Ethics in Modern Analytic Philosophy

This post is based on Chapter 8 of Stephen P. Schwartz’s A Brief History of Analytic Philosophy: from Russell to Rawls (2012). I also draw on some of my earlier posts, and discuss the influence of George E. Moore on John Maynard Keynes.

For a long time, George E. Moore’s Principia ethica (Cambridge, 1903) – mainly a work of metaethics – was the most influential treatise on ethics in analytic philosophy. Under the influence of logical positivism, ethical statements were widely considered either not to be objectively true or to not have cognitive content at all (that is, to not have a true or false value) (Schwartz 2012: 264).

One of Moore’s most important conclusions was that the concept of “good” was a simple, non-natural and indefinable property (Schwartz 2012: 266–267). Nevertheless, our notions of the “good” are apprehended by our moral intuitions (Schwartz 2012: 267).

According to Moore, all naturalist ethical theories commit the “naturalistic fallacy,” which is the attempt to equate “goodness” with a natural property (Schwartz 2012: 268).

Note that the “naturalistic fallacy” is not simply a crude fallacy called the “appeal to nature,” which is the assertion that what is natural is therefore inherently moral. Nor is the “naturalistic fallacy” the same as Hume’s “is–ought” problem.

Moore’s “naturalistic fallacy” consists in the fallacy of identifying the property of goodness with some natural property or thing.

For example, one could say:

(1) Pleasure is good.

This is a proposition, but it has two possible meanings, as follows:

(1) Pleasure is a thing that has the independent property of being good.

(2) Pleasure is identical with the concept “good.” That is, they are one and same thing.

In order to understand what Moore means, we must understand the somewhat confusing grammatical differences in the way the word “is” is used in English.

The verb “is” has 3 possible grammatical uses in English:

(1) to convey identity, e.g., “He is John” (They are one and same thing);

(2) predication (as the so-called copula or linking verb), e.g., “This desk is white” (that is, this desk has the property of being “white,” but obviously the “desk” per se is simply not the same thing as “white”), and

(3) existence or being, e.g., “There is a high mountain two miles from here” (that is, there exists a mountain that is two miles from this location).

Just because we can use the word “good” with “is” in sense (2), Moore says, it does not follow that anything supposedly having the property goodness can be identified with the “good” in sense (1) (that is, identity). To assert that anything natural x is actually identical with the “good” in sense (1) is the “naturalistic fallacy.”

As noted above, Moore therefore contends that the “good” is an ineffable and non-natural property, even though Moore did think the “good” was real and that good and bad conduct has a rational basis: Moore thought that personal affection and appreciation of the beautiful are intrinsically good (Schwartz 2012: 268–269).

Moore thought that actions that create the most good are right, but that people cannot necessarily know which actions these are (Schwartz 2012: 269).

Moore’s Principia ethica greatly influenced the Bloomsbury Group and John Maynard Keynes (Schwartz 2012: 269). Keynes in particular was concerned with how we can have knowledge of the consequences of our actions in order to produce morally good ends, and the epistemological status of this knowledge and how it is acquired (Skidelsky 1983: 151). Keynes’s answer was that our knowledge must be probabilistic, since we cannot obtain certainty in knowing all future consequences of actions in the present (Skidelsky 1983: 151). Keynes’ interest in this subject dates from a paper he read to the Cambridge Apostles group called “Ethics in Relation to Conduct” (delivered on 23 January, 1904).

Thus Keynes’ concern with consequentialist ethics, via Moore, was the great inspiration of Keynes’ work on probability theory that occupied much of his spare time between 1906 and 1914, and that resulted in the Treatise on Probability (1921) (Skidelsky 1983: 151–152). Keynes contended that we cannot have certain knowledge of the future, especially the far future, and that non-objective probabilistic arguments should be used to defend ethical actions (Skidelsky 1983: 153).

Nevertheless, to return to the main subject, it is far from clear that Moore was right in his fundamental views on ethics, and analytic philosophers still debate Moore’s arguments (Schwartz 2012: 268).

A fundamental distinction between modern ethical theories is that between (1) cognitivist and (2) non-cognitivist theories, which can set out as follows:

(1) Non-cognitivism

(1) Emotivism (Spinoza, Hume, C. L. Stevenson, A. J. Ayer)
(2) Prescriptivism (R. M. Hare)
(3) cognitivist expressivism (S. Blackburn; M. Timmons; T. Horgan)

(2) Cognitivism

(i) Anti-realism
(a) Moral subjectivism
(b) Error theory

(ii) Moral realism
(a) Ethical naturalism
Consequentialism/Utilitarianism
Non-theological natural rights theory
Thomism
neo-Aristotelian ethical naturalism (P. Foot; R. Hursthouse)

(b) Ethical non-naturalism
G. E. Moore ethical intuitionism/agathistic consequentialism
Platonist ethics
divine command ethics
Kantian ethics

The cognitivist theories of ethics – which include most of the historical normative ethical theories – hold that moral statements do have real cognitive content and can be true or false (either in an objective or subjective sense).

The non-cognitivist theories of ethics contend that moral statements do not actually express propositions and have no truth values, and instead have a non-cognitivist, emotive or imperative meaning. That is to say, an ethical statement expresses an emotive judgement or attitude of approval or disapproval towards an action or idea.

This “emotivist” view of ethics was taken by some of the logical positivists, such as A. J. Ayer.

Another non-cognitivist theory of ethics is the prescriptivism of Richard M. Hare (1919–2002), who was an Oxford philosopher under the influence of post-WWII ordinary language philosophy (Schwartz 2012: 272). According to prescriptivism, the moral statement is really a special kind of command (or imperative). Sentences with the word “ought” (“You ought not to steal”) really conceal an imperative, a command.

The conclusion of R. M. Hare is that a moral statement is not really a declarative sentence that can carry a truth value (that is, being either true or false). We are mistaken in thinking this. Moral statements are really just commands, and they urge action. Many moral injunctions are really universalisable imperatives (Schwartz 2012: 274). That is, they invoke types or kinds and are addressed to the world at large, to people in general.

Hare also argued that moral action can be debated rationally because moral discourse is fundamentally about logic of imperatives and how to achieve ends (Schwartz 2012: 274).

From the 1960s onwards, substantive normative ethics experienced a rebirth in analytic philosophy (Schwartz 2012: 264).

The first development was the counterargument that Moore’s naturalistic fallacy is not a logical fallacy at all, and that his “open question” argument is seriously inadequate (Schwartz 2012: 275).

Foot (1958), for example, contended that definitions of the “good” cannot be arbitrary and people can readily identify definitions of the good based on self-interest as unsatisfactory. The “good” can be connected with things that are worthwhile, beneficial or valuable in a general or universal way (Schwartz 2012: 277).

The next obstacle to an analytic normative ethics was the “fact” versus “value” dichotomy (Schwartz 2012: 279), a divide which was challenged by Philippa Foot.

The results of these new criticisms of older ethical ideas led analytic philosophers to return to normative ethics and applied ethics by the late 20th century (Schwartz 2012: 280–281).

For example, new forms of consequentialism have been proposed, and Philippa Foot and G. E. M. Anscombe have developed a modern form of virtue ethics (inspired by Aristotle), which emphasises moral character rather than moral “oughts” (Schwartz 2012: 280).

John Rawls (1921–2002) developed a form of human rights ethics in terms of a social contract theory in A Theory of Justice (1971), which sought to reconcile elements of Kantian ethics with utilitarianism, while overcoming the shortcomings of them both (Schwartz 2012: 285–286). Rawls’s ethics has also been criticised and developed by Martha Nussbaum.

But, by the end of the 20th century, anti-realism in ethics made a return in analytic philosophy. Moral fictionalism is the idea that all moral claims either do not have truth values or are false: morality is thus a useful fiction (Schwartz 2012: 317).

In short, modern analytic philosophy has explored a wide range of normative ethical theories, as well as criticising traditional ethics.


BIBLIOGRAPHY
Foot, Philippa R. 1958. “Moral Arguments,” Mind 67: 502–513.

Moore, George Edward. 1903. Principia ethica. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Rawls, John. 2005 [1971]. A Theory of Justice. Belknap Press, Cambridge, Mass.

Schwartz, Stephen P. 2012. A Brief History of Analytic Philosophy: From Russell to Rawls. Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester, UK.

Skidelsky, R. J. A. 1983. John Maynard Keynes: Hopes Betrayed 1883–1920 (vol. 1). Macmillan, London.

Conservative Christianity and Libertarianism do not Mix

There is something strange about the moral landscape of a considerable body of people who call themselves libertarians. Many of them are quite conservative Christians. But for the conservative Christian there is an insuperable barrier to the most extreme forms of libertarianism.

Consider these passages from the New Testament:

(1) St Paul, Romans 13.1–7 (written c. 56 AD):
“Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgement. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you wish to have no fear of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval; for it is God’s servant for your good. But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for the authority does not bear the sword in vain! It is the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be subject, not only because of wrath but also because of conscience. For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, busy with this very thing. Pay to all what is due to them—taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honour to whom honour is due.”

(2) Titus 3:1:
“Remind them (viz., believing Christians) to be subject to the rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work …”

(3) 1 Peter, 2.13–15, 17:
“For the sake of the Lord, submit to every human institution, whether to the emperor as the supreme authority, or to the governors sent by the emperor to punish evildoers and to praise those doing good … Honour the emperor.”

In essence, these admonitions to Christians are:

(1) Christians should be subject to their respective governments;

(2) These governments have in fact have been brought about by God’s will: “for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God.”

(3) Christians should pay taxes.

Christians think that St Paul had direct visions and revelations from God and Jesus (e.g., 2 Corinthians 12.1–10), so that for the conservative Christian the passage in Romans must count as orders from god.

For the conservative Christian, then, virtually all extreme forms of libertarianism seem to be ruled out. For example, the extreme Rothbardian might claim that the state is evil, but how can something be evil if it is ultimately instituted by god and he commands you to submit to it?

Of course, the idea that one should submit to government just because the Bible says so is a terrible – and in many ways a horrific – argument, e.g., does this mean that victims of the Nazis in Germany were required to submit to Nazi government? Was the Nazi government actually brought about by God’s will? What about the Soviet Union?

But such moral paradoxes present no problem for the secular person who rejects all forms of religion and belief in god (I happen to be such a person).

They do present the believing Christian with the ethical problems.

Paradoxically, for liberal libertarian Christians of course, the passages above are not a problem. They can claim to be Christians without thinking that all of the Bible is divinely inspired or the literal word of god.

But that then raises the question of what moral theory do Christians really support?

The most crude answer is divine command theory. But that theory faces difficulties so severe that it quickly falls apart. Indeed, historically divine command theory had little support from Christian philosophers.

In short, the problem with divine command theory is this: is something good solely because god orders it, or because it is good by some other objective criteria?

If one really thinks that, say, any action is good simply, solely and only because god has ordered it, this means that morality is ultimately nothing but the arbitrary whim of good. Morality has no objective basis and could in theory be subjectively determined by god.

For example, if god orders mass murder, as he supposedly does in Deuteronomy 2:33–36 and 3:1–11, then mass murder is moral, because god has ordered it. There are Christian philosophers who have seriously taken that position: William of Ockham argued that, yes, anything god orders, even if it appears to be evil, it is actually good and morally obligatory. That is an appalling conclusion, which concedes that we have (in theory) no ultimate moral standard except the subjective whims of god.

If the Christian concedes that an action is good, not because god has ordered it, but because it is good for some independent objective standard or objective criteria, one has conceded that god is not omnipotent (in the conventional sense of that word), for it follows logically that god’s actions and orders are severely limited by some external objective moral principles or standard. Morality ultimately cannot come from god.

There are sly tricks to get around the dilemma. One is to argue that, well, god is inherently good, or god and goodness are identical, so that he, as an omnibenevolent being, can never in actuality do or order anything evil.

But that does not solve the dilemma, for logically this concedes that there could be no god and yet it would in theory be possible for a universe to have objective moral principles or an objective moral standard to guide right action. If one wants to argue that a perfectly good being exists (like an imaginary god), you have not answered the question: what is the standard for perfect goodness anyway? That standard is logically independent of the notion of an omnipotent and omniscient divine being.

All that has occurred is that we are taken right back to the question: if an act is not good merely because god orders it, then there must be some other standard for determining its rightness or wrongness.

The solution most Christian philosophers found is to reject divine command theory and simply take over and develop the pagan Greek and Roman ethical theory of natural law (which goes back to Plato and the ancient Stoics). But natural law theory has difficulties almost as bad as divine command theory. It requires the belief in a “divine order” in the universe and a divinely-created human nature that makes us conform to “natural law.” In other words, it just begs the question by assuming the existence of some divine agency and order in the universe.

Furthermore, the very idea of a “divine order” just raises the question of what standard of morality determines it, and once rationalist European philosophers like Grotius tried to defend natural law theory by removing God and the previous supernatural justification for it, they simply destroyed the only convincing explanation for belief in natural law (Tawney 1998: xxv-xxvi).

At that point a Christian libertarian might retreat to Rothbard’s natural rights ethics, but that system has a flawed basis and no convincing justification.

Other solutions were like that of Kant: Kantian ethics was in fact partly an attempt to create an objectivist ethics that could defend Christian morality, but by basing morality on moral principles derived from human reason, not from god per se.

So ultimately the most sophisticated Christian philosophers accept that morality does not come from the Bible or directly from god, but that it can be determined by human reason.

Addendum
Although I am completely secular and do not believe in god, I suppose that liberal (non-fundamentalist) Christians could solve their moral conundrum.

Perhaps they might argue as follows.

If one is a sincere liberal Christian, then one might argue that, after all, morality can be independent of god in the sense that it is rationally possible for a moral system to exist even if (hypothetically) god did not.

That is to say, for a perfectly moral being to exist like god, he must follow a moral code that is not just subjective, but objective. Therefore there must be an independent, objective standard of morality. And god must obey it. So god is not really omnipotent in the crude sense of that term: his action is limited by the need to be logically consistent.

But what is the moral code? One solution is deontological ethics (like the system of Kant) and other choice is teleological/consequentialist ethics.

That is, one moral code might be some form of consequentalism. Mill once argued (perhaps insincerely) that god was a utilitarian. But some Christian philosophers do seriously argue that a god would be the perfect consequentialist: he could foresee all consequences of all hypothetical actions into the unbound future, and determine the morally right actions, suggesting these actions by general moral principles, although human beings can only ever have an imperfect grasp of what is perfectly right, because of lack of knowledge and the extreme difficulty of predicting the future.


BIBLIOGRAPHY

Tawney, R. H. 1998. Religion and the Rise of Capitalism. Transaction, New Brunswick, N.J. and London.

Thoughts on a Version of Consequentialist Ethics

Ethics is never far from the surface of discussions of economics, especially practical economic polices. Adam Smith, for example, was also an ethical theorist. We also have the spectacle of the Austrian Murray Rothbard who tried to defend and justify his anarcho-capitalist system mainly on natural-rights ethical grounds.

The limitations of early versions of hedonistic utilitarianism are well known, of course: the difficulty of reliably comparing interpersonal utility, and so on.

But hedonistic “act utilitarianism” is only one version of a myriad of ethical theories that can all be subsumed in the broader category of consequentialism.

And consequentialism as a broad group of theories can itself be categorised as one of the two species of teleological ethics, as follows:

Teleological (broad Consequentialist-type) Ethics:

(a) Virtue Ethics

(i) Eudaemonist theories
(ii) Plato’s eudaemonist ethics
(iii) Aristotle’s eudaemonist ethics
(iv) Stoic ethics (with natural law)
(v) non-eudaemonist virtue ethics
(vi) agent-based virtue ethics of Michael Slote
(vii) neo-Aristotelian ethical naturalism (P. Foot; R. Hursthouse)

(b) Consequentialist (minimal/moderate moral realism)

(i) Utilitarian-type theories
- Hedonism
- egoism (the 17th-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes)
- universal/universalistic hedonism = utilitarianism (Bentham, Mill, and Sidgwick): act utilitarianism, rule utilitarianism

(ii) Consequentialist/Other teleological/utilitarian-type
- ideal-moral-code rule consequentialism (Hooker 2000; Richard Brandt)
- preference rule consequentialism (John Harsanyi)
- Motive consequentialism (Robert Adams)
- ideal consequentialism/utilitarianism (G.E. Moore; Hastings Rashdall)
- preference consequentialism/utilitarianism (R. M. Hare; Peter Singer)
- two-level preference consequentialism/utilitarianism (R. M. Hare)
- negative consequentialism (Popper, Christoph Fehige and Clark Wolf)
- evolutionary ethics, with ends of action, survival and growth (Herbert Spencer) power, as in despotism (Niccolò Machiavelli and Friedrich Nietzsche)
- satisfaction and adjustment, pragmatism (Ralph Barton Perry and John Dewey)
- freedom, existentialism (Jean-Paul Sartre)
- Buddhist ethics
- Mohism (Mo Tzu/Micius)
- Ayn Rand’s objectivism?

There is in fact a high degree of compatibility between a number of modern consequentialist theories.

While I don’t directly endorse any one particular theory above, I suspect that a workable version of consequentialism would require concern for a number of ends, and would draw on various of these theories.

As I think of ethics more and more, I am starting to see some merit in certain aspects of Virtue ethics and Rawl’s rights-based ethics.

Morality must be concerned not just with happiness, but clearly with fairness, justice and justifiable human rights as well.

But my position is in no sense an endorsement of any natural rights theory of ethics, a theory which, I think, remains nonsense. Rights are not natural; they are ethical constructs, requiring rational justification, and requiring human institutions and human beings to enforce them.

I suppose a serious ethical theory must pass three tests:

(1) it must not commit the “appeal to nature” fallacy;

(2) it must explain how it overcomes or is consistent with G. E. Moore’s “naturalistic fallacy,” and

(3) it must explain how it overcomes or is consistent with Hume’s “is–ought” problem (sometimes called Hume’s Law and Hume's Guillotine).

A complete answer to the question whether the “good” is really identifiable with natural properties (as naturalism contends), or is an indefinable, non-natural property (as G. E. Moore argued in Principia Ethica) I leave as an open question for further thought, although I do now lean towards the view that the “good” is at least explicable for humans in naturalistic terms.

According to Moore, all naturalist ethical theories commit the “naturalistic fallacy,” though there is some dispute on what exactly Moore meant by this. The “naturalistic fallacy” is not simply a crude fallacy called the “appeal to nature,” which is the assertion that what is natural is therefore inherently moral. Nor would some philosophers say that the “naturalistic fallacy” is the same as Hume’s “is–ought” problem.

Moore’s “naturalistic fallacy” consists in the (alleged) fallacy of identifying the property of goodness with some other natural property or thing.

For example, one could say:

(1) Pleasure is good.

This is a proposition, but it has two possible meanings, as follows:

(1) Pleasure is a thing that has the independent property of being good.
(2) Pleasure is identical with the concept “good.” That is, they are one and same thing.

In order to understand what Moore means, we must understand the somewhat confusing grammatical differences in the way the word “is” is used in English.

The verb “is” has 3 possible grammatical uses in English:

(1) to covey identity, e.g., “He is John” (They are one and same thing);
(2) predication (as the so-called copula or linking verb), e.g., “This desk is white” (that is, this desk has the property of being “white,” but obviously the “desk” per se is simply not the same thing as “white”);
(3) existence or being, e.g., “There is a high mountain two miles from here” (that is, there exists a mountain that is two miles from this location).

Just because we can use the word “good” with “is” in sense (2), Moore says, it does not follow that anything supposedly having the property goodness can be identified with the “good” in sense (1) (that is, identity). To assert that anything natural x is actually identical with the “good” in sense (1) is the “naturalistic fallacy.” Moore therefore contends that the “good” is an ineffable and non-natural property.

Whatever one thinks here, it is still possible in principle to be a moral consequentialist and to accept Moore’s non-naturalist views on the nature of the “good” (Levine 2002: 136), and then proceed to construct a consequentialist ethics. Moore himself did so, and was a moral consequentialist.

As to Hume’s “is–ought” problem, this seems rather more difficult. Now many philosophers contend that it is very easy to derive an “ought” from an “is” in a non-moral sense. For example, a working clock keeps time, so logically a clock ought to keep time in a sense that is non-ethical, that is, merely teleological. But that does not really help the moral theorist.

For example, one can observe the empirical (descriptive) fact that leaves naturally fall under the influence of gravity to the ground. Does it follow from this in a clear logical way that a leaf has a moral right to fall to the ground? No, it does not. My stopping the leaf falling to the ground does not appear to be immoral in a way logically derivable from the descriptive fact. Just because the nature of a leaf is to fall to the ground under the influence of gravity, it does not follow that the leaf has any moral right whatsoever to fall to the ground.

You can complain that morality should only involve sentient beings. But the difficulty is still apparent. If a person takes possession of unoccupied property never claimed by anyone else, this can also be expressed as a descriptive fact. But does it follow from the descriptive fact that such a person now has a moral right to absolute ownership and use of his homesteaded property? Is the moral statement “John ought to have the right of absolute ownership and use of his homesteaded property” a proposition that is true and justified (a moral fact) derivable from the previous mere descriptive fact? It does not logically follow.

If we say that “theft is the cause of serious problems in human society,” how is the moral injunction that follows, that “you ought not to steal,” a morally justified, true ethical fact? How do you derive that “ought” from the “is”?

If one wants to argue that all moral injunctions are really teleological imperatives to achieve some aim or end, then I suppose one has solved Hume’s “is–ought” problem, and endorsed some form of non-cognitivism, the view that there are in fact no “moral facts” as such and no “moral knowledge.” One version of non-cognitivism is the prescriptivism of R. M. Hare: what we think are ethical statements are just imperative statements. “You ought not to steal” becomes “do not steal!” but in a sense that is not a moral fact, but an imperative. Strictly speaking, the prescriptivist argues that any moral judgement is not a descriptive statement and is never entailed by any other descriptive fact.

That is, if one wants to admit that a moral “ought” statement does not really possess the property of truth or falsity, and in fact is never true or false, and can only be obeyed or disobeyed (since it only urges a course of action as an imperative does), then one has evaded Hume’s “is–ought” problem (though the prescriptivist, however, asserts that one can still reason about moral imperatives, not just about descriptive facts).

But many might complain that this a high price to pay for having solved (or perhaps evaded) Hume’s “is–ought” problem.

Other moral naturalists contend that one can derive the moral “ought” from “is,” and see the answer in the nature and logic of goal-directed behavior. I am not sure they have really solved the problem, and at best one should subject all claims to deriving a moral prescription from some descriptive fact to careful scrutiny.

Perhaps the solution really is to say that assumed moral injunctions are imperatives. Whatever justification is given consists in asserting that actions are urged to achieve certain ends to allow human society to function in a way that is conducive to order, known rules, predictability in life and social harmony. A direct moral injunction does not constitute a true moral statement at all, but is an imperative to urge action in a teleological sense to make society work.

That is the basic utilitarian function of what we call morality, and once one has proposed ends or aims, one can

(1) defend them by showing how other moral theories are flawed and unjustifiable;

(2) defend one’s proposed ends or aims in discourse to see how far one can obtain agreement from other human beings, and

(3) logically and empirically examine how to achieve the teleological ends: that is to say, what consequences follow about what should be done and should not be done to achieve the stated aims.

Returning to the main argument, crude versions of utilitarianism focusing merely on happiness/pleasure/utility as the sole good are inadequate, but not more sophisticated forms of consequentialism that argue that multiple moral aims (or consequences) are what must be aimed at.

I would propose a version of consequentialism that holds we should aim at more ends than just utility/happiness such as the following:

(1) preservation of human life where the people in question wish to continue to live and we can clearly ascertain this* (e.g., the man dying of disease in a highly privatised system of health care, the starving human being who is unemployed and who finds no private charity). Such an end has precedents in 20th century forms of consequentialism.

(2) minimising suffering, especially where this can be done with redistribution of resources that are relatively abundant (on this point, I wish to take Karl Popper’s negative consequentialism and make it part of a larger consequentialist system).

(3) aiming at the end of respecting certain individual rights where not doing so would harm the functioning of society significantly or would violate the sense of justice or fairness that an individual must feel to have respect for the law and confidence in others, in so far as this does not lead to gross violations of (1) or (2) (on this, I think notions of justice and fairness are legitimate ends, as in Rawls’s critiques of some crude utilitarian theories).

* Although this is quite compatible with the idea of voluntary euthanasia when expressed clearly by those of sound mind suffering from painful terminal disease, I will leave this question open.

These additions to consequentialist ends aimed at overcome most of the traditional objections to utilitarianism.

I suspect the alleged incompatibility of consequentialism with other theories is exaggerated.

This is an ethics that strongly supports the right to be free from unjustifiable coercion, unjustifiable suffering, arbitrary killing, and theft (non-justifiable appropriation of external property), but at the same time the limited right to control over external property.

But also one’s right not to die simply because one cannot find a job in a laissez faire society or successfully beg for private charity; and the right not to live in poverty or without adequate health care, and so on.

Addendum
Here is a puzzle for grammarians and philosophers.

What is the grammatical status of this sentence?:

“When playing a normal* game of chess, one ought to play to win the game.”

* Normal in the sense of not playing to deliberately lose or draw.

I suppose the obvious answer is that it is a sentence in the subjunctive mood.

Some might complain that the grammatical form of the sentence is misleading. Perhaps it is really just an imperative: “Play a normal game of chess to win!”

But can it be understood as a true proposition? That is, it is simply a true statement that a person playing a normal game of chess plays to win in a teleological sense. This is the purpose of chess.

Can a subjunctive even be true or false?

In addition, it is clearly not an ethical proposition. If you do not play a normal game of chess to win, then you are not immoral or evil, but simply acting contrary to the convention of behaviour required by the game.




BIBLIOGRAPHY

Levine, A. 2002. Engaging Political Philosophy: From Hobbes to Rawls. Blackwell, Malden, Mass.

A Note on the Libertarian Asteroid Dilemma

This is a brief afterthought to a post I wrote some time ago:

“Would Anarcho-Capitalists Allow the Earth to be Destroyed?,” February 28, 2011.

I write it because the issue continues to pop up now and again. The fundamental point is that the Austrian Anarcho-capitalists supporting natural rights theory are the ones subject to this problem. The Austrian advocates of a limited state justified by utilitarianism would be capable in principle of evading it by endorsing some form of government intervention.

And, as I have pointed out before, it is useless for anarcho-capitalists to try and evade the question by claiming that the situation imagined is “unrealistic” or “unlikely.” Hypothetical scenarios that are possible are perfectly legitimate to test ethical theories and their implications.

And it now strikes me that even that alleged “unrealistic” nature of the scenario can be questioned. Asteroid strikes and other threats we might face from natural events in our local part of the galaxy are no joke:

“Every century or so, a 10-meter meteor slams into the Earth with the force of a small nuclear device. Tunguska was the site of the last, in 1908, and it was pure luck that that meteor landed in the uninhabited wilderness of Siberia. Every few thousand years, Earth can pass through unusually thick parts of the debris trail of comets, turning the familiar light show of a meteor shower into a deadly firestorm. Roughly every 100,000 years, a projectile hundreds of meters across unleashes power equal to the world’s nuclear arsenals. The result is devastation over an area the size of England, global tidal waves (if the impact is in the ocean), and enough dust flung into the atmosphere to dim the Sun and kill off vegetation. That could ruin your day.

Then there's the “Big One”. About every 100 million years, a rock the size of a small asteroid slams into the Earth, causing global earthquakes, kilometre-high tidal waves, and immediately killing all large land animals. Creatures in the sea soon follow, as trillions of tons of vaporised rock cause drastic cooling and the destruction of the food chain based on photosynthesis. There's good evidence that this happened 65 million years ago and our tiny mammal ancestors were the beneficiaries as the giant lizards were extinguished. .... When massive stars exhaust their nuclear fuel, the result is a titanic explosion called a supernova. The dying star brightens to rival an entire galaxy and emits high-energy particles that can destroy the ozone layer of a planet like Earth if it occurs within 30 light years. The demise of large North American mammals 41,000 years ago has been linked to a supernova, and several other mini-extinctions may be tied to the cataclysm of stellar death. A supernova is a small squib compared to a hypernova. In this dramatic and rare event, the violent collapse of a very massive star ejects jets of gas and high-energy particles at close to the speed of light, and for a few moments the star outshines the entire universe in gamma rays. If a hypernova went off within 1,000 light years, and Earth was within the narrow cone of high-energy radiation, we’d experience an immediate global conflagration. It’s brutal luck if a hypernova ever goes off with its beam aimed at us.”
Chris Impey, “The End of the World as we Know It,” Independent, 14 June 2010.

We live in a dangerous, dangerous universe indeed, and humanity in fact needs to devote itself to detecting and dealing with threats like this.

And one immediately wonders: has the private sector concerned itself with threats like this, and by pure private funding provided a solution or detection system? I see no evidence of it. By contrast, both the UK and US governments certainly have:

Centre to Monitor Asteroids Opens, Guardian, 18 April 2002.

Robert Matthews, “Britain Leads Defence Against Asteroid Impact,” Telegraph, 1 March 2001.

Furthermore, the technology required for actually doing something about any such threat now exists because it has been developed in the state sector, with decades of government funding to programs like NASA.

If such a threat occurred and the solution required not just national mobilisation of resources and labour, but international co-operation by governments as well, the pure natural rights libertarian would be forced to condemn such coercive measures as an immoral violation of private property rights.

The extinction of the human species in scenarios where government intervention would be required to save it follows logically from natural rights ethical precepts. That is a very high price to pay for a theory which also lacks any credible justification.

The two major Austrian defences of absolute rights to property are Rothbard’s natural rights theory (which I have criticised here) and Hoppe’s argumentation ethic. Neither overcomes the ought from is dilemma of Hume. In the case of Hoppe, one can note that, just because you require the use of certain body parts in debate, it simply does not follow from this that you have any absolute moral right to the use of your body or of any external property.

Ethical Theories: A Classification

Ethics is a confusing enough subject, and it takes much time and effort just to understand the various theories and their classification. The study of ethics can be divided into these three areas:

(1) Descriptive ethics, mere description of morality in different cultures;
(2) Normative ethics, the study of systems that dictate morally correct conduct;
(3) Metaethics, discussion of meanings of moral terms without directives.

We can provide the general classification of normative ethical theories here:

(1) Non-cognitivism

(1) Emotivism (Spinoza, Hume, C. L. Stevenson, A. J. Ayer)

(2) Prescriptivism (R. M. Hare)

(3) cognitivist expressivism (S. Blackburn; M. Timmons 1999; T. Horgan)

(2) Cognitivism

(i) Anti-realism

(a) Moral subjectivism

(b) Error theory

(ii) Moral realism

(a) Ethical naturalism

Utilitarianism

Non-theological natural rights theory

Thomism

neo-Aristotelian ethical naturalism (P. Foot; R. Hursthouse)

(b) Ethical non-naturalism

G. E. Moore ethical intuitionism/agathistic consequentialism

Platonist ethics

divine command ethics

Kantian ethics

I have made a more detailed list below of the major objective ethical theories and their classification.

(1) Deontological ethics

(a) Moral absolutism

(i) Divine Command Theory

(ii) Categorical Imperative ethics (Kantian ethics)

(b) Moral Universalism (minimal/moderate moral realism)

(i) Natural law theories (Plato and many Christian philosophers)

(ii) Natural rights theories

(iii) Thomist ethics

(iv) Pluralistic deontology, the non-absolutist ethics of W.D. Ross

(v) Human rights objectivism (Rawls)

(2) Teleological/Consequentialist ethics:

(a) Virtue Ethics

(i) Eudaemonist theories

(ii) Plato’s eudaemonist ethics

(iii) Aristotle’s eudaemonist ethics

(iv) Stoic ethics (with natural law)

(v) non-eudaemonist virtue ethics

(vi) agent-based virtue ethics of Michael Slote (2001)

(vii) neo-Aristotelian ethical naturalism (P. Foot; R. Hursthouse)

(b) Consequentialist (minimal/moderate moral realism)

(i) Utilitarian-type theories

- Hedonism

- egoism (the 17th-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes)

- universal/universalistic hedonism = utilitarianism (Bentham, Mill, and Sidgwick): act utilitarianism, rule utilitarianism

(ii) Other teleological/utilitarian-type

- ideal-moral-code rule consequentialism (Hooker 2000; Richard Brandt)

- preference rule consequentialism (John Harsanyi)

- Motive consequentialism (Robert Adams)

- ideal consequentialism/utilitarianism (G.E. Moore; Hastings Rashdall)

- preference consequentialism/utilitarianism (R. M. Hare; Peter Singer)

- two-level preference consequentialism/utilitarianism (R. M. Hare)

- Negative consequentialism (Popper, Christoph Fehige and Clark Wolf)

- evolutionary ethics, with ends of action, survival and growth (Herbert Spencer) power, as in despotism (Niccolò Machiavelli and Friedrich Nietzsche)

- satisfaction and adjustment, pragmatism (Ralph Barton Perry and John Dewey)

- freedom, existentialism (Jean-Paul Sartre)

- Buddhist ethics

- Mohism (Mo Tzu/Micius)

- Ayn Rand’s objectivism?

(3) Ayn Rand’s objectivism?

(4) Utilitarian Kantian Principle of James Cornman (combines deontology and utilitarianism).

I will just make some quick remarks here.

Non-cognitivism
Non-cognitivism contends that moral statements do not express propositions and have no truth values.

Ethical non-naturalism
These theories include G. E. Moore’s intuitionism/agathistic consequentialism; Platonist ethics; divine command ethics, and Kantian ethics. Moral knowledge is a non-natural property known by (1) intuition, (2) god’s command or (3) a priori reasoning in these theories.

Naturalism
Ethical naturalism holds that moral knowledge is empirical in the sense that we can use the methods of the natural and social sciences to understand it. Moral concepts are reducible to, or definable in, non-ethical, natural terms. Most utilitarian theories are in the class of moral naturalism:

“even utilitarians who object to hedonism in its original, Benthamite form, as Mill expressly did, and utilitarians who stray even farther from the hedonistic fold, as I will suggest that Mill, perhaps unwittingly, also did, usually agree that the good is one or another kind of natural property. The dominant view, in other words, is that whatever is intrinsically good is part of nature. It is therefore fair to say that, with very few exceptions, utilitarians are ethical naturalists. One can be a utilitarian, though, and not be an ethical naturalist. For example, G. E. Moore, one of the founders modern analytic philosophy, was a utilitarian. He was as committed as Bentham or Mill to enhancing overall goodness by maximizing social utility, taking social utility to be the logical sum of individuals’ utilities. However, Moore famously opposed ethical naturalism, insisting that the very idea rest on what he disparagingly called the ‘naturalistic fallacy’. In direct opposition to Mill, Moore maintained that the good can only be a non natural property...” (Levine 2002: 136).

According to Moore, all naturalist ethical theories commit the naturalistic fallacy.

The deontological theories (or duty/obligation based morality) hold that the basis of morality is duty and some acts are always right no matter what consequences they can cause (the best example of which is Kantian ethics or some forms of divine command theory; Kant famously said that it is always wrong to lie, no matter what the circumstances).

The Eudaemonist theories of ethics are those that hold that morality consists in some activity appropriate to man as a human being, and thus tend to emphasize the cultivation of virtue or excellence as the end of our action or moral life. These theories were mainly held by the ancient Greeks and Romans.

The utilitarian theories hold that utility/happiness is the end we should aim at, and the rightness or wrongness of an action is judged by ability to create more utility/happiness in the world.

Consequentialist theories hold that other ends are also important, and not just utility.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hooker, B. 2000. Ideal Code, Real World: A Rule-Consequentialist Theory of Morality, Oxford University Press, Oxford, England and New York.

Levine, A. 2002. Engaging Political Philosophy: From Hobbes to Rawls, Blackwell, Malden, Mass.

More on “Taxation is Theft”

Consider this statement:

“The institution of taxation is one in which one party uses force to demand payment from another.”

As I have pointed out, there is considerable empirical evidence that the majority of people do not regard paying taxes as immoral or as theft, but as the right and proper thing to do as a citizen.

If the threat of force or use of force invalidates everything, then we are left with a very strange situation indeed. For example, the law employs the threat of force or use of force. Is that any reason to abolish the law?

It is the law that you cannot park in an ambulance zone in front of a public hospital, and the threat of force or actual force can be seen as restricting your “freedom” to park where you want. If you park your car there, the car will be forcibly removed and you will be fined, yet most people freely choose not to park their cars in these zones, and they think this behaviour is moral and right. Why? When pressed, I suspect, most people would give a utilitarian argument: parking your car there could have very bad consequences indeed for sick people arriving in ambulances, if they can’t get in quickly and easily.

If this silly argument above against taxes were valid, under such an argument, no action made illegal by the state is avoided by anyone “voluntarily”.

In other words, it’s like saying that the reason why everyone doesn’t go out now and commit a crime spree is that people are being “coerced” by the “evil” state from committing theft, arson etc. etc. Do we seriously think that people don’t commit theft only because there is a threat of force by the state to arrest and try them, if they in fact do commit it? That in fact it is only coercion that stops everyone from breaking the law?

No, it is because most people think theft is immoral and unacceptable, and refrain from it voluntarily, and the threat of force by the state is not what makes most people adhere to the law. It is the same with taxes: most people pay taxes because they think it right and fair. Some people are indeed coerced, but I have already dealt with that issue.

Coercion and the “Taxation is Theft” Argument

I see one of the latest responses to one of my previous posts is this:

“You statists simply refuse to analyze human activity as voluntary on the one hand or the result of hostile force and/or fraud on the other, the Rothbardian test. That is because unsophisticated people understand the difference quite well and would see what a nest of theft and fraud the Keynesian program is.”

I am well aware of the difference between forced and voluntary behaviour, and the simple truth is that you cannot live in a world without some degree of reasonable force and coercion (the operative word being “reasonable”). For example, your wife or child is about to walk in front of a speeding car, and there is no time to yell a warning. Do you:

(1) Use coercion to stop them from being killed or injured by grabbing them, or

(2) Do nothing because coercion is always wrong.

If you do what any normal, moral human being does, you do (1), and that course of action can be defended as a moral and right thing to do on many ethical theories. If you choose (2), on the grounds that nobody can be subject to involuntary coercion at any time, you are revealed as an utterly immoral idiot, to my mind. The crucial point is that when coercion occurs it must be justifiable. To say that coercion is reasonable is to say that it is justifiable in a convincing way, on some grounds.

We are told by some Austrians (perhaps not the more intellectually sophisticated ones) that nobody should be subject to involuntary coercion at all, and usually they appeal to natural rights arguments and nature. But I doubt whether such libertarian concepts really are consistent with nature. Take this libertarian insistence that we must be free from any coercive authority, done without our consent. This is a radical violation of one fundamental part of human nature: the relationship of parents to children. How can you raise children without using coercion without their consent? You can’t. The alternative is letting children run wild. Reasonable coercion is necessary, in so far as it does not conflict with the legal rights that all human beings are given under the law.

But to return to the comment above, it is a typical version of the “taxation is theft” argument.

First of all, how would Austrians know that all people who pay taxes regard this as theft? It is natural to dislike paying taxes, but evidence suggests that many people – a majority – think it is the moral thing to do:

“The IRS Oversight Board conducted an independent poll in 2005 that found 96 percent of the respondents agreed ‘it is every American’s civic duty to pay their fair share of taxes.’

The Pew Research Center in a similar study in 2006 found 79 percent of the respondents said that cheating Uncle Sam was ‘morally objectionable.’

Certainly, Americans pay they taxes because they have to: ever since 1945, taxes have been automatically withdrawn from pay-checks. But people also comply because they think it is fair. Polls show that most Americans think only ‘a few’ people cheat on their taxes. Paying taxes, just like leaving a tip, is a social norm” (Maxwell 2000: 146).

Yes, Americans might dislike paying tax, but it appears a majority think it is both fair and right, just as you might dislike looking after a troublesome, obnoxious teenage child, even though you recognise that this is the right thing to do and the law says you must do so as a parent.

With regard to modern taxes which pay for public goods, it appears to me that it is the Austrians/libertarians who are in the minority. But, of course, just because a majority of people think something is moral, this does not necessarily make it so. You need a defensible moral theory to justify some action as right. This issue cuts right to questions about philosophy of ethics.

If two people (a libertarian and Keynesian, say) wanted to seriously debate, they would have to ask:

(1) Is there an objective theory of ethics?

If one person does not believe in objective ethics, then the debate collapses into whether ethics is objective or subjective. Also, anyone who believes that morality is subjective can just appeal to David Gauthier’s Morals by Agreement and come up with some contractarian theory in which, if a majority of people assent to living by certain rules, then this is perfectly defensible ethics. If one takes David Gauthier’s Morals by Agreement as a method for ethics, then modern social democratic states already have a majority that supports basic principles like progressive taxation, so it appears to have ample justification.

But the statement “taxation is theft” seems to require that some objective ethical theory is true, however, so:

(2) If both people agree that ethics is objective, then what ethical system is true?

Our morality cannot be justified by an appeal to nature: that is why most natural rights/natural law based ethics collapse, and why natural rights ethics in the Rothbardian or Randian tradition won’t fly.

In my opinion, the workable objective theories of ethics that are not obviously flawed are Rawl’s human rights ethics, or rule consequentialism/utilitarianism (as in Brad Hooker, 2000, Ideal Code, Real World, Oxford University Press, Oxford). Some claim that a modern form of Kantian ethics is defensive, though I have my doubts.

Since taxes are levied to provide public goods and services (e.g., universal health care in all industrializied nations except the US), it is not difficult to justify them morally under Rawl’s human rights ethics or rule consequentialism.

Also, since in every ethical system some values will conflict, where does human life and the preservation of human life rank in these systems?

The belief that taxation is theft obviously implies that property rights are absolute or at least high in value. But why on earth should property rights rank above human life? Under rule consequentialism even the initiation of force involved in taking wealth might be perfectly justified, e.g.,

(1) If a village of 100 people has one well which is in the possession of one man, who suddenly refuses to give water to anyone else, and there is no rain or any other water and people are dying of thirst, can the dying people use force against the man (but not kill or wound him) to take what water they need just to survive? (leaving him of course with his proper share).

If a person said “no,” I would conclude that the person is morally bankrupt (since I regard rule consequentialism as defensible theory). If “yes,” then it is obvious that rule utilitarianism allows the use of reasonable force to take some reasonable amount of property, if people's lives or welfare are at stake.

In fact, utilitarianism as a moral theory was also held by Ludwig von Mises, who rejected natural rights, and used utilitarianism to justify a minimal state and limited interventions like fire regulations:

“There is, however, no such thing as natural law and a perennial standard of what is just and what is unjust. Nature is alien to the idea of right and wrong. “Thou shalt not kill” is certainly not part of natural law. The characteristic feature of natural conditions is that one animal is intent upon killing other animals and that many species cannot preserve their own life except by killing others. The notion of right and wrong is a human device, a utilitarian precept designed to make social cooperation under the division of labor possible. All moral rules and human laws are means for the realization of definite ends. There is no method available for the appreciation of their goodness or badness other than to scrutinize their usefulness for the attainment of the ends chosen and aimed at” (Mises 1998 [1949]: 716).

“Economics neither approves nor disapproves of government measures restricting production and output. It merely considers it its duty to clarify the consequences of such measures. The choice of policies to be adopted devolves upon the people. But in choosing they must not disregard the teachings of economics if they want to attain the ends sought. There are certainly cases in which people may consider definite restrictive measures as justified. Regulations concerning fire prevention are restrictive and raise the cost of production. But the curtailment of total output they bring about is the price to be paid for avoidance of greater disaster. The decision about each restrictive measure is to be made on the ground of a meticulous weighing of the costs to be incurred and the prize to be obtained. No reasonable man could possibly question this rule” (Mises 1998 [1949]: 741).

Perhaps is time for Austrians to attack Mises as an “evil” statist who advocated using coercion to enforce fire codes?

Progressive taxes and Keynesian macroeconomic management of an economy are justifiable on utilitarian grounds. As for the libertarian minority who disagree, there is no reason why a minority of people with a debased sense of morality should not pay their share.


BIBLIOGRAPHY

Maxwell, S. 2000. The Price is Wrong: Understanding What Makes a Price Seem Fair and the True Cost of Unfair Pricing, John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, N.J.

Mises, L. 1998 [1949]. Human Action: A Treatise on Economics, Ludwig von Mises Institute, Auburn.

Would Anarcho-Capitalists Allow the Earth to be Destroyed?

A lively debate has inflamed the blogosphere, concerning the natural rights-based (and pro-free market) libertarians’ view that it would be immoral to tax people coercively to prevent the earth’s destruction by an asteroid. Some of the relevant posts are below:

Sasha Volokh, “Asteroid Defense and Libertarianism,” February 15, 2011.

J. Bradford DeLong, “Empirical Proof that America's Libertarians Are Completely Insane...,” February 15, 2011.

Robert P. Murphy, “Empirical Evidence That Brad DeLong Is Completely Obtuse,” Mises Daily, February 22, 2011.

J. Bradford DeLong, “Robert Murphy Joins the ‘It’s Immoral to Tax Americans to Destroy an Asteroid’ Caucus,” February 22, 2011.

Robert Murphy, “Murphy vs. Famous Keynesian,” 22 February 2011.

For J. Bradford DeLong, this is proof that (pro-free market) libertarians are “completely insane” – a not unreasonable conclusion.

But, in fact, such a position by them is logically consistent with their ethical theory. The difference between Austrians/pro-free market libertarians who would accept some government intervention to save the earth and those who would reject such intervention lies in their ethical theories. That is the fundmanetal point that, I think, escapes a good many people: this is about ethics, not economics per se.

Nor will it do any good for anarcho-capitalists to try and evade the question by claiming that the situation imagined is “unrealistic” or “unlikely.” Hypothetical scenarios that are possible (whether likely or not) are precisely what are used in good discussions of ethical theories to test them and their implications. To refuse to answer the question of what your ethical theory says is the right thing to do in a hypothetical situation is intellectual cowardice and surrender. You may as well wave the white flag.

This applies to Robert Murphy’s claim that taxes would not be needed to fund a project to save the earth, as many people would in fact give voluntarily. That may well be true, but is irrelevant to the actual moral question and simply evades it. Suppose not enough people give. Suppose more money is needed: is it moral to tax people to get that money or not?

The Misesian classical liberals who believe in a minimal state and who use utilitarianism as an ethical theory could in fact justify government intervention in such a case (whether they all do so in practice, I don’t know). Their utilitarianism gives them such a justification.

Natural law/natural rights-based Austrians in the tradition of Rothbard will vehemently reject all government intervention, even to save the earth, without logical inconsistency, in a way that (to them) appears rational, as that is what their ethical theory leads them to.

The cold, rational reason why they are wrong is simply that their natural law/natural rights based ethics is severely flawed and untenable (an interesting starting point is L. A. Rollins, The Myth of Natural Rights).

A more practical reason to reject their view is that, with no sense of the public good, and an ethical theory which would place absolute rights to property above not just a single human life but above the lives of all humans on the planet, their society would quickly destroy itself.

Why? In fact, we would not need an asteroid. Anarcho-capitalism would logically require the private production, sale, ownership, and (possible) use of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. How long would civilization last in such conditions? (see “The Different Types of Austrian Economics,” December 5, 2010).

And, if there are any anarcho-capitalists who deny that this is a logical conclusion of their ideology, let them explain why chemical, biological and nuclear weapons should not be privatised. They won’t do it convincingly without some concept of the public good or consequentialist ethics.

Economics and Ethics: A Brief Survey

In the previous post (see “Rothbard on Mises’ Utilitarianism: Why the Systems of Mises and Rothbard both Collapse”), I pointed out that Rothbard’s natural law theory is untenable, and once that is recognised his whole case for anarcho-capitalism also collapses. While I will publish a longer post soon refuting natural law and natural rights theory, I present here a brief introduction to ethics. This post was also published as a guest post on the Cynicus Economicus blog ( “Guest Article: Economics and Ethics,” May 4, 2009).

For a number of economic systems (e.g., libertarianism, free market economics, neo-liberalism, social democracy, democratic socialism, communism etc), in intelligent debate many people justify their preferred system as public policy by appealing to some ethical theory, to convince other people of the morality or superiority of their system.

The Austrians who follow the praxeological system of von Mises claim that economic science is value-free, and that the inferences of praxeology are justifiable as economic laws independently of ethics, though that remains a questionable idea. But, as a public policy prescription, even Austrians will often require an ethical theory, and Rothbard explicitly used natural rights theory to justify his anarcho-capitalism.

In the end, when an economic system is urged as a policy it must often be justified or limited by an ethical/moral theory, and one needs an objective theory of right or wrong to do this. For the only effective theories available to justify a larger philosophical system in a consistent way are objectivist theories of ethics (that is to say, a subjectivist or relativist theory of ethics is self-defeating).

In essence, an objectivist theory of ethics holds that:

– moral judgements are propositions that have an objective value, either true or false (e.g, “The unjustified killing of another human being is wrong”);
– the truth of a moral proposition remains true regardless of the subjective opinions of a person or the values of a different culture (e.g., “Slavery is wrong”);
– morality is not subjective or relative.

If we want an objectivist theory of our morality, we essentially have these options:

(1) Moral absolutism

(a) Divine Command Theory

(b) Categorical Imperative ethics (Kantian ethics)

(2) Moral Universalism (minimal/moderate moral realism)

(i) Deontological theories:

(a) Natural law theories (Plato and many Christian philosophers)

(b) Thomist ethics

(c) Pluralistic deontology, the non-absolutist ethics of W.D. Ross

(d) Human rights objectivism (Rawls)

(ii) Consequentialist theories:

(e) Utilitarianism (act utilitarianism; rule utilitarianism)

(f) Ayn Rand’s objectivism?

(3) Ayn Rand’s objectivism?

(4) Utilitarian Kantian Principle of James Cornman (this combines deontology and utilitarianism).

All of these objectivist theories of morality/ethics can be divided into two basic groups as follows:

(1) Deontological theories (= duty or obligation based morality): the basis of morality is duty and some acts are always right no matter what consequences they can cause (the best example of which is Kantian ethics or some forms of divine command theory; Kant famously said that it is always wrong to lie, no matter what the circumstances).

(2) Consequentialist theories: the basis of morality is the evaluation of the consequences of acts on people (the most famous such theory is Utilitarianism). The greatest happiness of the greatest number of people is one way of describing it.

(I will not address the question whether Ayn Rand’s objectivism is consequentialist or in a category by itself, since this is disputed.)

Use your intuition and find out whether you subscribe to (1) a duty-based ethical theory or (2) a utilitarian or consequentialist ethical theory by thinking about this moral problem:

A known murderer comes to you and asks to know where a person he wants to kill is, and you are aware of his desire to commit murder. Do you:

(1) Lie to protect the innocent person and say you do not know, or
(2) Tell the murderer where that person is in the knowledge that a murder may occur?

Decision (1) makes you a utilitarian, and (2) a believer of duty-based ethics. Immanuel Kant held that (2) is the moral course of action, since lying is always immoral, under all circumstances.

Ethics as Applied to Economics

Divine command theory is easily refuted: e.g., if god orders someone to commit genocide, then this suddenly becomes a “moral” action, because God has ordered it. Thus divine ethics turns out to be a subjective theory of ethics: what is moral and what is not actually depends, in the end, on the arbitrary whim of God, not the goodness of actions or their consequences. If God’s moral laws are not arbitrary, then there must be some independent, objective standard or method he uses to determine what is right and wrong. But, if there is an independent, objective standard, then it is this system that tells us what is right or wrong, not the commands of God. We could presumably use reason to apply the standard ourselves to discover what is right and wrong, without any need for instruction from God. (And Kantian ethics was in fact partly an attempt to create an objectivist ethics that could defend Christian morality, but remove this problem by basing morality on moral principles derived from human reason.)

Many libertarians rely on a natural law/natural rights theory of ethics.

Thus they often argue that state intervention is bad when it violates private property rights, and that this government action is always immoral, irrespective of the good or bad consequences that state intervention has or may have.

Natural law as a theory can be traced back to Plato, the ancient Stoics, and many Christian philosophers. (Contrary to popular belief, the most widely-held theory of ethics in the Middle Ages in Christian philosophy was the natural law theory, not the crude divine command theory.)

Natural law was famously attacked by the English utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham as “nonsense on stilts.”

One of the main weaknesses of natural law theory is that its main historical justification was the belief in a “divine order” and a divinely-created human nature that makes us conform to “natural law.”

For Plato, the divine soul made human beings conform to the natural law of the universe. In ancient Stoicism, all humans had a divine reason given by the gods to make them adhere to divine “natural law.”

When natural law theory was taken up by Christian theologians, they simply substituted the Christian god for the gods of the Greek and Romans.

In the early modern period, rationalist European philosophers like Grotius tried to defend natural law theory by removing God and the previous supernatural justification for it.

However, in doing so, they destroyed the only convincing explanation for belief in natural law (Tawney 1998: xxv-xxvi).

Thus anyone who accepts an atheistic and naturalistic scientific view of the universe, and who rejects all religion, has no reason to believe in natural law or natural rights.

I would note here that just because we appear to have an innate sense of right and wrong, this does not provide us with an objective system of ethics. That some scientists believe they can identify an innate sense of right and wrong, which humans have evolved through social life in communities during our evolutionary history, does not mean that they have found an objectivist theory of morality that can function as a consistent, logical and universal system for justifying our moral choices, both now and in the past. The well-known fact that there is a vast chasm between what can be regarded as moral in one society and immoral in another demonstrates that, like our language faculty (which also has a biological basis), our innate moral intuition can lead to quite different systems of morality in different cultures in different times (just as our core language faculty leads to vastly different languages, with different words, grammar and syntax). For instance, in ancient Greece and Rome, the killing of unwanted children by exposing them (i.e., leaving them at crossroads or abandoning them at birth) was widely accepted. Human sacrifice and slavery were also widely practised in many ancient societies, and this was apparently perfectly compatible with the “innate moral sense of right and wrong” that ancient people had, although it is no longer accepted today.

Only an objectivist theory of morality can demonstrate that these things are immoral now and also immoral in the past. So it turns out the innate sense of right and wrong is not the same thing as an objectivist theory of morality.

Nor does appealing to “nature” give us any objective standard of right and wrong. For example, cannibalism is observed in many species: does this make cannibalism moral for humans? It certainly does not, and anyone who thinks so has committed the fallacy of appeal to nature, a fallacy of relevance.

I will note here too that a very good starting point for why natural law and natural rights are untenable is Kai Nielsen, “The Myth of Natural Law,” in S. Hook (ed.), Law and Philosophy: A Symposium, University Press, New York. 1963.

Also relevant is L. A. Rollins, The Myth of Natural Rights (Loompanics Unlimited, 1983), which is an attack on the natural rights theories of Rothbard and Ayn Rand.

It follows that all modern types of libertarianism or free market economics based simply on a “natural law” or “natural rights” foundation are severely flawed systems (e.g., the systems of Adam Smith or Murray Rothbard). There is no reason to believe that the “natural law” that justifies placing inviolable property rights at the centre of our modern political or economic systems has any validity whatsoever.

In my opinion, Kantian ethics has no real consequences for economics: it can be used to justify numerous economic systems and is fully compatible with social democracy. However, Kantian deontological ethics has severe problems.

A better ethical theory, in my view, is a modern form of utilitarianism called rule utilitarianism (which is quite different from its crude early form as advocated by Jeremy Bentham). Some libertarians or advocates of free market economics actually do use utilitarian arguments to justify their positions and economic systems, e.g., Ludwig von Mises (although Mises’ praxeology was an a priori system of deductive reasoning, independent of his utilitarianism), the earlier Friedrich von Hayek (Gregg 2003: 21–22), and Milton Friedman (Frederick 2002: 23). Thus anyone who uses a utilitarian argument to support ideas about economics will ultimately have to examine the good and bad effects of the policies they advocate.

In these theories, there is no reason in principle why state intervention could not be moral and successful. Any economic argument, then, essentially becomes an argument about empirical reality: the consequences of economic policy today and in the past. The good consequences of state intervention and social democracy fully justify these policies. Of course, philosophical objections have been raised to utilitarianism as well.

One solution may be that we should adopt James Cornman’s Utilitarian Kantian Principle of ethics: this (as I understand it) has caused a great deal of excitement amongst modern philosophers, because it combines the best elements of Kant’s deontological ethics with utilitarianism. It is perfectly compatible with state intervention in economics.

APPENDIX 1: WHAT WAS MARX’S ETHICS?

Marx himself, as I understand it, rejected the utilitarianism of his day for some very confused ideas on ethics (Alan Gilbert, Democratic Individuality, Cambridge University Press, 1990, p. 240). And, at the very least, the question of what ethical theory he believed in is debatable (N. Churchich, Marxism and Morality: A Critical Examination of Marxist Ethics, James Clarke & Co., 1994, p. 139).

Since I don’t advocate communism as preached in the Communist Manifesto, it has nothing to do with my moral argument for certain types of state intervention.

Furthermore, the means Marx advocated to achieve communism (i.e., dictatorship, destruction of freedom of speech and civil liberties) can be rejected on utilitarian grounds anyway, since the abolition of freedom of speech and dictatorship have harmful effects on everyone.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cornman, J. W., Lehrer, K. and G. S. Pappas. 1992. Philosophical Problems and Arguments: An Introduction, Hackett, Indianapolis.

Frederick, R. 2002. A Companion to Business Ethics,, Blackwell, Malden, Mass.

Gregg, S. 2003. On Ordered Liberty: A Treatise on the Free Society, Lexington, Oxford and Lanham, Md.

Nielsen, K. 1963, “The Myth of Natural Law,” in S. Hook (ed.), Law and philosophy: A Symposium, University Press, New York.

Rollins, L. A. 1983. The Myth of Natural Rights, Loompanics Unlimited.

Scruton, R. 1994. Modern Philosophy: An Introduction and Survey, Penguin Books, London.

Tawney, R. H. 1998. Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, Transaction, New Brunswick, N.J. and London.

Rothbard on Mises’ Utilitarianism: Why the Systems of Mises and Rothbard both Collapse

In a previous post (see “Was Mises a Socialist?: Why Mises Refutes Himself on Government Intervention”), I reviewed the critique of Mises’s Human Action by George J. Schuller (1950; 1951) and his exchange with Rothbard (1951).

It appears that, after George J. Schuller’s (1951) reply to Rothbard, the latter realised that there was a devastating contradiction in Mises’ thought. In Rothbard’s book The Ethics of Liberty (first published in 1982), Rothbard makes a remarkable concession on government intervention:

“What can Mises reply to a majority of the public who have indeed considered all the praxeological consequences, and still prefer a modicum–or, for that matter, even a drastic amount—of statism in order to achieve some of their competing goals? As a utilitarian, he cannot quarrel with the ethical nature of their chosen goals, for, as a utilitarian, he must confine himself to the one value judgment that he favors the majority achieving their chosen goals. The only reply that Mises can make within his own framework is to point out that government intervention has a cumulative effect, that eventually the economy must move either toward the free market or toward full socialism, which praxeology shows will bring chaos and drastic impoverishment, at least to an industrial society. But this, too, is not a fully satisfactory answer. While many or most programs of statist intervention—especially price controls—are indeed cumulative, others are not. Furthermore, the cumulative impact takes such a long time that the time-preferences of the majority might well lead them, in full acknowledgment of the consequences, to ignore the effect.” (Rothbard 2002: 211–212)

Rothbard comes dangerously close to conceding that government intervention does not necessarily lead to chaos or socialism, just as Schuller (1951: 190) had argued. One might also note that Rothbard states that the “cumulative impact” of some intervention takes a long time, which makes his case even weaker. For example, how long does it take? (5 years? 10 years? 50? 100? 200?).

But Rothbard makes a perfectly valid point against Mises’ utilitarianism as well, and how Mises cannot possibly provide a convincing counterargument against state intervention once the cost and benefits are weighed and such interventions have been endorsed by democratic vote:

The point here is that Mises, not only as a praxeologist but even as a utilitarian liberal, can have no word of criticism against these statist measures once the majority of the public have taken their praxeological consequences into account and chosen them anyway on behalf of goals other than wealth and prosperity. Furthermore, there are other types of statist intervention which clearly have little or no cumulative effect, and which may even have very little effect in diminishing production or prosperity (Rothbard 2002: 213) ….

“Thus, while praxeological economic theory is extremely useful for providing data and knowledge for framing economic policy, it cannot be sufficient by itself to enable the economist to make any value pronouncements or to advocate any public policy whatsoever. More specifically, Ludwig von Mises to the contrary notwithstanding, neither praxeological economics nor Mises’s utilitarian liberalism is sufficient to make the case for laissez faire and the free-market economy. To make such a case, one must go beyond economics and utilitarianism to establish an objective ethics which affirms the overriding value of liberty, and morally condemns all forms of statism” (Rothbard 2002: 214).

The full implications of this passage are profound. Rothbard is rejecting Mises’ utilitarian case for laissez faire, and saying that Mises’ praxeology does not in itself allow any Austrian to advocate any public policy whatsoever. A Misesian cannot justify an economic policy as an actual public policy just because it can (allegedly) be shown to be an inference of praxeology.

So Rothbard abandoned Mises’ utilitarianism and instead made the case for anarcho-capitalism and laissez faire a moral issue, which could be justified by an objective moral theory. This was a fundamentally important difference between Rothbard and Mises.

Now Rothbard called himself an Aristotelian neo-Thomist, and held an objective natural law/natural rights view of ethics. He proceeded to make the case for a free market economy on objective moral grounds based on natural law (for example, his nonaggression axiom was justified by appealing to natural law).

So we can easily and totally refute Rothbard simply by showing his objective natural law/natural rights theory is untenable.

Frankly, that is not difficult. I will devote a larger post to it soon. Here philosophy of ethics is important, and there are very powerful arguments against the idea of natural law or natural rights, which even some libertarians accept (indeed Mises himself rejected natural law precisely because the case for it is utterly unconvincing). I will note here that one of the serious objections to natural law theory is that its main historical justification was the belief in a “divine order” and a divinely-created human nature that makes us conform to “natural law.” In the early modern period, rationalist European philosophers like Grotius tried to defend natural law theory by removing God and the previous supernatural justification for it. However, in doing so, they destroyed the only convincing explanation for belief in natural law (Tawney 1998: xxv-xxvi).

Anyone who rejects natural law has no reason to accept Rothbard’s ethics or his moral case for anarcho-capitalism derived from it. And, once the ethical case for Rothbard’s system is destroyed, that leaves Mises’ severely flawed system which must also be rejected, as it simply cannot provide any rational objection to intervention on moral or pragmatic grounds.

The case for the praxeological Austrian economics of Mises or Rothbard is a house built on sand.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Rothbard. M. N. 1951. “Mises’ ‘Human Action’: Comment,” American Economic Review 41.1: 181–185.

Rothbard, M. N. 2002. The Ethics of Liberty, New York University Press, New York, N.Y. and London.

Schuller, G. J. 1950. Review of Human Action: A Treatise on Economics by Ludwig von Mises, American Economic Review 40.3: 418–422.

Schuller, G. J. 1951. “Mises’ ‘Human Action’: Rejoinder,” American Economic Review 41.1: 185–190.

Tawney, R. H. 1998. Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, Transaction, New Brunswick, N.J. and London.