[Thanks to Jani Moliis for his challenging reply. Jani is a recent graduate from the Vienna campus who's now back home in Finland, but obvious still as intellectually active as ever. In the past 6 months Jani and I spent many hours in discussion!]
Jani Moliis Jani.Moliis@formin.fi
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Bob,
This is such a great puzzle in my mind. It's a textbook case of a dilemma on which "reasonable people disagree". Somebody put it as the choice between "freedom from failure" and "freedom to fail".
I remember you calling me the "strongest egalitarian" or something to that effect over at Fischerhutte, which made me think about the puzzle even more. Obviously I look at the issue from a very different perspective than you do, but that just means I can get an excellent glimpse to what "the other side" is thinking. Only a few days ago I followed a debate on the internet about this very issue, in the form of a commentary to an article of a survey which found that 40% of Americans would want to limit the scope of the 1st amendment.
The commentary can be found by clicking here:
It's long, much of it is nonsense (as any discussion on the internet is bound to be to an extent), but especially at the end it gets very interesting. "Demosthenes" seems to argue a point very similar to yours, and just as extremely. If you have the time, I recommend you read through it selectively.
I understood from your message that it's not equality of opportunity that you have a problem with but more the equality in everything. This is also what I believe, but I think the difference lies in what we consider to be equal opportunities. Does everyone get the same education, nutrition and upbringing, or are we just going to protect people's negative rights? I see very vividly the problem of paternalism in my thinking, but there's just something in sentences like: "The great architects of society hand on a silver platter all that the masses need. It all sounds so dreadfully boring..." that just make me shudder. You were even successful in making it sound extremely elitist (which I know wasn't your intention). I can just imagine a British officer in India in the late 19th century, sipping tea and complaining to his colleague: "No uprisings in the last few weeks, no natives to shoot down, it's so dreadfully boring." One man's entertainment is another's suffering. That's how I see your sentence as well: people less fortunate than you ought to suffer, because else you'd be bored. (By the way, I'm glad that I can attack your ideas strongly, knowing that you're the last person to take offence. Anyone else and I would perhaps need to think of a more diplomatic way of making my point.)
The debate boils down to whether one likes a nice average or extremes. The more paternalism there is, the less extremes exist and vice versa. A good "example" of this is the following scenario (a la Brave New World): All children are raised by some kind of an institution, which would take care of them all equally. This would mean that those children today that have loving and committed parents would get a poorer upbringing, but those children (which I would argue far exceed in numbers the fortunate ones) that are abused, ill-treated and ignored would come off better. The price society pays for "saving" unfortunate children is the poorer upbringing of those children that would have had excellent parents.
If the masses are unable or unwilling to make the choice between freedom and well-being, how can anyone argue in favor of either possibility for them? If you say that every individual should have freedom, even if freedom means that some individuals will suffer, you are taking away their freedom to well-being. Like you said yourself: "given the enormous history of the masses who, as Martin Heidegger argues in Being and Time, will, if it is possible "take things easy and make things easy" such a paternalistic world just isn't very attractive." If that's the choice of the masses, who are you to argue against them? Aren't you being paternalistic for saying that you know better than they that freedom is the more valuable?
I realize there isn't a cohesive thread going through this whole message, more like ideas thrown together in one big pile, but I hope you're able to make sense of it and respond. If this was a graded piece of work, I'd certainly refine it a bit :-)
Jani
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Corbett responds a first time:
Jani says:
I understood from your message that it's not equality of opportunity that you have a problem with but more the equality in everything. This is also what I believe, but I think the difference lies in what we consider to be equal opportunities. Does everyone get the same education, nutrition and upbringing, or are we just going to protect people's negative rights?
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Corbett replies in some length:
Again, on my view one has to protect the equality of opportunity, not equality of fact. "the same education, nutrition and upbringing." I read as equality of FACT, not of opportunity. The equality of opportunity would be sure than no one was BARRED from educational opportunity. But, to get the opportunity one must do what is necessary to earn it.
Separate issue, and as you know, Jani, one profoundly important to me. For those not aware, Jani raises the question of negative rights (as opposed to positive rights).
This is an important notion to me in this entire question, perhaps one of the absolutely central. Yet, I am QUITE uncertain about how to think about it.
The general notion is this:
A negative right someone has is for other to NOT do something to them. Classic negative rights would be:
They ask the other to DO nothing, just to NOT DO SOMETHING. They require nothing of the other than to not do.
A positive right claims someone is entitled to something that presumably the other must give them or provide for them.
These would be such things as:
These things, education, health care, food and shelter do not come from nowhere. Someone must provide them to the other.
Negative rights, on the other hand, ask nothing of the other but to REFRAIN from doing something, normally from harming another.
One objection to this distinction has always seemed spurious to me:
Namely that to ensure any such negative rights there must be social (governmental institutions to ensure them. Do not kill me requires a policed force to ensure the right; do not steal my property as well. Do not kill me, harm me or steal my property may require an army in the time of foreign invasion. Thus, says the critic, there are things REQUIRED for us to do, provide these services.
Here again we come into the conflict between actions of individuals and actions of governments. A right is a CALL on ME the person. I am not asking about what governments should or must do, I'm asking about ME; I'm asking about YOU. The negative right calls out for me NOT to do something. The positive right calls out for me to do something.
I don't see any reason why I have any responsibility to any other who is a stranger to me. I don't think that I own them anything. This does not mean that I might not help them. I may well. That would be my free choice and it is a choice I've spent a great deal of time and money acting on. I enjoy helping people and my heart leans toward helping others in need. What I reject is not the notion of helping others, but in regarding it as a DUTY, a moral OBLIGATION. That is what I reject. If I choose to help, wonderful. If I choose not to help, that is my option. I have no duty and the other has no RIGHTS to expect anything from me.
There is an exception to this simple description. I may have harmed the other in the past, and in such cases I may well OWE the other some restitution for my acts. Again, I am not talking about what a government does; I'm talking about what I do. Governments are a very different case. But, if, indeed, I have harmed someone then, yes, I may well have an obligation to them; they may have a RIGHT to call on me to make up for what I have done.
A lot seems to hang on this distinction and I think we might need to talk about my analysis of it and various objections to that analysis.
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Jani continues:
I see very vividly the problem of paternalism in my thinking, but there's just something in sentences like: "The great architects of society hand on a silver platter all that the masses need. It all sounds so dreadfully boring..." that just make me shudder. You were even successful in making it sound extremely elitist (which I know wasn't your intention). I can just imagine a British officer in India in the late 19th century, sipping tea and complaining to his colleague: "No uprisings in the last few weeks, no natives to shoot down, it's so dreadfully boring."
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Corbett responds:
Ah, Jani, you and I may well disagree at this point, but not about what you said above. My sentence mislead you since I didn't use my pronouns well. I was not thinking of the boredom being boredom for the DONORS. Quite the contrary. The paternalists who "DO GOOD" are often very highly motivated, and anything but bored. Their very attempts at doing good -- of paternally stepping in to help needy others -- is quite often a very meaningful notion to them, and a driving force giving them energy and a sense of moral worth. I in no way condemn any of that, at least not in principle. I may object to some of just as you are likely to if the aims are what we might think are misguided. All I want to point out is I would never suspect them of being bored.
Rather, I worry for the RECIPIENT!!! That's whom I worry is bored. I think there are lots of studies of "the poor" as they are called, who develop horrible self images in the face of welfare systems and charity systems when they are mere recipients of the largess of other folks.
One reason to want there to be positive rights would be then they would not receive the "gifts" of others, but what is DUE them. But I can't imagine any decent rational moral arguments for why they deserve these gifts.
So my claim of "boredom" was not about the givers but the receivers. Again, you may still well reject my argument, but at least I'd rather you reject an argument I actually hold than one I don't.
A further item. There are some huge and much higher level assumptions I hold which are relevant here. I see the human species in much the way Darwin did: evolved from other species by a process of accidental change and survival of the most efficient (to live and prosper) changes. Life, on this view, is also quite meaningless. It is just a fact of the evolutionary process and of no particular or discoverable value. Thus it is up to the human person to CREATE value as he or she can do so.
Further, I see humans living in a relatively hostile world, or at least a world with some tremendously hostile forces: storms, earthquakes, micro-organisms which cause disease, bodies which are both astonishing in their durability, and astonishing in their fragility. The human is in danger from a zillion natural forces, certainly the most sure enemy being age (as I am increasingly aware). But, also humans face huge difficulties from other humans and from the social institutions which humans have created for their own purposes.
I don't see any of us "deserving" much of anything in such a world. It does seem to me that when I make choices in the world, those choices have impacts and I am responsible (in fact -- this is not a "moral" responsibility of which I speak here) for those impacts. At the same time, in choosing I create values. I imply, even if I don't yet consciously state, that in choosing this, I not only change the world, but I CHOOSE that change over some other. That is what I think it means to VALUE something. To value for me is not to talk or think, it is to act in the world.
Since I think there are no necessary value choices, it follows that it is not surprising that I don't find any necessity in my "owing" anything to anyone. Since I am a sympathetic person and like people and regret their pain, it is not surprising that even thought I don't OWE people anything, on my view, I might well choose in my freedom to try to help some selected people who are in need.
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Jani continues:
One man's entertainment is another's suffering. That's how I see your sentence as well: people less fortunate than you ought to suffer, because else you'd be bored. (By the way, I'm glad that I can attack your ideas strongly, knowing that you're the last person to take offence. Anyone else and I would perhaps need to think of a more diplomatic way of making my point.)
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Corbett replies:
Oh my, I never mind being attacked. My own position on ideas I present is that I try to say things I've considered and think that I believe them. But, I know I am fallible and have been wrong many many times in my past, expect I will come to recognize some of my current beliefs as mistaken in the future, and can always learn and improve. One of the best ways for this to happen is put my ideas "out there" and hear what others say.
On this one, however, you and I are really not in disagreement as I explained above. I just didn't explain myself clearly.
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Jani continues:
The debate boils down to whether one likes a nice average or extremes. The more paternalism there is, the less extremes exist and vice versa. A good "example" of this is the following scenario (a la Brave New World): All children are raised by some kind of an institution, which would take care of them all equally. This would mean that those children today that have loving and committed parents would get a poorer upbringing, but those children (which I would argue far exceed in numbers the fortunate ones) that are abused, ill-treated and ignored would come off better. The price society pays for "saving" unfortunate children is the poorer upbringing of those children that would have had excellent parents.
If the masses are unable or unwilling to make the choice between freedom and well-being, how can anyone argue in favor of either possibility for them? If you say that every individual should have freedom, even if freedom means that some individuals will suffer, you are taking away their freedom to well-being.
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Corbett replies:
People have freedom, as I see it TO STRIVE. They get what they can get and no right to anything they can't get.
But, on a different point:
Here we may identify a notion I hadn't thought of before where we are in disagreement. You seem to take the "ought" to be universal. The same "ought" for all. I don't. I have to choose my values and the world I'm wanting to live in and affirm. I totally reject the world of universals simply because that is utterly meaningless for me.
I have a paper on my web site where I talk of this. I am in a world of 6 + billion people. There is no reasonable way in the world I can imagine that I can take any honest sense of responsibility for them. I have what I call a "circle of closeness" of people I let into my world (simply by acknowledging them as in it). You are in that circle, but since we don't know each other terribly well, you are more removed from the center than, say, my seven children and eleven grandchildren. I take more or less responsibility for what is in my circle of closeness and much less to no responsibility for what is outside that circle. Not only are humans in my circle of closeness but animals, some things (my bicycle) and even the ecosphere in which we live is important to me, much more important that the entire population of some nations of which I know or care very little. I wish no human, animal, plant or thing HARM. But I don't go out of my way for people, animals, plants and things not within my circle. The circle of my closeness is 100% chosen by me, much of that contact is absolutely ACCIDENTAL.
I happened to meet you because we chanced to be in Vienna at the same time and you happened to take my course last term. Huge accident and coincidence. Otherwise you would be not anywhere in my circle of closeness, and virtually all the other Finns aren't. (I believe you are the only Finnish person I know.)
All that impacts my sense of obligation. Ah, our differences may be getting clearer.
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Jani continues:
Like you said yourself: "given the enormous history of the masses who, as Martin Heidegger argues in Being and Time, will, if it is possible "take things easy and make things easy" such a paternalistic world just isn't very attractive." If that's the choice of the masses, who are you to argue against them? Aren't you being paternalistic for saying that you know better than they that freedom is the more valuable?
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Corbett replies:
By no means. I have no idea of any universal value at all. I create some things as valuable to me. I offer those values to others in discussions like this -- offering them by the use of discussion and what I think is reason. I try whenever possible not to force values on others, but I am willing to force BEHAVIOR on others. I would physically resist a person wishing to harm me or mine and wouldn't even mind killing in the name of that defense if I had to.
But, I don't believe my values are superior to others. They are mine; I like them very very much, I think there are persuasive reasons for others to accept them and like to have the chance to offer those arguments to others. On the other hand, I am unsure of many things and downright puzzled by others and thus, in turn, I like to hear the value augments of others so that I can compare them with my own considerations to see if I continue to prefer mine after the attacks of others on my views, and the positive development of their own positions which I consider in seriousness.
I am in fact in a constant state of change and things I have valued at one point in my life I no longer value. It is a shifting and changing world of value.
One of the things I've always wanted to really show from textual evidence is that Heidegger's theory of authenticity and non-authenticity is not a VALUE position, but a FACTUAL one. Some of you on this list who've studied existentialism with me in the classroom have heard me make this argument, but I've never written it all up and with the care it needs, and, to the best of my knowledge, neither has an Heideggerian scholar. I still dream of doing that work before I give up doing philosophy -- which probably means before I die since I imagine the two mean he same thing.
Bob Corbett
Jani responds a second time and Corbett grants his argument and backs away from one of his own.
Jani writes:
I don't think there was a confusion on who's boredom we were talking about, and my example probably put you off. I was also talking about the recipient's boredom. Or maybe I wasn't. I don't know. In any case, here's another (or the same) point: If given the choice of living in hunger (and I'm talking about real malnutrition here) or living in boredom, I'd choose boredom. I think most people would agree. Even if it's boring to not struggle to get your food, it's better than struggling and not getting any food, which is the case for many people today. Whether that's because of historical wrongs or not takes us into a whole different topic.
My opinion on boredom/struggle is as follows. I agree that a utopian world where everyone could live without a care would be much more boring than our current world. But I don't see this boredom as the ultimate evil. In my utopia, people could choose to struggle and not live in comfortable boredom (much like you have done, I suppose). But they would have the choice between a materialistically comfortable life and a life with more struggle and more meaning perhaps. A vast majority of the world's population does not have that choice today, they are thrusted into a position where they must struggle for survival, often not succeeding.
Brave New World somewhat resembles this system. Those people that do not agree with the system are hauled to an island where they can live with all the problems that the society has solved for them. You and I would probably meet on that island, while most people would prefer to live in comfort, as is the case today with those people that do have the choice. Once again, the difference is that most people today don't have that choice. Whether that's a sad fact of life or something that should be corrected is the dispute. You agree that historic wrongs should be retributed, so if one could show that most of today's harm is caused by past wrongs you would agree that it needs to be corrected (working on the governmental level here).
Jani
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NOTE: The above is not Jani's full second response. But, Corbett responds explicitly to these paragraphs, granting this argument. First Corbett's short response, then the rest of Jani's second reply.
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Corbett replies:
I think he is correct that the "boredom" claim was ill conceived and isn't a reasonable position. I back away from it and say: thanks. I needed that correction.
I think he is right that when the struggle for the basics is so hard, you just have to live the struggle. It may be exhausting, frustrating, demoralizing and lots of other things, but boring it isn't. I was simply wrong about that.
It is at a very different level of struggle where there is what I would worry about as a structural situation in providing for others which takes away too much responsibility from them for their own well being, which MAY lead to boredom, but may not. But not at the harshest levels.
The whole notion, however, isn't worth pursuing. It requires a notion of what is the internal state of others and we simply can't get that data in a reliable enough fashion to make that line of inquiry worthwhile.
Thus, I just want to back away from the claim altogether and say: it was misconceived.
Thanks Jani, I like the corrective. Avoiding bad arguments helps make others ones stronger by association!
Bob Corbett
======================
Jani's second reply continues:
I find your idea that life has no objective reason / meaning fascinating. True, that is the conclusion you have to come to if you accept macroevolution in its extreme (I'm not so sure about that, too little we know about it). And nihilism would be the "easy way out" from such an idea. To be able to construct meaning to something that doesn't inherently have any is difficult but admirable. I can see now where your objection to human rights in general comes from, although I'm not sure how this corresponds with "our relationship with animals." But those are both topics of another few years' worth of debate, let's stick with the issue at hand. I find your idea that life has no objective reason / meaning fascinating. True, that is the conclusion you have to come to if you accept macroevolution in its extreme (I'm not so sure about that, too little we know about it). And nihilism would be the "easy way out" from such an idea. To be able to construct meaning to something that doesn't inherently have any is difficult but admirable. I can see now where your objection to human rights in general comes from, although I'm not sure how this corresponds with "our relationship with animals." But those are both topics of another few years' worth of debate, let's stick with the issue at hand.
If life has meaning only to the extent that we ourselves give it such, then I agree that we really only need to think about the people / things we are in contact with, the circle of closeness. Here I'd try a different avenue of reasoning, though. In this circle of closeness, you will have your family no matter what. Even if you don't have anything in common with your brother, he's still going to be your brother and you're going to have to care about him one way or another. If life is a freak of nature and humans one outcome out of an infinite, then - in a universal picture - I think we're all close enough to matter. That sounds silly - "we're all brothers" - but I hope the argument is worth a thought. You mentioned the ecosystem as one of the things that you need to worry about. Well, we're all part of that ecosystem, and doing anything will affect others somehow (the famous butterfly in Sahara). I see the planet as such a small place that we need to think about others beyond our circle of closeness. 6 billion as a figure is too much to comprehend, but 1 planet is simple enough.
This would be the place to jump again to the governmental level, as an individual can do little for all the others. Much as it has been accepted that governments can and should take care of nations, the same thing could be held applicable to the entire world. Citizenship is the last form of feudalism, giving other people benefits by birth which others are not entitled to. How's that different from a caste system?
People obviously tend to float towards their favorite topics in discussion, as I have done here and Sigrid in her message. By the way, I found her message hugely interesting, agree with it and look forward to what Bob has to say to it. I'm in the same situation with her, "work in progress", which means I'll be stating other people's ideas without knowing it myself. If you notice that, I'd appreciate it if someone said "That's exactly what Smith / Schmidt / someone argued in his work '...' " Thanks.
Jani
Bob Corbett corbetre@webster.edu
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