Tyler ’s Comments (group member since May 09, 2008)

Tyler ’s comments from the Philosophy group.

Hi Everyman --

The state could conceivably require some doctor to be present at an execution if the taking of life is an explict part of the agreement by which doctors are licensed. But this just throws more light on the morality of the death penalty, and we'd be more likely to see the death penalty ended than for that requirement to be enforced.


That, of course, begs the question what is the public good and who decides what it is.

I agree. But that in itself doesn't make the concept of the public good immoral.

Hi Bill --

You seem to think that licencing power is an expression of complete right of the Government to completely control all commercial activity.

What is it in fact? Precisely that, by definition of the activity as commercial in nature. No government doesn't regulate such activity somehow. Whether it should be an inalienable right is a different question, and presumes a social contract of some sort. The question is whether rational agents in a "state of nature" would agree that this secures equal liberty. I don't think they would. Of course, equal liberty may not be what you're aiming for in establishing founding principles. But if that's the case, you have to sell people in a "state of nature" on some concept of inequality.


This the totalitarianism, in act and spirit, which comes of always giving 'the public good' priority.

The public good is a neutral concept that cannot be defined as totalitarianism or anything else on the bare definition of it. My point is that this concept is the only means by which individuals can be protected from the predations of others, and the only means by which the idea of a society would make sense to persons in a hypothetical state of nature.

If we hold the idea that all men are created equal as realistic, each person must have equal liberty. No private association can uphold this principle, and if you have any ideas along that line, I'd like to hear them. Thus, a notion of the public good is the only guarantee we have of our individual freedoms.

Hi Everyman --

Question: What principle of morality to you bring to this situation, and under that principle, do you believe that the state does or does not have the right to require these pharmacists as a condition of working in their chosen profession to violate their deep moral belief that to prescribe this drug is an act of killing an innocent child?

The principle that there exists a public good is what has priority. Not just anyone can become a pharmacist. The state decides the licensing requirements. In its capacity, it acts for the public benefit and cannot morally act otherwise. That means that if the drug is legal and legally prescribed, it must be dispensed impartially.

I have little sympathy for such pharmacists. If we had doctors who acted as they did, many patients would face dangerous denials of service. As a citizen with equal rights, I would expect the state to act on everyone's behalf to protect us from the harassment implicit in trying to locate a professional whose personal beliefs aligned with our own. In other words, I expect the state to act for the public good.

It would, however, be acceptable for the pharmacist to withhold the drug so long as anybody could sell it.

Hi Bill --

What is the practical relevance of the question since 'the rest of us' have been a significant minority for the last 2500 years with little more consensus then the emotive and intuitive moralizers?

The question is irrelevant if you don't think political theory matters or can be implemented. But political conditions, whatever their current state, are noticeably better than they were in the past, and it seems unlikely that "the rest of us" have had no hand in improving them.


Politicians are pragmatists because thats the only way to agree on policy.

If this is the case, and if pragmatism means dispensing with principles as a matter of principles, then the scope of action politicians have must be restricted. A contractarian theory would do that. But I don't think even politicians act on purely pragmatic grounds in all cases.

Well, there has been cases where philosophical agreement became necessary. Which is pretty much a critical component of totalitarianism, isn't it?

I don't agree. The worst totalitarian regimes have resulted from one-man rule. Philosophical principles, whichever they were, made no difference; if they hadn't been compromised, the political entity wouldn't have taken on a totalitarian character.

Hi Aaron --

An important point your post makes is that morality cannot be objectively grounded in the scientific sense. Scientific truth means correspondence to reality, an ontological standard. But facts of human interaction can also be true epistemologically, such as when we designate a piece of paper money, or a rule of addition to mean two plus two equals four. The good, then, although it makes no ontological sense, can be evaluated using epistemological standards of truth.

Rather more tenuously, it's possible to talk about moral truths so long as the starting point, or justification, of the moral theory is designated. But, as you mention, moving from a subjective hunch to something objective is a problem. Doing so would require a non-moral justification or an explicit mutual agreement to treat a grounding principle as an objective one. A subjective opinion about human norms must appeal to some epistemological standard to be rational and understood. In any case, an emotivist or intuitionist conception of morality makes pragmatism necessary to mediate among preferences. Politics and politicians today are all about pragmatism. The question is whether it takes the rest of us where we want to go.


Egoism is an attempt by every person to enjoy this world as best as possible by responding to whatever it is that pleases them best and minimizing that which will hurt them. Would an objective morality aim at something different and if so, why would it be superior?

An objective morality may or may not be different, depending on whether it recognizes human life as its grounding value, and specifically the lives of individuals. If social contract theory has any explanatory power, we ought to be able to look at any existing system and determine whether it is based on self-interest or something else. The question is that in the hypothetical state of nature, what would people actually agree to to form a society? That is, what principles would best protect their incipient rights? The answer depends on the degree of objectivity with which people reason. If people argued their way toward a social contract from pure subjectivity, no agreement would ever be reached.

Man’s overall nature is relevant to a social contract. If historians, economists, anthropologists and other social scientists don’t agree on every point, it seems reasonable that they can at least tell us what not to do. Whatever facts they can adduce must have an (epistemologically) objective basis. The objectivity of the social sciences is debatable, but it cannot be ruled out. Even so, that’s part of what makes moral reasoning one of the most difficult endeavors in philosophy. For politics, the question is what we would accept as a rational justification for social and legal actions. However that’s decided, I agree that contract theory is a mental tool that cannot be used to radically reform society. All the same, the efficacy and the ease with which various theories can be applied in concrete situations is relevant to evaluating those theories.

Here are a couple of links to the books you mentioned, Law and Social Normsand Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance. The synopses are pretty interesting.

Hi Robert --

It's post 9, in response to post 8.

The question is Marx's general view that society shapes personality. He seem to imply that individuals have little or no say in how their personalities develop. But if that's the case, where did the social forces and ideas to which we're subject come from?

Hi Lisa

So, without liberalism, you could not have liberals? Hmmm.

Yes, this is how I understand Marx, and of course I may be misinterpreting him. For if society conditions an individual with this degree of cause and effect, the paradox you point out is compelling. Where, indeed, would liberalism come from in the first place?

What quote? I hope it's a good one.

Hi Robert --

I see your point about the use people make of the term "morality." Another problem that comes up is whether we should call certain acts "evil" rather than "bad." I feel a little more comfortable with those terms. I think religious points of view are more explicit when an idea is written, but in conversation it is often really hard to figure out what the root of the other person's outlook comes down to.

What I was arguing for as societal prudence is actually an umbrella term, in the way I was using it, for ethical constructs like utilitarianism, justice, etc.

Now that I think of it, I believe prudence plays an important role in pragmatism. If I've got this correct, emotivist and intuitionist accounts (I'm not attributing those to you personally) of moral reasoning often rely on pragmatism.

Language and terminology are interesting in philosophy. In the books I've read, each philosopher seems to have his own particular word for a generally understood concept. I wish there were some way to codify philosophical terminology.

Hi Bill --

What if a physically healthy person wants to commit suicide in as comfortable a way as possible. What, under your criteria for government intervention, would prevent an industry from growing up which would provide assistance to such people?

Because I regard suicide an absolute right, no health care system, public or private, can abridge the freedom to do it.

Robert wrote: Now the general point: if there is no prudence argument, does the government have a moral basis for protecting us from ourselves?

The government does have that basis if it is grounded in an adequate conception of justice.

We have to distinguish what we might do for ourselves (an ethical problem) from what rights and duties we have in society.

The idea that morality is largely a matter of belief sounds like emotivism or intuitionism. There are other moral systems, however, that do attempt to ground morality objectively. Kant tried to do that; egalitarianism and utilitarianism, as well as some forms of libertarianism, also profess an objective basis.

Consider the consequences of the idea that morality is a matter of subjective belief. If society, or the government in particular, cannot ground its reasons for acting in something objective, then governance becomes a matter of subjective preference, as it in some cases is. Would we be happy with that?

The problem is that if a moral vacuum results from emotivist and intuitionist ideas, that vacuum will be filled somehow anyway. In the absence of a moral system, the moral psychology of the situation suggests that the most intimidating or the most cunning among us will be the ones making the rules. That would turn the basis of government into an expression of egoism, not morality.

One of the problems is that while we're talking about what the government or society must do for us or must not do to us, we're losing sight of what duties we might owe in return. That points to the question of whether there is any implicit "social contract" in the way society is structured.

Many of the arguments put forth about social policies are made from a subjective point of view. I don't think this is proper. Such arguments ought to be made without reference to one's own personal circumstances if they are to be counted as moral arguments.

A basic question that might be helpful is why humans even live in societies in the first place.

Hi Everyman --

Once every citizen is required to carry health insurance which will pay for any additional costs of injuries which may be incurred by lack of seat belt use, doesn't the prudence argument diminish significantly or even disappear, and the issue then become purely moral?

Yes, I think so. Once prudence no longer offers a reason, morality again becomes the only basis on which the government can act. In fact, where it comes to government actions, even laws created out of prudence must eventually have some moral justification.

So what we're asking is what moral basis the government has in the first place to limit our freedom. Here there may be disagreement, because what's in play is where a government gets its authority from in the first place. People will disagree about the answer, but whatever it is, each interpretation has different implications for what a "government mandate" properly entails.

Looking at the source of government authority will help show whether particular restrictions on freedom are just or unjust.

Conspiracy theories of any stripe have two problems to overcome. First is that the rule of "Argument to the best explanation" requires accepting the simpler of two accounts unless strong evidence indicates that a more complex one is the true one. Conspiracy theories are by nature rather complex.

The second concerns the people who advocate those theories. The first question to those people has to be, "What would you accept as evidence that your theory is wrong?" If no evidence will convince them they are mistaken, what they are engaged in is not a discussion. Fans of such theories typically will accept nothing as disproof. From a philosophical angle, this is a fatal error.

Hi Everyman --

But many societal constraints arise largely from convenience, or from the ability of those in power to impose their will ...

Some societal restrictions stem from prudence, and it's hard to argue that such a restriction rises to the level of being a moral one.

If arbitrary power devolves to a single dictator, such as with Stalin, Hitler, or Mugabe, that would be an example, but not the only one, of egoism. With the distinction between social and individual restrictions on freedom, their power is unjustified because no way has been established to get from what one person wants to what the society as a whole would agree to.

Iran, to me, gives us an example of a nation governed by a morality -- in this case, a religious one. But since someone has to apply the theological reasoning to real world situations, freedom is being restricted by a particular group, here the clerics. The authority of this group to rule is doubtful.

With Venezuela today I think power is spread out in such a way that the limits on freedom are societal, based in the contitution. It's true the executive branch has extensive power, but that power can and has been limited by an institutional process.

There is a question whether societal restrictions are non-moral or moral. But a further distinction has to be made between "moral" (right) and "immoral" (wrong) restrictions. When this comes up in a social context, I think the problem is really one of justice. We'd need to ask what a just act is, and what an unjust act amounts to.

Hi Patrice --

De Toqueville isn't part of the mainstream media, so he isn't part of the problem.

What you're saying about redistribution of wealth is that what you end up with is for someone else to decide. That's already largely the case, but it's not the government making the decision.


The irony here is that I am supposedly in a position to benefit from "redistribution". My husband and son both work for the state.

Your family benefits from the state and renders services in return for it. In the situation we're now in you don't need me to tell you how fortunate that is. But what the mass media does is to make people ambivalent about being paid by the government. The only way out of this ambivalence is in some way to conclude that you deserve the money while other recipients don't.

I think most people deserve the redistribution as long as they comply with the rules by which they get it. But it's true that if the government is broke, the money is being borrowed.

Patrice, I wouldn't waste a moment's thought about the government's empty coffers or accept a shred of the rebuke handed out to employees of the state. You didn't create the deficit and the politicians who did can balance the budget any time they want.

The mainstream media is manipulating the public on this point. Suddenly, everyone's screaming about being broke. At least, everyone in the media is. Here a healthy dose of philosophical skepticism goes a long way.

The first thing to question is why the media has selected this issue, just as it's helpful to ask why that factoid about half of Americans paying no taxes was selected as news. The very fact that something was selected by the media implies a certain conclusion to be reached. That's the manipulation.

I won't evade the point about the deficit though, because, as you say, it's reality. But the government has always been broke. This used to be offset by economic growth, but real growth hasn't been occurring for a long time. Sure, there have been short times like in 1996-2000 when the budget was in surplus and the debt was being paid. But greedy politician took that surplus, and they will again if there's ever another one.

Taxes won't go up. It's too politically sensitive. What's going to happen is this: The borrowing will continue and the state will allow inflation to eat away the value of the public debt. Because of the collapse in housing prices, the Fed is worried about deflation, and they'll do anything to stop it. Getting the value of the dollar to keep going down is the only plan they have to get the deficit under control.

The rest of it is smoke and mirrors, and it's to this cause that government jobs and salaries are being sacrificed. If they eventually end up firing every government employee, the politicians will still spend whatever amount they want under the current political arrangements, regardless of whether the money is there or not.

About Qatar, I'll say one thing. The global free enterprise system has a thousand ways of peeling those dollars out of their hands. It's just a matter of time before that happens. Their wealth is going to get spread around all right, and it will probably be more or less for the good.

Hi Glen --

I don't think you are ever likely to get 300 million people on the same page unless the country's basic security is under attack.

People aren't equally suceptible to the manipulation of the media, but our media do try to get everyone on the same page about key issues. The banks are one example. Another is the idea that the economic system we have right now is inevitable.


I must admit it's hard as a Canadian to understand how Americans could be worried about the right to own private property.

The American news media, as opposed to the Canadian, makes an issue out of it. But this is something that goes way beyond our media. It's part of the culture almost to worry about loss of property rights. Our supreme court has ruled that governments have a right to condemn private homes for the sake of turning that land over to a private developer who can build something more profitable on it:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8331097/n...

So the concern is not altogether unmerited.

Getting back to private property. There are some socialist in our country that still do not believe in private property but they are a small minority. On that issue even the "left" is on the "right".

The predominant view in the U.S. media is that socialism entails the abolition of private property. It is this that has people in the U.S. so upset. I don't think the American public sees the issue the way Canadians do.

Hi Jimmy --

That article makes a good point about the idea of self-reliance becoming something of a creed in this country, an example of a fact stripped of context.

I hear the accusation that the media is leftist quite often, but all the mainstream media seems to be on the same page, using the same techniques and talking points, where it comes to key issues like the role of large banks. Every single outlet, right to left, takes for granted that these banks are a necessary part of the economy.

Hi Patrice --

Tyler, I find that post of yours to be a bit condescending.

I don't intend it to be. I've tried to make it a fair summary of how you feel based on many of your posts. As I said, I think what you've said is important because it reflects the attitudes and feelings of a huge number of Americans, regardless of whether it's the media that keeps these ideas front and center or whether they came to these conclusions on their own. If my summarization of your feelings is in error, please point out where and I'll withdraw it.

And this issue has everything to do with feelings. My point is that feelings have become so detached from facts in the modern political climate that decisions are being made independently of reasons. The media has a role in creating this situation and uses it to manipulate people.


The contempt and condescension that exists for the common man is what has caused the anger.../People are not stupid, although the politicians think they are. They can see what is happening.

I agree exactly. Even if people don't know just how they're being manipulated, they do know on some level that they are. Broadcasters and politicians who manipulate the public, whoever they are, can only do so on the basis of cynical contempt for their listeners.


How about looking at the facts? If the "media [...] reports that half the people of the country pay NO taxes, is it the media that is at fault?

Yes. They lie when they present facts out of context, which is part of the manipulation. It's the stripping of facts from the context in which they came about that has become characteristic of the mainstream media.

A bare fact about the percent of Americans paying no taxes means nothing in itself. The media manipulates viewers and listeners by implying that every person should be paying taxes in the first place. Should they?

What has happened is that the left leaning media has distorted "facts" ...

The mainstream media I'm referring to is the media that reaches the great majority of Americans every day, regardless of what specific politics they espouse.

Hi Everyman --

As you said, #3 subsumes #2 in a way as a restriction on freedom. If we look at #2, self-imposed restrictions, one feature that strikes me is the source of the limitation.

If #1 points to natural contingencies, those restrictions on our freedom to act are non-moral. In #3, the restrictions applied on a social basis are what I would call moral ones. But in #2, the restrictions imposed are perhaps better described a ethical ones.

In an ethical system of thinking, as I understand it, the virtues play a crucial role in leading to the values individuals will act upon. This brings up the applicability of moral and ethical systems, and focuses attention on their origin.

Moral systems such as Kant's are relatively recent. But does a moral system intended to hold people together in a society really cover all the contingencies that arise? Or more to the point, does a moral system restrict freedom unduly in some ways and leave the door open too much in others?

Perhaps a drawback of modern life is concentrating too much on public morality and not enough on individual ethical reasoning.

Some links on the Plato discussion:

A Commentary on Plato's Meno

Plato's Trilogy

The Trial of Socrates

Another writer who has devoted time to the Greek language and the proper interpretaion of Plato is Gregory Vlastos:

Platonic Studies