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The narcissism of rights, freedom, equality

  Originally published on Language and Philosophy, July 12, 2022 Freedom, equality and individual rights are not three distinct values. They entail one another — can’t have one without the other. That raises the question, is one of them the goal, the others just necessary conditions, or is there an underlying motivation driving the whole package? Here’s one way to think about these: Equality is a necessary condition for individual freedom. If someone can wield greater power than you, then you can’t be entirely free. In a world of inequalities, socially enforced individual rights are a necessary condition for individual freedom. The collective — the law — will ensure the equality of rights regardless of any other socio-economic inequalities. So if we want freedom, say, to own what we want, we’ll have to accept some inequalities, and in our world of inequalities, equal rights will be necessary for freedom, everybody compromising a bit to maintain a fair distribution of as much freedom as
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free will and responsibility don’t distinguish between non-deterministic religions and secularism

  Originally published on Language and Philosophy, April 18, 2013 Believers in deities often claim that because secularism is deterministic, it has no room for free will and therefore has no concept of personal responsibility or morality. But I don’t see how free will entails moral responsibility, and I don’t see that responsibiltiy entails free will. To take the first implication direction: free will is an incoherent notion. If there is no motive or source of a decision, then the decisions are not tied to an integral self — they’re just random decisions, that don’t belong to anyone. If a decision is motivated by some determinant, then the decision isn’t free. To put it in a theological context: either god made you who you are, and she is responsible for every decision thereafter, or your decisions are random and not anchored is a self. So free will doesn’t entail responsibility. It entails no responsibility, because it entails no self. End of story. From the other direction of entailm
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Social illusions, freedom, autonomy, authenticity

   Originally published on Language and Philosophy, March 25, 2011 The Times the other day had an interesting piece about free will: When people are persuaded that their actions are deterministic, they give reign to their desires irrespective of ethics. People who believe themselves to be free agents tend to curb their selfish inclinations in consideration of the consequences for others. It’s a wonderful support for the notion of moral realism and moral universalism: as soon as people believe they are moral agents, they incline towards the universal principles (see below a couple of posts ago “Jesse Prinz at Philosophy Now”). It’s not conclusive — there might be cultural pressures — but it makes a great test for other cultures. It turns morality into an empirical question, which really is kind of wonderful. The piece goes on to wonder whether people actually are moral agents — are we free? It seems odd to me that this is still a question. On the one hand, if you reject determinism, you
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more on universal morality

  Originally published on Language and Philosophy, February 18, 2011 Again, if the question for moral universalism were, “where do all peoples agree on values” we’d have an empirical answer, but still not a philosophical answer. In any case, the empirical answer would still be forthcoming. All peoples do recognize certain principles of fairness, among other notions that motivate them. Most (all?) global religions hold to principles that stand in stark contrast to purely selfish interests. Morality is universal and is universally of a kind, even when it isn’t exactly alike. Overall, notions of both morality and mores contrast pure self interest, which is odd, since our species nature includes both selfishness and altruism. Yet mores and morality do not try to contradict altruism. The basic notion of morality seems always and everywhere a negotiation with selfish interest where self interests might lead to conflict. One way to define morality is that contrast: morality is not just a cons
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Jesse Prinz article at Philosophy Now

 Originally published on Language and Philosophy, February 18, 2011  I see Jesse Prinz regularly at the Grad Center colloquia where he always asks interesting and articulate questions. So I read a recent article of his on moral relativism “Morality is a Culturally Conditioned Response.” It begins with an exposition exemplifying the variety of human moral values, and asking how there could be such variety if morality is universal. Odd question. Moral theory is not and never has been an empirical science. It’s prescriptive, not descriptive. Kant wasn’t trying figure out a way to describe morality. He wanted to find a rational basis for action. That his conclusion was consonant with much (though not all) of his local cultural mores, might be a reason to suspect his objectivity, but not enough to stand as an argument against his rational program. Seems to me the JP’s question mistakes mores for morals. Does any universalist care what strange rites and social conventions hold across the wor
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