Cartoon libertarians–and there are many of them–usually think the non-aggression principle does a lot of philosophical work. Zwolinski has been arguing the principle is really quite problematic. A flustered George Smith has been writing various responses, none of which seem to have any real force to me. I’ll just comment on a few bits of his last response here.

Smith:

Zwolinski claims that, according to a strict interpretation of the NAP, “No amount of aggression, no matter how small, is morally permissible. And no amount of offsetting benefits can change this fact.”

This fuzzy account fails to distinguish a theory of justice from a more general theory of ethics (a point I raised in Part 1). To commit an unjust act entails that the victim has a claim of redress against the aggressor, often in the form of reparations. And though matters of justice and injustice normally harmonize with our fundamental moral principles, this is not always the case. There may be exceptions.

Suppose that a mother with a starving child has no realistic course of action except to steal food from a grocery store. In this and in similar “emergency” situations, I would argue that the theft might be morally justifiable. However, it would still be unjust. That is to say, the mother would be obligated to compensate her victim (the grocery store owner), and should she refuse, the victim would have the option (which he need not exercise) to take legal action against the thief. Libertarian justice is concerned with rights, their violations, and restitution, not with the moral worth of actions per se. The owner of the food does not forfeit his property rights because of the needs of the mother, however legitimate and severe her needs may be.

I hope this isn’t just a boring semantic battle. But philosophers normally use the word “justice” to refer to a proper subpart of morality. Everything that is part of justice is part of morality, but not everything that is part of morality is part of justice. Anyways, what I think Smith means here is that the mother’s action is not justifiable, but excusable, since she still owes redress.

At any rate, let’s do another example. Suppose you are walking along the street in Lake Barcroft, when suddenly a rabid beaver starts to chase you. Suppose your best chance to escape is to run through a neighbors’ yard.  (Suppose the beaver can’t crawl over the neighbor’s fence.) However, suppose the neighbor is right there, in the front yard, saying, “No trespassing! Let the beaver bite you!” Are you permitted to jump in the neighbor’s yard? The NAP seems to say, no, you can’t. And if you do, you owe the neighbor compensation. But that seems wrong. On the contrary, unless trespassing in this case imposes some serious harm to the neighbor, it seems more plausible that you are permitted to run over the yard, that the neighbor is not permitted to stop you, and that you don’t owe the neighbor monetary compensation for the mere act of trespassing. (It might be polite to say “sorry” and all that, but you aren’t obligated to do so.) If the neighbor did try to stop you, I’d say you’re free to push him out of the way. (Zwolinski adds to this: Suppose there were a third party bystander, who could intervene either to stop you from jumping the fact or stop your neighbor from stopping you. Whom should he help?) That doesn’t mean that you can just walk on your neighbor’s yard whenever you want. I’m just saying that there are limits to the neighbor’s property rights.

Smith apparently agrees:

The itsy-bitsy counterthrust to general principles consists of positing very minor exceptions to a rule, and then concluding that only a rigid dogmatist would fail to admit the legitimacy of those exceptions.

Yes, that’s right. And many libertarians–if not libertarian philosophers–are just such rigid dogmatists. For any ideology X, the overwhelming majority of people who believe X believe in the dumb versions of it and have bad reasons for their beliefs. Libertarians are no exception.

But Smith isn’t being fair. Zwolinski is pointing out that once you start admitting these counterexamples, you can see clearly that the theory of property rights has to be more complicated than most libertarians let on. These counterexamples are problematic for their background theory, since they need to explain just why these counterexamples are correct.

Smith thinks arguing from examples is a bad idea:

Zwolinski basically engages in arguments from examples. As Immanuel Kant pointed out, this is a problematic approach because examples do not explain themselves. Their significance, if they have any, can be discerned only with the aid of a general theory, so philosophers with different theories will interpret the same example in different ways.

Well, sure, Kant has a point. But we cannot just axiomatically derive some first principles and then apply them come what may. When doing moral theory, we begin with a certain degree of moral knowledge. We have to test our principles against our considered judgments about cases. When there is a clash between what seem like the best principles and what seem like the best judgments about particular cases, we have to resolve the contradiction. Sometimes that means modifying the principles, and sometimes it means modifying our judgments about the cases. I admit freely that I might be wrong about the rabid beaver chase example above. After all, it clashes with cartoon libertarianism. But I have never seen a compelling argument for cartoon libertarianism, so I don’t see a reason to revise my considered judgment about the beaver case. Instead, I see better reason to revise certain ideas I may have had about the absoluteness of property rights.

Like many Objectivists, Smith is exasperated by imaginary thought experiments:

If Zwolinski told me that he could save the world by scratching my finger, then, in all probability, I would write him off as a nutcase and tell him to go away. There is a good reason for my reaction, namely the probable fact that Zwolinski would be unable to explain and justify the supposed connection between cause (a scratch) and consequence (saving the world). We do not live in a world where scratching fingers can save the earth from destruction, so I would have no reason to take Zwolinski seriously.

Only in some alternate world, a world with different causal laws than the world we know, might the finger-scratching hypothetical make sense. But in a natural-law moral theory of the sort that most libertarians defend, our theory of justice is based on certain presuppositions about the causal relationships among human beings and their physical environment.

Who is the “we” here? Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard? Anyways, I don’t understand the criticism here. In fact, I have no difficulty whatsoever in evaluating these counterfactuals, and neither does Smith, despite his protests to the contrary. As I’ve said before:

McElroy says [moral thought experiments with different laws of physics are all bunk], but I doubt she really believes it. Consider:

• Star Wars posits an parallel world in which the rules of reality, like cause and effect, have been dramatically changed. The postulated world operates more on magic than reality.
• Same with Lord of the Rings.
• To some degree, same with Atlas Shrugged, which involves significant science fiction.

When I watch Star Wars, I have no trouble evaluating whether the light side of the force is the good side or bad side. I have no trouble evaluating whether the dark side of the force is good or evil. All this, even though I developed my moral code in the real world. Same with McElroy. She knows that the dark side of the force is the bad side, even though the force doesn’t exist.

Moral rules apply to all sorts of unrealistic situations. And we have no special difficulty applying them in unrealistic cases. E.g.,

• Was it okay for the IF to trick Ender into exterminating an alien race, which the IF justifiedly but incorrectly perceived to be an existential threat?
• Would it be okay to feed your baby to Godzilla for fun?
• Should Boromir have attempted to take the ring from Frodo?
• Was it okay for Raistlin Majere to strive to become a god and to overthrow Takhisis?
• Should Magneto try to organize all the mutants against humanity?

All of these issues involve magic and bending the rules of reality, yet insofar as these questions are difficult to answer (and at least two of them are easy), the issues of magic/non-magic and realism/non-realism aren’t what make them difficult. The different laws of physics in these worlds doesn’t have any impact on our moral principles, but merely on how we apply them.

I presume McElroy, if she watches/reads sci fi or fantasy, doesn’t do so as a moral agnostic. Rather, she judges away, easily applying her moral principles to new, unusual cases involving sci-fi and magic.