FYI, it’s more helpful if you use the Quote functionality or the "Reply button as it pulls in the quote with a link back to the referring post so that someone like me can read the original for the full context.
But, barring that, I’ll try to explain it a bit.
Take out the “epistemogical” from the first point and it might help a bit. Your prof who looks out into the world and sees examples of slight violation of rights, and says nothing more than, “here’s evidence so why isn’t it ok” is commiting errors of empiricism or pragmatism. Both of these types of errors dispense with the concept of primciples, either implicitly or explicitly. A pragmatist goes by the idea that whatever works is good. That might seem like a principle, but in reality it rejects principles. It says, “I can’t know more about reality than the specific examples I have, and therefore the only thing I can judge by is whatever works.” The empiricist rejects the idea of principles outright. That is, there are no valid generalization that can be made, and we can only look at the data and maybe look at correlations, but we can’t really draw generalizations because we might run up against an example that violates the generalization later (and who are we to know if we will or not).
These are both epistemological mistakes. That is that principles are tools of reason, and they are fundamental to our being able to understand the world.
Anyway, hope that helps. It’s a bit of complex point and I’ve only given some very quick (and poorly spelled) thoughts on it.
FYI, it’s more helpful if you use the Quote functionality or the "Reply button as it pulls in the quote with a link back to the referring post so that someone like me can read the original for the full context.
But, barring that, I’ll try to explain it a bit.
Take out the “epistemogical” from the first point and it might help a bit. Your prof who looks out into the world and sees examples of slight violation of rights, and says nothing more than, “here’s evidence so why isn’t it ok” is commiting errors of empiricism or pragmatism. Both of these types of errors dispense with the concept of primciples, either implicitly or explicitly. A pragmatist goes by the idea that whatever works is good. That might seem like a principle, but in reality it rejects principles. It says, “I can’t know more about reality than the specific examples I have, and therefore the only thing I can judge by is whatever works.” The empiricist rejects the idea of principles outright. That is, there are no valid generalization that can be made, and we can only look at the data and maybe look at correlations, but we can’t really draw generalizations because we might run up against an example that violates the generalization later (and who are we to know if we will or not).
These are both epistemological mistakes. That is that principles are tools of reason, and they are fundamental to our being able to understand the world.
Anyway, hope that helps. It’s a bit of complex point and I’ve only given some very quick (and poorly spelled) thoughts on it.
So bringing this all together, how would you concisely respond to the argument: “well, a little bit of re-distribution/coercion never hurt anyone!”
So bringing this all together, how would you concisely respond to the argument: “well, a little bit of re-distribution/coercion never hurt anyone!”
Well, you could try knocking your opponent in the face and when he objects, explain that the pain is relatively minor and temporary, and it made you feel better.
If that doesn’t appeal to you, I’m not sure there is a concise way to respond, if by concise you mean a few sentences or whatever. Basically, principles are important because of what they are – the means by which man grasps long term cause and effect. For instance, take any of the Objectivist virtues – why should I be honest or productive or rational all the time, as opposed to most of the time? Or in this case, why should I adhere to the principle that force is evil and individual rights demand a person be left free, when it seems advantageous to take a little money from the people down the street to pay for my tuition or doctors bill – especially when they ain’t got any way to stop me, since I’m the government? The short answer is that human beings survive by using reason, and reason entails conforming to reality. One of the aspects of reality is cause and effect, which is captured by principles. By saying I should be honest on principle, I’m saying I should recognize that honesty is the cause that brings the effect of being in tune with reality and all the goodies that entails – and that dishonesty is a cause that brings the effect of all the bad things that happen when you make pretend. If I decide to be dishonest and violated my principle “just this once”, I am evading causality and reality. Since evasion is bad, as I hope we all agree, then violating principles is bad. And if we want to be good, then we shouldn’t do that. Therefore, we should reject even a little bit of welfare state because it’s bad for everyone involved.
Does that get closer to answering your question?
Oh, and I recommend you sign up at ARI’s website and listen to Leonard Peikoff’s lecture about why one should act on principle.
So bringing this all together, how would you concisely respond to the argument: “well, a little bit of re-distribution/coercion never hurt anyone!”
This seems to concede that both re-distribution and coercion are wrong. Why would anyone knowingly allow for wrong things to be done? Does that not make ethics irrelevant?
This seems to concede that both re-distribution and coercion are wrong. Why would anyone knowingly allow for wrong things to be done? Does that not make ethics irrelevant?
It wouldn’t make ethics irrelevant; it would make you a pragmatist. Pragmatists still answer the basic question of ethics, “what should I do”, by saying you should do what works. They deny the necessity of principles because “what works” according to them sometimes requires violating principles. Case in point: if individualism doesn’t “work” to solve the plight of the poor, and redistribution does, then why not do it? Clearly it lacks a validated standard of value, but I don’t think they’d claim that ethics is irrelevant. They would just say that ethics requires one to go with the flow rather tie oneself down with restrictive absolutes.
Basically, principles are important because of what they are – the means by which man grasps long term cause and effect.
This is the fundamental truth that the “pragmatists” fail to grasp. Theft (forced “redistribution” of wealth) will always hurt the victims, so the underlying idea of pragmatism is that the harm to a few is outweighed by the supposed benefit to a greater number of people, or maybe a few people whose ostensive benefit would be greater. In a society governed by short-term whim and on the spot cost / benefit decrees, you can’t make long-term plans – you don’t know whether you’ll fall within the penumbra of the victims, and have your wealth confiscated. One of the great long-term discoveries of man has been that misfortune can be predicted and planned against – we now understand that it gets cold and dark at certain times, and hot and dry at other times, and we plan accordingly; we learned to plant seeds so that there would be food when it wasn’t just lying about on the ground. We learned how to avoid leopards, and to capture cows, because we are able to understand the underlying principles about calendars, cows and leopards. Pragmatism demands that we destroy man’s fundamental discovery, the predictive principle, and replace it with an unprincipled post-hoc meaningless mantra “whatever benefits the greatest number of people the most”.
