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"Consequentialism"
Milton Friedman’s Classical Liberalism
By Matt Zwolinski On March 22, 2012 · 70 Comments · In Book/Article Reviews, Consequentialism, Economics, Libertarianism
Inspired by Pete Boettke’s semi-recent post, I’ve just finished re-reading Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom. It is a great work articulating and defending liberalism “in its original sense.”
It is also a work that illustrates [...]
Economists, Why So Consequentialist?
By Kevin Vallier On February 27, 2012 · 28 Comments · In Academic Philosophy, Consequentialism, Economics
Economists are frequently (a) subjectivists about value and (b) consequentialists. (a) and (b) are in tension.
Brief dialectical summary:
Non-Consequentialist Philosopher: What should we do?
Typical Economist: Maximize utility!
Philosopher: What should you do?
Economist: Pursue what I value.
Philosopher: What about when pursuing what you value doesn’t maximize [...]
Contractualism
By Kevin Vallier On February 15, 2012 · 48 Comments · In Academic Philosophy, Consequentialism, Libertarianism, Rights Theory
I think the right political theory is some form of contractualism. In this post, I will explain what I mean by contractualism and address some common but confused objections to it. I will partly summarize the main points in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entries on Contractualism, Contractarianism and
Today would have been the 80th birthday of one of my deepest intellectual heroes and a man whose optimism about the future of humanity has become part of my intellectual DNA. I speak, of course, of the irreplaceable Julian Simon. Rob Bradley offers a really nice appreciation here. I will only add that [...]
Twelve Theses on Libertarian Eudaimonism
By Roderick Long On February 10, 2012 · 40 Comments · In Academic Philosophy, Consequentialism, Left-libertarianism, Libertarianism, Rights Theory, Social Justice
Obviously each of these following steps would need more explication and defense than I’m giving here. The picture is also a bit oversimplified, since (for one thing) it concerns reciprocal determination between just two virtues rather than among them all. But it will help to fill in a bit the picture I sketched in my [...]
Libertarianism, Consequentialism, and Self-Ownership
By Fernando Teson On February 6, 2012 · 2 Comments · In Academic Philosophy, Book/Article Reviews, Consequentialism, Left-libertarianism, Libertarianism, Liberty
1) Consequentialist Considerations Are Crucial for Libertarians
In a recent post, Kevin Vallier suggests that libertarianism cannot be justified by either utilitarianism or self-ownership. The first is said to be too distributionally-insensitive; the second, too consequence-insensitive. In a sense I agree, but for somewhat different reasons. Libertarianism is a thesis about the proper [...]
Eudaimonist Libertarianism
By Roderick Long On February 4, 2012 · 87 Comments · In Academic Philosophy, Consequentialism, Left-libertarianism, Rights Theory
In his most recent post, Kevin Vallier argues that as potential moral foundations for libertarianism, “Utilitarianism is too consequence-sensitive and self-ownership is too consequence-insensitive.”
I agree with him, almost. (I think that utilitarianism is too consequence-sensitive and that most versions of self-ownership theory are too consequence-insensitive; but I think self-ownership itself escapes the [...]
Against Utilitarianism and Self-Ownership Defenses of Libertarianism
By Kevin Vallier On February 1, 2012 · 35 Comments · In Academic Philosophy, Consequentialism, Libertarianism, Rights Theory
Perhaps the best argument against utilitarian and self-ownership defenses of libertarianism is this:
Utilitarianism is too consequence-sensitive and self-ownership is too consequence-insensitive.
It’s a simple criticism. Utilitarianism is well-known for being too insensitive to matters besides utility, such as the separateness of persons (as Rawls made famous in TJ). Utilitarianism [...]
What Sort of (Libertarian) Consequentialist are You?
By Kevin Vallier On January 25, 2012 · 18 Comments · In Academic Philosophy, Consequentialism, Libertarianism
Last post, I claimed that lots of libertarians are consequentialists. In this post, I want to try and state the kind of consequentialism I think most libertarians would sign on to if asked. This is the conception of consequentialism that is “implicit” in the writings of most (non-philosopher) libertarian consequentialists.
Let me be [...]
Why Libertarianism Needs our Adjective, Jeff Sachs Version
By Steve Horwitz On January 16, 2012 · 148 Comments · In Consequentialism, Current Events, Liberalism, Libertarianism, Liberty, Social Justice
Over the weekend, my good friend Pete Boettke wondered why it was necessary for us to call ourselves “Bleeding Heart Libertarians” when the whole history of classical liberalism (from Smith forward) is full of thinkers who clearly cared about, for example, the condition of the least well-off. My response was that “yes, that might be [...]
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