Posted on 12/01/2002 3:07:05 PM PST by Sir Gawain
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Those people who are most opposed to freedom are often those who are most obsessed with endlessly discussing borderline cases. In their lame attempts to "prove" that liberty and individual rights are impractical or impossible, they harp on rare occurrences or ambiguous situations and then leap the chasm of qualifications or uncertainty you might offer and proclaim, "Aha! See! Your vaunted moral code can't deal with the real world!" (And, yes, the use of both "individual" and "rights" is redundant...but necessarily so in today's corrupt intellectual and political culture.) These folks are so enamored of statism and collectivism — or so fearful of freedom and personal responsibility (another technical redundancy) — that they cling desperately to the unusual and the unique so they can obstinately refuse to recognize the obvious cases where liberty should exist. Ayn Rand dealt with some aspects of this curious mental deficiency of fixating on the unlikely in her essay, "The Ethics of Emergencies," in The Virtue of Selfishness. As she points out there, the major (proper) goal of philosophy and morality is to provide people with a guideline for living their lives. But rather than accept and follow actually useful information, the Borderliners scramble to evade the truly practical so they can continue their eternal quest of "seeking" but never finding answers. For them, philosophy and morality are merely parlor games designed to occupy their minds and to distract from the messy details of living their lives. While Rand focused on the deleterious effects of altruism in deciding how to deal with emergencies, e.g., should you swim out to save a drowning stranger or race into a burning building to rescue someone you don't know, the same basic mindset is evident in many other areas. For example, when arguing the right to self-defense, pro-self-defense folks will point out that this natural right recognized and guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the Constitution is absolute, i.e., "shall not be infringed" by the State. The antigun nuts grin gleefully at this imminently reasonable and accurate statement and will always and immediately ask whether individuals should be "allowed" to own machine guns, bazookas, tanks, jet fighters, or nuclear weapons. Not for an instant will the statists accept either the fundamental fact of our right to defend our lives and property from violent criminals or the fact that a simple handgun — at the very least — is a proper tool for implementing that right. If you favor privately run and financed education, the collectivists will ask what will happen to those children whose parents refuse to send them to school...and ignore the fact that nearly all parents would do everything they could to see their children learn the basics of life, just as nearly all parents desire to feed and clothe and shelter their offspring. If you favor keeping your hard-earned money and not letting it be stolen and used for State-run welfare, the statists will ask what will happen to the crippled, er, disabled who can't work or the retarded or the mentally ill or the homeless...and ignore the reality of charity or family or personal responsibility for most of one's circumstances. If you favor open availability of all drugs to adults without restrictions, the statists will say that drug addiction will increase and more people will die...and ignore the fact that only a handful of drug or alcohol users become addicted and that there is a substantive difference between the use and the abuse of mind-altering substances. If you favor totally private and individual health insurance coverage, the collectivists will ask if you want those people who cannot afford insurance to die...and ignore the fact that many of those without insurance choose to do without and that the current high costs of insurance are due to the very kinds of interventions the collectivists are advocating. If you favor individuals saving for their own retirement, the statists will ask what you'll do with those who fail to save...and ignore the fact that most people survived fine before the introduction of Social Security and could do so again if their money wasn't seized before they even received their checks. If you favor parents deciding for themselves whether their children should wear helmets or use seat belts, the collectivists will say that we can't risk the life of a single child...and ignore the fact that very few children die simply because they were or were not wearing seat belts in cars or planes, and that mandates may result in more danger to the youngsters in question. Constantly appealing to rare circumstances that happen infrequently and, if they do occur, affect only a miniscule percentage of people may serve to confuse the philosophically unsophisticated, but it accomplishes nothing morally useful. The anti-freedom zealots would rather place restrictions on everyone because of what might — or might not — happen to or be done by a tiny fraction of people. Focus on the thousands who are murdered by handguns and call for licensing, registration, or prohibition...and ignore the millions whose lives are saved by showing or using firearms. Focus on the relatively rare instances of improper use of chemicals and ban such useful and safe compounds as DDT and freon and common insecticides...and ignore the millions saved from malaria and the billions who benefit from plastics, household chemicals, and other man-made products. Focus on the scattered instances of ill-considered clear cutting and sequester more millions of acres in national forests and parks...and ignore the radical increases in trees resulting from privately owned forests harvested by private companies. Focus on unsightly roadside trash littered by a few inconsiderate drivers and mandate recycling and bottle deposits...and ignore the responsible majority who must deal with the unprofitable burdens of the eco-fascists. Focus on the isolated incidents of school shootings and implement inane "zero tolerance" policies and declare schools "gun-free" zones...and ignore the countless millions of students who are free of violence and would benefit if teachers and others carried weapons at school. The Borderliners believe the scarce, the seldom, the sporadic, the scattered are the essence of existence. Statistical flukes must direct and dictate all of our actions no matter how counterproductive or destructive such a strategy might be. I can imagine these people confronted with a simple gedanken experiment. Ask them if it would be possible to determine whether a person were in Iowa or Illinois. They would furrow their brows in apparent thought then brighten when they realized that the Mississippi River formed the boundary between these two Midwestern states. They would nod sagely and say, "If you were sitting in a boat in the middle of the river, you would be unable to tell if you were in Iowa or Illinois. It is impossible to establish a constant line upon the top of the water to demarcate one state's territory from the other's. Even if you had a GPS reader, the margin of error inherent in the measurement would render it futile to declare with certainty that you were either in Iowa or Illinois." It would never occur to these self-delusional people that if you stood on the western shore of the Mississippi River, you would definitely be in Iowa; if on the eastern shore, Illinois. Nor would it penetrate their befogged awareness that in certain places there are solid bridges spanning the river from one state to the other; that it would be possible — there at least — to measure and draw a line across the roadbed to establish a line where you could straddle the border with precision. It is this kind of mind-boggling obtuseness that the Borderliners bring to discussions of freedom and morality and politics. If in the future you should ever find yourself confronted with such self-defeating attitudes, I suggest you tell your opponent that he can take a flying leap from that bridge that he finds so impossible to imagine. You both would be better off if he did: you, because you would be freed of his flummery, and he because a dunk in cold water might actually convince him as he swims for one shore or the other that the world is not composed solely of fuzzy borderlines.
See Russ Madden's articles, short stories, novel excerpts, and items of interest to Objectivists, libertarians, and sci-fi fans at http://home.earthlink.net/~rdmadden/webdocs/. |
That may explain the mental state of majority of this planet's population. How astute.
Hank
If you're attempting to claim that I did, you're being dishonest. If you're attempting to claim that your nightmare fantasy would be the logical culmination of even thinking about hard cases, you and I have nothing to say to one another.
It seems to me your last remarks are aimed at begging off of seriously responding. HK gave you a well reasoned and thought out response. If serious discussion and intellectual honesty are what you are looking for you can respond to him in such a manner and convince us of his errors with logic and reason. Dismissing his postulations as 'dishonest' and unworthy of reply is intellectually dishonest and cowardly. You are resting your reply on your opinion of his statements and dismissing their merits. Ironically that's just what you accuse him of.
It appears that you didn't consider that, in this and comparable hypothetical cases, the conditions can always be tightened and intensified to leave the protagonist no way out of the hard choice. The point of the problem is that in such a case, adhering strictly to the precept of ethical individualism (in this case, in its property rights manifestation) produces a horrible result.
The situation presented may be hypothetical but it is a complete departure from reality to suggest that any situation can be created that leaves no choices. In reality there are always choices available and any hypothetical situation that attempts to preclude them is and can be nothing but fiction. If you reach into the story and decide that the protagonist has to decide this or that the idea that the hypothesis is a demonstration of an ethical choice is in error. You strangle the concept of choice with conditions that can't exist outside of the hypothesis. If choices don't exist then ethical considerations don't exist. The automaton has no moral code and can't be reasonably held to any moral standard. It does what it's programmed to do.
I could pre-indemnify the protagonist against all practical negative consequences of his choice, leaving only the ethical dilemma.
This makes my point. Lacking objective consequences there is no ethical dilemma.
...he still has to face a choice between adhering to the letter of property rights theory and averting a public slaughter.
The idea that one is bound by the law of property rights theory in his actions precludes the possibility that he is an individualist who makes choices based on a personal code of ethics. He is simply a person who weighs the cost of 'doing business'. I would argue that that is a collectivist code that is dependent on an assessment of what others will think or do.
A sane protagonist would be secure in his assessment of his probable future; he would not do what he chose to do out of expectation of reward, or even exculpation, but rather from fellow-feeling for the madman's victims.
You argue against yourself here. Is he including an assessment of the consequences of his actions in his decision or not? It is not unimportant to know. It is essential to the question of how an ethical decision is arrived at.
As for "socialism on the sly," that's just epithet-hurling, not serious disputation, and I dismiss it.
It certainly is not. It was a serious assessment of the structure of the original hypothesis. Your taking it personally does not change that. If it is wrong you can refute it on its merits or lack thereof. Dismissing it out of hand on the grounds that your feelings have been hurt is your perogative but contains no intellectual merit of its own. No personal slight was intended nor is it now.
You set the parameters of the hypothesis. Within those parameters I (and Hank Kerchief) have responded with reasoned critical analysis based on our own philosophical outlooks. To boil it down you have taken two approaches in response. One - we attacked you personally and our responses may be dismissed. Two - the hypothetical parameters are so fluid that any analysis of them based on the original postulation is invalid. All possible criticism of the hypothesis is cut off at the pass by endless redaction of the original parameters.
The point of all this is that one must exhibit appropriate humility in political argument.
That is a wonderful self reflection. But it shouldn't be taken so far that it requires the surrender of principles that make the seat of ethical consideration. What is the point of a hypothetical ethical exercise if principles are factored out?
-- "without reference to "hard" or borderline cases, the central tenet of libertarianism, ethical individualism, is a good and constructive principle. But like all other theoretical models, it is inherently partial. That is, outside a certain zone of human conduct, it fails to apply, and if forced, will yield negative consequences."
Give us an example of how one of Maddens fails? - 8 by tpaine
If I wanted to take issue with one of Madden's cases, I would have done so.
That was obvious, & it's why I asked that you do so. - Instead, you frame a 'case' of your own, labeling it a 'boundry-problem case'. What is that term supposed to mean?
The "borderline" issues he mentions above aren't true boundary-problem cases, but rather objections from carpers who are unable to grasp that:
No matter what rules a society institutes, some people will come to grief through no fault of their own, and:
A legal regime premised on ethical individualism is both morally defensible and practically optimum.
More high sounding, vaguely worded generalizations, with little content.
If you want to grapple with some really tough cases, David Friedman presents a few in The Machinery Of Freedom. One of my favorites runs like this:
A madman is rampaging through a crowd, taking lives right and left. No one in the crowd is armed, whereas the madman is, heavily. However, there's a loaded rifle in plain sight -- on the front porch of an old curmudgeon whose made it known that he is unwilling for anyone to come onto his property for any reason. You're a crack shot. Given that rifle, you could drop the madman where he stands. But according to strict property rights theory, you'd be committing a trespass to touch the rifle. What do you do? Any sane man would blow a razzberry at the property-rights issue and do what obviously needs to be done, secure in the knowledge that no jury in the world would convict him for his trespass. Property-rights purists, for whom nothing justifies an invasion of others' property, would be paralyzed.
As Friedman points out in his study of this case, there are no "trick" answers, for the conditions can always be straitened to foreclose any choices but violating the curmudgeon's property rights or allowing the loss of innocent lives.
Do you really think this example is any better than one of Maddens? - I don't see why.
- And, in any case, you have failed to make your increasingly obscure point, or to refute any of Maddens.
Other important boundary-problem issues exist in dealing with children, madmen, abortion, border control, foreign policy and military affairs.
Ahhh yes; - I'm sure they do.
-- You really enjoy making such buzz worded general pronouncements, don't you?
My comments here are about as passive as I can get and still engage the subject.
The article summed up what I learned about a decade ago - that it is impossible to reason with an irrational person or illogical arguments. I once had a conversation with a man about the fact of Jesus Christ's birth, death, and resurrection, based on eyewitness accounts and hundreds of documents verifiable both in their authorship and date. The discussion ended when the man proclaimed that he did not believe that George Washington ever actually existed, and mockingly stated that nothing I said could prove it to him.
At the time it surprised me that such a mind and such an argument could really be present on planet earth. I have learned since then that it is not appropriate to assume human intelligence in persons who appear sane and capable in every other aspect of life.
Instead I use such encounters as opportunities to thank God that my eyes and ears are open, that I have a rational mind with which to interpret what I perceive, and that I am capable of formulating logical opinions and expressing them. Whether others perceive or receive them is not within my sphere of influence. I can thank God for that too.
You, fp, and Hank have all displayed rational intelligence in your posts. I admire yours most:
The sane man knows that only his own actions are under his control and expects nothing else. He would do what he felt was right in full awareness of the possible consequences of his actions with a willingness to accept them.
Always.
Ingraining the grey area Vision Thing which best obscures the natural order of things from whence we derived certain self-evident truths.
Takes one to know one, eh?
Thanks, guy, for always assuming there's always a point to what I'm saying ... even if you've no clue.
No point ... just saying hi, of course.
(And wondering -- Score! -- if you'd opt to make an ass of u and me. Your constancy in that regard reassuring somehow. Trust all is well with you and yours. For true. =)
I'll try. But I'm not promising anything.
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