Pols vs Meninwigs, again

At Volokh, but it is Josh Blackman, who I think one of the weaker and distinctly more Trump-friendly, reporting Vance saying:

You cannot have a country where the American people keep on electing immigration enforcement and the courts tell the American people they're not allowed to have what they voted for.

This is wrong - at least in theory. The USA has a constitution, and people can vote for who they like, that doesn't change it. Of course if a sufficient supermajority wants a thing, then the constitution can be changed; but that isn't so in this case. "Does the majority get what it wants" is a recurring theme in political philosophy of course; see for example In a democracy, when and where should majorities rule? or Whole Woman's Health v. Jackson.

Of course, how it plays out politcially is a different matter. Vance is trying to push for what he wants, disguised as some kind of principle. JB, ditto.

Locke: Two Treatises of Government

I've owned, and been meaning to read, this for years. Indeed my copy is marked up at the start of Vol II; but I get ahead of myself. First, an intro. Quotes are mostly taken from this online copy or SEP.

Vol I is dull, and is a sarcastic refutation of the patriarchal theory of Sir Robert Filmer, who tries to justsify the divine right of kings from the authority that God gave Adam. Locke tediously refutes this, but really you're best off reading the summary at the start of Vol II, viz: Firstly. That Adam had not... any such authority over his children, nor dominion over the world, as is pretended. Secondly. That if he had, his heirs yet had no right to it. Thirdly. That if his heirs had, there being no law of Nature nor positive law of God that determines which is the right heir in all cases that may arise, the right of succession, and consequently of bearing rule, could not have been certainly determined. Fourthly. That if even that had been determined, yet the knowledge of which is the eldest line of Adam’s posterity being so long since utterly lost, that in the races of mankind and families of the world, there remains not to one above another the least pretence to be the eldest house, and to have the right of inheritance. Indeed, point four pretty well suffices on its own. It is perhaps worth noting that Vol I begins Slavery is so vile and miserable an estate of man...

No more of Vol I, we move on to Vol II.

We begin with The State of Nature. Locke is whifflier than Hobbes; his SoN is a State of Liberty not of Licence; we may for example not kill ourselves, because we are the Property of God¹. Similarly, we are enjoined not to take away the life limbs or goods of others. And anyone may punish transgression of this Law of Nature. Hobbes, and I, say this is piffle: with no-one to judge, there is no law; and no-one can be judge in his own cause², as Hobbes says and common sense dictates. Moreover the founding of all this on God is regrettable; if Locke's work is only for the God-fearing I will put it down with a yawn. Para 11 - still in the SoN chapter - starts talking about the powers of the Magistrate; this is very confusing. L seems very hung up on rights of punishment; Hobbes has no such burden.

Para 14 asks if we were ever in a SoN, and answers Yes, since currently different countries effectively are. This is an error, a confusion, between people and countries. Hobbes, correctly, says that countries are indeed in a SoN; at least they were then and to some extent still are now; the international Civil Sword is weak.

Chapter 3 moves on to War, and discovers that the LoN also says when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred. L is not parsimonious of his LoN; essentially, it says anything he wants it to. He notes that where an appeal to the Law … lies open, but the remedy is deny’d by a manifest perverting of Justice, … there it is hard to imagine any thing but a State of War. For wherever violence is used, and injury done, though by hands appointed to administer Justice, it is still violence and injury, however colour’d with the Name, Pretences, or Forms of Law…” This is a rather more pragmatic approach that Hobbes, who would point out that L here is assuming that everyone can recognise injustice when they see it. And, to avoid the SoN turning everywhere into the SoW, men naturally turn to setting up Authority on earth.

2025/05: that was written around 2024/07; and this having sat around in this state for a while, I now throw it into the world unfinished.

Notes

1. This would appear to make us the slaves of God; and being the slave, even of a good master, is surely vile; this is a conclusion that you may be sure Locke does not draw.

2. L's answer is para 13, which is basically WP:OTHER: if people shouldn't be their own judges, what about kings, eh? Eh? And then digs another hole for himself with at least in the SoN, people are not "bound to submit to the unjust will of another" - taking it for granted that there is a good defn of unjust, that everyone recognises and agrees on it. This is more piffle. Later (para 19, SoW) puts further obstacles in the way of private justice.

3. Fans of Hamas-vs-Israel will like one may destroy a man who makes war upon him, or has discovered an enmity to his being, for the same reason that he may kill a wolf or a lion, because they are not under the ties of the common law of reason, have no other rule but that of force and violence, and so may be treated as a beast of prey, those dangerous and noxious creatures that will be sure to destroy him whenever he falls into their power.

How do we solve moral problems?

I'm not sure that the "midwit" text here is quite right; it is supposed, I think, to be something like "we derive our morals from first principles" or somesuch. And the idea is that while dimwits just use common sense, the cognoscenti recognise that there is nothing better than just using common sense. The picture was posted, we must presume favourably, by Bryan Caplan; and criticised by Scott Alexander.

For most common everyday issues we do of course use "common sense" for our moral judgements. It could hardly be otherwise; we don't have time to think everything through from first principles. Nor is there any reason to: most ordinary everyday problems are commonplace with well-known solutions; this is after all what we call everyday morality. And even when we do immoral things, no great depths of analysis is required. As good ol' Kant put it:

There is no one, not even the most hardened scoundrel - provided only he is accustomed to use reason in other ways - who, when presented with examples of honesty in purpose, of faithfulness to good maxims, of sympathy, and of kindness towards all (even when these are bound up with great sacrifices of advantage and comfort), does not wish that he too might be a man of like spirit. He is unable to realise such an aim in his own person - though only on account of his desires and impulses; but yet at the same time he wishes to be free from these inclinations, which are a burden to himself.

But the more interesting question is how morality is to be applied to less common situations where we do not have a wealth of examples to guide us. Here it helps to know what morality is, for which you should read Hazlitt, not Kant or his ilk.

From this we learn that, since morality is to promote social cooperation for the long-term good, we should expect us not to have good answers to artificial issues, like the Trolley Problem¹. And since morality is under-determined by any irreducible basis, we should expect people to disagree over edge issues, like the social acceptability of abortion. But I think the most common confusion is to believe that morality covers all issues, up to and including international relations, wars and related matters. You know where I'm going with this, so I can almost stop here. But I'll add: if there's a war, it is best² that it should end quickly. Thus if one side is clearly losing, it should surrender.

Refs

* The parable of the Antheap and the Anteater / Reporting of yer conflict / By the sword you did your work and by the sword you die / Polling Pales.

* Book Review: The Righteous Mind.

* The Prevalence of Marxism in Academia.

Notes

1. If we encountered this in the real world, our likely response would be to jump onto the trolley and try to stop it; or throw a rock onto the tracks or cut the power; or to try to untie the people; or attack the maniac who has set up the problem.

2. "Best in what sense?" you might well ask. Being a comfortable Western atheist, I would answer "best for life, health, prosperity and opportunities for human flourishing". But if those aren't your top priorities - if your top priority is <something else> you might well consider an unwinnable war "worth" continuing. But if you do, you shouldn't then go around wailing that you lack LHPaOfHF.

Moah Techno-optimism

I seem not to have been optimistic since 2017; but really, life is better than that. The world is beautiful; I've made it out onto the rocks; and tech advances, when the idiot govt stands aside.

And the immeadiate cause for this enthusiasm is Accelerating astrophysics with the SpaceX Starship. People are always being whingey about Starlink (see ATTP and note my comment; or here; or Sabine) but I've thought for a while that dumping telescopes into space, and having to pay rather less attention to their mass or size could make them a lot cheaper, which is what that discussion paper says.

Speaking of idiot govt, Auntie offers Inside the desperate rush to save decades of US scientific data from deletion but I am doutful the headline is accurate. It would be very strange if the data was actually deleted; I think it is just being removed from the wub, if that; though I could be wrong. The first easily-verifiable link is "On 16 April, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) announced that a list of datasets regarding ocean monitoring were now scheduled to be removed in early May". From that, there's ADT-HURSAT, which is just not being updated; Cloud Properties - ISCCP H-Series CDR, ditto; Billion Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters (RP's bete noire²), ditto; nClimGrid-Daily: mostly-ditto; at that point I got bored. If anyone knows of anything actually being deleted¹, I'd be interested.

Notes

1. If that even means anything in today's world of multiply redundant backups and copies.

2. "Because the methodologies used by NOAA to generate loss estimates are neither public nor (to my knowledge) written down, it may be that with Smith’s departure the agency may have lost capacity to carry on..."

Refs

* The Pope Who Helped Bring Down Communism.

* Pharmaceutical Price Controls and the Marshmallow Test.

* "Europe Really Is Jailing People for Online Speech," by Prof. Yascha Mounk by Eugene Volokh.

* Surprising, but not unexpected, multi-decadal pause in Arctic sea ice loss via RP.

* Dazal’d thus with hight of place - Upon Somerset's Fall.

* The Merciful Maximization of the Market.

* Europe’s free-speech problem.

* Supreme Court Issues Ruling Temporarily Blocking Alien Enemies Act Deportations.