a good overview of how this connects with the notions of ends and nature, in Aristotle’s ethical, political, and physical writing, see e.g. SEP on “Presuppositions of Aristotle’s Politics”, and follow the citations from there.

DSH: Other than Finnis, Grisez, Boyle, and George, what other philosopher, American or Continental, accepts natural law? Roger Scruton, a likely candidate, certainly doesn’t. A few Thomists, perhaps (e.g., Maritain). Otherwise the slate is clean. I admit that teleology is useful, when applied to production of human artefacts. But other than Aristotleans and Thomists, who seriously applies “natural” teleology to ethics?

Putting it this way is rather like saying, “Other than Kantians, who seriously suggests that the universalizability of a moral principle is an important criterion of rightness?” “Aristotelians and Thomists” include many important and well-respected writers on moral philosophy. Some prominent recent examples include Philippa Foot (cf. Natural Goodness), G.E.M. Anscombe (cf. “On Promising and its Justice”), Michael Thompson (cf. “The Representation of Life”), etc. (Note also that although each of these writers is explicitly interested in reviving ideas that they identify with Aristotle, they are not primarily identified as “Aristotelians” or “Thomists.” (They are more influenced by Frege and Wittgenstein than by the Thomist tradition, for one.)

A prominent example popular amongst libertarians, if not widely read elsewhere, would be Lysander Spooner (cf. “Natural Law, or the Science of Justice,” “Letter to Bayard,” etc.), who is not particularly indebted to either the Philosopher or to St. Thomas.

Of course, even if nobody at all in contemporary philosophy advocated the idea, it might still very well be true. But I don’t think that you have the right to appeal to philosophical consensus here, anyway.

DSH: Re: Wittgenstein, see David Stern (reviewed on Amazon.com). Personally, I find most LW incoherent. Even the “themes” he’s credited with are not powerhouse issues for me. The Humanities, conversely, adore him (after the Frankfurt School and Derrida).

So do a number of prominent Analytic philosophers (Putnam, Armstrong, Hacker, Cavell, Conant, Diamond, Foot, Kripke, etc.). Anyway, you’re entitled to your opinion of L.W., but if you find him incoherent and do not care about the things that he’s publicly identified with, why bring him up at all? You’re the one who invoked his authority, not I. The problem is that he clearly does not say what you suggest he says.

DSH: Re: the “self-evident” postulates of Jefferson, see my review of Thomas Reid’s philosophy on Amazon.com. Jefferson’s “self evidence” is an appeal to authority; if there’s an “argument” in the classical sense, I couldn’t find it.

You’re missing the point. Jefferson does not intend to give an argument, from authority or otherwise. If you hold a truth to be self-evident then you are holding that it needs no argument of any kind, because it recommends itself just as it is. (For useful discussion, see also Moore, in PE 86.) Maybe you think they’re not self-evident; maybe you think Jefferson needs to give some further argument that they are self-evident, or at least some explanation. But then that’s a different sort of complaint. (How are we supposed to identify the claims that are self-evident and distinguish them from the ones that aren’t? Well, I don’t know, but Jefferson wasn’t intending to write a declaration on epistemology anyway, so I’m not sure he can be faulted for not discussing the topic.)

Are you still a minarchist? If so, I suggest that you provide the best argument you can in defense of anarchism.

Also, Sandefur should be nonviolently compelled to give an argument against the decision to deploy federal troops against the Confederacy.

Josh: For open heart surgery, I lean more toward the licencing side.

Licensing by whom?

If you just mean that you favor surgeons being credentialed by medical experts, there’s already a system for that (the MD) without the further intervention of a licensing bureaucracy.

If you mean that you favor surgeons being licensed by the government over and above the community standards existing already in the medical field, then I don’t know where the government (or for that matter privatized defense agencies) would get the knowledge, the virtue, or the right to impose licensing schemes above and beyond the voluntary forms of credentialing that exist within the medical community.

In either case, I think the case under question isn’t even anywhere near a gray area. Ms. Wightman is a working counselor who does talk therapy for willing patients (not surgery or even the prescription of drugs). I don’t think that there’s even a prima facie plausible case for demanding a formalized licensing system here (certainly not imposing byzantine regulations about whether you can call your business “psychological” or merely “psychotherapeutic”!)