Academic Philosophy

Anarchy in Manhattan

The Molinari Society will be holding its mostly-annual Eastern Symposium in conjunction with the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association in New York City, 7-10 January 2019. Here’s the schedule info:

Molinari Society symposium: New Work in Libertarian and Anarchist Thought

G5C. Tuesday, 8 January 2019, 9:00 a.m.-12:00 noon, Sheraton New York Times Square Hotel, 811 7th Ave. (at W. 53rd St.), New York NY, room TBA

chair:
     Roderick T. Long (Auburn University)

presenters:
     Jason Lee Byas (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), “The Political Is Interpersonal”
     Dylan Andrew Delikta (Memorial University of Newfoundland), “Anarchy: Finding Home in the (W)hole”
     Alex Braud (Arizona State University), “Putting Limits on Punishments of Last Resort”
     Roderick T. Long (Auburn University), “The Anarchist Landscape: Social Anarchism, Individualist Anarchism, and Anarcho-Capitalism from a Left-Wing Market Anarchist Perspective”

Regrettably, our session is scheduled opposite a session on Elizabeth Anderson’s book Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives, with comments by Jacob Levy and Jessica Flanigan. This is unfortunate both because many members of our potential audience will probably be lured away by this session, and because we’d like to go to it ourselves. But as good anarchists, we must bear our sufferings like Rakhmetov.


Published on: Author: Roderick Long
Uncategorized

So dangerous!

The commonsense theory of self-defense that everyone understands and accepts: “You may use proportional force if it is necessary to stop an attacker from severely harming your or violating your rights.”

Everyone: “That sounds legit.”

Me: “Add this clause: Even if the attacker is a government agent.”

Lots of people: “Whoa! Hold on, cowboy! You mean to say you can use violence whenever you feel like it? That anyone can just decide at will that something is unjust and then start shooting?! OMG, chaos!”

Me: “Wait, you understood that the commonsense theory of self-defense doesn’t say that. Why does this suddenly become a problem when you add ‘even if the attacker is a government agent’.”

Others: “Uh, because motivated reasoning, bro.”


Published on: Author: Jason Brennan
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Ari Armstrong’s *What’s Wrong with Objectivist Ethics*

It usually begins with Ayn Rand, the proverb goes. If so, let’s hope it doesn’t end there.

Ari Armstrong recently released What’s Wrong with Ayn Rand’s Objectivist Ethics.

It’s an engaging discussion and critique of Rand’s metaethics and ethics. Armstrong is a sympathetic critic, and takes great care to present Rand’s arguments and views correctly. Nevertheless, he finds her theory is full of big holes each step of the way.

For instance, Rand’s metaethical position is supposedly based on induction: She notes that only living things seem to pursue value, and concludes from this that the ultimate aim of every living thing is to preserve its own life. But, Armstrong notes, as an empirical observation, this is easily falsified–in fact, animals and other living things regularly prioritize, say, reproduction over survival. Humans rationally do make trade-offs between survival and other values. Talking about survival as “man qua man” ends up being Rand’s largely ad hoc way of fudging her argument.

Rand is a strong advocate of individual rights. Yet, as both Mike Huemer and I have pointed out, as an egoist, she can only contingently endorse human rights. An egoist by definition cannot regard other people as ends in themselves and cannot hold that one has non-derivative, non-instrumental duties toward others. Armstrong tries to respond as sympathetically as possible on Rand’s behalf, but in the end, argues that Rand cannot overcome this objection. The problem is not merely–as some have suggested–that Rand isn’t really an egoist (or that she uses the word “egoism” incorrectly). Rather, her metaethical survivalism allows no place for rights.

While Armstrong is a critic, he also sees a great deal of value in Rand’s work. Rand extols the heroism of everyday people, who work with purpose and who do not simply capitulate to others’ values out of fear. She recognizes and defends productivity as a moral virtue. She sees people as actors, not merely as stomachs to be fed.

I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in Rand. Her fans could learn that she is not an infallible god. Many of her critics can learn that the proper way to criticize someone is to first get their views right before criticizing them.


Published on: Author: Jason Brennan
Announcements

*When All Else Fails* Is Out!

I’m pleased to report my ninth book, When All Else Fails: The Ethics of Resistance to State Injustice is now out with Princeton University Press. Read chapter one here.

Kit Wellman’s review:

“A superb book. Brennan clearly and convincingly defends the radical idea that ordinary citizens may use force against injustice perpetrated by government officials, just as they would against fellow citizens.”―Christopher Heath Wellman, Washington University in St. Louis

Blurb:

Why you have the right to resist unjust government

The economist Albert O. Hirschman famously argued that citizens of democracies have only three possible responses to injustice or wrongdoing by their governments: we may leave, complain, or comply. But in When All Else Fails, Jason Brennan argues that there is a fourth option. When governments violate our rights, we may resist. We may even have a moral duty to do so.

For centuries, almost everyone has believed that we must allow the government and its representatives to act without interference, no matter how they behave. We may complain, protest, sue, or vote officials out, but we can’t fight back. But Brennan makes the case that we have no duty to allow the state or its agents to commit injustice. We have every right to react with acts of “uncivil disobedience.” We may resist arrest for violation of unjust laws. We may disobey orders, sabotage government property, or reveal classified information. We may deceive ignorant, irrational, or malicious voters. We may even use force in self-defense or to defend others.

The result is a provocative challenge to long-held beliefs about how citizens may respond when government officials behave unjustly or abuse their power.

This is not a book defending a controversial conclusion on the basis of some whacky, controversial moral theory. Rather, I start with commonsense moral thinking about self-defense, and then ask whether there’s any good reason to grant government agents “special immunity” from commonsense principles of self-defense. An excerpt:

The Moral Parity Thesis holds that democratic government agents, property, and agencies are as much legitimate targets of defensive deception, sabotage, violence or “vigilante” justice as civilians are. The principles explaining how we may use defensive violence and subterfuge against civilians and the principles explaining how we may use defensive violence and subterfuge against government agents are one and the same. Government agents (including citizens when they vote) who commit injustice are on par with civilians who commit the same injustices.

To some, this may not sound like a controversial thesis. However, if we combine A) the Moral Parity Thesis with B) commonsense moral thinking about defensive lying, sabotage, and violence, plus C) frank and realistic appraisal of how governments tend to behave, a number of controversial claims follow, such as:

  1. It can be permissible to assassinate presidents, representatives, generals, and others, to stop them from waging unjust wars, even if those wars enjoy widespread popular support and are ratified through legal means. It is also permissible to kill them to stop them from issuing certain unjust orders even if the war they are fighting is, overall, justified.
  2. It is permissible to hurt or even kill a cop trying to arrest you when you have broken a bad or unjust law, such as laws criminalizing marijuana or homosexual sex.
  3. If you are imprisoned for doing something which should not be a crime, you may hurt the guards and break free.
  4. Political candidates may sometimes lie to ignorant, irrational, misinformed, or malicious voters in order to stop them from getting their way.
  5. Corporations, and private individuals or businesses, may lie about their compliance with wrongful or punitive regulations.
  6. A person may join the military or a government bureaucracy in order to sabotage some of its operations from within.
  7. You may engage in tax evasion to avoid unjust or excessive taxes.
  8. Soldiers may ignore unjust orders, and, in some cases, subdue or even kill the officers who issue them. They may also, in some cases, kill their fellow soldiers who try to follow those unjust orders.
  9. You may hurt a police officer to stop excessive violence.
  10. It can be permissible to find, steal, and publicize certain state secrets, such as some, if not all, of the secrets Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, or Chelsea Manning revealed.
  11. Supreme Court (or equivalent) justices may lie about what the written or unwritten Constitution allows or forbids. They may refuse to enforce or apply unjust laws.

And so on.

These seemingly radical conclusions follow from commonsense moral principles plus the Moral Parity Thesis. While lying, sabotaging, hurting, destroying, and killing are usually wrong, commonsense holds that we may do these things, either in self-defense or defense of others, under the right circumstances. This book’s conclusions seem radical only because we tend to assume that government agents are to be held to a lower moral standard than we hold civilians, and we tend to assume that government agents enjoy a special immunity against defensive action. These assumptions are unfounded. Philosophers have spent 2500 years trying to justify these assumptions, but their arguments fail badly.

Of course there are lots of objections to this view: We musn’t be vigilantes! What if people make mistakes in applying these principles? What if we’re uncertain about whether the government officials are acting wrongly or not? Don’t government agents enjoy legitimacy and authority, which explain their special immunity? If you work as a government agent, don’t you thereby promise not to disobey or interfere? Isn’t this book dangerous? These are good worries, but on closer inspection, none of them succeed.


Published on: Author: Jason Brennan