I suppose it depends on how the Demandingness Objection is spelled out. If the complaint against consequentialism is just that, if true, it would mean that most or all people aren’t always doing all that they’re morally obliged to do, then, sure, that’s not convincing at all.

But most of the carefully worked-out versions of this objection that I’ve encountered are complaining about something different: that maximizing consequentialism allows no conceptual room for supererogatory conduct. The problem isn’t that there’s anything unintuitive with the idea that fallible people often or always fall short. It’s that there are positive intuitive reasons to believe that there are at least some cases where doing something would be especially meritorious but failing to do it wouldn’t a case of falling short. The problem that many philosophers who stress “demandingness” have with maximizing consequentialism isn’t that the positive existential claim (that there are some ways in which we fall short when we omit to do something meritorious), but rather with the negative universal claim (that there are no ways in which we ever fail to fall short when we omit to do something meritorious).

Here’s a theological example: most Christians believe that God’s decision to incarnate Himself, to take on the sins of the world, and to suffer anddie on the Cross, was morally gratuitous: it was an act of undeserved grace, which God was not morally obliged to do, but did out of love for the world. But it’s impossible to make sense of a claim like that if you’re a maximizing consequentialist; either doing all that would lead to the greatest compossible aggregate of good effects within God’s range of choice, or it would lead to something less than the greatest compossible aggregate of good effects within God’s range of choice. Presumably, since God is all-seeing and all-powerful, he’d know ahead of time whether this is the case and would be capable of choosing the better course if there were a better course. But then it would follow that God’s actions were either morally obligatory for Him, or else morally wrong, depending on the breaks of whether or not the action led to the greatest compossible aggregate of good effects. There’s no room for the claim that God might willingly choose to do something above and beyond His moral obligations, because by definition there is nothing above and beyond the maximum. Which would be a problem for Christian soteriology.

I’m not a Christian myself, but I do certainly think that there are supererogatory actions which people can, and have, carried out, even in this vale of tears. Which seems like a good reason to reject maximizing consequentialism.

In other words, “right but I want to quibble”.

“Right” about what? It’s true that Micha was using the term “naturalistic fallacy” in a sense other than the sense in which Moore used it. (Specifically, he used it to refer to arguments that infer something about the moral status of something from its naturalness.) But I don’t have any basic problem with that kind of loose usage as long as it doesn’t interfere with accurately understanding what Moore meant by the term when he used it. The “quibble,” such as it is, is aimed to clarify how Moore himself used the term. Which is not an issue that Micha raised, or one that’s particularly important to assessing his argument; it’s an issue that you raised in the course of a reply to him.

It’s certainly true that the issue of what Moore coined the term “naturalistic fallacy” to mean is tangential to this conversation. But misrepresentations of his view, especially those that are very common and very misleading, are worth correcting anyway, in the interest of accuracy.

I read him right without the benefit of seeing his later explanation

Well, no; what he said is that by “natural” he means those things which arise from a “spontaneous order.” But that explanation is itself ambiguous, depending on whether he means strictly a “voluntary order” (which may very well be designed), or instead an “undesigned order” (which may very well be involuntary), or both. Libertarian writers have often used the term “spontaneous order” to refer to either, or both, or have simply equivocated between the two different meanings from one use to the next.

If he means the former, you read him right; but then the claim is unresponsive to what it was supposed to respond to. And, since that interpretation is unresponsive, it made sense for Micha to suggest, out of motives of charity, a more responsive reading.

If he means the latter, you read him wrongly, and the claim is somewhat more responsive to Francois; but then it is underargued and almost surely false.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think that your reading of him is “off the wall;” I’m not even claiming that it’s wrong. My point is that whether you read his claim rightly or read it wrongly, the claim doesn’t get Arthur very far either way vis-a-vis his interlocutors.

And anyway, G. E. Moore invented the term “naturalist fallacy” to label philosophers who disagreed with him about morality.

No, he didn’t.

Moore coined the term “naturalistic fallacy” to describe a particular kind of move in ethical argument, which Moore believed to be fallacious. (Specifically, an attempt to establish a substantial ethical conclusion by equivocating between a statement of the form “Everything that is X, Y, and Z is good” and a definition of the form “‘Good’ means being X, Y, and Z.”) His issue with the naturalistic fallacy is meta-ethical, not normative; it’s not that he disapproves of the conclusions drawn from it, but rather that he disagrees with the way they are drawn. (He argues that this kind of maneuver tries to resolve substantive ethical disagreements on the cheap, by changing the subject from ethics to semantics, which fails to offer an ethically serious inquiry, i.e. one which might possibly result in reasons for action.) He did not accuse all philosophers who disagreed with his own ethical views of committing the naturalistic fallacy. In particular, he specifically argues that Henry Sidgwick did not commit the naturalistic fallacy in his ethical arguments, although Moore disagrees with, and spends half a chapter arguing against, Sidgwick’s hedonistic view.

Thus, while I don’t know what Arthur meant (and I see he has replied but I’ll take a gamble and submit this without reading his reply), as I understand him what he writes is not only true but trivially true. If something is natural in the sense of natural law, i.e., if it occurs in the absence of a state, then it is trivially true that in order for it to stop occurring, a state is necessary.

If that’s what Arthur means (I think it’s still not especially clear from his response), then he is either walloping a strawman or asserting a strong claim without evidence. If the argument started out about whether gender roles are or are “socially constructed” or “natural,” then the latter presumably refers to those things which aren’t derived from social construction (which may be a coercive process, a non-coercive process, or an admixture of both), rather than to those things which emerge spontaneously in the absence of coercion. If his claim is the trivial claim you attribute to him (that things that emerge spontaneously in the absence of coercion will emerge spontaneously unless coercion is applied), then he’s not successfully responding to Francois’s expressed concern. If, on the other hand, his claim is the substantive claim that things that aren’t socially constructed cannot be limited or eliminated without the use of coercion, then what he’s saying is responsive, but it’s also not as yet supported by argument. (And in fact is pretty obviously wrong, if it’s intended as a universal claim.)

Mark,

Well. The scope of the debate is not actually limited to what are commonly called “lifestyle” issues, unless you mean to expand the word “lifestyle” out from its conventional meaning into something much broader (i.e. so broad as to cover absolutely any feature of social or personal life other than those immediately connected with the use of violence). For example, in addition to dealing with genuine “lifestyle” issues (e.g. what kind of sex acts and with whom you should or should not treat as worth indulging in; whether or not you participate in traditional religious rituals in your community or subculture; etc.), the debate also touches on more strictly intellectual issues (e.g. what kinds of explicit philosophical positions, or tacit worldviews, best cohere with libertarianism), and also with material and institutional structures that are larger and more formalized than any individual lifestyle choice — e.g. I believe that a free economy should have a large and vibrant network of wildcat unions and grassroots mutual aid associations; whereas some other libertarians believe that a free economy should be dominated more or less exclusively by large-scale corporations or proprietorships, with little or no unionization in the workforce. The difference between these two views is not settled by the non-aggression principle alone (presumably, we both reject, on principle, all forms of coercive social or corporate welfare, all State patronage to either big business or to organized labor, etc. etc. etc.). But it’s not really a difference over individual lifestyles, either; it’s a difference over the relative merits of certain organizing structures within social society that are much larger than any individual and which come about through deliberate, entrepreneurial social coordination, not simply from a series of uncoordinated individual lifestyle changes.

A consequence could involve being ostracized or criticized by others who live by the NAP, but should not involve being lynched or defamed by them.

You’re right about that. Thick conceptions of libertarianism aren’t intended as a way of carrying non-libertarian policies into libertarianism. The point is to make clear what kinds of things are worth criticizing, ridiculing, ostracizing, boycotting, striking, or whatever, and what kinds of things are worth praising, celebrating, materially supporting, etc. A thick conception of libertarianism holds that libertarians, as such, have some good reasons to take a definite stance on that, even where what’s being criticized, ridiculed, ostracized, boycotted, struck against, praised, celebrated, materially supported, or whatever is not directly, logically tied to the question of aggression or liberty.

JOR,

The same. The original essay is available online; cf. also GT 2003-09-30: Why There Are No Arguments for Terrorism for my responding to Honderich with a certain gesture of the hands.

Incidentally, for reference, see also some brief remarks of mine on demythologizing the “higher law” doctrine, and the relationship between natural law and personal interest or commitment: (1), (2), (3).

Jeremy,

No; the voluntariness is key. Where did I suggest otherwise?

Well, I started this thread of conversation by asking a question about the rough handling of the few by the many in some non-consensual societies (e.g. Athens and Roman-occupied Palestine); got a response that the authority in question wasn’t necessarily rightful authority; asked if you meant mere power; and got a response that it was more than mere power that we were discussing, at which the shift over to consensual societies happened. As I said, I’m just having trouble understanding what claim you ultimately are defending about the relationship between numbers and authority, and trying to get clearer.

In a formula like “when a voluntary society stands up for a common end, that has authority to it,” there are at least three things doing conceptual work: (1) social (majority? supermajority?) consensus, (2) authority, and (3) the voluntary nature of the society (which I presume means that dissenters from the consensus have complete freedom of exit). But if (3) is doing no work in the relationship between (1) and (2), then the same claim would have to apply to non-consensual societies as well as consensual societies. If, on the other hand, (3) is doing some work, and is a necessary condition for (1) and (2) to have the claimed relationship that they have, then the question is what difference there might be between this claim about “voluntary society” (which, given freedom of association and freedom of exit, might consist of one person alone, or all rational creatures in the universe, or any size and arrangement in between) and the usual anarchist claim that all rightful authority derives from individual sovereignty and voluntary association (which again might mean one individual person, or the whole cosmopolis, or any size and arrangement in between). Maybe you meant to say something different, which I’m not grasping, in which case what I’d need to know to better understand it is how the claim about numbers and authority relates, if at all, to nonconsensual societies (where presumably the differences, if any, between these two claims would arise).

Or maybe you didn’t mean to say anything different, and just meant to restate the libertarian-individualist claim in other, panarchistic terms; but then I don’t see how that would connect with the claim libertarianism shouldn’t be about what is right or moral. Clearly, if this is the right understanding of your position, then your theory has already built in a very robust universal constraint of some kind on claims to the authority of superior numbers, which has nothing in itself to do with superior numbers, viz. the requirement of unanimous sustained consent to participation in the social project, whatever preferences or beliefs the majority faction may have. But if that requirement is an essential part of the claim you’re advancing, then it becomes increasingly hard for me to see how your claim is substantively different from mine, or how the requirement of consent is distinct from what I would call “natural law” or “inalienable natural rights.”

Admittedly, you might have a theory about the underlying status of the consent-requirement that is very different from what I would be willing to entertain — for example, you might think that while the consent-requirement is binding on every claim of authority, it’s only binding because, as a matter of taste, you prefer to hold people to a consent-requirement rather than not to hold them to it. But then, obviously, the question to ask is why anybody other than you should care about what requirements you would prefer to hold them to. I prefer that everyone drink unsweetened iced tea instead of sweet tea, but I’d never dream that these preferences give me the right to require bitter tea or resist vulgar sweetening by force. But requiring consent and resisting tyranny seem to be on quite a different footing.

As for what that footing may be, well, “sublime,” “over-arching,” “transcendent,” “Platonic,” etc. are your words, not mine. I’m not actually advancing any claim about the status of the moral constraints on claims of authority except to argue that they are not contingent on the beliefs or preferences of particular human beings. There are lots of things that are that way (e.g. the germ theory of disease) that don’t require much in the way of appeals to a separate and superior realm of Forms (or whatever) to talk about them.

My beliefs are just opinions, too. By treating them as such, I’m more likely to be able to present them in a way that others who don’t hold them find acceptable. Why? Because I understand the arbitrary nature of my beliefs, so I don’t pretend that they have some special truth that will compel somebody to acknowledge.

I don’t think that your solution, at least insofar as I’ve understood it, is nearly as eirenic as you seem to think it is. Look at it this way: my standards for consent and for the use of force against other people are either rooted in something outside of my particular preferences and tastes, which is in principle accessible to other people; or else they are not. If they are not, then I’m proposing to force other people to adhere to my own standards, whether or not those other people have any reason, even in principle, to care about the standards that I’m forcing them to hold to. This is, in the end, a proposal for trying to remake the whole world in my own image, for no reason other than the brute fact that it is my own image. If, on the other hand, they are rooted in something outside of my preferences and are in principle accessible to other people, then what I am proposing is that people other than myself do indeed have a reason to care about this stuff already, whether they’re aware of that reason or not, and my goal is not to remake them to suit my own preferences, but rather to take an interest in them as they are in their otherness, and in the things that they, as my fellow creatures, care about. That view gives me every reason to try and find the best way to communicate with those particular people and lead them from where they are now, towards a greater awareness of the reasons they already have; instead of what the other view seems to have on offer, which is a sort of talk in which “suggestion” that just amounts to bashing my no-less-but-no-more-justified preferences up against their no-more-but-no-less-justified preferences, until mine somehow win, on the basis of something other than shared reasoning.

Jeremy:

It goes beyond power; when a voluntary society stands up for a common end, that has authority to it.

O.K., I’m lost. I don’t think the Roman occupation of Palestine was an example of a voluntary society. It’s certainly true that in a voluntary society, consensus on a goal confers authority to pursue that goal. But do you intend to also transfer that claim about numbers and authority over to involuntary societies, like the American or Roman Empires? If so, what justifies the extension? If not, doesn’t that entail the existence of some principle constraining claims of authority, and undermining all claims of nonconsensual authority over others?

But they’re YOUR principles; in the end, they’re just preferences, opinions.

Well, I know you’re claiming this, but what’s the basis for claiming it?

And do you really mean to try and connect a radical form of moral relativism and a theory of majoritarian authority with Christian moral teachings?

smally:

I was under the impression that many state apologists will readily admit the government is a band of thugs, but that it is the “lesser evil”.

I don’t think that most liberal “lesser-evil” theories of the State recognize government as criminal. They recognize it as “an evil,” in the sense that it restrains liberty, but they generally go to some length to try to demonstrate the justice of nonconsensual political obligation (e.g., via a social contract, whether historical, tacit, or imaginary; or via non-contractual theories, such as Nozick’s procedural-rights account), and construe government as a service provided to citizens. Almost nobody defends the claim that government expropriation is no different in kind from brigandry, while also defending the claim that government expropriation should on (in order that even worse brigandry might be stopped. Maybe that’s what Hobbes believes, but not many followed him down quite that road.

So the upshot of lesser-evilist arguments is usually not that government is itself evil (in the contemporary sense of active wrongdoing), but rather that it’s bad relative to a utopian baseline, i.e., not as good a state of affairs as an anarchy composed of more or less ideal people. Since they rule out the ideal anarchy (for whatever reasons), you fall back to plan B. So government on this view is much more like fire insurance than like Mafia “protection”; something that, in an ideal world, you wouldn’t have to deal with, but which is morally permissible and which, in this vale of tears, you’re better off having, even at some cost.

I think these kind of arguments necessarily involve both (1) a lot of historical howlers in order to justify the claim that the single most deadly institution in the history of the world is actually defending people against chaos and destruction, and also (2) a lot of precisely the kind of mystification I’m talking about, in order to justify or at least excuse actively perpetrating evil against innocent people. (The cult of political compromise, the myth that democratic elections constitute mass consent to majoritarian or “representative” government, and the fabrication of tacit or imaginary social contracts to justify the legitimacy of government are all cases in point.)

You’re right that many if not most statists today like to fall back on utilitarian arguments in order to avoid arguments made on moral principle. Partly because forms of utilitarianism are very popular right now in both our intellectual and our mass culture; and partly also because it’s very handy to be able to abstract away any tricky questions about personal obligations, rights, virtues, vices, responsibility, complicity, defiance, etc. etc. etc. in order to zoom out to a depersonalized, God’s-eye-view calculation of aggregate outcomes. But I think that’s precisely because utilitarians start out by mystifying the issue and supposing that any question about the permissibility or legitimacy of coercing innocents has already been answered, when in fact it has merely been waved off as a necessary precondition of the utilitarian standpoint.

Well, I certainly agree that the Romans had the power to crucify Jesus.

Is that all you mean when you say that superior numbers confer authority?

It should be about what is possible, leaving the question of what possibility we pursue to the individuals

Would it be wrong for me not to “leave the question of what possibility we pursue to the individuals?”

If so, then isn’t that, in itself, a claim about what it is (or is not) “right” or “moral” to do?

If not, then why should you care whether I leave it up to the individuals or not, since there’s nothing wrong with my not doing so?

I dunno. I think people who use the word “anarchy” use it as a package-deal: it’s not that it means chaos instead of freedom from rulers; it’s used to mean both chaos and freedom from rulers, because people who use the word that way think that the two are the same thing, or at least inevitably connected with each other.

So when people are package-dealing, there’s two ways you could respond. You could reject the term and come up with a new one. But what would you come up with? “Peace?” “Freedom?” That’s what anarchy means, but obviously the common uses of those terms are just as knotty as the common uses of “Anarchy.” “Lawlessness?” “Ungoverned?” Both of these imply chaos in common usage just as much as “anarchy.” “A spontaneous, polycentric, or non-hierarchical social order?” Gag.

Fortunately, there’s another thing you can do when dealing with a conceptual package deal: you can pick out the part of the concept you want to preserve and defend, and then explicitly challenge the presupposition behind the attempt to package-deal it with the part of the concept you don’t want to defend. For example, this is what gay men and lesbians did when they reclaimed the words “homosexual” and “bisexual” from the psychiatrists; the words used to be used so as to imply both (1) having particular types of sexuality, and also (2) suffering from mental illness. The gay liberation movement embraced (1) but chucked (2) out the door, and it didn’t take too long for much of the rest of the world to catch up.

It might seem like taking the reclamation route is somehow a drain on time, since it gets you tangled up in other people’s confused terminology. But I’m not at all sure that’s right. Identifying and challenging the confusion that’s implicit in the ordinary use of the word — e.g. the confusion between lawlessness and riot, or the presupposition that only government force can produce social harmony — is part and parcel of the strategy of reclaiming the term. In some important ways, it involves you much more in meeting people where they are, whereas minting new language can lead you into inadvertently sidestepping the real issue, by not confronting the confusion that’s at the core of the dispute over the meaning of e.g. “anarchy.”