rights, rights, and still more rights

Ian Murray seamus2001 at attbi.com
Mon Apr 1 15:33:01 PST 2002


----- Original Message ----- From: "Justin Schwartz" <jkschw at hotmail.com> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Monday, April 01, 2002 2:58 PM Subject: Re: rights, rights, and still more rights


>
> >
> >Smoke 'em if you've got 'em folks.
> >
> >Justin how do you reconcile the contradictions between majoritarianism and
> >the notion, which seems
> >implicit, of some objective moral order? Either there is one or there
> >isn't; would that too be up to
> >majority vote? If the people decide there is no objective moral order then
> >how can you sustain the
> >claim that what they might choose to do is immoral?
> >
>
> Moral truth is irrelevant to legal obligation.
=================

This itself is a moral claim. Ok, metaethical if you want to get technical. My point is is if that claim is itself adjudicated via majoritarian methods and you don't get the result you prefer, what's the metasocial basis for the claim that the majority is acting immorally if they have no legal obligation to parse the moral/legal distinction you adhere to?


> Democracy means that the
> people have the right to make horrible moral mistakes. I'm a hard-boiled,
> copper-bottom, nickle-plated, iron-studded, no-apologies moral realist, as
> you know! But I don't think the fact that a moral view is true or false
> trumps the fact that it was democratically embodied in legislation by the
> people or their representatives. The key thing is democratic adoption, not
> truth.
=====================

Oh geez we're not gonna solve this without book length arguments that won't budge our positions. By your own claims, the second sentence faces non-compossibility constraints regarding legislative embodiment. Extreme counterfactual; the legislature decrees by by majority vote that there's no such thing as morality or god and all those who believe in such things shall be put to death. It's begging the question as to whether what they're doing is immoral sub specie aeternitas, no?


>
> This might be the fuyndamental insight of libearlsim coming out of the wars
> of religion. "Maybe you're right about the Trinity. I personally think you
> are going to hell. Now, let's put down that gun and work with me on this
> bill so we can get some nice fat bork into this barrel for the both of us,
> ay?"
=================

The cold war made a mockery of such simplistic partnership models. How about "lets stop all those who hold beliefs we *both* disapprove of from exercising their liberties." Secularism in politics hasn't been the friend of the poor or the "libertine" eh? How can you even prove the majority is acting immorally on the WOD or in criminalizing prostitution? I guess I'm struggling to say you still haven't overcome Arrovian-type problems.


>
> Now, legal obligation isn't the whole story. If the moral disaster is big
> enough, civil disobedience or other resistance to the law might be
> indicated. But that would be based expressly on our moral commitments and
> would not involve an appeal to democratic procedures with the claim to
> therespect those can command simply because they are the correct procedures
> for making laws. And it would be illegal, we should expect to suffer the
> normal penalty for breaking the law.
>
> jks
=======================

And if no majority even prevails in what can count as democratic procedures? Peter Suber has been all over this problem for years on the paradoxes of majoritarianism and objectivity; you're coming up against deep issues of transitivity and undecideability. When you solve them take me with you to Sweden when you go to pick up your prize.

Ian



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