Tony Hanson e-mails from the once-great state of California whose governor-elect is once again Governor Moonbeam:
I see you had Berlin's essay in your library and reread it. I just wanted to say I don't think that we are in quite the bind you describe since there still seems to be a lot of room for some good rationally justified smiting, polemics and general political ass-kicking in spite of value pluralism. I'll make this very brief.
Defense of Polemics. I am sure you would agree that one's opponents may have all sorts of bad reasons for their positions, and (politely?) exposing them can make people more thoughtful, and may even enlighten them to the truth of value pluralism so much so that they may "flinch" too. Could this encourage comity?
That is a good point and I fully agree with it. The pluralistic position, according to which no objective resolution satisfactory to all competent practioners is possible due to irresolvable value differences, is entirely consistent with the possibility of the fully objective exposure of bad arguments and empirical falsehoods on both sides. Take abortion. There are bad arguments on both sides of the debate, and almost everyone will agree that there are. (I won't say what those bad arguments are lest I spark a meta-debate as to exactly which arguments on both sides are bad; but that there are bad arguments on both sides is uncontroversial.) An argument can be objectively bad for a number of different reasons: it is logically invalid; rests on an empirically false premise; involves a weak analogy; commits an informal fallacy; is so murky and indistinct as to be insusceptible of evaluation, etc. The essence of the pluralistic position is that once all the bad arguments on both sides are set aside, one arrives at a set of 'good' arguments which, however, do not resolve the issue for an impartial observer.
I would quibble, though, with your use of 'polemics.' From the Greek polemos, it means strife, struggle, war. So we can define polemics as verbal warfare, warfare at the level of ideas. There needn't be anything polemical about pointing out to an opponent that one of his arguments falls short of an objective standard such as the one represented by formal logic. Here there is the possibility of convincing the opponent (assuming he is sincere, intelligent, etc.) because the cognitive values that come into play (truth, clarity, logical coherence, etc.) are agreed upon.
Defense of War and Smiting. You said, "Suppose further ... that this value difference that divides them cannot be objectively resolved to the satisfaction of both parties by appeal to any empirical fact or by any reasoning or by any combination of the two." Say you are arguing with a Fascist or radical libertarian (who thinks property rights are absolute), and no empirical fact or reasoning satisfies them In other words, they are unreasonable.
But if you say that the radical libertarian is unreasonable, what are your criteria of reasonability or rationality? I reject the radical libertarian position on property rights and I get the impression that you do as well. But from his point of view, his stance is reasonable in that it is rationally derivable from certain axioms he accepts. Is there some plain empirical fact that he fails to take cognizance of, or some rule of logic that he flouts? When you say that the radical libertarian is unreasonable, aren't you just rejecting his scheme of values? He places an absolute, inviolable, value on the individual and his property and refuses to admit that there are any competing values that would tend to have a relativizing effect. Consider an eminent domain dispute. Farmer Jones has worked hard all his life and owns 100 acres. The Feds want to buy from him a strip of land for a much-needed road that cannot be placed anywhere else. Jones refuses to sell. Even if he agrees that there is such a thing as the common good, he refuses to concede that it has the power to limit the absoluteness of his property right.
When you say that Jones is unreasonable, what you are doing is pitting your value-based conception of reasonableness against his. But then my point goes through, which was that disputes like this are objectively irresolvable because rooted in value disputes which are objectively irresolvable.
Seems like its time for the Converse Clausewitz Principle [Politics is war conducted by other means]. Well, you can of course work to defeat libertarians in the political arena (though they do a pretty good job of this themselves, which is why I follow Medved in calling them 'losertarians.') But the issue concerns your rational warrant for "unflinchingly" opposing them. What makes you so cocksure that you are right and they are wrong?
Further, it seems a distinction needs to be made between the priority of a value, and the weight (or height?) of the priority. Two people could prioritize security over liberty, but one would be prepared to sacrifice a lot more liberty for security than the other. The extremist gives his value too much weight, obviously; but it also seems one can be objectively wrong about the weight of the prioritized value, and not be an extremist. Invoking Aristotle might be helpful. Though one might not be a complete coward (or extremist), one might miss the mark with respect to courage and be a little cowardly, and so on with the various values. Moreover, it might not be possible to come to an agreement by using facts and reason, to what "hitting the mark" is, but you know it misses. Someone might have a different intuition on what hitting the mark is, or the target might be a large one allowing for disagreement, but it still might be worth trusting your sense of "tone," and fighting for it.
I agree that if value V1 takes priority over value V2, there remains the question of how much higher up in the axiological hierarchy V1 is. Patrick Henry said, "Give me liberty or give me death." He apparently valued his liberty over his very life. Would you call him an extremist? If yes, then what is wrong with being an extremist? If he is placing an inordinate value on liberty, how do you show that? Or take the Obama liberal who is willing to sacrifice his liberty for (the promise of) cradle-to-grave security and material comfort. How do you show in an objective manner that the liberal places too much value on security and not enough on liberty? You simply assert that "one can be objectively wrong about the weight of the prioritized value." Gratuitous assertions, however, elicit gratuitous counterassertions in response.
Tea Partiers object to the liberty-encroaching governmental overreach of the Obama gang. (Case in point: the 'individual mandate' of Obamacare which forces citizens to buy health insurance.) The political conflict is rooted in a deep value conflict. How resolve it?
I don't see how Aristotle helps in this. I would also point out that he was talking about virtues, not values, which are a different animal entirely and didn't come into philosophical currency until the 19th century. A virtue is a habit (hexis, habitus), a dispositional feature of an agent; a value is . . . well what exactly is a value? An abstract or ideal object of some sort?
The ComBox is open to give Hanson an opportunity to reply. Others may chime in as well, but only if their comments are well-informed, intelligent, and stick precisely to the topic under discussion, what he says and what I say here and in the post that Hanson in replying to. I simply delete comments I consider to be substandard.
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