Below is an excerpt from a paper on an idea that's been bothering me for a while. Comments, criticism, and "shut-the-hell-up-you-nerd" are all welcome
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Nozick ideasifkaramazovSeptember 18 2004, 12:49:02 UTC
A few thoughts:
Wouldn't Nozick argue each person having "what he can get" is justice?
My other thought, probably of use only to the vague whimsies permissable in literature [smirk], is that the philosophical search for "thought in which there is no contradiction" (which seems to be the premise of your first paragraph) tends to lead nowhere of practical use. Isn't it fair enough for Nozick to say, "Well, because this isn't a perfect world, we need some control?" Along the same lines I suspect you and I would argue for, rather than a perfection of logic, a certain sense of reason. A pro-life activist might point out that we probably wouldn't be comfortable with an abortion 2 days before a woman is due to deliver her child, and really, what is so different from two to three? Three to four? etc. You end up having to make an entirely intuitive, vague judgment about what is reasonable. Whereas the conservative position here is clear: conception is a distinct boundary. We have no clear, inconsistent logical position to argue from on this issue (since there's something repellant about relying on viability for a moral principle, because that's so dependant on our own technology). Just reason.
Obviously I agree with you in general, but simply saying that Nozick is "inconsistent" doesn't seem like quite enough. He can argue that what one owns may be used as the basis for purchasing/obtaining all those other things, and hence has a certain privileged place.
That was probably both longer and more incoherent than you wanted. Sorry.
Re: Nozick ideasath8naSeptember 19 2004, 16:56:05 UTC
You make an excellent point about whether logical consistency is really the end-all of political discussion. It's not - clearly if it was, we'd never get anywhere, becaue we haven't found a completely consistent political philosophy yet.
However, I think that in the case of this very basic, crucial question of entitlement theory, it's important to answer the question "on what basis do people deserve things"? If Nozick is inconsistent in his answer to that question it's a problem, because he uses it as the framework for the rest of his theory of justice, which I'm trying to discredit in the rest of the paper.
Also, as I told Diana, I'm trying to figure out whether I believe what I was arguing. What do you think? No property rights?
Re: Nozick ideasifkaramazovSeptember 19 2004, 17:44:31 UTC
It's much more fun to think about your essay than mine at the moment. Probably because I don't have to turn anything in . . .
There's a difference between being "inconsistent" in an answer to a question and providing a qualification. I don't know Nozick, and maybe he is unselfconsciously inconsistent---but he could just as easily answer that question ("On what basis do people deserve things?") with, "In general, people deserve things based on what they can get and keep. However, in order to build in some measure of sanity and stability---and some incentive to try to get things in the first place---into this world, we should protect people's possession of basic, material property once they have it."
After all, as good liberals, aren't we supposed to stand for shades of gray? (Maybe not a resonant slogan, but it has some truth.)
I'm going to have to come selfishly and unintellectually down on the side of property rights' right to exist. I like solitude ("my own space") and am possessive (my copy of The Brothers Karamazov: Mine! Mine! Mine!). As to the question of whether such rights "exist"---well, I wouldn't say it goes into the most elite category of fundamental rights (like freedom of conscience and speech, privacy, etc.). It's not a demand I'll make for the human condition, but it's one I'm glad my particular society has seen fit to permit, and I have trouble imagining privacy fully enacted without some concept of personal space.
Re: Nozick ideasath8naSeptember 21 2004, 13:21:26 UTC
Right, but he's trying to create a moral justification for not adding a qualification like, say, "In order to build some measure of sanity and stability, we should prevent people from starving."
His logic is inconsistent in that his moral justification doesn't differentiate between his qualification and mine. Also, I think the argument you attribute to him is better than his actual arguments, which insists that property rights are morally justified, not just necessary in a utilitarian sense. Perhaps I'm not reading him charitably enough - in the past, TAs have certainly called me on overly uncharitable interpretations of texts I disagree with.
Re: Nozick ideasifkaramazovSeptember 21 2004, 22:26:06 UTC
As I vaguely mentioned earlier, there may be something to an argument that, if you're going to build in a single control, property rights are the most sane way to do it, material goods being a means to get all the other useful things (like food).
Actually, I think yours probably makes more sense, but it is possible to pick out a fundamental difference: yours (nobody starves) provides a guaranteed baseline, whereas his (people keep what they have) enshrines a certain degree of inequality. In that sense, I suppose, yours is more free-market.
If he's trying to make a truly "moral" justification, on what is he basing his conception of morality? That's definitely something to call him on.
Also, I sympathize over the problem of how much credit to give the author. Sometimes I think the elaborate apparatuses critics evolve to justify and rescue an ill-favoured text (say Spenser!) are the literary equivalent of the iron lung.
Re: Nozick ideascilroiSeptember 20 2004, 13:48:54 UTC
just wandering vaguely into this - can't promise any coherency after a full day of unpacking-pricing-stacking-unpacking, etc, textbooks for the upcoming onslaught of your contemporaries this side of the pond, but I'd have to come down on the side of property rights don't exist - in fact, no rights exist. No one has a right to anything. However, since I LIKE to have things, and I am only 5'2-ish, and not overwhelmingly strong despite my box-and-book lifting exercises, and because using my human capacity of empathy I can presume that other weak people like myself might also like to possess things, including food and shelter, I am all in favour of us human-types agreeing to pretend that such abstracts as 'rights' DO exist, insomuch as we all (or most all) are quite partial to warmth, full bellies, and owning stuff, particularly cool shiny fancy stuff like computers...and I like people to be happy. But do property rights exist? No.
p.s. All of the lovely academic presses have put up textbook prices by at least 2 quid this year, so when the Borjas comes in, with its multiple refs to your mum's work, and when I have a slow moment (sometime late Oct), I'm going to work out exactly how many pence she is worth...(or at least how much her refs in one particular text are worth).
Re: Nozick ideascilroiSeptember 23 2004, 00:00:03 UTC
Nope - we are just animals after all, on a twirling mound of rock. Beliefs, rights, gods, all that stuff, where is it? But having said that, I still need to live on this rock and with a whizzy little human brain, and human emotions. Therefore, despite having flirted with anarchistic views in the past, I would now have to come down firmly on the side of the rule of law - because we are animals, and do all want our own way, and will never behave fairly or justly if left to our own devices, so law is all we have...that's what most religions come down to, but they often only address their own peoples' needs being met, as did (and do) most nationalistic laws, whether they cover the nation as it is defined now, or the gens/race as they did earlier - good international law (UN and Kofi Annan and Int'l Court style, not GW and Empire USA style) is the only thing to keep us beasts in line - because people using logic and philosophy and morality will always draw their lines in separate places, and agreement will never be reached. Urg, yes, anyway, I need to finish eating my cereal and get off to work - today we get to drag all the wet soggy cardboard from all the lovely shiny expensive textbooks that has been gathering in the back all week through the shop and out to the front to be taken away to be recycled - woohoo!
Re: Nozick ideasifkaramazovSeptember 23 2004, 10:23:38 UTC
Sorry to jump off my own thread, but--
I agree. Rights, like a solidly defined morality, vanish with deities. And what remains is law, the literal manifestation of might defining what is right. Nevertheless, better the power of something approximating a general will than than the absence of moral thought at all.
Wouldn't Nozick argue each person having "what he can get" is justice?
My other thought, probably of use only to the vague whimsies permissable in literature [smirk], is that the philosophical search for "thought in which there is no contradiction" (which seems to be the premise of your first paragraph) tends to lead nowhere of practical use. Isn't it fair enough for Nozick to say, "Well, because this isn't a perfect world, we need some control?" Along the same lines I suspect you and I would argue for, rather than a perfection of logic, a certain sense of reason. A pro-life activist might point out that we probably wouldn't be comfortable with an abortion 2 days before a woman is due to deliver her child, and really, what is so different from two to three? Three to four? etc. You end up having to make an entirely intuitive, vague judgment about what is reasonable. Whereas the conservative position here is clear: conception is a distinct boundary. We have no clear, inconsistent logical position to argue from on this issue (since there's something repellant about relying on viability for a moral principle, because that's so dependant on our own technology). Just reason.
Obviously I agree with you in general, but simply saying that Nozick is "inconsistent" doesn't seem like quite enough. He can argue that what one owns may be used as the basis for purchasing/obtaining all those other things, and hence has a certain privileged place.
That was probably both longer and more incoherent than you wanted. Sorry.
Reply
However, I think that in the case of this very basic, crucial question of entitlement theory, it's important to answer the question "on what basis do people deserve things"? If Nozick is inconsistent in his answer to that question it's a problem, because he uses it as the framework for the rest of his theory of justice, which I'm trying to discredit in the rest of the paper.
Also, as I told Diana, I'm trying to figure out whether I believe what I was arguing. What do you think? No property rights?
Reply
There's a difference between being "inconsistent" in an answer to a question and providing a qualification. I don't know Nozick, and maybe he is unselfconsciously inconsistent---but he could just as easily answer that question ("On what basis do people deserve things?") with, "In general, people deserve things based on what they can get and keep. However, in order to build in some measure of sanity and stability---and some incentive to try to get things in the first place---into this world, we should protect people's possession of basic, material property once they have it."
After all, as good liberals, aren't we supposed to stand for shades of gray? (Maybe not a resonant slogan, but it has some truth.)
I'm going to have to come selfishly and unintellectually down on the side of property rights' right to exist. I like solitude ("my own space") and am possessive (my copy of The Brothers Karamazov: Mine! Mine! Mine!). As to the question of whether such rights "exist"---well, I wouldn't say it goes into the most elite category of fundamental rights (like freedom of conscience and speech, privacy, etc.). It's not a demand I'll make for the human condition, but it's one I'm glad my particular society has seen fit to permit, and I have trouble imagining privacy fully enacted without some concept of personal space.
Reply
His logic is inconsistent in that his moral justification doesn't differentiate between his qualification and mine. Also, I think the argument you attribute to him is better than his actual arguments, which insists that property rights are morally justified, not just necessary in a utilitarian sense. Perhaps I'm not reading him charitably enough - in the past, TAs have certainly called me on overly uncharitable interpretations of texts I disagree with.
Reply
Actually, I think yours probably makes more sense, but it is possible to pick out a fundamental difference: yours (nobody starves) provides a guaranteed baseline, whereas his (people keep what they have) enshrines a certain degree of inequality. In that sense, I suppose, yours is more free-market.
If he's trying to make a truly "moral" justification, on what is he basing his conception of morality? That's definitely something to call him on.
Also, I sympathize over the problem of how much credit to give the author. Sometimes I think the elaborate apparatuses critics evolve to justify and rescue an ill-favoured text (say Spenser!) are the literary equivalent of the iron lung.
Reply
p.s. All of the lovely academic presses have put up textbook prices by at least 2 quid this year, so when the Borjas comes in, with its multiple refs to your mum's work, and when I have a slow moment (sometime late Oct), I'm going to work out exactly how many pence she is worth...(or at least how much her refs in one particular text are worth).
Reply
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I agree. Rights, like a solidly defined morality, vanish with deities. And what remains is law, the literal manifestation of might defining what is right. Nevertheless, better the power of something approximating a general will than than the absence of moral thought at all.
Reply
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