Richard: Put in more intuitive terms, we can ask: could our world have turned out in any possible way?

Sure. In fact, I’d wager that it’s necessarily true that our world could have turned out in any possible way, provided that you’re not equivocating on the sort of modality you’re talking about in between the “could” and the “possible.” After all, any way that our universe could not have turned out to be is (ipso facto) an impossible, not a possible, “way.”

To put it another way, isn’t your question here just equivalent to asking whether the world could have turned out in any way it could have turned out, or whether it’s possible for the world to have turned out in any possible way?

Richard: Or are some possibilities so extreme that they could only be realized by a different underlying universe?

I don’t think I know what this even means. What would it mean to have a numerically (not just qualitatively) different universe from the one we’ve got? I can conceive of things going quite differently in this universe, but I really have no idea what I’m supposed to imagine about this numerically distinct, alien world that would make it something other than the world we’re in, under different circumstances. (If they are numerically distinct, could they both be actual at once? If not, why not? But if so, doesn’t that conflict with the condition of totality?)

Alex Skiles: Whether or not property P is essential to object x itself has to do with whether or not x has P in all possible worlds. But possible worlds aren’t the sorts of things that can have properties in other possible worlds.

I don’t see why they wouldn’t be. If there are statements that are true of possible worlds, (e.g. that in at least one of them I went to bed instead of writing these remarks), then that seems like a good prima facie reason for saying that those statements are actual, i.e., are among the states of affairs that constitute the actual world. But if you accept that, then you accept applying predicates to worlds within other possible worlds (e.g. that the world in which I go to bed has, in this the actual world, the property of having been accessible for me).

Of course, you could deny the prima facie case, and argue either (a) that modal facts aren’t in any possible world, but float outside (over? under?) any possible world; or (b) that there aren’t really any facts about possible worlds at all. But the sort of transworld realm of facts required for (a) seems to undermine the idea of possible worlds as total; and to assert (b) just seems to be to give up on possible worlds as anything other than a useful fiction.

E. Simon:

And just how many unrelated third parties do you think the IDF can legitimately kill or maim in the process of retaliating against “Nasrallah and his supporters”?

Will: Can you seriously expect Israelis to give Lebanese civilians equal importance as their families?

That depends on what context you’re speaking in. Importance for what?

If you mean, “Should Israelis give innocent Lebanese strangers as many birthday presents as they give their own family members?” then of course the answer is no.

If you mean, “Should Israelis feel the same urgent need to rescue innocent Lebanese strangers from danger as they feel towards their own family members?” then the answer is probably still no, but less obviously so.

If you mean, “Should Israelis be willing to actively go out and ”slaughter” innocent Lebanese strangers in order to protect their own family members from danger?” then the answer is no, they should not. Murder is wrong.

Will: Given the choice of saving a dozen people I don’t know or my wife I would choose my wife. I wouldn’t care how unethical it was.

We’re not talking about a situation where Lebanese civilians just happen to be in danger, and Israelis have to choose between “saving” them or saving their family members. We’re talking about a situation in which the IDF is rolling out, professedly in the name of ordinary Israelis, and actively killing innocent Lebanese civilians, supposedly in the process of trying to damage or destroy a guerrilla army (Hizbollah), which many of those civilians are not members of.

So the “choice” you pose here is a weak analogy at best. The proper question to pose to yourself is: would you be willing to go out and murder a dozen people you don’t know in the process of saving your wife from some unrelated menace.

I wouldn’t. And if you would, then you’re a fucking sociopath.

mrfisher,

If you personally want to offer narcotics for free, then in a free society you’d have every right to do so. I hope you don’t propose to present me with the bill, however, or to force those who are selling drugs at a profit to stop doing so.

For what it’s worth, if you propose to ENFORCE a price ceiling of zero, that would virtually guarantee tremendous shortages of drugs unless those footing the bill have a nearly unlimited budget that they’re willing to devote to providing the drugs. If they don’t, and shortages and the attendant rationing result, then you’ll merely re-create the black market that exists under Prohibition: people will pay under the table for access to drugs now, or drugs over and above the amount on their ration card. Either you can let that market flourish (in which case you give up on the enforcement), or else you can escalate the use of force in the attempt to suppress it (in which case you end up with much the same situation that you have now).

Genius:

as a [consequentialist] I would say they have an obligation to do what is required to defend themselves without causing more harm than would have been caused by the thing they are trying to prevent.

Consequentialism does entail this standard, but I think that that’s a good reason not to be a consequentialist: the standard is too lax about murdering the innocent. It excuses (in principle, if not in fact) all kinds of retaliatory violence, even terroristic violence, against people who have done nothing to deserve it. If the Israeli army could save the lives of 100 Israeli civilians by murdering 99 Lebanese civilians in retaliation for an attack, I think they would still be wrong to do so, even though there’s a decrease in the net body count. Reason being that the 99 Lebanese civilians (ex hypothesi) didn’t have anything to do with the threatened murder of the 100 Israeli civilians, and other people’s lives are not yours to volunteer for that kind of sacrificial duty. This connects up with a more general problem I have with consequentialism in the theory of justice: it suggests that the primary demand of justice on you is that you take steps to minimize the amount of net evil going around in society. Not so: the primary demand of justice is that you must be just.

Clark:

Doesn’t Israel have the right to either eliminate Hezbolla as a threat or come to some sort of peace accord?

Sure, but not by any means necessary. They have no right whatsoever to inflict massive and disproportionate human costs on the lives and livelihoods of civilians in Lebanon in order to “eliminate” Hizbollah or to force their hand diplomatically (or to do the same thing, mutatis mutandis, in Gaza, to eliminate or force a settlement on Hamas). After all, the Israeli government could do all kinds of things to eliminate the threat from Hizbollah; they could, for example, firebomb all the cities in southern Lebanon until everyone in the area was dead, or they could threaten to use nuclear weapons on Beirut, Damascus, Tehran, etc. These would be far more effective at the task of restraining or destroying Hizbollah than the current military strategy is; I leave it up to you and your God to judge why it is that they are not appropriate responses to the death or capture of a handful of soldiers, or the threat posed to civilians from ongoing poorly-aimed rocket attacks.

Clark:

Once a war starts the fact is that there are collateral casualties. While I think there is a lot one can blame Israel for the fact is once the war starts there isn’t the possibility of a clean fight like you suggest.

This is not an argument in favor of so-called “collateral casualties” (that is, killing or maiming innocent people). If it’s an argument against anything, it’s an argument against going to war.

Clark:

One can’t simply say, “I can’t think of anything better” and then simultaneously say, “their current actions don’t meet the standard of restraint.” That’s just a cop out.

Oh yes one can. If you can’t figure out any way to achieve your aims without doing evil to innocent third parties in the process, then your aims had jolly well better go unachieved; it is better to do nothing than to do evil.

I would like to be able to suggest something that the IDF could do that would not be evil and that would be better than doing nothing at all; attacks on Israeli civilians are criminal and should be stopped where possible. But I’m under no obligation to come up with that constructive advice for them before I condemn immoral policies that they’re presently engaged in: they are obliged to stop doing evil immediately and completely, whether or not anybody has thought of any better way to accomplish their professed goals.

Clark:

I hate to say it but as democracies both the people of Lebanon and Palestine have to foot a lot of the blame. (Just as Americans have to accept the blame for George Bush)

Oh, bullshit. What blame should I accept for the policies of a ruler that I never voted for, never supported, and have no effective control over whatsoever?

Amp,

Thanks for this post.

This puzzled me, though:

In virtually any context other than a crime committed by US soldiers, a 14 year old girl who was raped and murdered would be called a girl, not a “woman.”

That’s probably true, but why is it important? Is raping a woman, then murdering her and burning her body to cover up, any less monstrous than doing the same thing to a “girl”?

The language might not provoke the same level of outrage amongst the average newspaper reader: sexual assault against children or adolescents tends to be treated as if it were more of an outrage than sexual assault against adult women. But if it doesn’t provoke the same level of outrage, then that’s a problem with the audience, not a problem with the newspaper.

Robert:

For an individual or minority group which disagrees with those laws to demand that they not be enforced is for that group to de-legitimize the state.

What my argument “de-legitimizes” is the government inflicting injustice upon innocent third parties, even if it should scribble down a permission slip for itself to commit the injustice, and call it a “Law.” If the state can carry out its policies without doing injustice to innocent third parties, then more power to it. If the state cannot do its business without invading the rights of innocent people, however, then its business had jolly well better be left undone. This has nothing to do with whether a faction of one or more people “disagree” with the law; it has to do with whether or not the law violates innocent people’s rights (that is, whether or not it involves pushing around people who aren’t doing any violence themselves).

Robert:

The legislature can point to a big chunk of people who affirmatively chose to give them power; you can’t.

I don’t give a damn. Might does not make right, whether from the force of arms or from the force of numbers. The rights of drug users to be let alone to make their own decisions does not depend on permission from the powerful, or from the majority.

La Lubu: Rad geek, the argument you present privileges wealthier drug users. Because let’s face it, most heroin addicts are not going to be capable of holding down an average, everyday job.

La Lubu, I’m not suggesting that heroin addiction is a good idea, or that it’s not a problem. I’m denying that heroin addicts should not be thrown in prison for using heroin. If people claim to be concerned about the welfare of addicts then they should not suggest restraining them and locking them in a cage with a population of violent criminals. If people claim to be concerned about the welfare of people other than the addicts (e.g. victims of street crime, or victims of violence or neglect in the home, or whatever), then the issue for the legal system to address is theft, battery, neglect, etc., not the drug use.

It’s certainly true that many people cannot afford rehab on their own. That’s a damn shame, but it is not a justification for forcing rehab on them against their will. It’s a good reason to try to make it available to poor people (through financial aid, sliding-scale programs, etc.). It’s not a good reason to (a) lock them in prison or (b) threaten to lock them in prison unless they participate.

Your suggestion that I’m unfamiliar with the violence involved in drug trafficking, or with the the way that people are victimized by drug users in their family, is unfounded, and it’s frankly shitty of you to presume otherwise without any knowledge of me or my family. I’m well aware of the former, and my own family has far too much personal experience with neglect, abandonment, and physical abuse that was tied to alcoholism and other drug addictions. I’ve nowhere claimed that irresponsible drug use isn’t a problem; what I’ve claimed is that the massive government violence involved in drug prohibition isn’t a reasonable response to those problem.

Robert:

Nonsense. They have legitimate authority through the assent of the governed, not because of some intangible (and empirically unprovable) characteristic of their policies.

The “assent” of an electoral majority is certainly not sufficient for legitimacy. Even if the majority of the electorate approved of, say, the Nuremberg Laws, or the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, that would be absolutely no argument for the legitimacy of the Nuremberg Laws or the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. And it would be no argument for enforcing either of them. Unless you are willing to accept a totalitarian theory of political authority, then you are, I’m afraid, stuck with recognizing that there are in principle some limits on what a government can enact, even if that government is backed by a majority of the electorate. (It does not matter whether the authority consists of 535 legislators, or of 50%+1 of the voting public; the point is that there are things that nobody at all has the right to do to other people.)

Now, you could claim, if you wanted, that some policies are more monstrously unjust than others, and only the really really monstrous ones should be refused on the grounds of their injustice. But then you’ll have to give some argument for why the massive violence involved in drug prohibition (including the violence of arrest and incarceration, and also the violence that results from driving the market underground) is only on “merely unjust” rather than “monstrously unjust” side of the ledger. Or you could claim, if you wanted, that any atrocity that’s backed up by an electoral majority under a democratic constitution really is legitimate, no matter how unjust it is. But if you want to argue that, then you’ll have to explain where you think that electoral majorities get the right to treat dissenters that way.

Me:

Demanding that “the people,” or the government, stop imposing their will on nonviolent drug users, does not involve overriding the decisions that they have made for themselves. It involves overriding the decisions that they have forced on innocent third parties, but those are “decisions” that neither “the people” nor the government had any right to make.

Robert:

But it does. They decided to elect a certain set of representatives, and those representatives made certain laws, …. And so saying drug laws are invalid because we find them unjust — when the populace disagrees — is an attempt to override the legitimate choices of other people.

You’ve missed the point. You’ve also seriously misunderstood, or misrepresented, my position.

Your rhetoric about overriding the decisions of others is plausible only insofar as you’re referring to the decisions that people make concerning themselves. It would be, for example, presumptuous of me to try to override your decisions about what sort of education you should get, or where you should work, or what size of a family you should have, or how you should decorate your living room. I have no business making you change your plans about these things against your will, even if you would end up with a better education, or a better job, or a more rewarding family life, or a more attractive living room, as a result. But I have every right to “override” decisions that you are trying to make for me: if you are trying to force me to go to the college that you prefer for me, or take the job that you prefer for me, or decorate my living room the way you want me to decorate it, then I have every bloody right to “override” that decision, because you have no right to make the decision for me.

You cannot sensibly posture as wanting to let people alone to make their own decisions here while also endorsing the enforcement of drug prohibition. Drug prohibition just means interfering, by the use or threat of physical force, with people’s decisions about how to spend their own time and what to put into their own bodies. When I suggest that drug laws should not be enforced, the only decisions I am “overriding” are the decisions that the governing majority wants to impose on peaceful third parties against their will. And I don’t give a damn about whether or not the governing majority is left alone to push innocent third parties around. That’s not something they have the right to expect.

Further, I’d like to note that I did not claim that any law is void because “we” find it unjust. The claim is that laws are void if they are actually unjust, whether or not anyone finds them so. If I thikn the laws against slavery are unjust, and so defy them by enslaving my neighbors, that does not mean that the laws are void, and does not making enforcing them illegitimate. It just makes me monstrously wrong about the moral status of the laws in question. The issue has to do with how a law actually treats the people subjected to it, not how third parties look on happen to react to that treatment.

Robert:

The point is that among the population of drug users who are also criminals (other than the “crimes” they commit in the ordinary process of getting and having their drugs), there is a big chunk who don’t want to stop using. For this group, sending them to rehabilitation (the point of this thread) is worse than useless – not only do they not want to be there, not only are they going to interfere with the progress of the people who do want to be there, but they are going to go out and commit more crimes while they’re in/around the non-lockup rehab process. For this group, locking them up is the only interventionist approach that makes any sense. The reason we need to lock them up rather than rehab them is that if we put them in rehab, they will continue hurting people outside the system.

Yes, Robert, but that’s a reason to lock them up for theft, or robbery or whatever crimes against person or property that they have been committing. It has nothing at all to do with the proper punishment (if any) for drug use.

But it’s punishments inflicted for drug use that Amp was addressing in his cartoon. I can’t find any plausible reading of the cartoon on which it would be suggesting that you shouldn’t imprison thieves or robbers who also happen to be drug addicts.

Robert,

Certainly there is: to maintain the validity of our system of government.

A system of government is not more important than millions of innocent people’s lives and livelihoods. If maintaining the “validity” of the former requires destroying the latter, then the system of government deserves to be ignored, altered or abolished.

If democratically-elected legislatures pass laws, and those laws are not odious to the constitution under which they operate, then the laws should be enforced regardless of whether they are reasonable or just.

Why?

Enforcing an unjust law means using violence against innocent people in order to secure an aim that is unworthy of securing. Neither electoral majorities nor Constitutions have total authority over the people subject to them, and if they have legitimate authority it is only because of the justice of the policies they endorse. Laws or constitutions that endorse unjust violence against innocent people have stepped outside of the boundaries of their legitimate authority, and are no more legitimately binding than criminal compacts or pirates’ codes.

To do otherwise is to imbue some unelected body with the power to override the decisions of the legislature on matters specifically entrusted to the legislature.

It’s not a matter of an “unelected body” having some kind of special authority to veto the acts of the legislature. It’s a matter of the legislature not having any special authority to commit injustice against the innocent. Everybody — not as a “body,” but as free individuals — has the right to ignore or defy so-called laws that the legislature has no legitimate authority to enact: an “unjust law” is no law at all, and the idea that anyone is obliged to carry out an admitted injustice against innocent people is an affront to conscience.

I consider myself smarter and more informed than you. What decisions do you make for yourself, that I should get to override and change in your life, on the basis that I think your decisions are unreasonable?

Is this some kind of joke?

You have things exactly backward. Drug prohibition is founded on the premise that one group of people, who consider themselves smarter and more informed (the government, and perhaps the electoral majority behind them) are entitled to override the decisions of another group of people (drug users), on the grounds that the drug users’ decisions are unreasonable. Not only do they claim to be entitled to override drug users’ decisions about their own lives; they claim to be entitled to force drug users to comply with their judgments.

Demanding that “the people,” or the government, stop imposing their will on nonviolent drug users, does not involve overriding the decisions that they have made for themselves. It involves overriding the decisions that they have forced on innocent third parties, but those are “decisions” that neither “the people” nor the government had any right to make.