I haven’t had time to read the whole thing, but this looks like an interesting and provocative essay.
15 thoughts on “Why Libertarians Need Darwin”
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I haven’t had time to read the whole thing, but this looks like an interesting and provocative essay.
Comments are closed.
How do we know it’s really you and not Dick Cheney?
the primary aim of government was to secure individual rights from force and fraud, which included enforcing laws of contract and private property.
What heretical ideas. Next they’ll be arguing for the rule of law and equal justice. Don’t they know rules are supposed to be changed in the middle of the game so everybody freezes up from uncertainty?
“the primary aim of government was to secure individual rights from force and fraud . . . ”
Really?! Live and learn. I thought it was to allow “liberals” to redistribute our wealth.
The problem is managing individual rights against equal justice. Equal means a comparison, and in the case of justice, a comparison in treatment between to individuals. Today’s liberalism claims the disparity and inequalities of the pass has lead to an injustice in which some individuals have more than the ought to have, and others are far more poorer than should be.
Ken Anthony seems to think equal justice is the equal application of the law. Dude is smoking something…
“Today’s liberalism claims the disparity and inequalities of the pass has lead to an injustice in which some individuals have more than the ought to have, and others are far more poorer than should be.”
“Ought” and “should”–two words that often follow (small-r) religious thinking. I’d like to see one of today’s “liberals” prove, syllogistically, theit “oughts” and “shoulds,” and how those oughts and shoulds give A a blank check against B’s bank acount.
Ought according to whom? Who decides? God? Cthullu? Me?
‘Social Justice’ is just another way of saying ‘rapine and plunder’. But by kinder gentler sorts of Barbarian. Or so they claim.
Dude is smoking something…
Ya got me. I forgot that some people are more equal than others.
I was ten when all the kids in the neighborhood started smoking… ten! I didn’t join them.
I read the whole thing. Can’t figure out what exactly the author is saying regarding the relationship between Darwinism and classical liberalism. Maybe because I know there isn’t one – you have to be crazy to understand a crazy person.
Scientific theory offers no basis for ethics, political or otherwise. Science can tell us only what is physically or (in the case of the only known emotional creatures, birds and mammals) psychologically harmful or beneficial to an object. Science can tell us whether that object is useful to humans. It cannot tell us whether we are obligated to value it for its own sake – to regard it as having certain unalienable rights.
Perhaps Alan, but the scientific method (observe, measure and reason) can be used in politics and ethics. You can look at certain principles (or lack thereof) and see the historical result (rather than the revisionist history which concludes with a false claimed result.)
We’ve seen how statism leads to mass death.
We’ve seen that you can’t spend your way to prosperity.
We’ve seen this admin claim 3 million jobs ‘saved or created’ (in districts that don’t exist, no less) while real unemployment is around 20% (while giving almost 2 yrs of U.I. benefits instead of the normal 6 months.) Also while driving out jobs as fast as they can by demonizing business.
It shouldn’t take a rocket scientist to see that Obama and friends are really, really bad for the future of this country (and we’ve a lot of years of work to do to fix this current disaster… thanks MTV.)
Some principles can be relied on for better results than others and a little application of reason might be helpful in determining which.
I was ten when all the kids in the neighborhood started smoking… ten! I didn’t join them.
Same here, but considering all the grammatical errors in my comment, I might be on something.
pass=past
the=they
To Alan, good job reading the whole thing. I attempted it, but quit after a 1,000 words. Whether their is a reasonable similarity or not just doesn’t matter. What exactly is gained by equating Libertarians to Charles Darwin? Besides, Darwin is dead. If you need Darwin, then you are doomed by the fact he no longer exists.
If you need confirmation of the values of Scientific Method, then say so. But then, if Scientific Method is the style of governance for Libertarians; then they don’t need Darwin. They need to employ that style, and prove (or disprove) it is actually a better way to govern. Pointing out that Darwin was successful with it, when he wasn’t trying to govern, is useless.
Alan, your baseless assertions do not define reality. Grandstanding with confidence doesn’t make you right. Your argument by intimidation only serves to highlight that you don’t have a coherent argument for your position.
As for a review of the essay, I thought it was myopic, and failed at bridging the ‘is/ought’ dichotomy, which generally made the essay clumsy.
The author attempts to establish the 20 some-odd factors that all humans value, arguably biological necessary conditions for human life, as the basis of morality. In engineering terms, thats like ignoring the Level 0 requirements and only using the Level 1s to spec your system. Those 20 factors are derived from a higher level requirement, but the essay never explored in that direction.
Because the author failed to explore the the integrating principle behind his data, he forced his argument to make a illogical leap in his argument about desires. Namely, that human desires are the basis for value (hedonism). The author then backtracks a bit and attempts to make a distinction that desires are good, but some desires are better because they have better outcomes (an exercise that only serves to make ‘good’ a floating abstraction). The entire time I was reading the article I kept facepalming, because if the author had even once familiarized himself with the fundamentals of Objectivism he could have written a much more coherent essay, and made a much more convincing argument (without the illogical leaps along the way).
To provide a thought experiment to invalidate Alan’s ‘hypothesis’ consider this:
In order to make value judgements, a being must be alive and capable of conscious reason, i.e. morality requires sentient life.
Now the thought experiment with the following null hypothesis: a human cannot survive without using their reason (or relying on the reason of others).
As for controls, you can’t control another beings mind, but you can prevent that being from acting on it’s reasoning.
How long will the human survive when you restrict it from any activity that it attempts to pursue based on logic and aggregated knowledge?
I think you’ll find that the extent you contol this variable is the extent that you kill the human.
So what we have is:
1. Human life is a neccessary condition for human morality.
2. The freedom to act on one’s reason is a necessary condition for human life.
therefore:
3. the freedom to act on one’s reason is a necessary condition for morality.
and there we have a plausible scientific basis for morality!
(p.s. I can’t seem to control the auto-bolding)
…which doesn’t show up when I submit the post.
The problem with the article is twofold. Let’s start with the second: Arnhart puts way more verbosity than explanation into his thesis. I can figure out rationales of lots of ideas I don’t believe in, but I can’t figure out how Arnhart figures that Darwinism is more classical-liberalism-friendly than statism-friendly.
The first, as I have stated in different words, is the faulty assumption that an amoral system (Darwinism) can serve as sufficient basis for making moral assumptions.
Ryan’s three-step diagram is hogwash. Freedom isn’t a necessary condition for human life. For starters, Charles Manson’s continued existence disproves Point 2.
All moral systems are based on a number of philosophical assumptions – claims about that is objectively good and objectively bad and which of these things are better/worse than the others.Various anti-statist worldviews place the welfare of general humanity at the top or (in the case of theists) the number 2 slot. Statists believe that the welfare of certain classes of humans is more important than the welfare of certain other classes. Neither of these conflicting claims can be proven scientifically.
In response to Ken: science cannot tell us what situations are objectively good or bad, but it can tell us what activities tend to bring those situations about. The Quaker and the monarchist can agree 100% on behavioral science, but will put that knowledge to very different ends.
A parasite needs a host off of which to feed. Manson would cease to exist without feeding off those who are free to use their minds and further their lives.
He also uses rational decision making for many of the mundane aspects of his life to continue surviving. Like deciding which objects to consume to feed his body. I’m pretty certain he’s using previously accumulated knowledge to judge whether an object is edible. He’s also using rational induction that other objects are not edible without ever having to try eating them (without direct experimental knowledge of those objects).
So try again.
As for the rest – speak for yourself brother. Your philosophical system may very well be constructed on baseless assertions. That doesn’t mean all of them are.
btw your depictions of anti-statists/theists vs. statists aren’t conflicting at all, they are the same side of the coin and only vary in degree, not principle. Both of your descriptions revolve around amalgamated groups of individuals.
Ryan,
Your Manson remarks don’t rebut what I said – that people can be unfree and still be alive – and they don’t bear any relevance to the original topic either.
I interpreted your Item 2 literally. If that was an error, then you need to take another stab at explaining your three-point recipe. It makes no sense to me.
I never claimed that philosophical systems are all “constructed on baseless assertions.” Philosophical systems stem from philosophical assumptions, just as scientific systems stem from scientific assumptions. “Philosophy” is not synonymous with “baselessness.”
I did mistakenly speak of theism from a monotheistic perspective. From what I gather, polytheists don’t really think of the gods as authority in the way that monotheists do; the gods are more like a protection racket than City Hall. Give sacrifices so they won’t zap you.
My remarks on statism require a caveat, but not for the reason you think. Many types of statism involve class warfare, but nanny statism is something quite different. Nanny statism in and of itself values the general welfare, but goes wrong by micromanaging it to excess.