Political Theory/Political Philosophy

Thanks for the many comments – many long comments – to my academic groupthink posts, particularly the second. Having dutifully read through, I’m too tired to respond point by point to any more points. I do feel that this exercise – which threatened to be a bit of the old same old/same old – did me much good, writing and reading.

I hope those who followed along feel the same. Otherwise you must be seething.

One commenter requested – for the benefit of those with day jobs, or whose time is valuable – a dsquared-style shorter Holbo for all this.

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Via Butterflies & Wheels I came across the following ludicrous and offensive argument against gay marriage from Keith Burgess-Jackson, the self-styled AnalPhilosopher :

bq. I have said in this blog many times that the very idea of homosexual marriage is incoherent, which is why I put the word “marriage” in quotation marks. I do the same for dog “voting.” If we took our dogs to the polls and got them to push levers with their paws, they would not be voting. They would be going through the motions of voting. It would be a charade. Voting is not made for dogs. They lack the capacity to participate in the institution. The same is true of homosexuals and marriage.

Richard Chappell at Philosophy etc says nearly all that needs to be said about Burgess-Jackson’s “argument”, so I wouldn’t even have bothered mentioning it if I hadn’t been in conversation on Tuesday with the LSE’s Christian List whose article “Democracy in Animal Groups: A Political Science Perspective” is forthcoming in _Trends in Ecology and Evolution_ . List draws on Condorcet’s jury theorem (previously discussed on CT here ) to shed more light on research by Conradt and Roper in their paper Group decision-making in animals , from Nature 421 (155–8) in 2003. Conradt and Roper have this to say about animal voting:

bq. Many authors have assumed despotism without testing, because the feasibility of democracy, which requires the ability to vote and to count votes, is not immediately obvious in non-humans. However, empirical examples of ‘voting’ behaviours include the use of specific body postures, ritualized movements, and specific vocalizations, whereas ‘counting of votes’ includes adding-up to a majority of cast votes, integration of voting signals until an intensity threshold is reached, and averaging over all votes. Thus, democracy may exist in a range of taxa and does not require advanced cognitive capacity.

[Tiresome, humourless and literal-minded quasi-Wittgensteinian comments, putting inverted commas around “voting” etc. are hereby pre-emptively banned from the comments thread.]

Scott McLemee has an astute review of Gertrude Himmelfarb’s “The Road to Modernity” in tomorrow’s _New York Times_. I’ll leave her claim that one can distinguish between a ‘good’ Enlightenment (English theorists of moral sentiments) and a ‘bad’ one (nasty French rationalist universalists) to more qualified commentators. What I liked was McLemee’s little sting at the end, which nicely illustrates certain of the limits of Himmelfarb’s brand of conservatism, and indeed “compassionate conservatism” more generally.

bq. When Himmelfarb’s attention turns to colonial America and the early United States the results are less persuasive, and indeed reveal far more than she may intend about the limits of moral sentiment she extols. ”For economic if for no other reasons,” she writes, ”the displacement of the Indians was the precondition for the very existence of the settlers.” As for slavery, Himmelfarb acknowledges it as an evil, but is curiously silent about its cumulative effect, over 400 years, on the nation’s stock of moral capital.

bq. I was reminded of something the ”elitist” Diderot wrote, in a moment of bitter hatred for the slave trade: the Africans ”are tyrannized, mutilated, burnt and put to death, and yet we listen to these accounts coolly and without emotion. The torments of a people to whom we owe our luxuries are never able to reach our hearts.” A more robust sociology of virtue might begin with the realization that the power of moral sentiment so often fails us. Yet when it does, our moral obligations remain. Meeting them is, arguably, one function of the state. But in the eyes of the neocons, I suppose, such thoughts smack of John Rawls — or even, worse, Le Monde.

This seems to me from my limited reading in the literature to be one of the key problems of conservatism – coming up with a coherent and convincing argument about those moral and ethical obligations that don’t spring ‘naturally’ from our pre-rational loyalties to family and friends. I suppose if you were a conservative, you could retort that obligations that aren’t natural are by virtue of that fact not obligations. But this leaves conservatives in a rather awkward position, given that many of the loyalties that conservatives prize (such as patriotism) are clearly artificial in nature (nation states are relatively recent social constructs). Others, such as the belief that slavery is morally repugnant, have changed dramatically over time. I suspect that there has to be a conservative literature out there that tries to grapple with some of these problems – can anyone point me in the right direction?

It looks like Columbia University Press is bringing out a new edition of Political Liberalism. All things considered, I wish they wouldn’t. For the Rawls obsessed, more below the line.

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The Royal Institute of Philosophy lecture series for 2004–5 has just been announced and includes several people whose work we’ve discussed on CT (Jonathan Wolff, Mike Otsuka, G.A.Cohen and John Kekes, to name but four).

Eugene Volokh is too reasonable. Maybe. Regarding Republican mailers alleging liberals are hot for an old timey Bible banning:

Whether the usage is actually misleading depends on how people are likely to perceive it. If the literal meaning is clearly extremely implausible (such as that the liberals would actually criminalize private possession and distribution of Bibles), then people are more likely to recognize the alternative meaning. And this is especially so if the usage is in a medium that’s known for hyperbole (such as political mailers), then I suspect that people will discount it in some measure. This is why, having read both the cover separately and the cover and the insides together, it seems to me that the flyer is likely to be understood as making a plausible allegation — that liberals are seeking to ban the Bible from public schools (at least in most contexts) and from government-run displays — rather than a wildly implausible one (that they’re seeking a total outlawing of the Bible).

A very popular fiction genre in the United States is (what’s a good name?) tribulit. Christian tribulation/persecution fantasy. Unkinder critical terms – raptureporn and such – have been applied. I don’t read the stuff; I’ll bet Volokh doesn’t either. The snippets I’ve seen are stand-out dreadful. But never mind the literary criticism. Jerry Jenkins (of LaHaye and Jenkins Left Behind fame) has a recent novel, Silenced, the plot of which involves – well, I’ll let you read the news today oh, boy: Silenced Times (PDF). [And you really might want to click the Silenced link. It goes to the book site, which is dramatic. Not safe for work if there is any sort of no-cymbals policy in your work place. Or just turn it down. Site needs a fast connection.]

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Jim Holt in the New York Times raises the old question of whether it is rational to vote . The issue is this (for those who don’t know): the rational voter decides what to do by weighing the expected cost and benefits of actions. Suppose I value the victory of Party X at $1000. In working out the expected benefit of voting, I also have to take account of the probability of my vote making a difference, a probability which is extremely low (say 1/100,000). Assigning, therefore an expected benefit to voting of 1c, I see that going to the polling booth involves an expenditure of time, shoe leather and incurs the opportunity cost of missing a few minutes of my favourite soap opera. Since these costs will certainly by incurred if I vote, and dwarf the expected benefit of voting, the expected _net_ benefit is always negative, and so, rationally, I shouldn’t vote.

What’s wrong with this argument? Well, one thought, which I remember hearing first from my friend Alan Carling, is this: the argument involves inconsistent assumptions about rationality. The assignment of a low probability to my vote making a difference assumes what the conclusion of the argument denies, namely, that rational persons would vote. But the argument says they wouldn’t. Well if they wouldn’t then I would be the only voter (a dictator, in effect). In which case I would certainly be rational to vote since I can count the full expected benefit of $1000 in favour of doing so. But if that’s the case, and I should vote, then so should everyone else … in which case I shouldn’t … in which case nor should they … in which case I should ….

I agree with Matt. Jacob Levy’s defense of the possibility of Libertarian Hawkishness is coherent and even forceful in the context of the Afghanistan war, but Belle backed down too soon. It’s just not plausible to construe libertarianism as really being about massive, state-sponsored,[1] centrally-planned,[2] militarily-administered[3] efforts to invade and reconstruct another country — let alone to imply that libertarians are by temperament the kind of people who are confident that enterprises like this usually succeed as planned. So, I think Schmibertarians could adopt as their anthem a slightly modified version of Randy Newman’s song The World Isn't Fair. It’s about Karl Marx, which doesn’t seem promising for Schmibertarians with aggressive foreign policies.[4] But consider:

Oh Karl the world isn’t fair
It isn’t and never will be.
They tried out your plan
It brought misery instead,
If you’d seen how they worked it
You’d be glad you were dead.
Just like I’m glad I’m living in the land of the free,
Where the rich just get richer
And the poor you don’t ever have to see —
It would depress us, Karl.
Because we care
That the world still isn’t fair.

Just replace ‘Karl’ with 'Bob' and “they” with “we” and you’re set. Sure, Iraq was run by a wholly evil despot before. But so what? After all, who if not libertarians can we depend on to remind us that the world isn’t fair, your plan brought misery instead, and that you’re just wasting your time — and probably making things worse — by initiating some Grand State Scheme to control unemployment, the market for rental accommodation, civilian air traffic or infant polio. This argument scales up to things like the forcible invasion, occupation and political reconstruction of faraway countries. Given that the country posed no credible threat to the U.S., Libertarians ought to have opposed the war and especially the subsequent occupation in Iraq. And indeed many of them did.

fn1. That is, botched.

fn2. That is, botched.

fn3. That is, botched.

fn4. Note that we’re talking about the Schmibertarians of Samizdata here, not Jacob Levy of the University of Chicago.

Jacob Levy, whose absence is deeply felt in the blogosphere, sent me an email containing the following, totally correct rebuke:

Libertarianism is incompatible with invading other countries and overthrowing their governments iff:

1) States are fundamental rights-bearers who cannot be aggressed against — which is a really weird thing for libertarians to think.
2) Libertarianism is incompatible with *any* use of force, e.g. it is a variant of pacifism. Some people think this, but I deny that only they count as libertarians.
3) Libertarianism is incompatible with *any* state action, e.g. it is a variant of anarchism. Lots of libertarians think this, but I also deny that only they count as libertarians.

I hang my flippant, snarky head in shame. Clearly, libertarians can support or not support foreign wars of choice depending on the ostensible goals of the war, empirical questions about the various options available, differing beliefs about international law, etc. etc. My vague sense that there is something…odd…about libertarians who are full-throated supporters of wars to export democratic government by force doesn’t amount to a reasoned critique of libertarianism. Nonetheless, I stand firm on my original “those Samizdatistas are kinda nuts” claim.

The posts on positional goods give me a lame excuse to link to a paper Adam Swift and I have recently posted on the Equality Exchange. The paper tries to think through the significance of positional goods for distributive principles. Here’s the abstract, in case you want to look any further. Comments welcome (though I don’t promise to respond on the thread, and if comments are really substantive you might want just to email me or Adam).

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I’ve spent the past couple of days at the latest in a series of conferences under the name Priority in Practice , which Jo Wolff has organized at UCL. I don’t think I’d be diminishing the contribution of the other speakers by saying that Michael Marmot was the real star of the show. He’s well known for the idea that status inequality is directly implicated in health outcomes, a thesis that he promotes in his most recent book Status Syndrome and which first came to the fore with his Whitehall Study which showed that more highly promoted civil servants live longer even when we control for matters like lifestyle, smoking etc. Even when people have enough, materially speaking, their position in a status hierarchy still impacts upon their longevity. One interesting other finding that he revealed was that being in control at home (as opposed to at work) was massively important in affecting women’s longevity, but didn’t really impact upon men. There’s an excellent interview of Marmot by Harry Kreisler of Berkeley in which he outlines his central claims.

One interesting recent strand of research on justice and human well-being has been that inspired by Amartya Sen’s “capability” approach. There’s now an association dedicated to this, with Sen as its first President and Martha Nussbaum as President-elect. Details here .

In his reply to Chris B’s response to his article on desert Will Wilkinson expresses dismay that no-one has taken up a point he made in his original piece, viz,

bq. Material inequality is one kind of inequality among many. Political
inequality is more troubling by far, for political power is the power to
push people around. Coercion is wrong on its face, and so the existence
of political inequality requires a specially strong and compelling
justification. However, if the luck argument cuts against moral
entitlement to material holdings, it cuts equally against any moral
entitlement to political power.

He goes on, in the original piece, to say that

bq. The justification for political power is generally sought in the “consent” of the people through free, fair and open elections. Yet the fact that someone has gained power by a democratic ballot can be no more or less relevant than the fact that Warren Buffet gained his billions through a series of fair, voluntary transactions. John Edwards (who, by the way, is a mill worker’s son) didn’t deserve his luxuriant tresses and blinding grin. Reagan didn’t deserve movie-star name recognition. Bushes don’t deserve to be Bushes. Kennedys don’t deserve to be Kennedys. Kerry’s war medals? Please.
If the luck argument is any good, then democratic choice and the resulting distribution of coercive political power is also, as Yglesias says, “chance all the way down.” And if luck negates the moral right to keep and dispose of one’s stuff, it also negates the right to take and dispose of others’ stuff.

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Will Wilkinson has a column up at TechCentralStation on desert . This very fact is regrettable, since Wilkinson is smarter, saner, and more interesting that the average TCS columnist and hence will serve to cover-up — somewhat — the nakedness of this astroturf operation. Anyway, the real issue is what he says, which is aimed at Matthew Yglesias , Max Sawicky and others who attack the concepts of meritocracy. Wilkinson credits their argument — that we don’t really deserve anything — to John Rawls. The argument Wilkinson (mis)attributes to Rawls is, in a nutshell, that although, superficially, it may seem that we deserve praise or reward for our efforts, in some deeper sense we don’t, because the attributes that enabled us to strive (such as our genetic makeup and our upbringing) were not themselves deserved. Given the moral arbitrariness of of our natural endowments — including the capacity for hard work — those with more talent can be legitimately taxed, as necessary, to support those unfortunate enough to have less.

[I’m putting the rest of this below the fold as it gets into technical Rawlsiana]

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