NY passes same sex marriage

[_EAllusion]

Because it is socially counterproductive to do so. When people start legislating strongly-held and widely divergent interpretations of "divine command" and "natural law", conflict usually results.

1) There are other deontological views than divine command and natural law.

2) The shared American values you list were initially derived from deontological arguments - natural law ones at that. There are other ways to likewise justify those views, of course, but I find it interesting because of how you take deontology off the table, not because deontology is wrong, but because of this.

3) There are just as many widely divergent and strongly held interpretations of applied views from other normative theories as there are in deontology. I'm a consequentialist. I think you are too. Yet here we are disagreeing and having conflicting views on laws.

Point 3, by way, makes my brain sad when I read your post.

Because it is socially productive to do so. The most effective strategy for long-term stability in a pluralistic society seems to be when people are socialized into a minimalistic moral establishment, consisting only of those values that facilitate peaceful and civil coexistence.

Ok, but why is this not possible via deontological framework - like one Rawls advocated - but is possible via other moral theories? That makes no sense to me. It's like you imagine deontology as a series of blunt, lengthy 10 commandment lists of what you should and shouldn't do.

I'm not sure it makes sense to think of moral or legal tradition as being "wrong" or "right," but certainly some traditions are more functional and productive than others.

Can you define "functional" and "productive" in a way that tells us what they are good things to have without making a moral judgment? Because I think you are making a right and wrong judgment here with a half step added. If you look at a legal framework and ask yourself "is this functional and productive?" with the implicit belief that a functional and productive framework is the right thing to have, then you very much are thinking of a legal tradition as right or wrong. And if you don't think it is the right thing to have, then why advocate it? Because it is functional and productive? Yeah, but why should I care? [/quote]

That's a very Rawlsian view, but I think Rawls failed to sufficiently explain why some arguments are "publicly accessible" whereas others are not.

By publicly accessible I mean holds information that can be evaluated by others to determine its truth value. In short, you only impose behavioral standards on others through coercive means if you have the capacity to provide information on why this is a good thing that can be evaluated according to a standard criteria of rationality. I understand this is a tricky argument, but it's not necessary to get into here. I do think this is as much a part of the enlightenment era American political tradition as anything, though. If you prefer, this argument can be abandoned, because what you appear to be calling "sectarian morality" is primarily distinguished by it having a baseless base.

[_CaliforniaKid]

EAllusion,

You're getting really sidetracked on this whole deontology thing. When I said someone shouldn't outlaw a behavior just because they feel it's deontologically immoral, I basically just meant we should justify our legislative decisions in terms of how they serve the established values rather than in terms of the rightness or wrongness of specific behaviors. I just don't want people trying to legislate arbitrary "rules" derived from their interpretation of religion or nature. I really don't give a fig how people legitimize the established values themselves. Divine command, natural law ... who cares? What matters is that we're speaking the same language, not how we got that language in the first place.

3) There are just as many widely divergent and strongly held interpretations of applied views from other normative theories as there are in deontology. I'm a consequentialist. I think you are too. Yet here we are disagreeing and having conflicting views on laws.

Point 3, by way, makes my brain sad when I read your post.

Yes, but because you and I share most of the same values and logical processes, we can at least have a mutually intelligible debate and still respect each other at the end of the day. By contrast, people who are trying to legislate incommensurable value systems are more likely to come to blows than have a civil debate.

Can you define "functional" and "productive" in a way that tells us what they are good things to have without making a moral judgment? Because I think you are making a right and wrong judgment here with a half step added. If you look at a legal framework and ask yourself "is this functional and productive?" with the implicit belief that a functional and productive framework is the right thing to have, then you very much are thinking of a legal tradition as right or wrong. And if you don't think it is the right thing to have, then why advocate it? Because it is functional and productive? Yeah, but why should I care?

I'm thinking mainly in terms of self-interest. The rules of legal discourse I've been describing are rules that facilitate hazardous social interactions. If everyone believes in these rules and follows them, we all ultimately benefit.

By publicly accessible I mean holds information that can be evaluated by others to determine its truth value. In short, you only impose behavioral standards on others through coercive means if you have the capacity to provide information on why this is a good thing that can be evaluated according to a standard criteria of rationality.

There are no standard criteria of rationality for evaluating moral statements. There are only learned criteria. That's why it's useful to have a national civil religion that teaches us a common set of moral criteria, so we can all "speak the same moral language," so to speak.

If you prefer, this argument can be abandoned, because what you appear to be calling "sectarian morality" is primarily distinguished by it having a baseless base.

Sectarian morality isn't baseless. Its base just isn't generally accepted, which makes it unintelligible and potentially threatening to those who don't share its presuppositions.

Peace,

-Chris

[_EAllusion]

Yes, but because you and I share most of the same values and logical processes, we can at least have a mutually intelligible debate and still respect each other at the end of the day. By contrast, people who are trying to legislate incommensurable value systems are more likely to come to blows than have a civil debate.

I don't think we share the same values. That's clear from this conversation alone. I don't think deontology implies an incommensurable value system whereas utilitarianism does. Moral disagreement is a feature of all normative theories. In fact, a normative theory is dead in the water if it cannot account for the fact that there is moral disagreement. And that disagreement doesn't imply commensurable value systems. I think the problem is that you don't understand how a deontological viewpoint provides a mutually accessible criteria for evaluating legal policy. Kants categorical imperative, wrong as it may be, is universally applicable. Consequentialist ideas are only accessible to people who accept consequentialist ideas just the same as natural law is for those who accept natural law. That said, at the end of the idea people generally just have moral ides that they retrofit into their preferred moral framework if they have views on that at all.

I'm thinking mainly in terms of self-interest. The rules of legal discourse I've been describing are rules that facilitate hazardous social interactions. If everyone believes in these rules and follows them, we all ultimately benefit.

That we should behave in terms of self-interest and enforce a system of laws that maximally benefits that interest is itself a moral assertion. And if you are evaluating laws in terms of whether it achieves that aim, you are evaluating laws in terms of rightness or wrongness. That's why your earlier assertion is confusing. Further, the idea that one's self-interest aligns with a code of laws that respect the various rights you outlined (sometimes called the "harmony thesis") is almost certainly false. In short, sometimes it is in a person or group of people's interest to disrespect the Lockean rights of others. If, instead of self-interest you mean to refer to advancing aggregate interests, then yeah, that's a more defensible position, but also a naked appeal to consequentalist thought.

There are no standard criteria of rationality for evaluating moral statements. There are only learned criteria.

I think this is false. I think moral statements are evaluable just like I think empirical statements are. How to evaluate statements in a sophisticated way is learned, but I think that learning process is a matter of discovery rather than artificial construction.

Sectarian morality isn't baseless. Its base just isn't generally accepted,

[/quote]

By "baseless" I mean lacking a sound justification. For example, if you assert people should do X because X is a commandment of a morally perfect being, I think the fundamental problem with that assertion is that the person is cannot justify the belief that X is a commandment of a morally perfect being.

Finally, you keep appealing to a mutually agreed upon tradition, but you let that tradition just float out in the air. We can imagine and point to historical examples of all manner of traditions that were harmful to people even though they were widely agreed upon. You seem to be interested in harm-reduction, but tradition in of itself doesn't get you there. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness isn't good because people agree about it - they don't - but because those rights advance the general welfare of a society regardless of whether the actors in a society hold those views. If that wasn't the case, then why should a society who doesn't hold those values adopt them in the first place?

[_Buffalo]

I think the ban against public urination should also be rescinded. I resent big government telling me were not to pee!

[_CaliforniaKid]

I don't think we share the same values.

You don't value life, liberty, equality, and the pursuit of happiness?

That we should behave in terms of self-interest and enforce a system of laws that maximally benefits that interest is itself a moral assertion.

I consider it a self-interested assertion, but I suppose one could argue that it's moral. I don't see why it matters whether it's moral or not.

And if you are evaluating laws in terms of whether it achieves that aim, you are evaluating laws in terms of rightness or wrongness.

I'm evaluating laws in terms of usefulness. I suppose you could argue that non-useful laws are therefore "wrong", but I don't see why it matters whether we think of them in those terms or not.

Further, the idea that one's self-interest aligns with a code of laws that respect the various rights you outlined (sometimes called the "harmony thesis") is almost certainly false. In short, sometimes it is in a person or group of people's interest to disrespect the Lockean rights of others.

Yes, but it's also sometimes in other people's best interest to betray your Lockean rights. That's why it's in all of our best interest for compliance to be ingrained through tradition and enforced through law.

If, instead of self-interest you mean to refer to advancing aggregate interests, then yeah, that's a more defensible position, but also a naked appeal to consequentalist thought.

I consider myself a utilitarian, but I don't particularly think utilitarianism should be legislated. That's a guide for my personal moral behavior, not for my voting.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness isn't good because people agree about it ... but because those rights advance the general welfare of a society

That's what I've been trying to tell you.

regardless of whether the actors in a society hold those views. If that wasn't the case, then why should a society who doesn't hold those values adopt them in the first place?

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here. Societies that adopt these values do so because they're useful. But adoption entails the socialization of the members of society. How could the values benefit anyone if no one in the society believes in them?

Anyway, I feel like this discussion has mostly been the two of us talking past each other, and unfortunately I'm not getting any work done as a result. So I may need to limit myself to one more post to wrap it up.

Peace,

-Chris

[_EAllusion]

You don't value life, liberty, equality, and the pursuit of happiness?

As a means to an end, yes, but I think if we unpacked what those terms meant to us we'd get some different answers.

I consider it a self-interested assertion, but I suppose one could argue that it's moral. I don't see why it matters whether it's moral or not.

That we ought to do things that advance our self-interest is a moral assertion. I think it matters because you are arguing that Democrats and not Republicans are interested in what you termed "privatized morality." My disagreement with you stems from me seeing all laws as enforcement of moral standards. I see the distinction you see as a matter of having disagreements over either 1) what is and isn't moral or 2) whether some moral standard ought to be enforced with the coercive tools of the state.

Yes, but it's also sometimes in other people's best interest to betray your Lockean rights. That's why it's in all of our best interest for compliance to be ingrained through tradition and enforced through law.

But sometimes it's not. In short, in some conflicts of interests people can get away with betraying people's rights without having to worry about reciprocity. Perhaps there is an asymmetrical power distribution, for instance. I think it favors the general welfare of people to respect what we term human rights, but it absolutely is not in everyone's self-interest to do so. It's an important distinction.

I consider myself a utilitarian, but I don't particularly think utilitarianism should be legislated. That's a guide for my personal moral behavior, not for my voting.

On the one hand, you appear to make a utilitarian argument for what sort of laws we should have. On the other, you say you refuse to vote on the basis of utilitarianism. I find this to be muddled.

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here. Societies that adopt these values do so because they're useful. But adoption entails the socialization of the members of society. How could the values benefit anyone if no one in the society believes in them?

We live in a society where freedom of the press is enshrined in our basic set of rights. Yet if you poll Americans, you can get large majorities to agree to assertions like, "It should be illegal for newspapers to criticize the president in a time of war." Americans, it would seem, don't agree with our fundamental American law. Yet, it still is to the benefit of them to have this law enforced despite their personal views. There's a distinction between what sorts of laws would benefit the people if they adopted them and what sorts of laws best match people's values. It isn't always necessary for people to agree on values to have values that benefit everyone. If we were to do the Constitutional convention/bill of rights process over again, there's absolutely no way the establishment clause passes. It's dead in the water. Secular government isn't a mutually shared value of our society. But, then again, secular government is a good thing and is to the benefit of our society despite that internal conflict over it.

As far as my question, you didn't answer it. Suppose we have a society that does not value life, liberty, property, equality before the law, etc. Suppose you want to convince them to adopt those values. What arguments do you use to convince them? Because with me the focus seems to be on enforcing whatever the traditional values of a culture is because that minimizes chance of conflicting values. My counter is that these values ought to be defended on some persuasive moral criteria. (e.g. it is for the general welfare of people.) I suspect you think that too, but to me it seems like there's some block for you in describing that as a moral thing.

[_CaliforniaKid]

As far as my question, you didn't answer it. Suppose we have a society that does not value life, liberty, property, equality before the law, etc. Suppose you want to convince them to adopt those values. What arguments do you use to convince them? Because with me the focus seems to be on enforcing whatever the traditional values of a culture is because that minimizes chance of conflicting values. My counter is that these values ought to be defended on some persuasive moral criteria. (e.g. it is for the general welfare of people.) I suspect you think that too, but to me it seems like there's some block for you in describing that as a moral thing.

I would suggest to those societies that their relations with the United States would be better if they adopted those values, and it's possible that their societies would also become more stable, to the benefit of most inhabitants. However, in my opinion the American system is only one possible system for organizing a stable society, and there's no moral mandate to spread this system because ultimately there are no valid, universal moral criteria for discriminating among systems.

As for acting in one's own self-interest, I see that as instinctive behavior, not moral behavior. I think the term "moral" generally implies a certain kind of ideological overlay and an intention to act in a non-self-interested manner (although ultimately even most "moral" behavior may be self-interested). Perhaps that's the root of many of our differences in this thread.

Peace,

-Chris

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Hello,

You know. All these people who love to deny homosexuals the right to marry ought to be protesting against divorce, old people marrying, divorced people marrying, single mothers marrying, and Islamic polygamy (which grants divorces rather easily).

*crickets chirping*

Oh. It's not about marriage, is it? It's really just hating people of the same gender having the same legal rights and hassles us heteros have.

Bigots.

V/R
Doc C

[_EAllusion]

As for acting in one's own self-interest, I see that as instinctive behavior, not moral behavior. I think the term "moral" generally implies a certain kind of ideological overlay and an intention to act in a non-self-interested manner (although ultimately even most "moral" behavior may be self-interested). Perhaps that's the root of many of our differences in this thread.

Not quite. The difference here is that when I see someone say, "So and so ought to do X because it is to the benefit of all" I find that necessarily to be a moral assertion.

Again, it isn't in everyone's self-interest to respect people's rights. The reciprocity argument is weaker than you think. Some people might have to worry about backlash and so buy into a system for their mutual benefit. But, for others, that's a dumb risk/benefit calculation on their part. You're arguing that a mutual system of laws that respects, vaguely defined, life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, etc. is the best deal a rational egoist can get. It might be in most cases for your average person, but in extreme examples of conflicts of interest and where there are significant gaps in relative power it clearly is not. Mafias respect other mafias, not the little guy, for good reason.

People don't necessarily instinctively act in their own interest, by the way. If they did, there would be no such thing as a bad habit. There's a distinction between the sorts of ways people are apt to instinctively behave and what is in their best interest to do, all things considered. Persuading people with self-interest can be a practical motivator without being moral, but in the context of the argument you offered above you appear to be saying people ought to behave in their self-interest. That's a moral assertion. Then on top of that you offer utilitarian considerations that are by their very nature moral.

I don't have a problem with this, mind you. I don't think you can justify saying a society ought to have equality before the law without ultimately grounding your justification in moral thought - however you imagine moral thought to be. It's just that you don't see or want to see yourself as doing that. And that's why you think Republicans are out there being moral busy-bodies while Democrats are not. I say we all are, but some people have better ideas about what's moral and when it makes sense to get the state involved.

[_CaliforniaKid]

Persuading people with self-interest can be a practical motivator without being moral, but in the context of the argument you offered above you appear to be saying people ought to behave in their self-interest. That's a moral assertion.

That people act in their self-interest is for me an assumption, not a moral mandate. I'm not prescribing a particular moral end, but rather what I perceive to be a "best strategy" for an end I merely assume is held in common.

People don't necessarily instinctively act in their own interest, by the way. If they did, there would be no such thing as a bad habit.

I think many people who have bad habits would agree that their habits are less than personally ideal (which is one reason it may be useful to have those habits regulated by government). The rest would be people who have made a rational calculation and concluded that the benefits of the habit outweigh the consequences. In both cases, self-interest is the organizing principle. There's an extensive literature on rational choice theory, and my reading of it leads me to believe that most people act out of self-interest most of the time (even when they think they aren't).

Again, it isn't in everyone's self-interest to respect people's rights.

I'm sure that a disruption of rights could benefit a few people. But it's difficult to predict who would benefit from a breakdown of social order and who would not. The majority would ultimately be losers. This is why for most people our system of rights is ideal, and it's in their interest to punish violators of those rights. (I agree with you that violators exist, and that they are people who have calculated that defection from the system is in their self-interest. But in my opinion, it is in the self-interest of most people to prevent such defection.)

Our fundamental disagreement seems to be about why we have our system of rights. You seem to see this as a utilitarian moral system for mass welfare, whereas I see it as a strategy for facilitating perilous social interactions that has been agreed-upon by most people because it is maximal for most people. Your argument against my view is apparently that some people could benefit from a disruption of rights. But I'm not denying that. I'm just saying that in any breakdown of rights the majority would be losers, and therefore it is in most people's interest to prevent disruption of the system and punish defection from it.

It's just that you don't see or want to see yourself as doing that. And that's why you think Republicans are out there being moral busy-bodies while Democrats are not. I say we all are, but some people have better ideas about what's moral and when it makes sense to get the state involved.

I agree that some people have better ideas about this than others. :-P