Aaron Ross Powell's Blog, page 17

The Incoherence of Denying Thick Libertarianism

If political philosophy is a branch of moral philosophy (and it is), then to have a political philosophy assumes having–even if only in an inchoate form–a moral philosophy.

If that’s true, then the claim (and it’s a rather common one) that libertarians should only concern themselves with permissible state action and take no stand on relationships and power structures outside of the state’s control is, I fear, rather incoherent. Because being a “thin libertarian”–as this view is called, in opposition to “thick libertarianism”–means (1) having a moral theory justifying your libertarianism but (2) believing that moral theory doesn’t also have something to say about relationships and behaviors outside of (the proper sphere of) politics.

Put another way, anyone who claims to be a libertarian (or claims any other political philosophy, for that matter) is a libertarian because she holds certain moral views about how people should–or are permitted to–interact with each other. Views such as, “Initiating aggression is always wrong” or “People have equal moral worth, and so should be treated equally or given equal say.”

Those moral beliefs then lead the libertarian to hold certain political beliefs about the legitimate role of the state–or, for some, beliefs about the state’s inherent illigitimacy. But if those moral beliefs are strong enough to motivate a political philosophy, they also must be strong enough to lead to conclusions about human interaction outside of the political sphere.

This means that anyone who is libertarian because of foundational moral beliefs (which is most of us who have thought deeply about our political views), must be a thick libertarian–even though they (likely) believe that the state should not enforce many (or most) of the conclusions their moral philosophy leads to. Because the very nature of a moral belief is that, if we believe something to be a moral truth, then we believe people ought to follow it. And if we believe people ought to do something, then we ought to want them to follow it. Or, at least, think the world would be better if they did follow it.

Of course, just because two different moral philosophies may both lead to libertarianism, it doesn’t follow that their non-political views (the “thick” part of their “thick libertarianism”) will be identical, or even compatible. That’s okay! But that pluralism should not lead us to think that libertarians should remain silent about moral questions outside of the (proper) realm of politics.

Hockey, Violence, and Sportsmanship

I don’t like hockey. That’s because, of the popular sports, it’s the only one that discourages sportsmanship.

We all know what sportsmanship is, because it’s so bound up in the culture of sports. Play fair, don’t cheat, respect your opponents, and respect the game.

Hockey doesn’t encourage this sort of virtuous behavior. Instead, it encourages its players to stop the game and punch each other in the face.

Here hockey fans typically respond that, “Fighting’s part of the game.”

If “part of the game” means only that fighting’s something common to hockey games, then fighting surely is part of hockey. But this sense of “part of the game” doesn’t lead to the conclusion that fighting ought to be encouraged or even tolerated. So something can be part of the game even if we believe that the game would be better if it weren’t. Concussions are common to football, but football would be (unquestionably) a better game without them. Personal fouls are common to basketball, but nobody thinks basketball would be worse if everyone played a clean game.

The other way of looking at “part of the game” is to claim that fighting plays a key role in what it means for a game to be hockey. Remove fighting and you’re still playing something, but not ice hockey. Clearly this is the case for a sport like boxing. But hockey games get played all the time without fighting. We don’t cheer when elementary school kids pummel each other on the ice.

I think hockey fans generally use “part of the game” to mean both “something common to” and “something essential to” the game of hockey. It’s “common to” hockey when they’re telling people like me that it shouldn’t be a knock against the virtuousness of hockey as a sport. But when they think about fighting themselves, when they talk about it with other hockey fans, when they turn on the TV hoping to see a good fight, they mean “essential to.” Hockey fans want fighting, or else the NHL would suspend players–like every other major sport does–instead of merely telling them to sit out for a couple of minutes. And it’s difficult to reconcile that with sportsmanship.

We teach our kids this important virtue. We should demand the same of our professional athletes. Every sport struggles with this, but every sport holds it up as a worthy goal.

Except hockey.

The Incredible Shrinking Doctor Who

Doctor Who feels small, and it’s Steven Moffat’s fault. The man who’s written some of the show’s best episodes is, as show runner, stripping the doctor and his universe of wonder.

Moffat’s mistake is in giving the Doctor too many connections. He runs into the same characters over and over, and so many people new he encounters already know of him. Moffat’s building the Doctor into a universal myth, but that means making the universe small enough to be evenly infused with his legend.

The result is a fettered Doctor in a universe that feels discovered and so without the wonder of discovery so central to the show. Episodes hinge on choices the Doctor can’t avoid instead of choices he gets to make.

Moffat needs to give the character room to breathe and then room to explore. He needs to abandon his desire for season-long plots and countless recurring secondary characters. He needs to make the show about to Doctor and his adventures.

He needs to make the Doctor big again.

My new video on what libertarians mean by “the free market”

The Appeal to Popularity

I’ve got nothing against Guy Fieri. But a lot of people do.

Anyway, in a post over at Breitbart, Lisa De Pasquale defends Fieri against all critics. This portion of her plea jumped out at me:

Maybe Fieri’s critics are right.  As such, my main defense for Fieri is… So what?  America likes him.  Is that what makes his critics so angry?  They’re like the nerds in high school who put down the popular jocks’ accomplishments.  Fieri’s biggest crime is his mainstream success.

Call it the appeal to popularity. “Fieri’s food can’t be terrible. Just look at how many people like it.” You hear this sort of thing all the time, of course, but no one actually believes it.

In fact, the only time you hear the appeal to popularity is when the person making the appeal agrees with popular opinion. Nobody ever says, “My opinion must be wrong because it’s out of step with the mainstream.”

And that’s because all of us recognize that popular taste isn’t always good taste. What’s liked isn’t necessarily what’s best. And so critics–whose job it is to distinguish bad from good from best–will frequently criticize the tastes of the majority. And sometimes get angry with the majority for having such bad taste.

So I submit that every damn time you see the appeal to popularity, it’s at least at some level disingenuous. Which means we should just stop using it.

Understanding Our Own Positions Requires Understanding Those of Others

I’m writing a piece for Libertarianism.org on clarity of thought. One of my chief goals with the site is to help libertarians better understand–and thus be better able to communicate–their moral and political beliefs. One of the things I stress is the crucial need to know–and understand–the best arguments against libertarianism.

Today, while reading John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, I came across this passage, which makes the same point far better than I ever could:

The greatest orator, save one, of antiquity, has left it on record that he always studied his adversary’s case with as great, if not with still greater, intensity than even his own. What Cicero practiced as the means of forensic success, requires to be imitated by all who study any subject in order to arrive at the truth. He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion. The rational position for him would be suspension of judgment, and unless he contents himself with that, he is either led by authority, or adopts, like the generality of the world, the side to which he feels most inclination. Nor is it enough that he should hear the arguments of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. That is not the way to do justice to the arguments, or bring them into real contact with his own mind. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them. He must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form; he must feel the whole force of the difficulty which the true view of the subject has to encounter and dispose of; else he will never really possess himself of the portion of truth which meets and removes that difficulty. Ninety-nine in a hundred of what are called educated men are in this condition; even of those who can argue fluently for their opinions. Their conclusion may be true, but it might be false for anything they know: they have never thrown themselves into the mental position of those who think differently from them, and considered what such persons may have to say; and consequently they do not, in any proper sense of the word, know the doctrine which they themselves profess. They do not know those parts of it which explain and justify the remainder; the considerations which show that a fact which seemingly conflicts with another is reconcilable with it, or that, of two apparently strong reasons, one and not the other ought to be preferred. All that part of the truth which turns the scale, and decides the judgment of a completely informed mind, they are strangers to; nor is it ever really known, but to those who have attended equally and impartially to both sides, and endeavoured to see the reasons of both in the strongest light. So essential is this discipline to a real understanding of moral and human subjects, that if opponents of all important truths do not exist, it is indispensable to imagine them, and supply them with the strongest arguments which the most skilful devil’s advocate can conjure up.

On the Use of Science and the Use of Philosophy

I came across this passage in Mortimer J. Adler’s wonderful little book, Aristotle for Everybody, and I rather liked it.

Is philosophy totally useless, then, as compared with science? Yes, it is, if we confine ourselves to the use of knowledge or understanding for the sake of producing things. Philosophy bakes no cakes and builds no bridges.

But there is a use of knowledge or understanding other than the use we put it to when we engage in the production of things. Knowledge and understanding can be used to direct our lives and manage our societies so that they are better rather than worse lives and better rather than worse societies.

That is a practical rather than a productive use of knowledge and understanding–a use for the sake of doing rather than a use for the sake of making.

In that dimension of human life, philosophy is highly useful–more useful than science.

This is why I get sad when I hear talk of focusing education so heavily on STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, math). No doubt important, STEM still lacks what’s so valuable about the humanities. Philosophy and literature don’t just teach us knowledge. They also make us better people.

The Discovery Institute Affirms the Consequent

Is intelligent design science? Scientists think not, but the Discovery Institute’s Casey Luskin disagrees. In a post at the Evolution News and Views blog (reprinted in the Winter 2012 edition of the Discovery Institute’s “The Viewpoint” newsletter), Luskin argues that intelligent design is science

because it uses the scientific method to make its claims. The scientific method is commonly described as a four-step process involving observations, hypothesis, experiments, and conclusion.

I found Luskin’s a fascinating piece because–seemingly unaware of what he’s doing–he defends intelligent design’s status as science by showing that intelligent design is also a logical fallacy. Specifically, it’s a textbook case of affirming the consequent.

Luskin starts by noting the basic observations intelligent design is built upon.

ID begins with observations that intelligent agents produce complex and specified information (CSI). (An event is complex if it is unlikely, and specified if it matches some independent pattern.)

For the sake of clarity, instead of referring to “complex and specified information,” I’m just going to call them “complex creations.”

So, from Luskin’s first point, we can observe that intelligent designers create complex creations. Thus, if we have intelligent designers, we’ll see complex creations. Which sounds right to me.

To keep things simple, let’s give “intelligent designers” the label P. And lets give “complex creations” the label Q.

Thus the first premise of Luskin argument takes the form of “If P, then Q.” (If there are intelligent designers, then there will be complex creations.)

Fair enough. Next, Luskin shows how we can test whether life shows characteristics of a complex creation.

Experiment: Scientists then perform experimental tests upon natural objects to determine if they contain complex and specified information. One easily testable form of CSI is irreducible complexity, which can be tested and discovered by experimentally reverse-engineering biological structures through genetic knockout experiments to determine if they require all of their parts to function. Mutational sensitivity tests can also be used to identify high CSI in proteins and other biological structures.

Conclusion: When experimental work uncovers irreducible complexity, or high CSI in biology, researchers conclude that such structures were designed.

So life is a complex creation. This means life is Q. Again, fair enough. Life certainly is complex. And even the believer in evolution can safely think of life as a “creation” if he’s willing to say that evolution created life.

But here’s where Luskin gets into trouble. His next move is to use the existence of Q (complex creation) as proof of the existence of P (an intelligent designer). We know that intelligent designers create complex creations. Therefore, Luskin argues, if we find that life is a complex creation, we can know that life had an intelligent designer.

Put in our P and Q structure, Luskin’s argument looks like this:

If P, then Q.
Q.
Therefore, P.

Which is, like I said above, the textbook form of the fallacy of affirming the consequent. Just because we know that P inevitably leads to Q does not mean we know that the presence of Q entails there must be a P. It’s entirely possible that things other than P lead to Q.

If it’s raining outside, my windows will be wet. But seeing that my windows are wet does not necessarily mean it’s rain. Instead, I could have left the sprinkler on, or a neighborhood kid could’ve sprayed the windows with the hose.

What’s particularly interesting is that Luskin (perhaps unconsciously) tries to get out of this by making an even weirder move. He has to do away with the non-rain explanations for why the windows are wet. So he writes that, “in our experience, intelligence is the only known cause of [complex creations].”

Luskin’s saying, as did William Paley in his famous watchmaker argument, that every time we’ve seen complex creations in the past, there’s been a designer. We see a complex watch, we know there’s a watchmaker. So if we see complex life, we can assume there must be a designer.

Except, of course, complex life might very well be–and probably is–evidence of complexity without a designer. Luskin’s assuming the truth of his hypothesis (complexity means designer) prior to evaluating the evidence for or against the hypothesis.

So, to summarize, here’s the argument Luskin thinks proves intelligent design’s status as science:

I observe that complex creations have intelligent designers.
From this I hypothesize that any complex creation I find has an intelligent designer.
I go out in the world and find evidence that life is a complex creation.
From this I conclude–though remaining open to refutation–that life has an intelligent designer.
I remain open to refutation because, of course, I may be presented with evidence of complex creations that lack an intelligent designer. I just haven’t seen any such evidence yet.

To which the scientist replies, “But Luskin, you’re surrounded by evidence of complex creations lacking a designer. In fact, you, Casey Luskin, are yourself evidence of a complex creation without a designer.”

Luskin’s response? “But, Mr. Scientist, life can’t be evidence of an undesigned complex creation. Because complex creations require an intelligent designer.”

In other words, Luskin claims his initial observation is true because it’s true, and any evidence to the contrary isn’t really evidence to the contrary because his initial observation is true.

Which doesn’t sound much like science to me.

Exiled: Chapter 1

This is it. My new serial novel. My plan is to post new chapters as I write them, because it worked well with my first novel in getting me to actually write on a regular basis and finish the thing. I hope you’ll read along and let me know what you think as we go. And please remember, you’re reading this as I write it. Which means don’t expect it to be perfect. I’ll do my best to make it great, but if you notice something wrong, or have suggestions on how it might be better, please post away in the comments. Thanks! And enjoy!

Talia blinked into the harsh sun as it dried the sweat on her arms. Behind her the men rolled the bolder back into place, cutting her off from her home, her friends, her family. Talia felt tears but pushed them away, knowing that now, more than any other time in her life, she had to be brave.

She stood in a small canyon. Overhead the sky shone grey-green and cloudless, while to her left and right black sandstone walls rose thirty feet, their tops capped by low, dry vegetation. The canyon continued in front of her for a hundred yards more before its gentle turn took it out of sight.

And behind her… Talia looked back as the bolder thudded into place, a huge grey bump now, filling the tunnel through which she’d come, carrying only a small pack of supplies and the memories of the hateful glares of everyone she’d loved. That tunnel was the only way back into the catacombs and then to the valley that had been her people’s sanctuary for a thousand generations, ever since their Makers had sheltered them there against the War.

Talia began walking. It would only grow hotter, she knew, and she needed to find water and shade. That much advice the old ones been willing to give her in their plodding, methodical way. Even now Talia felt sorry for them, sorry that they couldn’t see her gift for what it was.

“Why are they so stupid?” she asked the rocks beneath her feet. Their response came as an echo of her frightened voice.

The dust and rocks of the canyon’s floor felt slippery under her feet,  quickly disavowing her of any notion of climbing out of here. Which meant walking as far as need be, hoping to either find a passable way up or an end to this long gauge in the earth.

Talia wouldn’t die. That’s what they wanted when they sent her out here, even though they denied it. “You live,” her mother had said. “Talia live well. Happy. Out there.” And her mother hugged her then and took her hand as they walked out of their sanctuary.

Her mother banished her from the only home Talia had ever known.

The only home anyone had ever known. Her people told legends of the time before they’d fled at the Makers’ urging in to the tunnels and caverns—and discovered their sanctuary. They told stories of a great civilization of gods, reaching around the world, conquering even the mountains and the seas.

But that’s all they were: legends. Talia had no reason to think her people had ever lived on the open plains or in the forests, outside of the confines of the sanctuary’s valleys. Everyone knew what was out there, the horrors, the awful creatures and the scourging weather of the War. The boogymen and the monsters.

Now Talia Alura would face all of it. Alone.

* * *

The old ones made their decision to banish her three days before. Talia’d been born different. Her people moved slowly through the world, their minds turning over new facts like the rock they’d rolled to block her path. They turned these facts into new ideas with the utmost caution—and at a snail’s pace.

At least, that’s how it felt to Talia. Her mind worked faster, jumping with alacrity from concept to analysis, processing the world at a clip impossible for her parents and indeed for everyone she knew.

Not that Talia was the first. Others had come before and, like her, they’d found themselves outside the sanctuary on the morning of their thirteenth birthdays. Talia’d known it was coming but still felt overwhelmed with fear and guilt when the old made their decision. Nobody knew what had happened to the others sent out into the world beyond. None had tried to return—or they died before making the effort.

Talia’s parents, wrapped in their thick blankets on the cold morning of her birthday, had stared dully at her, mouthing the same word over and over again, the same word as everyone else who accompanied her to the passage: “Out.”

Before they’d come for her, Talia hd filled her sack with hard bread and dried meat. She took a knife, a second pair of shoes, and three empty water skins to compliment the one full one they’d give her as part of the ritual of banishment. She stuffed in a quilt—the only sentimental item she bothered with, a gift from her grandmother—and then cinched the pack closed with a strip of leather.

Now that was all she had to keep herself alive, out here.

* * *

Talia strained for the handhold. She felt her feet slipping, but managed to grab the ledge before the leather of her shoes lost its purchase.

Talia had walked for over two hours before finding this climbing spot. The sun had risen higher until she guessed it now had to be close to noon. During that time, the canyon walls had grown sometimes closer together, sometimes further apart, but never less steep. She’d drank nearly all the water she’d brought, knowing as she did that it was stupid, that she might not find a new source anytime soon. But it comforted her, drinking the cool water. It made her feel, for just a moment, like she was back in the sanctuary, and not lost in the wilderness.

Then she came upon a spot where the cliff face looked as if it at one time featured a waterfall, the rock scored in a deep and wavy groove. It wasn’t enough to make climbing easy, but it did give her something to grab hold of.

She’d now made it half way up, wedging into the crack and squeezing out with her legs, pinning herself in place. She inched further, ascending slowly but without too much difficulty.

When Talia had nearly reached the top, she glanced down. And froze. Something moved down there, near the canyon’s floor. She squinted. A shape—just a shadow—slithered along the rock. Talia glanced around, trying to discover its source, but saw nothing. Just the black rocks of the canyon stretching in both directions, and the green, cloudless sky above.

The shadow twisted and seethed, like oil on a puddle, moving along the wall’s contours, too big to be cast by a person. Talia began desperately to climb again. Whatever it was, she couldn’t let it find her. It felt wrong. Malignant. Unnatural.

She scrambled and twice almost fell, but then she was at the top, pulling herself over the edge and onto the dirt above. She rolled onto her back, let her hands fall to her chest, and closed her eyes, panting. She’d made it.

Some time later, Talia sat up and opened her eyes. She was on a vast plain, stretching in all directions, marred by the deep scare of the canyon, which continued cutting its way through the land until it disappeared over the horizon. Talia was relieved she’d climbed out when she did. If she’d stayed down there, waiting for it to end, she’d have died of thirst.

The plains were not empty. All around her, as far as she could see, rose twisted and grim rock formations, like enormous broken hands clawing out of the earth. Around these she saw what must have been trees, though they looked more like patches of rose crystal covered in moss. In the distance, she could see herds of animals wandering, though she couldn’t make out much more than rough shapes. They appeared slow, however, and for the moment at least, unthreatening.

Beyond them, huge, blocking a great swath of the sky, loomed the corpse of a monster. Talia stared at it, making out great bones bigger than the tallest of the rocks, each covered in enormous scales, shining and metallic, the same color as the sky but a shade darker. It must be hundreds of feet tall, Talia thought. Or more. Was that one of the horrible beasts of War the legends spoke of? She hoped so, because the legends also said all of them had died in the conflict. Whatever that thing was, Talia wanted nothing more than to never encounter one still alive.

Talia got to her feet, brushed dust and sand from her pants and shirt, and checked her supplies. Everything seemed in place. She patted the knife at her waist and began walking, following the canyon.

Little changed by the time she’d grown hungry enough to stop and eat. She dug out one of the strips of meat and chewed it, forcing herself to wash it down with only a few sips from her water skin.

It wasn’t long beyond that, though, that she found what she was looking for. A narrow stream bed ran parallel to the canyon, ending at the cliff. When she got close, she found a small trickle of water running its length, no more than a hand’s width across and only as deep as the length of her thumb. But it was enough. She cried out in excitement and pulled all the skins from her pack. This stream gave her something new to follow.

She was filling the last of the skins when she heard the snap of dry twigs behind her and then the awful screaming howl. Talia spun, fumbling for her knife.

A proto-“Politics Makes Us Worse”

Politics does awful, awful things to us–and anyone seeking virtue ought to avoid politics to the greatest extent possible. That’s the thesis my colleague Trevor Burrus and I developed in our short essay, “Politics Makes Us Worse.” And it’s a thesis found in this wonderful passage from Auberon Herbert’s 1908 essay, “Mr. Spencer and the Great Machine.”

We all know that the course which our politicians of both parties will take, even in the near future, the wisest man cannot foresee. We all know that it will probably be a zigzag course; that it will have “sharp curves,” that it may be in self-evident contradiction to its own past; that although there are many honorable and high-minded men in both parties, the interest of the party, as a party, ever tends to be the supreme influence, overriding the scruples of the truer-judging, the wiser and more careful. Why must it be so, as things are today? Because this conflict for power over each other is altogether different in its nature to all other—more or less useful and stimulating—conflicts in which we engage in daily life. As soon as we place unlimited power in the hands of those who govern, the conflict which decides who is to possess the absolute sovereignty over us involves our deepest interests, involves all our rights over ourselves, all our relations to each other, all that we most deeply cherish, all that we have, all that we are in ourselves. It is a conflict of such supreme fateful importance, as we shall presently see in more detail, that once engaged in it we must win, whatever the cost; and we can hardly suffer anything, however great or good in itself, to stand between us and victory. In that conflict affecting all the supreme issues of life, neither you nor I, if we are on different sides, can afford to be beaten.

There is little noble about politics. No matter how grand you think your favored politician is, chances are he’s engaged in exactly what Herbert describes.