Michael Huemer explains why a the social contract would NOT be binding on those who unreasonably reject it even if it is impossible to reasonably reject the social contract:
Thanks for the link. I've read through Huemer, and he does not critique the social contract theory that I make in this substack (although he definitely critiques bad social contract theories).
Will likely write an article addressing my theory of morality in Q&A format, although much later after I get a few points out on metaphysics first.
Your favorite hypothetical social contract fails BOTH requirements for relevance:
Requirement #1: You think that your favorite social contract binds those persons who explicitly & unreasonably rejects it, even if they are able but unwilling to reasonably accept that contract.
Requirement #2: You think that your favorite social contract binds anarcho-capitalists and amoralists alike, even if they reject all social contracts regardless of content or reasonableness.
If someone rejects the principle against murder without justification, are they not bound by the moral principle to not murder? Or are there moral principles that bind everyone regardless of whether they consent to them?
Response #1: Murder would be immoral even if the social contract would REQUIRE murder.
Response #2: Even in the context of murder, it would be the victim’s pre-contractual right, not the perpetrator’s alleged hypothetical consent to abstain from murder, that makes murder immoral.
Response #3: Enforcing the social contract on anarchists would be more similar to performing a blood transfusion on an unconscious Jehovah’s Witness than performing a blood transfusion on an unconscious atheist. This would be the case especially if reasonable rejection of atheism is impossible, and especially if reasonable acceptance of Jehovah’s Witness theology is impossible.
1. yep, so consent doesn't doesn't determine whats moral. Murder is immoral even is *no one* actually agreed to that rule. And no, the hypothetical contract would never require anyone to murder.
2. we're not talking about the victim, but what rules the perpetrator "consents" or doesn't consent to. The perpetrator is under no obligation to refrain from murdering, according to you, if he doesn't consent to that rule.
First of all, the right to not be murdered exists independently of BOTH actual consent AND hypothetical consent. Second of all, you still haven’t replied to the 3rd part of my previous comment.
The murderer didn’t consent to the *rights* of the murdered you’re asserting, so they can’t be bound by rules they didn’t accept, even if they are fully conscious and are able to consent. See the problem with requiring actual consent?
Just because the most reasonable social contract (I.e. whichever social contract could not be reasonably rejected) prohibits a behavior which is also immoral doesn’t mean that there is a CONTENT-INDEPENDENT obligation (absolute or otherwise) to obey the the social contract. NEITHER actual consent NOR hypothetical consent is the thing that the right to not be murdered is derived from. As a result, something OTHER than hypothetical consent overrides the murderer’s unreasonable veto of the principle that prohibits murder. However, you claim that hypothetical consent is the reason why unreasonable anarchists have a CONTENT-INDEPENDENT obligation (absolute or otherwise) to obey the very same social contract that they explicitly & unreasonably reject. The reason why I mentioned blood transfusions on unconscious Jehovah’s Witnesses is to show that explicit unreasonable rejection overrides hypothetical reasonable acceptance, EVEN IF reasonable rejection is impossible.
There are 2 necessary conditions for hypothetical consent to be relevant:
Requirement #1: the obtaining of actual consent must be impossible or unfeasible for reasons other than the unwillingness of the other party to give actual consent.
Requirement #2: The parties’ hypothetical consent must be consistent with their relevant actual values and philosophical beliefs.
For a scenario more realistic, take blood transfusions. For example, the hypothetical consent that an unconscious atheist who needs a blood transfusion to survive is usually considered to give hypothetical consent to receive a blood transfusion. However, an unconscious Jehovah’s Witness who needs a blood transfusion to survive is only rarely considered to have given hypothetical consent to receive a blood transfusion. This difference would remain even if reasonable rejection of atheism is impossible, and even if reasonable acceptance of Jehovah’s Witness theology is impossible.
For example, let’s focus an island inhabited by unreasonable persons. Suppose that all of them explicitly & unreasonably reject whichever social contract none of them reasonably reject. Suppose also that all of them explicitly & unreasonably accept a social contract that none of them can reasonably accept. It’s clearly obvious that the unreasonable social contract which unanimously accepted would (all else equal) override the reasonable social contract that was unanimously rejected. Also, it’s clearly obvious that when the unreasonable social contract really overridden, something other than the reasonable social contract overrides the unreasonable social contract.
The fact that reasonable veto of a given social contract is impossible is simply not enough to override an explicit, unreasonable veto. The fact that reasonable acceptance of given ideology is impossible is simply not enough to override the explicit, unreasonable acceptance of that ideology.
Your ideology gives an inadequate answer as to how to respond to those people who explicitly & unreasonably reject whichever social contract could not be reasonably rejected. After all, these people might explicitly & unreasonably accept a religion whose theology could be reasonably accepted.
The reason why people find hypothetical consent to be irrelevant in contexts that you consider hypothetical consent to be relevant is that you confuse morality with reasonableness.
I think this is completely off the mark. There have never been low-hanging fruit in morality, you are judging moral issues of the past with a presentist bias, but they were contentious issues in their time. Just like present moral issues are going to be viewed as obvious in the future.
You say any moral theory has to be accepted by rational agents, but what if the people rejecting the theory are not being rational? The theory is still valid regardless of what other people say. Many theories are rejected by their contemporaneous judges, only to be accepted in the future (when the person proposing it has already died).
I also don't think freedom and reason are the only values of importance. Freedom and reason are valued because of something much deeper: they improve the well-being of societies that embrace them. But it's the well-being of agents that morality should attempt to maximize.
Because of all this, the theory of Sam Harris which he explains in The Moral Landscape seems accurate to me.
To me morality is simply the discipline that explores what is good. And it would be a net positive if we could agree on an objective morality based on first principles, but your proposal needs more work.
Thanks for the comment. Id say not torturing babies is pretty low hanging fruit. Creating a detailed property rights regime is much harder. There are things that are wrong to do regardless of what time you happen to be in. Sure, reason depends on facts and circumstances, but not to the point of subjectivism.
The theory doesn’t rely on actual consent, but a hypothetical contract, what “would” people agree to. And I defend the case for that agreement throughout my substack.
Also, welfare isnt a moral value. Its agent-relative and there’s no moral motivation to care about someone else’s welfare. However, free people would care about their own welfare. Welfare is a good as an extension of one’s freedom, but not in and of itself to other parties. But freedom is. You don’t have to care about someone’s wellbeing as if it’s your own, but you should at least value their freedom.
Either torturing babies is good, or it's not, it doesn't depend on people disagreeing with it. You say it's "low-hanging fruit", but at the time many people agreed slavery was moral, doesn't mean it actually was. That's how most people view morality: it doesn't change.
Things that we view as moral today will ultimately be viewed as immoral, that doesn't mean morality will change, it means we are wrong.
Just because you get some people to agree doesn't make something moral.
Also, you are misrepresenting Sam Harris: he doesn't claim avoiding the worst possible misery for everyone is a moral truism, his position is that assuming "the worst possible misery for everyone is bad" is useful. It doesn't matter if our idea of the worst possible misery for everyone changes, it's still useful to consider it bad.
He makes an analogy with medicine. Medicine makes the assumption that being dead is bad. Does it really matter if the definition of "dead" changes? No, medicine should still try to avoid it.
You reliance on "freedom" is also problematic. I commented on your post regarding free will: it doesn't exist. You are trying to maximize something that a) doesn't actually exist b) is very loosely defined c) is subjective d) can easily be faked (as is most of the time, if not the totality of the time). I think that's a very hard sell.
The two statements regarding Sam Harris are equivalent, but let’s look at the implications. According to Harris, since the worst possible misery is bad, giving everyone a lobotomy must be good. Weve move away from the worst possible misery. This is one of the problems with the failure to recognize freedom.
Hypothetical agreements are meaningless. I do not have a hypothetical wife who hypothetically agreed to marry me.
And who decides what "everyone" would agree with? You? People you agree with? Some authority? Everyone currently alive? This is just shuffling the problem.
The fact that you don't see the difference between two statements doesn't mean they are equivalent.
And your lobotomy argument is an obviously nonsensical degree fallacy. According to your argument if two kicks in the nuts is bad, then anything other than that is good, including one kick in the nuts. No, there are *degrees*. One kick in the nuts might be better than two kicks in the nuts, but better doesn't imply good.
If all you care about is reducing pain, then according to Sam Harris, lobotomies to reduce the worst possible suffering are good. It meets his condition of reducing pain.
And I also have a problem with the moral naturalism that Harris adopts, where what is good/bad and what is right/wrong are conflated morally, which makes both statements equivalent from his view.
I make the case for the moral authority of the hypothetical agreement throughout my substack, but you can read some relevant articles here:
Michael Huemer explains why a the social contract would NOT be binding on those who unreasonably reject it even if it is impossible to reasonably reject the social contract:
https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ozarkia.net%2Fbill%2Fanarchism%2Flibrary%2FPPA%2F1-3.html%233.3&data=05%7C02%7CNathanel.Tekalign%40southeasttech.edu%7C6ffed96ecbbf465635ba08dddde7655e%7C98c66d8e08e64ad1ba01ca279798ce38%7C0%7C0%7C638910708115227590%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=kHZpM2i3irAukX041rGLA0jiaImZqkchPqfUtsgB6go%3D&reserved=0
Here is a better link:
http://www.ozarkia.net/bill/anarchism/library/PPA/1-3.html#3.3
Thanks for the link. I've read through Huemer, and he does not critique the social contract theory that I make in this substack (although he definitely critiques bad social contract theories).
Will likely write an article addressing my theory of morality in Q&A format, although much later after I get a few points out on metaphysics first.
Your favorite hypothetical social contract fails BOTH requirements for relevance:
Requirement #1: You think that your favorite social contract binds those persons who explicitly & unreasonably rejects it, even if they are able but unwilling to reasonably accept that contract.
Requirement #2: You think that your favorite social contract binds anarcho-capitalists and amoralists alike, even if they reject all social contracts regardless of content or reasonableness.
If someone rejects the principle against murder without justification, are they not bound by the moral principle to not murder? Or are there moral principles that bind everyone regardless of whether they consent to them?
Response #1: Murder would be immoral even if the social contract would REQUIRE murder.
Response #2: Even in the context of murder, it would be the victim’s pre-contractual right, not the perpetrator’s alleged hypothetical consent to abstain from murder, that makes murder immoral.
Response #3: Enforcing the social contract on anarchists would be more similar to performing a blood transfusion on an unconscious Jehovah’s Witness than performing a blood transfusion on an unconscious atheist. This would be the case especially if reasonable rejection of atheism is impossible, and especially if reasonable acceptance of Jehovah’s Witness theology is impossible.
1. yep, so consent doesn't doesn't determine whats moral. Murder is immoral even is *no one* actually agreed to that rule. And no, the hypothetical contract would never require anyone to murder.
2. we're not talking about the victim, but what rules the perpetrator "consents" or doesn't consent to. The perpetrator is under no obligation to refrain from murdering, according to you, if he doesn't consent to that rule.
First of all, the right to not be murdered exists independently of BOTH actual consent AND hypothetical consent. Second of all, you still haven’t replied to the 3rd part of my previous comment.
The murderer didn’t consent to the *rights* of the murdered you’re asserting, so they can’t be bound by rules they didn’t accept, even if they are fully conscious and are able to consent. See the problem with requiring actual consent?
Just because the most reasonable social contract (I.e. whichever social contract could not be reasonably rejected) prohibits a behavior which is also immoral doesn’t mean that there is a CONTENT-INDEPENDENT obligation (absolute or otherwise) to obey the the social contract. NEITHER actual consent NOR hypothetical consent is the thing that the right to not be murdered is derived from. As a result, something OTHER than hypothetical consent overrides the murderer’s unreasonable veto of the principle that prohibits murder. However, you claim that hypothetical consent is the reason why unreasonable anarchists have a CONTENT-INDEPENDENT obligation (absolute or otherwise) to obey the very same social contract that they explicitly & unreasonably reject. The reason why I mentioned blood transfusions on unconscious Jehovah’s Witnesses is to show that explicit unreasonable rejection overrides hypothetical reasonable acceptance, EVEN IF reasonable rejection is impossible.
There are 2 necessary conditions for hypothetical consent to be relevant:
Requirement #1: the obtaining of actual consent must be impossible or unfeasible for reasons other than the unwillingness of the other party to give actual consent.
Requirement #2: The parties’ hypothetical consent must be consistent with their relevant actual values and philosophical beliefs.
For a scenario more realistic, take blood transfusions. For example, the hypothetical consent that an unconscious atheist who needs a blood transfusion to survive is usually considered to give hypothetical consent to receive a blood transfusion. However, an unconscious Jehovah’s Witness who needs a blood transfusion to survive is only rarely considered to have given hypothetical consent to receive a blood transfusion. This difference would remain even if reasonable rejection of atheism is impossible, and even if reasonable acceptance of Jehovah’s Witness theology is impossible.
For example, let’s focus an island inhabited by unreasonable persons. Suppose that all of them explicitly & unreasonably reject whichever social contract none of them reasonably reject. Suppose also that all of them explicitly & unreasonably accept a social contract that none of them can reasonably accept. It’s clearly obvious that the unreasonable social contract which unanimously accepted would (all else equal) override the reasonable social contract that was unanimously rejected. Also, it’s clearly obvious that when the unreasonable social contract really overridden, something other than the reasonable social contract overrides the unreasonable social contract.
The fact that reasonable veto of a given social contract is impossible is simply not enough to override an explicit, unreasonable veto. The fact that reasonable acceptance of given ideology is impossible is simply not enough to override the explicit, unreasonable acceptance of that ideology.
Your ideology gives an inadequate answer as to how to respond to those people who explicitly & unreasonably reject whichever social contract could not be reasonably rejected. After all, these people might explicitly & unreasonably accept a religion whose theology could be reasonably accepted.
The reason why people find hypothetical consent to be irrelevant in contexts that you consider hypothetical consent to be relevant is that you confuse morality with reasonableness.
I think this is completely off the mark. There have never been low-hanging fruit in morality, you are judging moral issues of the past with a presentist bias, but they were contentious issues in their time. Just like present moral issues are going to be viewed as obvious in the future.
You say any moral theory has to be accepted by rational agents, but what if the people rejecting the theory are not being rational? The theory is still valid regardless of what other people say. Many theories are rejected by their contemporaneous judges, only to be accepted in the future (when the person proposing it has already died).
I also don't think freedom and reason are the only values of importance. Freedom and reason are valued because of something much deeper: they improve the well-being of societies that embrace them. But it's the well-being of agents that morality should attempt to maximize.
Because of all this, the theory of Sam Harris which he explains in The Moral Landscape seems accurate to me.
To me morality is simply the discipline that explores what is good. And it would be a net positive if we could agree on an objective morality based on first principles, but your proposal needs more work.
Thanks for the comment. Id say not torturing babies is pretty low hanging fruit. Creating a detailed property rights regime is much harder. There are things that are wrong to do regardless of what time you happen to be in. Sure, reason depends on facts and circumstances, but not to the point of subjectivism.
The theory doesn’t rely on actual consent, but a hypothetical contract, what “would” people agree to. And I defend the case for that agreement throughout my substack.
Also, welfare isnt a moral value. Its agent-relative and there’s no moral motivation to care about someone else’s welfare. However, free people would care about their own welfare. Welfare is a good as an extension of one’s freedom, but not in and of itself to other parties. But freedom is. You don’t have to care about someone’s wellbeing as if it’s your own, but you should at least value their freedom.
I’ll discuss this more in my next article. But I discuss why freedom takes moral priority over welfare, and what’s wrong with Sam’s realism here, https://open.substack.com/pub/neonomos/p/freedom-vs-utility?r=1pded0&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
Either torturing babies is good, or it's not, it doesn't depend on people disagreeing with it. You say it's "low-hanging fruit", but at the time many people agreed slavery was moral, doesn't mean it actually was. That's how most people view morality: it doesn't change.
Things that we view as moral today will ultimately be viewed as immoral, that doesn't mean morality will change, it means we are wrong.
Just because you get some people to agree doesn't make something moral.
Also, you are misrepresenting Sam Harris: he doesn't claim avoiding the worst possible misery for everyone is a moral truism, his position is that assuming "the worst possible misery for everyone is bad" is useful. It doesn't matter if our idea of the worst possible misery for everyone changes, it's still useful to consider it bad.
He makes an analogy with medicine. Medicine makes the assumption that being dead is bad. Does it really matter if the definition of "dead" changes? No, medicine should still try to avoid it.
You reliance on "freedom" is also problematic. I commented on your post regarding free will: it doesn't exist. You are trying to maximize something that a) doesn't actually exist b) is very loosely defined c) is subjective d) can easily be faked (as is most of the time, if not the totality of the time). I think that's a very hard sell.
Again, it doesn’t depend on actual agreement, it would be a hypothetical agreement. And everyone would agree that torturing babies is wrong in that agreement. See here https://open.substack.com/pub/neonomos/p/the-social-contract-part-1-why-is?r=1pded0&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
The two statements regarding Sam Harris are equivalent, but let’s look at the implications. According to Harris, since the worst possible misery is bad, giving everyone a lobotomy must be good. Weve move away from the worst possible misery. This is one of the problems with the failure to recognize freedom.
Hypothetical agreements are meaningless. I do not have a hypothetical wife who hypothetically agreed to marry me.
And who decides what "everyone" would agree with? You? People you agree with? Some authority? Everyone currently alive? This is just shuffling the problem.
The fact that you don't see the difference between two statements doesn't mean they are equivalent.
And your lobotomy argument is an obviously nonsensical degree fallacy. According to your argument if two kicks in the nuts is bad, then anything other than that is good, including one kick in the nuts. No, there are *degrees*. One kick in the nuts might be better than two kicks in the nuts, but better doesn't imply good.
If all you care about is reducing pain, then according to Sam Harris, lobotomies to reduce the worst possible suffering are good. It meets his condition of reducing pain.
And I also have a problem with the moral naturalism that Harris adopts, where what is good/bad and what is right/wrong are conflated morally, which makes both statements equivalent from his view.
I make the case for the moral authority of the hypothetical agreement throughout my substack, but you can read some relevant articles here:
https://neonomos.substack.com/p/the-social-contract-part-1-why-is
https://neonomos.substack.com/p/the-social-contract-part-3-in-defense
https://neonomos.substack.com/p/in-defense-of-hypothetical-consent