Comments Elsewhere

Dave,

I’m afraid that you may have confused things more than you have illuminated them.

This argument is not primarily an argument about empirical psychology. It’s about ethics. It may well be that Joe has views about the psychology of motivation that are different from those that natural rights folks such as Kennedy or I have. But the meat of the dispute is over value, not people’s psychological motivations. It’s not over what people are or are not motivated to seek, but rather what it is good or bad for people to seek. Unfortunately, in this vale of tears, the two aren’t always coextensive.

Joe:

He [John Stuart Mill] spends most of Utilitarianism rejecting appeals to intuitions, and while he is less dogmatic in his rejection of natural rights theory than is his godfather, he nevertheless does reject it.

Mill rejects something that he calls “the intuitive school of ethics”, which he associates with deontological theories, but I don’t know why you are leaning on this. Intuitionistic method is neither necessary for endorsing natural rights theory (cf. John Locke, Ayn Rand, Jan Narveson, etc.) nor sufficient for rejecting utilitarianism (cf. Francis Hutcheson, Henry Sidgwick). I’m personally quite comfortable with intuitionistic method, but many if not most natural rights theorists aren’t, and my influences on that score actually come more from consequentialists (Francis Hutcheson, G. E. Moore) than from deontologists.

Maybe you think that natural rights go along with intuitionistic method because you need to grasp at some sort of mystical revelation at some point to support the metaphysical mumbo-jumbo that you think natural rights theory requires. But if so, you can hardly expect either natural rights theorists or intuitionists to agree with the picture you present.

In any case, given the dispute between you and Kennedy over what file to drop J.S. Mill into, maybe it would help to clarify terms a bit. What do you think are the necessary components of a “natural rights” theory? Which of those do you think Mill fails to endorse?

(Kennedy, the same question, mutatis mutandis, goes for you.)

My reason for believing that the universe did not come into existence just now is that I remember it being in existence yesterday.

You might claim that this is a bad reason, because it is possible for the universe to have come into existence just now with a lot of false memories in place. I’ll grant that it is possible for that to have happened. But so what? Pointing out a mere metaphysical possibility proves very little about my actual epistemic state. Unless you have some reason to offer for treating my memories as globally deceptive, or even profoundly unreliable, you have not yet given me any reason for doubting the evidence of my memory. But without some such reason, you’ve given me no reason to entertain your “might have been” as a “maybe” worth considering.

Cf. Outwitting Old Nick for fuller remarks on the older version of the same puzzle.

Joe,

I think the issue with Kennedy’s question is to bring the commitments expressed in your post into greater relief than was provided for by the cases you set out. Not to change the subject to whether or not those commitments would lead you to commit rape under the a given set of circumstances. I also think you misunderstood my reference to “stealth,” which was purely to refer back to Kennedy’s point (that there are plausible cases where a rape might never be noticed by the victim), not to introduce any new considerations.

The main point of my remarks is to suggest that it is not even remotely spooky to suggest that there are depraved pleasures, which are worth abstaining from independent of any further considerations about the effects of the acts or rules or life-stories or whatever necessary to produce them. Pleasures derived from hurting, degrading, or violating innocent people are one such example. (I think pleasures derived from, say, necrophilia or bestiality are another.) These distinctions are not spooky or unfamiliar; they are part of common-sense morality. While common-sense morality may be mistaken, and may need to be revised on particulars in light of rational criticism, the burden is on you to produce some argument that it does need to be revised on this point. I don’t see where you’ve done that; all you’ve done thus far is point out that everybody seems to prefer pleasure in the abstract to pain in the abstract. (That’s true enough, but so what? That doesn’t rule out people valuing something else as an end in itself in addition to pleasure, and it doesn’t rule out the possibility of particular instances of pleasure turning out to be evils.)

And no, I don’t think that describing rape as a wicked act begs the question. I’m referring to a pre-reflective judgment that rape is wicked. I happen to think this judgment is part of the data that any possibly correct theory of ethics would need to explain, not a conclusion that needs to be derived from the theory — if your theory could justify raping uncnoscious women, then that’s as good a reason as any for thinking that your theory needs to be chucked out. But whether or not you share my views on philosophical method in ethics, the point of referring to the pre-reflective judgment was merely to explain the general distinction that I was making amongst pleasures, not to invoke any particular view about which acts are in fact wicked or how you ought to discover that. (Specifically, to make a three-way distinction amongst 1. refined or wholesome pleasures, 2. coarse or hollow pleasures, and 3. depraved pleasures. Part of the point of the distinction was to suggest that common-sense morality generally judges the pleasantness of 1. to be a good but the pleasantness of 3. to be, if anything, an evil. Another part of the point was to suggest that your reflections on “elitism” didn’t actually address the issue of depraved pleasures. Whether or not it’s justified, scorn for the pleasures of “sports entertainment” is quite a different beast from scorn for the pleasures of rape and pillage.) In any case, if you don’t like the word “wicked” you could get a less precise but more wertfrei statement of the distinction by substituting “depraved pleasures taken from hurting, demeaning, or violating other people” for “depraved pleasures taken from wicked acts.”

Henry: Most inventions and copyrights are bestowed to working folks with a need to remunerate themselves.

So what? When did the world start owing them a living?

If you cannot find a way to feed yourself with your writing or your inventing, without the aid of a government-enforced monopoly, of arbitrary length, on the use of ideas copied or derived from yours, then you need to find another line of work. Your need to remunerate yourself is not a claim on anyone else’s pocketbook.

Henry: Tell me whether you find it hard to believe that in a world without copyright, the Disneys and Stephen Kings of the world would not troll the world of uncopyrighted material in order to recast it and sell it through their pre-existing “sales channels.” Tell me who in this world would benefit more, the artist or the media conglomerate.

Who cares? The question is one of justice in property rights, not one of class solidarity. It’s not the government’s job to police academic honesty or creativity. Rooting out “plagiarists” is a job for critics, teachers, peer reviewers, and the reading/listening/viewing public, not lawyers, judges, and bureaucrats.

But, just out of curiosity, where do you think the media conglomerates will get the money to sustain their giant, centralized operations once they no longer can rely on monopoly profits from their own productions or the productions they acquire from others?

Are you advocating privately funded and privately conferred prizes here, or are you advocating Stiglitz’s actual suggestion, which amounts to reviving the Stalin Prize in science and engineering?

If the former, then, sure, why not. If the latter, though, then the whole idea raises the question of where the governments of the “industrialized nations” (either severally or jointly) got the knowledge, the virtue, or the right to put themselves forward as qualified arbiters of the usefulness or importance of new drugs. The sort of “status” that a panel of professional blowhards and usurpers could convey on scientific geniuses deserves their contempt and nothing more. Any scientists who would be motivated by such “prizes” are perfect examples of the psychological deformities imposed by a sick culture, and we’d be better off convincing them of the hollowness of political honors than setting up State Prize committees to pander to their vanity.

Joe:

“But the badness of rape isn’t from the pleasure of the rapist. It’s from the pain of the person being raped.”

Kennedy:

That’s easily factored out for the sake of argument: Rape a woman who’s passed out drunk. She’ll never know.

No pain. Is that pleasure good?

Joe:

Maybe this deserves its own post, but what many of you are discussing (e.g., Constant’s game show, or JTK’s passed out woman) are problems if and only if one interprets utilitarianism to mean that one ought always perform whatever action has the greatest utility.

There are, however, good reasons for thinking that direct, act-utilitarianism is self-effacing. That is, there may well be (and I think are) good utilitarian reasons for abandoning act-utilitarianism. That’s why I said in an earlier comment that I think utilitarianism actually justifies rules that cannot normally be violated. We call these rights. And the most important of those rights is best expressed by something very much like the harm principle.

So, to JTK, the reason I don’t rape the drunk passed out woman who won’t know is that doing so violates the harm principle. And obeying the harm principle is what all-things-considered will maximize utility over the long run. And to Constant, the problem with the game show is not infinite pain of rape (which you rightly criticize); it’s that the game show violates the harm principle.

Joe, you just changed the subject.

Kennedy didn’t ask you whether or not you would rape someone who was drunk and passed out. (Or what your reasons for doing so or not doing so would be.) He asked you whether the pleasure that you would gain from the rape would be a good thing. (Or, more precisely, whether the fact that you received pleasure while no-one else received pain, would make for a net increase in the preponderance of good things over bad.) Gesturing at rule-utilitarianism, or to other forms of indirect utilitarianism, does not answer the question, unless making the gesture is also meant to imply “Yes, it would be for the best, but that’s only a problem if you think its being for the best would license me to do it. It wouldn’t, and here’s why.”

I can’t speak for Kennedy, but I certainly think that treating a sufficiently stealthy rapist’s pleasure as any sort of good at all is a problem, whether or not that conclusion would license actually trying to secure the good in particular instances. Whatever you may think of stupid or hollow pleasures (such as the ones you mention in your post), the idea that the depraved pleasures taken from wicked acts should not be dignified as “goods” is hardly wacky, spooky, or elitist. On the contrary, I’d suggest that denying such an evident truth can be explained by little other than dogmatic shamelessness.

Kurtiss,

As far as the phrase “Free Culture” goes, while it’s true that Lawrence Lessig in particular is not identical with Creative Commons as an organization, I think it’s still the case that, given his extremely influential role with CC, the rhetoric he likes to employ in speech, writing, and titles — for example, “Free Culture” — can be fairly associated with the general temper of Creative Commons’ rhetoric and self-descriptions.

In any case, I don’t think you’ve answered my point. Giving your project a name such as “Creative Commons” conveys a particular impression of what your project is about. To wit, building a creative commons. To have a creative commons you actually need to make works available freely for common use (i.e. not limited to the proprietary control of the creator or copyright-holder). Many Creative Commons licenses — and NC licenses in particular — do not do that. Replying that CC actually aims at giving creators more precise control over the permission profiles on their works, rather than on making works freely available, does not answer the objection. If CC wants to focus on helping creators express precisely what sorts of general permissions they want to grant, and what sorts of control they want to exercise, then they can go right ahead and do that. But they ought to pick a less misleading name. Perhaps “Creative Control” or “The Content License Repository” or somesuch would do. “Creative Commons” does not, because it dilutes the idea of a commons and conflates it with restrictionist licenses (such as NC, or Founder’s Copyright), which do not actually put works in the commons. (They only “enclose” a smaller “plot,” or enclose it for a shorter time, than conventional copyright arrangements do.)

I just think the best way to get there is by opening up choice and creating an efficient market, not promoting a single ideal. Why? Because I very well could be wrong. Only the market can tell.

Just to be clear, I don’t think that any form of unilateral copyright restrictions (as a form of State-enforced monopoly) are compatible with free markets, efficient markets, or market choice. (Cf. [1] and [2] for the whys and hows). But the point of my remarks does not actually depend on that claim. It doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not I think that *-NC licenses (for example) are a good idea, or legitimate from the standpoint of individual rights. The point is, rather, that it’s misleading to pass yourself off as advocates for a Creative Commons if you’re also promoting licenses that restrict Freedom 0. If that’s part of what they want to promote, fine, but it’s not a commons, and they ought to reconsider how they’re trying to brand themselves.

fontor: “The Constitution is a document that has held this country together.”

I seem to recall some minor unpleasantness in which the Constitution failed to hold the country together. And the reasons that the country came to be “held together” again at the end of it had a lot more to do with bayonet-points, cannon, and warships than it had to do with the paper Constitution.

In any case, I do not see why it should be presumed that holding the country together is a valuable service to begin with. If the compromises necessary to maintain the union under the terms of the Constitution result in complicity with overt wickedness — as they certainly did for the eight decades before the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, and as they arguably do now, given the federal government’s ever-growing ambition and abusiveness — then the Constitution and the union based on it are nothing more than a covenant with death and an agreement with Hell.

Thanks for this post.

I’m certainly inclined to agree that market underdevelopment is the problem here. Provided that we take a sufficiently broad view of what counts as a market mechanism. (The problem with many would-be free marketeers is that they don’t actually pay attention to all the sorts of institutions a free market might feature.)

It used to be, back in the day, that the Left exhorted working folks to form fighting unions, co-ops, and mutual aid societies in order to help counteract both routine exploitation and the dangers of economic downturns. The idea being that when working folks united, they were more powerful than the bosses and more reliable for each other than the functionaries of the welfare state.

This sort of statist nonsense, endlessly celebrated and agitated for by most of the contemporary Left, poses as ameliorating exploitation within the existing market system. All it actually does is transfer control over more workers’ lives to the civil service bureaucracy, and further regiments the economy under the dubious command of the managerial State. All in all it’s pretty weak tea compared to the good old end of the industrial republic of labor and the good old means of building a new society within the shell of the old through the economic means of mutual aid and direct action.

Well, yes, it is, actually.

Which is why George W. Bush has no legitimate authority over anyone.

“But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain — that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.” — Lysander Spooner (1870)

And that’s why I celebrate every September 17th by ignoring the Constitution.