Brainpolice : Crime and Punishment, Human Nature

Morality, Rationality, Survival and the Law

Brainpolice — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 00:27:00 GMT

I was having a bit of a debate with an Objectivist and we got into some questions about morality and rationality. It related to the question of suicide, and I maintained that suicide is irrational but not immoral and that the individual has the liberty to commit such an irrational act. The Objectivist asserted that irrationality is immorality. This doesn't make any sense to me. I'd say that what is moral is inherently rational, but not that what is rational is inherently moral. Likewise, I'd say that what is immoral is inherently irrational, but not that what is irrational is inherently immoral. This is not a paradox when one makes a proper distinction between a vice and a crime or between that which is unethical and that which is merely incorrect or counterproductive. A meaningful distinction between ethics and aesthetics also helps clear up any confusion in this regaurd.

Consider the implications of combining the two premises that (1) that which is irrational is inherently immoral and (2) the law should reflect morality. I can think of endless things that are irrational and harmless to others in and of themselves that should consequentially be viewed as "immoral" and be outlawed under this logic: suicide, not taking a shower, not brushing your teeth, discrimating based solely or primarily on the basis of race, to continue to associate with people who hurt or manipulate you, to smoke cigarettes and do hard drugs, to pray, to go to church, to stay up for 3 days, to starve yourself, to bite your nails, to have promiscous sex with strangers, to have a high time preference, to not take care of one's own property, to not defend oneself and to be boistrous and loud.

All of these things are irrational and many of them are unconductive to either the quality of one's life or its continued existance, but I consider none of them to be immoral and think that all of them should be permissible and legal. It's not conductive to certain ends for me to buy certain products or patronize certain service providers over other ones. It's not conductive to my long-term economic security to borrow and spend lots of money and not save. It's not conductive to my long-term health to eat a certain way. But am I "immoral" for making a mistake in judgement or for merely being stupid or for having aesthetic tastes? That's absurd. It's not "immoral" for me to make bad financial decisions or have bad eating habits. The expression of aesthetic tastes in general could be viewed as irrational. There is no rational way to justify the notion that someone has an obligation to make a certain aesthetic choice because it happens to be the most efficient towards survival or happiness or prosperity, and in the case of happiness there is no way to determine what will make someone else happy. The logical end of this kind of thinking would seem to lead to the legislation of economic preferances in the name of utility.

One might object to this reductio as absurdum by trying to make a distinction between the law and morality, by positing that the law doesn't have to reflect or be in accordance with morality, but one can only do so by opening up a pandora's box of inconsistancy and accepting the evils of legal positivism. This view holds the law to be above morality and consequentially functions as a way to make moral inconsistancies and acceptions. The inevitable consequence of taking this view is that the law is quite blatantly turned into a instrument of immorality. Using such an approach to politics, things that are immoral can be legitimized by merely appealing to its legality. Natural law, in contrast, holds the currently existing and positive law up to an independant standard of justice, derived from reason. Notice that rationality does play a role, but the natural law follows from morality. It's not the case that everything that is rational is moral and everything that is irrational is immoral. Rationality in this context is only an instrumental tool that is used to figure out what is moral and immoral. But it does not follow that everything that is a product of rationality is moral or that all irrational actions are immoral actions.

Rationality can point one to the most efficient means at achieving a desired end and it can point one to the most moral means to a desired end (and the two aren't necessarily always the same thing), but not all questions of persueing desired ends are moral questions. That's the problem. Rationality can suggest that engaging in cooperative industrial production is more efficient to my survival and general well-being to being a hunter-gatherer, but it does not follow that I have a moral obligation to choose the more efficient means. I would assert that one has the liberty to go live as a hunter-gatherer, even if it is self-destructive or nowhere near as beneficial as the alternatives, and hence there is no real moral obligation to choose to engage in industrial production. The question of whether to live as a hunter-gatherer or as an industrial worker or producer is morally irrelevant in and of itself. From my perspective, regaurdless of the utility towards life and prosperity of the choices in question, the individual essentially has free reign to choose whichever alternative they want so long as they aren't violating any ethical or metaethical principles in the process, so long as they don't force anyone else to pursue or not pursue a particular option. These become questions of personal preferance, regaurdless of any objective concerns about their utility.

It seems to me that Objectivists rely too much on the concept of survival in their ethics, which makes it take a sort of utilitarian turn. They use survival, or more broadly the achievement of desires necessary to fullfil the necessities of life, as the primarily justification for actions. That is, Objectivists essentially conclude that because liberty is necessary for survival and the achievement of certain virtues or benefits (such as happiness, prosperity and healthiness), liberty is justified because it leads to those things. However, there are some problems with this view. While liberty is a necessary condition for survival and flourishing, it does not gaurantee it. Someone could theoretically be perfectly free and not violate anyone else's rights yet be unhappy, unhealthy, uneducated and have trouble surviving. So it seems far too demanding on people to proclaim that people have an obligation to do that which is necessary to survive and benefit themselves. People have the liberty to persue their survival and happiness, and it is in their rational self-interest to do so, but they have no such obligation to do so or to choose the most efficient means to doing so.

Yes, it is irrational to not persue the continuance of one's life and improvements upon its quality. But to consider people "immoral" for not doing so or not adequately doing so seems ridiculous. It also seems to me that Objectivists extend ethics way beyond interpersonal relations and into the realm of purely personal decisions. But for me, ethics is interpersonal and thus purely personal decisions are aesthetic at best. Such purely personal decisions can be objectively evaluated as being "good for you" or "bad for you", but there is no way to genuinely make them obligatory or enforcable and an unobligatory and unenforcable ethics seems like no ethics at all. It makes no sense to proclaim that one has a moral obligation to pursue and fulfill their rational self-interest while simultaneously say that they are free to not fulfil the moral obligation. Since I think that people are free to harm themselves or to make bad personal decisions, I have no choice but to consider such actions morally neutral at best. Otherwise, the implication would be that people should be legally required to eat healthy, raise their children in a right way, read the right books and conform to an endless sea of requirements in their personal preferances.

One might object that if what I'm implying is the case, then ethics wouldn't apply to a lone man stranded on an island. My answer is: yes, ethics indeed doesn't apply to a lone man stranded on an island, because ethics has no meaning in such a scenario. There's no one else to steal from, murder, lie to, cheat, and so on. There's noone else to violate the rights of. One could do all sorts of things to further one's own survival and happiness, but morality wouldn't really come into the picture until you start introducing interpersonal relations. The choice of a man stranded on an island "to hunt or not to hunt" or "what materials should I make my home with?" has no moral significance. Such decisions are not moral decisions but purely practical ones. Morality would only come into place with such questions in terms of how it affects the rational self-interest of other people, in terms of whether or not the means one pursues in the persuit of such things violate the life, liberty and property of others.

Another problem with this erroneous conflation of rationality and morality is that it essentially implies that holding irrational thoughts is immoral in and of itself. Thought crimes! It is of course true and important to realize that ideas determine the course of history. But nonetheless it is ultimately the realization of those ideas, or at least the attempt to do so, and the means by which those ideas are implemented that is immoral. Merely believing in false or irrational ideas does not make someone immoral, and neither would they be immoral for pursueing, spreading and enacting those ideas so long as it is on a voluntary basis. Stupidity and ignorance is not immorality. Being misinformed or just flat out wrong is not immoral in and of itself. Believing in communism or the flying spagetti monster is a vice, not an immorality. Forcing communism or the church of the flying spagetti monster onto people is what would be an immorality.

It seems to me that the moral of the story is that the fetishizing of the mind and survival leads to some absurd implications and conclusions if consistantly followed through.

The Myth of "The Rule of Law"

Brainpolice — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 09:43:00 GMT

The theory of a republic is essentially that, in contrast to democracy in which there is tyranny of the majority and in contrast to monarchy in which there is the rule of a single man or oligarchy, the law itself is what rules rather than men. In essence, a republic is supposed to be a model for government that avoids being both both democracy and monarchy, and allegedly replaces the adminstration of men over men with the adminstration of the law itself over men. In a republic, the law is supposed to restrain the lay public from creating tyranny of the majority (I.E. a democracy) and simultaneously restrain the institutional agents of the state from functioning as an elite of rulers imposing their will on the lay public (I.E. an oligarchy).

But a basic understanding of how human beings work and a rational analysis of how the state functions as an institution, including so-called republics, renders this theory of government as a rather blatant absurdity. How can a law be self-enforcing? By definition, a governmental law is drafted by men and must be enforced by men. No political system can escape the rule of men, for all political systems are created and run by men. At the same time, no political system is the result of the decisions of everyone within a society, for at a fundamental level all political systems are oligarchies in which a small percentage of the overall population are those with direct control over the state apparatus, those who actually make and enforce the laws.

The absurdity of the notion that a piece of paper with words on it in and of itself will fatalistically or pre-emptively stop human beings (including those within the state apparatus itself) from engaging in certain actions should be rather obvious. In terms of the lay public, they may theoretically engage in such actions anyways and their actions may be rather unpredictable. A piece of paper isn't going to restrain a mob. And in terms of those within the state apparatus themselves, they have most leeway of all in the matter, for it is ultimately they who make the laws and may choose to enforce or not enforce them. Since they are not really bound by any higher external 3rd party institution, they may theoretically function in a lawless manner. The law maker is effectively and seemingly paradoxically "above the law". For since they have a monopoly on law, they may theoretically interpret it and defy it as they please. The law is not binding on them. Rather, the law's content and applicability is actually bound to their whims as the ones with power.

So it would seem that an attempt at a republic will always reduce to some kind of oligarchy, most likely a representative democracy with a constitution. The constitution is merely an additional feature of the democracy that is meant to restrain both the people and the government. Except a constitution cannot really be effective in any consistant or long-term sense. It will not fatalistically restrain institutional agents of the state from using power and the lay public from engaging in majoritarian or mob behavior. As the decades and centuries pass, it becomes less and less meaningful and effective as a society evolves (or devolves). At best, it functions as a lame rationale to provide legitimacy to the state while its alleged function as a restraint is rendered meaningless by the ability of the state's institutional agents to exercise their power. A constitution does nothing to actually restrain or take away the oppurtunity or ability for institutional agents of the state to use power.

The notion of the rule of law would only make sense if the state was an entity external to human interaction, as if it were not made up of human beings but was enforced through some natural or supernatural mechanism. But the state is quite clearly created and administered by acting human beings. It is not some sort of intrinsic mechanism of nature that functions independantly of human action, or the result of the will of some deity. The only laws that can be said to rule all on their own irrespective of men are natural laws. But natural law is not something that political systems are based on, as political systems are the synthetic creations of men. At best, natural law is an independant standard of justice that currently existing political systems may be held up to and discredited with. While some early natural law theories were used to legitimize states, a properly formed and applied natural law theory can only be used to delegitimize states.

There is good reason to be quite skeptical towards the effectiveness of governmentally created laws to begin with. Not only is it absurd to propose that laws can rule on on their own, but the ability of human beings to enforce them is quite limited due to a certain factor of unpredictability in the behavior of human beings. That is, the mere existance of a law illegalizing certain actions and even the existance of an institutional apparatus that attempts to have humans enforce such a law and threatens punishment for defying it does not gaurantee that people will not in fact defy the law and that people will not in fact get away with defying the law. While this has obvious implications with respect to laws prohibiting economic interactions (which are miserable failures in light of their own alleged goals), it is even true with respect to laws against basics that everyone pretty much agrees are wrong like murder, rape and theft.

The notion that most people generally don't murder, rape and steal either solely or primarily because there is a governmental law against them is rather absurd if one accepts the premise of free will (at least some kind of compatibalism). The existance of a governmental law in and of itself is not the cause of good or ethical behavior, and some people do engage in the shunned actions in question despite the existance of a law against it. If someone is truly determined to engage in such an action, they are going to do it regaurdless of whether or not there is a governmental law against it. Criminals are criminals precisely because they have an extremely high time preferance, I.E. they want what they want now regaurdless of potential negative consequences that may come about in the future. If someone does not engage in such an action, it is mostly likely primarily because they themselves find it ethically impermissable. Social convention itself, combined with the natural incentives towards social cooperation, is the primary reason why most people tend to generally be peaceful in interpersonal relations.

In a fundamental sense, a society truly cannot be planned or socially engineered in the long-run, even by laws. A society is the sum total of interactions between the individuals that make it up, and such interpersonal relations are so complex and diverse that it would be impossible for a single individual or organization to truly predict and absolutely control their behavior. No human being or group of human beings has the mental capacity, let alone the physical ability, to deterministically control and pre-empt the behavior of everyone within a society. They would have to be omniscient to do so. The mere fact that one can only be at one place at one time renders any attempt to efficiently exercise such control ridiculous and pointless. So it could be said that all government is fortunately limited by definition, limited by the natural limits of human ability and the unpredictability and diversity of human behavior.

Quite clearly, the law is not something worthy of putting much of one's faith in, even with good intentions.