UNR Students for Liberty » Morality

Morality and Legality

Barry Belmont — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 18:47:22 +0000

I would like to put forth the notion that morality and legality, while containing overlap, are actually two different things, such that libertarians (when speaking about liberty) should only be concerned with the latter and leave the former to other individuals at other times. This is not to dismiss the value of either field of study, but only to suggest that the two are distinct enough to generally require a narrowed focus on one or the other (just as biologist and chemists hold different meetings, read different books, teach different classes). And the way I would like to do this is to use a well known (perhaps the most well known) example of morality and inverse it slightly to show the demarcation between morality and legality.

Morality: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It’s the most famous phrasing of the most underlying principle of all morality. The idea of morality is to treat others as you yourself would like to be treated. If you wouldn’t generally liked to be lied to, stolen from, spat upon, then don’t do these things to other people. It’s such a simple idea that it probably lies somewhere deep in our ancestral past (even chimps and apes appear to follow the principle). And I claim that this is the sought after “ought” inherent in all morality — this provides the impetus for action.

Legality: Do not do unto others as you would not have them do unto you. And this is what I consider the fundamental principle behind what all laws should be. All laws essentially restrict some kind of meta-untamed ‘freedom’ that exists in the ethereal ‘state of nature’ of the olden philosopher (I happen to think that the term ‘freedom’ here is often times unjustly associated with what we take ‘freedom’ to mean now, but that is a discussion for another day). In that sense, laws restrict what people would otherwise be “allowed” to do. A law like “do not kill” restricts the ‘freedom’ (see above parenthetical comment) of murderers. “Do not steal” and “do not rape” do the same to thieves and rapists. Hence we see that all laws should be negative laws, laws against certain actions — providing disincentives for action.

Going forth, I will use this as my provisional understanding about the intentions of morality and legality (what one ought to do vs. what one should not be allowed to do). I understand that the language of this piece would seem to suggest that a proposition like “not killing” would fall squarely under legality and not the morality side of things — and suggest to some that killing should not be taken under moral consideration — but I emphatically deny this to be the case. This proposal is still formative, quite rough around the edges, and will admit of exceptions. However, I posit that most of these counterintuitive morality vs. legality conundrums have more to do with the fact that atrocity high up on the Scale of Awful adversely affect many fields and hence cannot be constrained to either legality or morality. Thus with weighty issues it is better to understand that there is massive overlap between fields of study rather than trying to parse everything out through time-wasting word games.

But for things farther down on the Scale of Awful, this version and inversion of the ‘Golden Rule’ proves an excellent framework that filters legal and moral considerations. ‘Taking drugs’ for instance, which is considered immoral by some, would be something that would compel one not to personally take drugs, but simultaneously prevent one from stopping others from doing so, and vice versa. The same is true of eating products that contain trans fats, gambling, sending children to school, and just about every other libertarian talking point. It hopefully frames the discussion in such a manner as to show where all the confusion has lain.

And it also answers that pesky ‘should taxes be compelled?’ question…

The Universal Perspective Series: Female Circumcision

Barry Belmont — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 03:41:54 +0000

Donald Symons is a renowned anthropologist over at UC Santa Barbara. I’ve read much of his work (and I suggest you do too) and it is truly amazing how well scientists can convey meaning. Let me explain: the other day I was having a legitimate argument with someone (a girl known around town as a fairly respectable proponent of feminism) wherein I was trying to convince her that female circumcision was ‘bad’ thing and she was trying to convince me that it was a culturally determined practice that was “okay for them [in that culture].”

Disgusting.

However, as I was fumbling through a few science books, I came across this absolutely perfect refutation by Dr. Symons of genital mutilation, moral relativism, and actually spouting such rubbish as it’s “okay for them”:

If only one person in the world held down a terrified, struggling, screaming little girl, cut off her genitals with a septic blade, and sewed her back up, leaving only a tiny hole for urine and menstrual flow, the only question would be how severely that person should be punished, and whether the death penalty would be sufficiently severe sanction. But when millions of people do this, instead of the enormity being magnified millions-fold, suddenly it become “culture,” and thereby magically becomes less, rather than more, horrible, and is even defended by some Western “moral thinkers,” including feminists.

Moral Objectivism, Stated Eloquently

Barry Belmont — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 18:31:36 +0000

There are such things as objective moral truths. For anyone who disagrees:

A Difference of Ethical Systems

Barry Belmont — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 03:04:53 +0000

I had a teacher today claim, with a straight face, that there is no such thing as right and wrong answers to questions of morality.

She purported that there is no significant difference in the overall well-being of people in Sweden as opposed to those of Rwanda.
She claimed that a suicide bomber is morally on par with a doctor who gives regularly to charities.
She said Jeffrey Dahmer and the Dalai Lama have the same ethical merit.
She actually believes that a precept like “do not rape children” is culturally specific and cannot legitimately be claimed as a universally correct moral opinion.
She feels men should be allowed to treat women like property if they are in the right part of the globe.

I have never been more disgusted by the pseudo-intellectual tradition of relativism.

Ought From Is

Barry Belmont — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 23:39:45 +0000

I recently wrote the following article about morality for the Sagebrush where I am putting forth the idea that not only can we extrapolate from the the way the world is to the way the world should be, but that we must do this. I am putting forth the radical notion that there is such a thing as “right” and “wrong” answers to questions of morality. As this seems like the kind of group that might have something to add to this, I post the unedited version below:

“If you walked through campus these past two weeks, no doubt you came across that Crazy Screaming Christian Guy (CSCG) telling us that we all “deserve hell.” Alongside CSCG’s claim that homosexuality is like putting gasoline in your exhaust pipe and describing cunnilingus as sticking pineapple pizza up your nose, he pronounced that science cannot address morality, that science deems us all amoral apes with no responsibilities to no one, and that only (his) religion can save us.

Unfortunately, he is not alone in this belief. It’s generally accepted that questions of morality are questions to which science provides no answer. Science may tell us how to get what we want, but it can lay no claim on what we ought to want. More broadly it is thought that the way the world “is” cannot tell us how it “ought to be.”

However, this is completely wrong as all systems of morality are reducible, ultimately, to a concern for the well-being of conscious entities. This concern places “value” on behaviors which increase well-being while decrying those that do not. Since values correlate to the real world effects science can indeed answer these fundamental questions. This is not to say that all possible questions of morality will one day be answered by a supercomputer or derived using axioms or equations, but rather to say that questions of human morality have right and wrong answers.

Some might object that the notion of “well-being” is open to interpretation and it is therefore impossible to develop an objective science of morality. Consider though that “food” is also open to interpretation but there is clear distinction between food and poison. The same logic applies to the concept of “health”: obviously there is a difference between healthy and dead. These differences matter.

And just as there are many ways to become healthy and many kinds of foods, there are many ways to answer moral questions objectively. Just because there are many right answers, does not mean there are no truths to be known, whether it be in studies of health, food, or morality.

Some others might object, wouldn’t an objective study of morality necessitate the exclusion of exceptions? In other words, a universal moral truth can’t admit of any exceptions – if it’s wrong to lie, it’s always wrong to lie. But why should this be true? For example, in the game of chess (a realm of perfect objectivity), a principle like “don’t lose your queen” is a good rule to follow. Sure, there are exceptions, there are times when losing your queen is a smart move, but the fact that there are exceptions does not change the sound principle of retaining your queen.

Not only can science answer questions of morality, it must answer these questions. For too long, the fundamental questions of human well-being have been suffocated by religious dogma (like CSCG says it should remain) and political expediency. This is why we spend more time talking about gay marriage and illegal immigration than we do about alleviating poverty and ending genocides.

It is through science and reason alone that we can come to know and shape all aspects of our world. Simply by admitting this we will have advanced the conversation about morality by millennia.”

Morality and Liberty

Mary Hunton — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 19:07:14 +0000

Religion is a very predominant part of many people’s lives, and organized faiths, as we know, have their own set of moral code and conduct. What is and is not okay according to them–in other words, morals. Being born and raised Roman Catholic (and still going by that title even today), I was raised with a very firm set of moral beliefs. Things that were acceptable and things that were not. Many of these I still hold true to: murder is still bad, no matter what way you look at it, and I definitely can’t steal your stuff. However, growing up I realized something. Many of the “moral” codes set down by my denomination were a far cry from what my political outlook was. This is what I call the “moral dilemma.” What do I hold onto? Faith or freedom?

There are many different questions that can pose this problem, though not all on a political level. Premarital sex, divorce, polygamy, abortion, and gay marriage, to name a few. In the mind of a devout Catholic, completely and utterly dedicated to their faith, the answer to the question, “is any of this okay?” would be a simple, concise, “No.” However, I, and many others, find ourselves thinking, “Wait. What’s the BFD?”

Morality and liberty are two very different mindsets and codes, and they should be taken as such. For example, on a moral level I am against abortion, and yet I am pro-choice. Why? Just because I would never get an abortion does not mean that you shouldn’t have the right to if you so choose. The same goes for many political controversies that I find myself on the more “liberal” side of. Gay marriage? I am not gay, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think they should have the same rights straight couples do. I do not smoke pot, but that doesn’t mean I think it should be illegal. I wouldn’t really walk around naked (sorry, guys!), but if I DID want to, I think I should be able to. It is the same on a moral level: my morals are personal. You have no right to push your morals on me, and I have no right to push mine upon you.

For me the solution to this “moral dilemma” was simple. My faith and my morals are on a completely different level than my political outlook, and holding them in complete disregard to one another did nothing to discredit the merit to either of them. Religion, as with most things, is a choice, and the moral code that goes along with that is not something that can be forced upon any individual. If something does not infringe upon the rights of others, even if morally it is considered “evil” by your faith, what right do we have? Is the fact that we consider something “sinister” enough for us to condemn it without taking into consideration that it may not actually be violating another’s rights?

I don’t think so. You have your morals and I have mine: let’s keep it that way.

Government is the Problem not the Solution

Barry Belmont — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 20:29:35 +0000

I have an inordinate respect for many scientists. I have read literally hundreds of books on science and it never ceases to amaze me the brilliant insights many scientists (or scientific journalists/writers) illuminate. One particularly interesting book I read recently was The Origin of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation by Matt Ridley. I had read Ridley’s work before (his Genome and Nature via Nurture are two of my more favorite genetics books) and was quite interested in this one, as I have a penchant for evolutionary psychology, the evolutionary origins of morality, and the theory of evolution in general.

The book started out solidly, but I noticed Ridley dropping a hint every so often that there’s a big logical conclusion looming on the horizon. In the last four chapters or so, it broke: if virtue is precipitated evolutionarily (which all the evidence seems to suggest) then governments are, in a sense, superfluous. I couldn’t believe what I was reading, I had never guessed that I would be seeing a solid chunk of my anarcho-capitalism theory before my very eyes with oodles and oodles of science to prove it. (Then again, for the longest time, I didn’t know Thomas Sowell [another favorite author of mine] was black.) I was so happy upon reading this, that I looked for other things written by Ridley in a similar vein. What follows is from Ridley’s answer to “What’s your dangerous idea?”

Government is the Problem not the Solution

In all times and in all places there has been too much government. We now know what prosperity is: it is the gradual extension of the division of labour through the free exchange of goods and ideas, and the consequent introduction of efficiencies by the invention of new technologies. This is the process that has given us health, wealth and wisdom on a scale unimagined by our ancestors. It not only raises material standards of living, it also fuels social integration, fairness and charity. It has never failed yet. No society has grown poorer or more unequal through trade, exchange and invention. Think of pre-Ming as opposed to Ming China, seventeenth century Holland as opposed to imperial Spain, eighteenth century England as opposed to Louis XIV’s France, twentieth century America as opposed to Stalin’s Russia, or post-war Japan, Hong Kong and Korea as opposed to Ghana, Cuba and Argentina. Think of the Phoenicians as opposed to the Egyptians, Athens as opposed to Sparta, the Hanseatic League as opposed to the Roman Empire. In every case, weak or decentralised government, but strong free trade led to surges in prosperity for all, whereas strong, central government led to parasitic, tax-fed officialdom, a stifling of innovation, relative economic decline and usually war.

Take Rome. It prospered because it was a free trade zone. But it repeatedly invested the proceeds of that prosperity in too much government and so wasted it in luxury, war, gladiators and public monuments. The Roman empire’s list of innovations is derisory, even compared with that of the ‘dark ages’ that followed.

In every age and at every time there have been people who say we need more regulation, more government. Sometimes, they say we need it to protect exchange from corruption, to set the standards and police the rules, in which case they have a point, though often they exaggerate it. Self-policing standards and rules were developed by free-trading merchants in medieval Europe long before they were taken over and codified as laws (and often corrupted) by monarchs and governments.

Sometimes, they say we need it to protect the weak, the victims of technological change or trade flows. But throughout history such intervention, though well meant, has usually proved misguided — because its progenitors refuse to believe in (or find out about) David Ricardo’s Law of Comparative Advantage: even if China is better at making everything than France, there will still be a million things it pays China to buy from France rather than make itself. Why? Because rather than invent, say, luxury goods or insurance services itself, China will find it pays to make more T shirts and use the proceeds to import luxury goods and insurance.

Government is a very dangerous toy. It is used to fight wars, impose ideologies and enrich rulers. True, nowadays, our leaders do not enrich themselves (at least not on the scale of the Sun King), but they enrich their clients: they preside over vast and insatiable parasitic bureaucracies that grow by Parkinson’s Law and live off true wealth creators such as traders and inventors.

Sure, it is possible to have too little government. Only, that has not been the world’s problem for millennia. After the century of Mao, Hitler and Stalin, can anybody really say that the risk of too little government is greater than the risk of too much? The dangerous idea we all need to learn is that the more we limit the growth of government, the better off we will all be.