Hobbes an optimist? Monday, May 26 2008

While much of Hobbes’ Leviathan does indeed express a pessimism about the condition of individual men, especially in the absence of a Sovereign keeping all in ‘awe’, there is I think a considerable element of optimism to be found in Leviathan, pertaining especially to Hobbes’ vision of what can be achieved by sovereign power in civil society. Describing Hobbes solely as a pessimist does an injustice to the subtly of his work, even though we may perhaps continue to view him as predominantly pessimistic in our general assessment.

In certain respects Hobbes is best described as a pessimist, most notably his vision of the condition of man in the State of Nature (SofN). We see this by considering chapters 13-16 of ‘Of Man’, where Hobbes tells us that men are possessed of a fundamental (and inalienable) ‘Right of Nature’ (RofN): that each may do whatever is required for his own preservation, including the use of the bodies of others. In the SofN men, who lack a Sovereign power holding them all in awe via the ‘publique Sword’ are mutually suspicious and threatened by each other, due to the very fact each individual possesses the RofN. Men are thus apt to ‘invade’ each other for ‘competition, diffidence and glory’ (the first for power, the second for security, the third for reputation). Due to the lack of Sovereign power holding all in awe, covenanting is impossible in the SofN – without the publique sword, covenants are “but empty words”. Yet the inability to covenant in turn means men can never trust each other, never escape their mutual fear of each other. Thus the SofN is a State of Warre (SofW), where as we all know life is “nasty, brutish and short”. Hobbes’ vision here is certainly pessimistic – but let us be careful where we locate the pessimism. It is not that Hobbes views men as inherently ‘evil’ (indeed, ‘evil’ is a word given content only within society, like ‘justice’) but rather that the lack of a common power, combined with each’s right to self-preservation, generates a situation where conflict and violence is inevitable. Human beings even in the SofN are capable of compassion and benevolence – towards family, for example – but the uncertainty of the SofN limits such sentiments in favour of self-preserving egoism.

In this light, Hobbes can be read as a pessimist in another dimension, also: his vision of Sovereign power as absolute. Hobbes is icily clear that Sovereign power is absolute: in Chapter 29 he details that any attempt to limit or divide the Sovereign power is to dissolve it – and in doing so, men lose the ‘common power’ that holds them all in awe, plunging them back into the SofN which is a SofW. Indeed on Hobbes’ picture the Sovereign, by matter of logic must be absolute. It is the existence of a Sovereign with the publique sword which makes covenanting possible, as well as creating the ‘artificial chains’, i.e. laws, which help make civil society such. Hobbes is clear that laws are ‘commands of a superior’ (which raises an interesting issue as to whether the ‘Laws of Nature’ of Chapters 14-16 are in fact laws at all, being mere ‘precepts of reason’ – indeed Hobbes says in Chapter 26 that they are not laws properly so called), which can be enforced through coercion. If the Sovereign were limited, the Sovereign would be subject to laws – yet that would mean being subject to the commands of a superior, in which case the Sovereign would, ipso facto, not be a Sovereign in the first place. Likewise to divide the Sovereign means creating alternate centres of publique power – but then no single Sovereign holds all in awe, thus ipso facto there is no Sovereign.

This has important implications. Firstly, Hobbes dramatically tells us in Chapter 21 that if the Sovereign decides to put you to death, even if you are innocent, then while the RofN guarantees you the right to resist (in the same way the Sovereign cannot command you to hurt or kill yourself) you cannot remonstrate: because you have lived in a society in which you have prospered, made covenants and been free of the SofN, you have authorised every act of the Sovereign – including his decision to execute you! Secondly, Hobbes is icely clear that you are not allowed to resist the Sovereign in the aid of those who are innocent, but are to be put to death. Hobbes reasoning on these dramatic illustrations, I take to be as follows: the SofN is so terrible that anything done by the Sovereign is favourable to the return to that state. If the Sovereign deems it that executing innocents ensures the continuance of civil society, then that is what is required. Indeed I take it to be this hard-line attitude regarding the extent of absolute rule which inspired Locke to comment in the Second Treatise that this was to fear the mischiefs done to one by polecats and foxes, but to be content, nay, think it safety, to be devoured by Lions.

In this respect, I take Hobbes to be a pessimist of sorts: the SofN is so unbearable that anything is favourable to it – we must, therefore, resign ourselves to an absolute Sovereign, and run the risk that he will turn against us one day, even if we are innocent. At least until that point we will have been free of the SofN (which is a SofW), and we know that others will benefit from the Sovereign continuing to maintain civil society by wielding the publique sword. This is one reason Hobbes calls the Leviathan, in Chapter 28, the ‘King of the Proud’, after a passage from the Book of Job: God punishes Job for things he never did to test his faith in a wager with Satan – yet Job endures all, never challenging the authority of God or forsaking him. Hobbes’ implication is that subjects should take the same attitude to the ‘artificial man’, the Leviathan, i.e. the Sovereign power.

Yet to stop here would be to give only one half of the story, for I believe that despite this apparent pessimism, Of Commonwealth in fact indicates a significant level of optimism on Hobbes’ behalf. To see this, it is helpful to consider the vision of absolute Sovereignty as what I will call the ‘minimum requirement condition’ (MRC): for Hobbes, for us to exist the SofN, a Sovereign is required, and for the Sovereign to be such, it must be absolute (though it may be a King or an Assembly; Hobbes prefers the former, but thinks the latter is possible, though less desirable). Yet the MRC is just that – a minimum requirement, and nothing necessarily follows from it. While it is true that an absolute sovereign may put innocents to death, and so forth, there is nothing in Leviathan that entails that he must or will. Indeed, there is a great deal which suggests that the Sovereign may be kind, benevolent and helpful to his people. Firstly, Hobbes tells us that Sovereigns are more powerful and prosperous to the extent that their subjects are prosperous and do well: insofar as the Sovereign is wise and seeks to secure his own power, he will promote the good of the people –even if only as a cynical ploy to aid himself (after all, happy, well-fed subjects are those most likely to obey the Sovereign’s dictates). Secondly, Hobbes tells us in Chapter 30 that the Sovereign’s job is to provide more than just security, the enforcement of covenants and avoidance of the SofN, specifically, it must provide for ‘the contentment’s of life’. Thirdly, and again in Chapter 30, Hobbes likens the laws laid down by a Sovereign as restrictions upon subjects only in the way that ‘hedges keep a traveller on the right road’ (a sentiment Locke seems to have adopted with his insistence that laws are not undesirable restrictions when they fence men in from ‘bogs and precipices’).

Finally, I wish to offer a novel reading of Hobbes’ view of the Sovereign, which although not based in the text, seems to me perfectly compatible with the text. Namely, that a wise and able Sovereign might institute what we could think of as ‘quasi-limits’ on its own power. That is, if the Sovereign were, say, a King, he might recognise that he is only a man, and hence fallible. Consequently he might decide to establish a system of checks and balances, by which certain of his decisions might require consultation with an advisor (though only one; Hobbes was highly suspicious of multiple counsellors). Now we must be very careful here: Hobbes would certainly not have countenanced the idea of full-blown limits on the Sovereign – that would dissolve sovereignty. The idea here is that the Sovereign would always retain the power to ignore the self-imposed ‘quasi-limits’ if he chose, whether consulting a trusted counsellor or otherwise. But the limits would exist for as long as the Sovereign wanted them to – and a wise Sovereign might desire such limits as checks against error, though always retaining the power simply to overturn them if he saw fit. Again I stress that this is not in the text, but I believe it to be compatible with it. And if it is, this suggests a considerable degree of optimist is compatible with the theory of Leviathan.

I wish to conclude by offering the following explanatory consideration. I believe Hobbes focuses upon the absolute aspect of Sovereignty, and holds a pessimism about men without a common power to hold them in awe, because of his experience of the Civil War of 1642-6. The Civil War – for Hobbes a return to the SofN – was, for Hobbes, more terrible than any absolute power. Thus I suggest his’ main concern in writing Leviathan was a preoccupation with stability, and avoidance of war – and this is best facilitated by absolute Sovereignty. Yet once that stability has been guaranteed – the MRC is satisfied – there is no necessary limit to what can follow. Absolute Sovereigns need not be despots – indeed Hobbes expressly denied that they were. Thus I argue that a considerable degree of optimism can be discerned in Leviathan, and in discerning it we appreciate a greater level of depth and subtly to Hobbes work. Yet perhaps our final note should, after all, emphasise his pessimism – for the final passage of Of Commonwealth closes with a highly pessimistic remark: that this Leviathan Hobbes has written is perhaps no more a genuine possibility than the Republic of Plato, which was only a ‘model in heaven’. Despite undeniable elements of optimism within his work, perhaps Hobbes is essentially a pessimist after all.

 

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Good Old Simon Tuesday, May 6 2008

Simon Blackburn has a good little piece over here at T.H.E.

My favourite two are:

8. The myth of equal respect

The belief that everyone deserves equal respect and that anything else is discriminatory and elitist. The truth is the exact opposite: discrimination is a virtuous activity and elites are to be admired. The very few human beings who are good at anything, whether football or playing the violin or writing or painting, form an elite and deserve respect for their excellence. Other people either deserve sympathy for trying and failing, or should be ignored if they have not even tried.

Respect is not the same as toleration. I am lucky if my neighbours tolerate my singing when in the garden, but they would have to be tone deaf to respect it, and if they did then of course they in turn would forfeit my respect as music critics.

There are people whose chosen lifestyle disqualifies them from any respect at all, such as celebrities, although a more charitable view is that they deserve respect for the amount of publicity they can bestow, which is why they get into nightclubs and Downing Street. Religionists know in their hearts that they are always teetering on the edge of being ridiculous, and are therefore nervous about respect and constantly insist on it.

10. The myth of the public service ethos

The idea that sometimes people will do something because it is the right thing to do, not because it affords them any advantage. This was once true, but constant repetition by politicians and economists that it is a myth has successfully made it one.

Peter of Peter’s Apology thinks Mr Blackburn is not to be respected, I expect that’s got something to do with his religious and moral objectivist leanings…

But Peter is not the only one, over at Crooked Timber, poor Simon has been laid into:

Aside from the obvious fact (which Geras points out) that the claim that everyone deserves respect in the rights and human dignity sense doesn’t entail the hostility to discriminations of achievement that Blackburn claims, his statement that “very few human beings … are good at anything” is simply crap.

Many many human beings are talented cooks or gardeners, accomplished dancers, considerate colleagues, good mothers or good fathers. Many many human beings are empathetic, or courageous, or patient. And no, I don’t think those who are (for example) rated good cooks by those they know and cook for “deserve our sympathy” for failing to be Escoffier, nor should they be ignored for not even trying to be Escoffier. Blackburn, on the other hand, probably ought to have our sympathy: not for trying and failing to make it to the level of, say, David Hume, but for falling victim to the delusion that the less that superb doesn’t amount to good. What a failure he must imagine himself to be!

I feel an urge to defend Mr Blackburn at this point:

1) Blackburn is right: most people are not very good at anything. Note the word very. That’s important that is. Lots of people might be good cooks and gardners. The few who are very good go on Telly and do it for a living (and so forth). It’s simple a fact about the world that most people are decidedly average in their talents. Despite the propaganda you’ve been fed in primary school, which is perpetuated by ‘interactive, have your say!’ media culture, the fact is most people are only mildly good at a few things, and average or less than average at most. But that is just an empirical fact…nothing need follow from empirical facts alone.

2) If one bothers to read the tenor of Blackburn’s piece, his point is quite obviously not an attempt to insult people by denying them the ’status’ of ‘equal concern and respect’ that liberal egalitarians a la Dworkin hark on about. Hie point, as i take it, is to expose the fact that talk of equal respect is a pervasive sham detrimental to the interests of those very people it is aimed at and used to placate in the first place. Rhetoric about ‘equal respect’ is simply disingenuous – it does not follow that Blackburn advocates an Aristotelian vision of excluding the non-excellent – as he says, toleration can often be extended, except when people aren’t willing to reciprocate or to try themselves. But respect is a different matter; respect needs to be earned, and does not come automatically on the back of the myth – and it is a myth – that all people are good at stuff, because that is not true – but of course nothing follows from that as things stand.

Given that Simon is quite clearly a man who leans ever so slightly to the left, I can’t help thinking that it is a little silly to accuse him of holding nasty and inegalitarian attitudes towards ordinary people. From what I can tell, he’s been reading his Nietzsche more closely than his Truth ook might sugest (or his appearance at Balliol last year, for that matter), and has noticed that many lies are wrapped in the cloak of being beneficial to those they are given to.

So well done Simon, keep up the good work.

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‘Radical’ Feminism? Sunday, Mar 2 2008

On Friday night I attended a debate put on by the Oxford Radical Forum, entitled “Feminism: Radical or Socialist?”. It was a really lively, engaging and em-passioned debate, and it really got me thinking…hence i’m putting up a few thoughts that i’ve had time to crystallise since Friday. 

The debate – although it became pretty wide-ranging in the end - was between two ’socialist’ feminists – those who believe that transcending capitalist society is the most important factor in ending the oppression of women – and two ‘radicals’ – those who believe that while capitalism perpetuates female oppression, it is not the fundamental problem, and the root causes go far, far deeper; that if socialist society were achieved tomorrow women would still be on an unequal (moral) footing with men. (I am not going to defend the claim that women are oppressed in modern, Western societies. I take that claim to be quite obviously true to anyone who bothers to think and look hard enough).

The first thing that hit home for me in the course of the discussion came from the radicals, who responded to a question I posed about the limits of feminism, and whether it really just becomes ‘compassionate humanism’, i.e. something that any well brought up, morally well-balanced person should be getting behind – male, female or whatever.

What was really interesting was that both radicals agreed in principal, but pointed out to me something that I had completely overlooked: in my question i discussed the issue of rape and sexual violence (originally raised by the radicals) and said that it was a problem for everyone in society – and they agreed with that. But what they pointed out was the levels to which violent crimes are a product of social attitudes and environment. That is, I was unquestioningly thinking of rapists as ‘isolated psycopaths’ - what the radicals pointed out really well was that the levels of rape in western societies are greater than can plausibly be allowed for by a percentage of violent ‘unreasonables’ that will exist in any society, and will always be a problem. Rather, it has to be the case that there is something wrong with society as a whole which leads to so many men (and we’re talking here about 80,000 rapes a year in the UK, with - believe or not – barely 5% of reported cases ending in prosecution) being disposed to act violently towards women, including but not limited to rape. And for that reason, feminism has a part to play over and above humanism, because it is addressing a problem facing specifically women, because they are women.

For me this was compelling because not only have I decided that the radicals were right, but it made me realise to what extent i’d gotten comfortable in my academic, ivory-tower thinking about ethical issues, and had ceased to look at, for example, the levels to which violent and ‘unethical’ behaviour is not only socially determined, or constructed, but also socially accepted (think about the fact already noted that a mere 5% of rapes end in prosecution).

(A similar realisation occurred to me when there was a short tangential discussion about uses of the word ‘natural’, particularly in relation to homosexuality. I have in the past scoffed at arguments that homosexuality is ‘un-natural’ because it seems such an irrelevant point: driving cars is ‘un-natural’, so is wearing clothes, nothing follows about the status of these human practices. What the radicals pointed out was that the fight over homosexuality being considered ‘natural’ or otherwise is important for practical reasons. That is, if the idea that homosexuality is natural can be sufficiently established, then many reflexive homophobic attitudes are cut off at the root. For sure, it may be the case that naturalness is in truth irrelevant conceptually, but practically it is a live, and very much an important, issue).

The second thing I walked away from the debate thinking was that ’socialist feminism’ in a fairly untenable position. To see this, consider that they appear to me very much to be in a dilemma. On the one hand the socialists wanted to say that the main problem facing women was class-based gender inequality, and that if we progressed towards a classless society, women would be immeasurably better off – hence transcending capitalism should be the number one concern for feminists. Yet they were of course forced to admit that gender inequality – and the resultant oppression of women – had existed before capitalism, and that (for example) power-relation within, say, families that led to female oppression would not disappear simply because the means of production and wage-earning cease to be predicated upon class stratification. But it seems to me that given these two facts, ’socialist feminism’ either dissolves into something which isn’t really feminism, or if it remains feminist, fits the ‘radical’ label far better.

For if it is maintained that transcending capitalism is the most important thing, then the feminism starts to look like an added incentive for transcending capitalism, rather than the fundamental motivating factor. On the other hand, if it is conceded that capitalism is only one problem facing women, and that many other equally and perhaps more important ones exist, then it becomes unclear what ’socialist feminism’ is, and why one should not just be a ‘radical’, or some other brand of, feminist. Now of course, one could be a radical feminist whilst also being a socialist – that is, wishing to transcend capitalist society and holding radical feminist attitudes, indeed both ‘radicals’ on the night described themselves as such – but the point is the feminism doesn’t get defined through the socialism, so to speak. Both are kept sufficiently separate as political goals and commitments. And that to me seemed the overwhelmingly more tenable (as well as attractive) position.

Thirdly and finally, what really hit me was the extent to which in certain respects ‘radical’ feminism isn’t really radical at all. Of course, that needs to be qualified: I take the ultimate aim of radical feminists to be a society in which gender ceases to be any more a defining characteristic of individuals than is, say, height or hair colour. That is, we transcend the ‘gender binary’ that dictates that all human beings must be ‘men’ or ‘women’, and that along with that division (which I am increasingly convinced is socially imposed rather than simply biological, as the intuitive reaction would suggest) the social expectations and pressures associated with being a ‘man’ or a ‘woman’ are left behind. Of course, that is pretty radical – but that’s radicalism at the end-goal, conceptual level. What interested me was the extent to which the radicals practicalproposals – about the fair treatment of women, attitudes and stances to issues such as prostitution, the treatment of women in all professions, social attitudes towards sexuality, the frankly appalling treatment of women by the judicial system in all cases of (especially sexual) violence, the changing of prevalent attitudes to women as sex objects and correspondingly to attitudes about rape, etc – are if anything a straightforward, simple and logical extension of the moral compassion that we (by which I mean society, and in particular well-brought up men, i.e. not pig-headed selfish bastards) already claim to adhere to. And what this comes to is the realisation that in many ways ‘radical feminism’ is radical only because society is so far behind where it should be. I take that to be both an interesting – as well as a deeply worrying – conclusion.

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Nietzsche Joke Thursday, Feb 28 2008

“Students of Nietzsche never die, they just keep recurring”

 Ho ho ho.

Thanks to Niel Ashdown for that one.

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Locke, Hobbes and Violence Thursday, Feb 28 2008

Some very rough and ready thoughts about Locke and his relation to Hobbes vis-a-vis their attitudes towards violence and stability

 I went to an excellent lecture by Elizabeth Frazer today on Locke (and also Filmer), and she stressed a number of times the emphasis on violence contained especially in Locke’s Second Treatise on Government. This was interesting for me, because she seemed quite troubled by it, and I’ve also noticed that Waldron in Locke, God and Equality laments the fact that Locke is prepared to use extreme violence to deal with those who transgress the codes of civil society, thereby throwing us into a State of War (because for Locke, unlike Hobbes, the State of Nature is not automatically a State of War, indeed we can find ourselves suddenly in the latter even when a legitimate sovereign continues to rule).

In today’s lecture, Elizabeth Frazer mentioned Ashcroft’s interpretation of Locke as not so much a ‘liberal’ as a ‘radical’, prepared to endorse violence to bring about the political state of affairs he deemed most desirable. Now, I haven’t read Ashcroft, so i admit now that I don’t know his arguments. However I want to take the ideas about violence in Locke and construct a proto-thesis about how he might be read, which can be summarised as follows. Locke is applying what will later come to be designated liberal considerations to a conception of politics designed to transcend the Hobbesian. However, in order to achieve such transcendence Locke must posit what will later become known as a ‘thick’ conception of the good, and is prepared to use extreme force to deal with those who don’t accept the thick conception. This is interesting because I will endorse the postulation that Locke is concerned predominantly with stability – just as I believe Hobbes was. The difference between Locke and Hobbes may well then come down to Hobbes seeing stability as the primary and virtually exclusive concern, whereas Locke is compelled to ask what can be achieved once stability is assured. 

As I said, this is a rough and ready piece, and I don’t claim to be putting forward anything definitive. But I hope it is of interest to any Early Modern Politics Geeks out there. Also, i am too lazy to get proper references, so you’ll have to trust me, and I may well be open to strong objections that site actual bits of the text.

To begin, i’m going to focus on the example in Locke that Elizabeth Frazer employed in the lecture today, and the one that gets Waldron all upset. It is that if I am set upon by a robber who threatens my life in order to take my purse, then he places himself in a state of war with me. As a result, I am entitled to kill him, because this is the only way to defend myself – and myself is God’s property – and by extension my property. Further, those who would be robbers, and go about creating the State of War (or alternatively, treating the State of Nature not as a mere state of liberty, but a state of license) are those noxious beasts with which men can have neither Security nor Society. Correspondingly, society must destroy these men as it would destroy Lions and Tygers. Waldron doesn’t like this, because he sees it as a particularly anti-liberal attitude to criminals, which reduces them to mere beasts and degrades their status as human beings. This is especially problematic for Waldron, because his primary thesis is that Locke views all as fundamentally equal, because God made them that way. Elizabeth Frazer seemed to me to be voicing different concerns, which (due to the obviously limited nature of what she could present in her lecture) I inferred to be a general concern with the levels of violence Locke seems prepared to endorse, and that death appears to be a constant theme in the Second Treatise (as it is in Leviathan, which I agree with her about).

Yet this example of Locke’s has never troubled me in the way it definitely troubles Waldron, and certainly appears to trouble Elizabeth Frazer. To try and get my reasons clear, let’s begin by considering something else Locke says about criminals and transgressors, where we are not allowed to destroy them. Imagine I am getting off my horse and ask you, my servant, to hold my purse. Now imagine that as I dismount you run away. What I am certainly not allowed to do is chase after you and hack you to bits. In the previous example, I was allowed to destroy my enemy as a Lion or Tyger because if he killed me to take my property, the law would mean nothing – it could not restore life to my dead corpse. In this second example the case is different: there is a system of legal rules and enforcement that mean the perpetrator can be caught and dealt with, and my property returned. So as a first point, Locke isn’t saying that we can just go about slaughtering criminals as though they were brute beasts. Things are more subtle than that.

Secondly, I am now going to posit an explanation about what underlies the two cases. In the first case the only way I can protect myself and my property is through violence. Further, the only way society can protect itself from what we might think of as pathological criminals – those that really are akin to Lions and Tygers in that the rest of us simply cannot ever have security or society with them - is to just kill them. This is pretty illiberal – but perhaps even modern ‘liberals’ will agree with the sentiment, and simply modify it to “lock the pathological criminals up in gaol, or mental assylums, forever”. That Locke advocates outright killing may just be down to his being a product of his time. The second case is clearly different: somebody who runs away with my purse can be dealt with adequately by the law.

What I take to underlie both cases and be common to them is the issue of stability, and Locke’s desire that society have it. For consider; the presence of pathological criminals – Lions and Tygers – fundamentally destabilises society; if people like that are around everything descends into anarchy and fear. To make society stable – and i suggest, therefore worth having – such people must be eradicated (in Locke’s case, literally). Petty non-pathological criminals are different. They cause minor nuisances (polecats and foxes?) but ultimately society will be more unstable if we go around killing the non-pathological for minor transgressions. Thus as regards such people, stability is best served by letting the apparatus of the state deal with them.

Now some remarks about stability in general, and the connection with Hobbes. I take Locke to have some fundamentally similar sentiments about stability to Hobbes, but to articulate them differently and take them in different directions.

Firstly, Hobbes and Locke share a similar enough context. The execution of Charles I loomed over all of mid-late 17th Century thinking – this will have been as common to Hobbes as to Locke. Further, whilst Hobbes had experienced the Civil Wars of 1642-9, Locke lived through the Succession Crisis of 1688, and the wrangling and deliberation prior to this (if we are to accept Laslett’s reading of the Two Treatise as written in the early 1680s). So both knew what it was like to live under tumult, and to desire societies where instability was eradicated.

Secondly, we turn to differences. I take Hobbes as being fundamentally desirous of stability no matter what. I would have to argue at great length to establish this, so I’m basically just going to assert it, on the back of both contextual consideration about the English Civil War, as well as an explanation of why Hobbes is not only prepared, but keen to endorse absolute Sovereign Power. I see Locke as also having a strong urge to achieve stability, but drawing back sharply from the implications of Hobbes-style Stability Uber Alles. Thus Locke needs to get two things to sit with each other: a fundamental commitment to stability, and a society in which the Sovereign can be challenged, and which recognises that it would be mad to suppose men fear the mischiefs of polecats and foxes, but are content, nay think it safety, to be devoured by Lions.

How does he achieve this? The answer is complex, but goes something like this. Locke endorses something which is pretty similar to what will later come to be termed ‘a thick conception of the good’, and it happens to be pretty ‘liberal’ in nature. The ‘thick’ conception Locke has in mind involves things like recognising we are all God’s property, respecting each others’ property, possibly even seeing that we are all fundamentally equal (if one is to endorse Waldron’s reading), and so forth. Now, if a group of people all endorse this ‘thick’ conception, then the society will be stable, and furthermore, all sort of wonderful things can take place in it, such as the cultivation of land, the election of representatives, and the challenging of particular governments. However, those who do not share this thick conception are dangerous. For they are fundamentally at odds with those who do share such a conception – they are like Lions and Tygers. Indeed, these people are dangerous because they threaten not only fundamental stability, but everything good and beneficial that can be built up in a state that enjoys stability. Thus it will be necessary for those sharing the thick conception to destroy as noxious beasts those who fundamentally threaten stability, which means those not endorsing the thick (liberal?) conception.

So Locke does endorse violence against these people, and perhaps as Waldron says there is something particularly unpleasant in Locke’s reducing some men to the level of beasts to be destroyed. But what I am suggesting is that the violence is a necessary part of achieving the stability which will be necessary for any desirable political society – that is, any stable society that is not predicated on the existence of an absolute Hobbesian sovereign.

 That’s the proto-thesis. Any thoughts?

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Rousseau #2: Rousseau in Nietzsche Anticipation Wednesday, Feb 27 2008

Look at this from Book IV, Chapter 8. Again, probably the only person in the world who cares, but it’s almost as if Jean-Jacques had got an advance copy of the Genealogy of Morals:

“Christianity as a religion is entirely spiritual, occupied solely with heavenly things; the country of the Christian is not of this world. He does his duty, indeed, but does it with profound indifference to the good or ill success of his cares. Provided he has nothing to reproach himself with, it matters little to him whether things go well or ill here on earth. If the State is prosperous, he hardly dares to share in the public happiness, for fear he may grow proud of his country’s glory; if the State is languishing, he blesses the hand of God that is hard upon His people.

For the State to be peaceable and for harmony to be maintained, all the citizens without exception would have to be good Christians; if by ill hap there should be a single self-seeker or hypocrite, a Catiline or a Cromwell, for instance, he would certainly get the better of his pious compatriots. Christian charity does not readily allow a man to think hardly of his neighbours. As soon as, by some trick, he has discovered the art of imposing on them and getting hold of a share in the public authority, you have a man established in dignity; it is the will of God that he be respected: very soon you have a power; it is God’s will that it be obeyed: and if the power is abused by him who wields it, it is the scourge wherewith God punishes His children. There would be scruples about driving out the usurper: public tranquillity would have to be disturbed, violence would have to be employed, and blood spilt; all this accords ill with Christian meekness; and after all, in this vale of tears, what does it matter whether we are free men or serfs? The essential thing is to get to heaven, and resignation is only an additional means of doing so.”

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Rousseau #1: Rousseau in Funny Sarcasm Shocker Wednesday, Feb 27 2008

I recently had to concede to Chris Brooke and James Arnold that Hobbes is actually quite funny, though I still reckon de Tocqueville is funnier. Anyway i noticed today that old Jean-Jacques himself has a few moments of albeit quite sarcastic wit, which I’d never picked up on before.

 For example:

I have said nothing about King Adam, or about emperor Noah, father of three great monarchs, who among themselves divided the universe, as did the children of Saturn, whom some believed they recognised in them. I hope my moderation will be appreciated; for since I am a direct descendant from one of these Princes, and perhaps from the elder branch, for all I know, I might, upon verification of titles, find I am the legitimate King of humankind. Be that as it may, it cannot be denied that Adam was Sovereign of the world as Robinson was of his island, as long as he was its sole inhabitant; and what made this empire convenient was that the monarch, secure on his throne, had neither rebellions, nor wars, nor conspirators to fear.

- Book I, Chapter 2 of The Social Contract

Or:

“This would certainly have been to the taste of Barbeyrac, who dedicated his translation to King George I of England. But unfortunately the expulsion of James II, which he calls an abdication, forced him to be on his guard, to equivocate, to be evasive, in order not to make a usurper of William. If these two writers [Grotius and Barbeyrac] had adopted the true principles, all their difficulties would have been solved, and they would always have been consistent; but they would have sadly told the truth and paid court only to the people. Now, truth does not lead to fortune, and the people confers no ambassadorships, professorships or pensions.”

- Book II Chapter 2 of The Social Contract

Now the second quote is really just a bit funny (at least, if you are sad and live in libraries like I do, it is a bit funny), whereas the first is more interesting. Because the sentiment in the first quote appears to be reminiscent of Locke’s argument in the First Treatise on Government, that even if Adam held all of the Earth under his dominion, it doesn’t follow that Kings, even if they were descended directly from Adam – which obviously they’re not – have a proper right to rule on that basis alone.

At least, I think that’s interesting, because I often read Rousseau as quite fiercely opposed to especially Hobbes, but also Locke. Maybe nobody else cares. Probably.

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Induction Thursday, Feb 21 2008

James, and anyone else who does philosophy, please tear into this:

What is the paradox of the ravens, and how is it to be countered? 

This essay argues that when properly understood the ‘paradox of the ravens’ is a manifestation of the old Humean riddle of induction – why we expect persistence and not change. It also argues that paradox is not so much to be ‘countered’ as ‘understood’, for when it is properly understood it becomes (potentially) far less troubling.

To see what the paradox of the ravens is, consider the following argument:

P1: All ravens have been black

P2: This is a raven

C: \ It will be black

As things stand this is an inductive argument, which is valid. Unfortunately, we are not entitled to P1, in fact all we can claim is:

P1*: Al ravens observed so far have been black

From which C above does not follow. Yet it is clear that we may well be inclined to expect C to follow, even given P1* rather than P1, and this will be increasingly so the more black ravens we have observed. For example, if one hundred black ravens have been observed with no exceptions, we might quite strongly expect that the next raven will be black. If one million black ravens have been observed with no exceptions, we will expect even more strongly that the next one will be black. Of course, we will still not be entitled to conclude that the next raven will be black – only that we expect with great strength of certainty that it will be. Why is this a paradox? The answer is because we can never reach certainty about the next raven, no matter how many black ravens we observe and how strongly we expect persistence in raven colour rather than change. For consider, after examining one million ravens and finding them all to be black, I cannot say with certainty that the next one will be black. I examine it, however, and find it to be black – I have now examined one million and one black ravens. Will the next one be black? I strongly suspect it, but I cannot say that it will be – I must examine it! No matter how many ravens we examine, we never reach certainty – and we can never examine all the ravens, because not only might we have missed one, but many have not yet been born.

Of course, a natural response to this paradox is taken up by Karl Popper, and centres upon the possibility of finding a raven that is not black. For if we find one that is white, we will reach the conclusion that the next raven need not necessarily be black, and this apparently puts an end to the paradox (I will argue later that it in fact does not). Popper sharpened this response into his thesis of ‘falsification’: if we discover a non-white raven we will know that not all ravens are black, and that therefore there is no certainty to be had that the next raven will be black. Yet until we find a falsifying example – in this case, a non-black raven – we are entitled to assume that all ravens will be black. That is, we are entitled to expect that all ravens are black, and so the next one will be black, until somebody falsifies this with an observation of a non-black raven.

This reply is, however, inadequate for it doesn’t properly address the issue. We begin by noting something suspicious about ‘falsification’: after how many observations are we entitled to claim certainty about future instances? That is, how many black ravens must I have observed, without a falsifying counter-observation, before being entitled to conclude that all ravens are black, and be entitled to predict that all future ones must be black (so long as nobody finds one that isn’t)? Ten? A Hundred? A Million? Surely ten is too few – but even when we get to one million, are we really entitled to say that we have established that ravens are black, and the next one will be – until somebody finds one that isn’t? Something has gone badly wrong here, and it is not hard to see what it is: ‘falsification’ doesn’t really counter the raven paradox, it simply re-states it. For even after I have observed one million black ravens, with no falsifying counter-examples, I am not entitled to the conclusion ‘all ravens are black, so the next one will be’ because the very next raven could provide the falsifying example that disproves the hypothesis ‘all ravens are black (so therefore the next one will be black)’.

Put another way, the idea of falsification relies on the practice of induction to try and justify inductive practices – and here we find a convenient segway into Hume’s posing and solving of the riddle of induction. For the falsification account wishes to say that ‘so long as no exceptions have been found, you are justified in expecting persistence not change’, yet this itself is justified by the absence of exceptions, i.e. persistence and not change! It is clearly no good to say that the next raven will be black because so far no non-black ravens have been found, because the possibility of non-black ravens – which ex hypothesi we cannot rule out – is what prevents us from concluding that the next raven will be black.

This brings us neatly to a clear view of the philosophical heart of the raven paradox, which I take to be as follows. The more black ravens we observe, the more certain we become that future ravens will be black. Yet this certainty is rationally unjustified: no matter how many non-falsifying observations we make, we can never be sure that the next one will not falsify our expectations or persistence. Indeed it is the certainties of expectation that gives life to this entire issue. For it is a fact about human beings that the more cases of persistence (as opposed to change) that they are exposed to, the more certainly they expect continuation of that persistence. Show me one million black ravens, and my mind becomes almost determined to expect the next one to be black; the idea of one million black ravens compels me to expect the next one to conform to the observed regularity. Yet the nature of the problem means that this irresistable expectation of persistence and not change is not rationally justified: the possibility of a non-black raven, given ex hypothesi, means I am not entitled to say that the next raven will, or must, be black, no matter how strongly I find myself intuitively expecting persistence not change.

Thus we are firmly embedded in the Humean riddle of induction. Given that, I now hope to be able to show why the paradox is better thought of as being ‘understood’ rather than ‘countered’, and for that we turn to Hume’s own solution. Roughly, it is that human inductive practices are fundamentally non-rational. Rather they are instinctive processes, hard-wired into human beings – and all the other animals – by nature and not depending upon reason. As Hume noted, our inductive practices are fantastically accurate; we have a phenomenal ability to pick out the regularities that do persist, and are especially good at picking out the important ones. So whilst we are at one level instinctively hard-wired into expecting black ravens after having observed nothing but black ravens, more importantly we expect other more fundamental regularities to persist: that tigers eat people when they come into the cave (so running away is a good idea); that putting your hand in the fire hurt last time so it will next time; that the floor has never disappeared before so it won’t in future. None of these predictions about regularities are rationally justified, but all are fantastically useful, for two reasons. Firstly, that our inductive practices are hard-wired below the level of reason allows us to get on with our lives whilst making use of a vast array of inductive predictions subconsciously (think of the disappearing floor example just given), without relying on the frail and fallible faculty of reason to guide us. Secondly – and this is a post-Darwinian supplement to the Humean account – those creatures that expect persistence not change are most likely to survive and reproduce: consider the example of the tiger given above, and the survival chances of the person with an anti-inductive policy of prediction. Natural selection will surely favour creatures that expect regularity not change, and those that will be most successful will be those that best pick-out persisting regularities – rather like ourselves.

When viewed this way, the paradox of the ravens no longer looks as though it needs ‘countering’. We understand instead that the paradox is an upshot of our innate instinctive inductive practices, which serve us very well indeed. That this practice creates philosophical paradoxes when brought before the court of reason will not bother one – at least, not if one is lucky enough to share Hume’s philosophical temperamental regarding the problem of induction. For those who find themselves to be temperamentally anti-Humean the paradox will no doubt appear far more troubling – though I confess that I am somewhat at a loss regarding what to say to them.

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McDowell, Supervenience and Slugs Thursday, Feb 21 2008

Here’s an argument, attempting to pin down why I think John McDowell is impaled on the horns of a dilemma, which leads to the untenability of realism in meta-ethics.

 I start from the assumption that readers are familiar with the ‘Argument from Queerness’. That is, that it appears untenable that if there are moral ‘facts’, they are part of the ‘fabric of the universe’ as are, say, primary qualities (shape, dimension, etc). As a result McDowell advocates a conception of moral ‘facts’ as like secondary qualities. That is, there is a fundamentally Schopenhauerian relation between evaluative ‘facts’, such as those of ethics or aesthetics, and human observers: for there to be an object, there must be a perceiving subject. So for me to be able to perceive that this table is brown, it is required that I, the perceiver, exist. For if there were no conscious perceiver, the “brownness” of the the table would be absent. However, given that there is (at least one) conscious perceiver (with the relevant sensory apparatus), the table really is brown, and remains so in a sufficiently ‘objective’ sense. By ’sufficiently objective’ I mean that it would be unacceptable to say that the table is brown because the perceiver ‘projects’ brownness onto the table. For sure, the table wont be brown unless it is being perceived, but given that it is, it really is brown. Another way to think of this is that the physical properties of the table cause the perceiver to see it as brown, rather than the perceiver projecting brownness onto the physical properties of the table.

This is a powerful move against an anti-realist ethical position, because no ethical anti-realist will want to say that the perceiver ‘projects’ brown onto the table, in the way it is claimed we ‘project’ sentiments onto the world around us, in turn reading moral ‘facts’ into a world in which we in fact put them. Thus McDowell’s hypothesis is powerful and important, and needs careful evaluation.

The McDowell account, however, seems to me to be unsustainable in the face of considerations pertaining to supervenience without entailment. To see this, begin by  considering the following definition of supervenience:

“Property X supervenes upon property Y iff there cannot be a change in a things X properties without a corresponding change in its Y properties”

For example, chemistry supervenes upon physics: there can be no change in a things chemistry without a change in its underlying physics. In this case there is nothing remarkable about the supervenience, because the laws of physics entail those of chemistry.

Far more interesting are cases in which we have supervenience without entailment. To see the moral significance of such examples it will however be helpful to employ an example in which the moral seas do not run high, in order to be sure that our conclusions are not influenced or infected by prior moral reasonings or assumptions. The example I favour is the statement “slugs are disgusting”. This statement is true, at least it is for me, because I really do find slugs disgusting – and for the purposes of this example I’m going to assume that you do too.

Now it is worth asking the question “why are slugs disgusting (to us)?” There are two possible answers, which I think impale McDowell’s account upon the horns of a dilemma:

 Either: The disgustingness is a property of the slug’s physical attributes

 Or: The disgustingness supervenes upon the slug’s physical attributes

I take it that McDowell cannot take the first horn of the dilemma: this would be to reduce an evaluative predicate like “disgusting” to the status of a primary property, a part of the ‘fabric of the universe’ which is made implausible by the argument from queerness – and McDowell’s account is intended specifically to avoid crude primary quality value realism.

Thus what remains is the possibility of the ‘disgustingness’ of the slug supervening upon the slugs physical (primary) properties. Of course, we can agree with McDowell that the slug is only disgusting if there are concscious perceivers to look at it – but contra-McDowell I want to say that the disgustingness is a projection of the perceiver, and hence the disgustingness is not perceiver-independent in the McDowellian sense outlined above, as analogous with secondary properties like colours.

To see this, we ask “how is it that disgustingness supervenes upon the slug?” For there is nothing in the slugs physical attributes that entails‘disgustingness’ – this is clear given that we can easily imagine a possible world in which a physically identical slug was perceived by a person physically identical to myself as beautiful, not disgusting. The question now becomes: “if slug physicality does not entail disgustiness, from whence the evaluation that the slug is disgusting?” Of course, the projectivist has an answer: I perceive the slug, and it causes a reaction of disapproval in me, which I then project back onto the slug. This explains supervenience with no entailment. As far as I can tell, the McDowellian – or for that matter, any realist about value judgements – has no explanation of how disgustingness can supervene upon slugs without entailment.

This criticism can be made even sharper against all realist positions, including McDowell’s, for we need an explanation about what I shall label the “ban on mixed possible worlds”. For consider two possible worlds which we have not intuitive problem accepting. The first possible world is the actual world: I look at two slugs that are (sufficiently) physically identical, and find them both disgusting. The second possible world is non-actual: in that one I look at two (sufficiently) physically identical slugs and find both beautiful (because human beings evolved different aesthetic sensibilities in that possible world, say). There is no problem with these possible worlds - yet there is with a third. For consider the possible world in which I perceive two (sufficiently) identical slugs and find one disgusting, but the other beautiful. Notice that this world is conceptually possible: because we have established that disgustingness supervenes upon slug physicality, but without entailment, it is conceptually possible that I look at two (sufficiently) physically identical slugs and come to different evaluative conclusions. Yet something jars: it just doesn’t make sense to say that if both these slugs are identical, I can find one beautiful and the other disgusting. This is the ban on mixed possible worlds, and I take it to be an intuitive ban shared by all human beings.

Yet how are we to explain this ban? Again, the projectivist has a story to tell: we project our evaluations, or more precisely our sentiments, out onto the world around us. Thus if two slugs are identical, we project the same sentiments or evaluations onto each. This explains the ban on mixed possible worlds. But on the realist picture, there is simply no explanation: given that disgustingness supervenes upon slugs, but is not entailed by the slug’s physical attributes, it remains a mystery as to why we intuitively refuse to countenance the possibility that two physically identical slugs might illicit different evaluative reactions. To reiterate: if there is supervenience but no entailment, from where our intuitive ban on mixed possible worlds? Projectivism has a convincing story to tell, whilst realism looks on blankly.

This gives us a crucial insight, with which we can tie up the lose ends of this piece. Firstly, in order to see that the above applies to ethical as well as aesthetical considerations, one may simply replace the example of ’slugs are disgusting’ with ‘wilful murders are wrong’. The latter functions in exactly the same way as the former - indeed it will be helpful to recall Hume’s dictum that we can find no vice in the action of wilful murder until we turn our reflections into our own breast.

Secondly, what we now have is good reason to suspect that McDowell’s analogy with secondary properties is unacceptable – that is, that evaluative predicates like ‘disgusting’ or ‘wrong’ are asymmetrical to colour predicates like brown. There still remains an outstanding problem for the projectivist however: for we admitted above that it is an unacceptable conclusion to say that a conscious perceiver ‘projects’ brown onto the table – although we have subsequently seen that there is good reason to suspect that evaluative predicates like ‘disgusting’ and ‘wrong’ are not like colour predicates. If we can establish the asymmetry, we see that it will be acceptable for ethical projectivists to simultaneously claim that we project value judgements but not colour judgements – or more accurately, coloud perceptions.

Thankfully this is easily achieved, for the asymmetries between colour and evaluative predicates abound. Firstly, evaluative predicates are attributive, whilst colour predicates are not: a man’s actions may be good qua actions of a Captain, but bad qua actions of a father. By contrast, a red tomato is a red vegetable is a red object bought at the grocer’s this morning. Secondly, there is a well-established scientific literature explaining our perceptions of colours (and other such predicates), and also explaining why some people do not perceive them: damage to the retina, insufficient distribution of optical rods and cones, etc. What is the corresponding story for perceiving evaluative predicates? And how do we explain those who don’t perceive them ‘properly’? If James is colour blind, we explain this through biology: if James thinks it is OK to murder, what is the corresponding perceptual account explaining his disability? Thirdly, if everything that was red suddenly turned blue, we would say that the world had ceased to contain red things. If everyone were tomorrow to decide that it is permissible to torture cats, we would say that the (ethical) world has degraded.

Thus colour predicates are not like evaluative predicates, and we are entitled to say that we project moral judgements onto the world, without being worried about the fact we clearly do not project colour predicates. Thus we are entitled to reject McDowell’s account in favour of ethical projectivism.

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Kant and Moral Vertigo Wednesday, Feb 20 2008

I was reading the Grundlegung earlier today, and got thinking about one of Kant’s less well known reasons for wanting to ground morality in reason and not ‘inclination’. The main argument, or rather axiom, informing Kant’s ethical thinking is that moral action will only be truly moral if it is done solely out of respect for the moral law, and not at all because of inclination or sentiment. The reasons for this are complex, but I take Kant to be worried that if moral action is motivated by sentiment rather than disinclined respect for duty, it will be ‘infected’ by egoistic, self-referential designs and hence could not be truly moral.

That, however, is not the assumption I wish to challenge today (although I think it is an assumption which should be challenged, and forcefully). Rather, I wish to consider the considerations given in Chapter 1 Section 10 of the Grundlegung, namely that there is something dangerous, or unstable, about morality rooted in sentiment and not reason. Kant is apparently troubled by the possibility of the man who does ethically good acts out of inclination, yet one day ceases to have such sentiments and so stops acting morally (perhaps he is overwhelmed by a fit of depression, and no longer desires to help others). This worries Kant, and he prefers the following account:

“Suppose then that the mind of this humanitarian were overclouded by sorrows of his own which extinguished all compassion for the fate of others, but that he still had the power to assist others in distress; suppose though that their adversity no longer stirred him, because he is pre-occupied with his own; and now imagine that, though no longer moved by any inclination, he nevertheless tears himself out of this deadly apathy and does the action without any inclination, solely out of duty” (Ch 1 Sec 10, emphasis added).

It appears that Kant suffers from a sort of moral vertigo when asking if morality be based in sentiment: he looks and sees the possibility of sentiments simply giving out – and quite easily – and this induces a moral panic. Consequently, he wishes to ground morality in something he perceives to be eminently more stable - and he finds this in obedience to the moral law discovered by reason. That is, Kant is a little like the man at the top of the Empire State Building, who looks out over New York and suddenly feels the nausea of vertigo: he sees that there is a safety rail at his chest preventing him from falling, but he suddenly wonders, “what if the rail disappears, or becomes loose, or is corroded and snaps?”. And suddenly he wishes for more than a safety rail: he wishes perhaps for the rail, or the whole building, to be fundamentally attached to him, making his falling an absolute impossibility. Panic sets in, and the vertigo worsens.

Yet this moral vertigo seems to me unnecessary, and we can give to Kant an analogous answer to the man on the Empire State Building. We say, “for sure, the rail might snap, it might even disappear for no reason, and you might plummet. But we have good reason to be expect that it wont: the maintenance team look at it twice a week, it is made of non-corrosive steel, it has never disappeared before (and nor has anything else in experience), etc. So don’t worry; the merely possible need not worry you, for you are quite safe”. Analogously we say to Kant, “for sure, moral sentiments might simply give out and cease all of a sudden – but they probably wont. Such sentiments are deeply ingrained in us, reinforced repeatedly through our lives since early childhood, and are so important as to constitute fundamental aspects of our humanity and individual personalities. We have good reason to expect these sentiments to persist – indeed we can ensure they persist by bringing up our children in ways of which we approve, and encouraging those around us to share in our sentimental practices. Moments of weakness will of course arise, but a sudden total sentimental nihilism is hardly plausible”.

And this should be enough to avert the moral vertigo. If it isn’t, I am tempted to suggest that Kant or the Kantian feels the vertigo because he or she is looking for it, and this is because he or she has already decided to locate morality in reason and not sentiment. Yet with that we are probably at meta-ethical bedrock: we are at the point where people’s basic philosophical temperaments dictate which moral axioms they are drawn to accepting – either embracing reason, as Kant did, or sentiment, as Hume did. To what extent there is argument to be had beyond this point is something about which I am dubious.

 EDIT: It might also be worth pointing out to the Kantian that even if ethical action is based on sentiment, and contrary to my reassurances, it is in fact thereby unstable, it doesn’t follow that this account should therefore be rejected. For perhaps morality is unstable; perhaps this is a cold, hard and unpleasant truth - but as Nietzsche wrote, there are such truths.

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