Justice （上）

Justice 01 The Moral Side of Murder / The Case for Cannibalism 杀人的道德侧面/同类自残案

This is a course about justice and we begin with a story.

Suppose you're the driver of a trolley car, and your trolley car is hurtling down the track at 60 miles an hour.

And at the end of the track you notice five workers working on the track.

You try to stop but you can't, your brakes don't work.

You feel desperate because you know that if you crash into these five workers, they will all die.

Let's assume you know that for sure.

And so you feel helpless until you notice that there is, off to the right, a side track and at the end of that track, there is one worker working on the track.

Your steering wheel works, so you can turn the trolley car, if you want to, onto the side track killing the one but sparing the five.

Here's our first question: what's the right thing to do?

What would you do? Let's take a poll.

How many would turn the trolley car onto the side track? Raise your hands.

How many wouldn't? How many would go straight ahead?

Keep your hands up those of you who would go straight ahead.

A handful of people would, the vast majority would turn.

Let's hear first, now we need to begin to investigate the reasons why you think it's the right thing to do.

Let's begin with those in the majority who would turn to go onto the side track. Why would you do it?

What would be your reason? Who's willing to volunteer a reason?

Go ahead. Stand up.

Because it can't be right to kill five people when you can only kill one person instead.

It wouldn't be right to kill five if you could kill one person instead.

That's a good reason.

That's a good reason. Who else?

Does everybody agree with that reason? Go ahead.

Well I was thinking it's the same reason on 9/11 with regard to the people who flew the plane into the Pennsylvania field as heroes because they chose to kill the people on the plane and not kill more people in big buildings.

So the principle there was the same on 9/11.

It's a tragic circumstance but better to kill one so that five can live, is that the reason most of you had, those of you who would turn? Yes?

Let's hear now from those in the minority, those who wouldn't turn. Yes.

Well, I think that's the same type of mentality that justifies genocide and totalitarianism.

In order to save one type of race, you wipe out the other.

So what would you do in this case?

You would, to avoid the horrors of genocide, you would crash into the five and kill them?

Presumably, yes.

You would? -Yeah.

Okay. Who else? That's a brave answer.

Thank you.

Let's consider another trolley car case and see whether those of you in the majority want to adhere to the principle "better that one should die so that five should live."

This time you're not the driver of the trolley car, you're an onlooker. You're standing on a bridge overlooking a trolley car track.

And down the track comes a trolley car, at the end of the track are five workers, the brakes don't work, the trolley car is about to careen into the five and kill them.

And now, you're not the driver, you really feel helpless until you notice standing next to you, leaning over the bridge is a very fat man.

And you could give him a shove.

He would fall over the bridge onto the track right in the way of the trolley car. He would die but he would spare the five.

Now, how many would push the fat man over the bridge?

Raise your hand. How many wouldn't?

Most people wouldn't. Here's the obvious question.

What became of the principle "better to save five lives even if it means sacrificing one?"

What became of the principle that almost everyone endorsed in the first case?

I need to hear from someone who was in the majority in both cases.

How do you explain the difference between the two? Yes.

The second one, I guess, involves an active choice of pushing a person down which I guess that person himself would otherwise not have been involved in the situation at all.

And so to choose on his behalf, I guess, to involve him in something that he otherwise would have escaped is, I guess, more than what you have in the first case where the three parties, the driver and the two sets of workers, are already, I guess, in the situation.

But the guy working, the one on the track off to the side, he didn't choose to sacrifice his life any more than the fat man did, did he?

That's true, but he was on the tracks and...

This guy was on the bridge.

Go ahead, you can come back if you want. All right.

It's a hard question. You did well. You did very well.

It's a hard question.

Who else can find a way of reconciling the reaction of the majority in these two cases? Yes.

Well, I guess in the first case where you have the one worker and the five, it's a choice between those two and you have to make a certain choice and people are going to die because of the trolley car, not necessarily because of your direct actions.

The trolley car is a runaway thing and you're making a split second choice.

Whereas pushing the fat man over is an actual act of murder on your part.

You have control over that whereas you may not have control over the trolley car.

So I think it's a slightly different situation.

All right, who has a reply?

That's good. Who has a way?

Who wants to reply?

Is that a way out of this?

I don't think that's a very good reason because you choose toeither way you have to choose who dies because you either choose to turn and kill the person, which is an act of conscious thought to turn, or you choose to push the fat man over which is also an active, conscious action.

So either way, you're making a choice.

Do you want to reply?

I'm not really sure that that's the case.

It just still seems kind of different.

The act of actually pushing someone over onto the tracks and killing him, you are actually killing him yourself.

You're pushing him with your own hands.

You're pushing him and that's different than steering something that is going to cause death into another.

You know, it doesn't really sound right saying it now.

No, no. It's good. It's good.

What's your name?

Andrew.

Andrew.

Let me ask you this question, Andrew.

Yes.

Suppose standing on the bridge next to the fat man, I didn't have to push him, suppose he was standing over a trap door that I could open by turning a steering wheel like that.

Would you turn?

For some reason, that still just seems more wrong.

Right?

I mean, maybe if you accidentally like leaned into the steering wheel or something like that.

But... Or say that the car is hurtling towards a switch that will drop the trap.

Then I could agree with that.

That's all right. Fair enough.

It still seems wrong in a way that it doesn't seem wrong in the first case to turn, you say.

And in another way, I mean, in the first situation you're involved directly with the situation.

In the second one, you're an onlooker as well.

All right. -So you have the choice of becoming involved or not by pushing the fat man.

All right. Let's forget for the moment about this case.

That's good.

Let's imagine a different case.

This time you're a doctor in an emergency room and six patients come to you.

They've been in a terrible trolley car wreck.

Five of them sustain moderate injuries, one is severely injured, you could spend all day caring for the one severely injured victim but in that time, the five would die.

Or you could look after the five, restore them to health but during that time, the one severely injured person would die.

How many would save the five?

Now as the doctor, how many would save the one?

Very few people, just a handful of people.

Same reason, I assume.

One life versus five?

Now consider another doctor case.

This time, you're a transplant surgeon and you have five patients, each in desperate need of an organ transplant in order to survive.

One needs a heart, one a lung, one a kidney, one a liver, and the fifth a pancreas.

And you have no organ donors.

You are about to see them die.

And then it occurs to you that in the next room there's a healthy guy who came in for a check-up.

And he's -- you like that -- and he's taking a nap, you could go in very quietly, yank out the five organs, that person would die, but you could save the five.

How many would do it?

Anyone? How many?

Put your hands up if you would do it.

Anyone in the balcony?

I would.

You would? Be careful, don't lean over too much.

How many wouldn't?

All right. What do you say?

Speak up in the balcony, you who would yank out the organs. Why?

I'd actually like to explore a slightly alternate possibility of just taking the one of the five who needs an organ who dies first and using their four healthy organs to save the other four.

That's a pretty good idea.

That's a great idea except for the fact that you just wrecked the philosophical point.

Let's step back from these stories and these arguments to notice a couple of things about the way the arguments have begun to unfold.

Certain moral principles have already begun to emerge from the discussions we've had.

And let's consider what those moral principles look like.

The first moral principle that emerged in the discussion said the right thing to do, the moral thing to do depends on the consequences that will result from your action.

At the end of the day, better that five should live even if one must die.

That's an example of consequentialist moral reasoning.

Consequentialist moral reasoning locates morality in the consequences of an act, in the state of the world that will result from the thing you do.

But then we went a little further, we considered those other cases and people weren't so sure about consequentialist moral reasoning.

When people hesitated to push the fat man over the bridge or to yank out the organs of the innocent patient, people gestured toward reasons having to do with the intrinsic quality of the act itself, consequences be what they may.

People were reluctant.

People thought it was just wrong, categorically wrong, to kill a person, an innocent person, even for the sake of saving five lives.

At least people thought that in the second version of each story we considered.

So this points to a second categorical way of thinking about moral reasoning.

Categorical moral reasoning locates morality in certain absolute moral requirements, certain categorical duties and rights, regardless of the consequences.

We're going to explore in the days and weeks to come the contrast between consequentialist and categorical moral principles.

The most influential example of consequential moral reasoning is utilitarianism, a doctrine invented by Jeremy Bentham, English political philosopher.

The most important philosopher of categorical moral reasoning German philosopher Immanuel Kant.

So we will look at those two different modes of moral reasoning, assess them, and also consider others.

If you look at the syllabus, you'll notice that we read a number of great and famous books, books by Aristotle, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, John Stewart Mill, and others.

You'll notice too from the syllabus that we don't only read these books; we also take up contemporary, political, and legal controversies that raise philosophical questions.

We will debate equality and inequality, affirmative action, free speech versus hate speech, same sex marriage, military conscription, a range of practical questions. Why?

Not just to enliven these abstract and distant books but to make clear, to bring out what's at stake in our everyday lives, including our political lives, for philosophy.

And so we will read these books and we will debate these issues, and we'll see how each informs and illuminates the other.

This may sound appealing enough, but here I have to issue a warning.

And the warning is this, to read these books in this way as an exercise in self knowledge, to read them in this way carries certain risks, risks that are both personal and political, risks that every student of political philosophy has known.

These risks spring from the fact that philosophy teaches us and unsettles us by confronting us with what we already know.

There's an irony.

The difficulty of this course consists in the fact that it teaches what you already know.

It works by taking what we know from familiar unquestioned settings and making it strange.

That's how those examples worked, the hypotheticals with which we began, with their mix of playfulness and sobriety.

It's also how these philosophical books work.

Philosophy estranges us from the familiar, not by supplying new information but by inviting and provoking a new way of seeing but, and here's the risk, once the familiar turns strange, it's never quite the same again.

Self knowledge is like lost innocence, however unsettling you find it; it can never be un-thought or un-known.

What makes this enterprise difficult but also riveting is that moral and political philosophy is a story and you don't know where the story will lead.

But what you do know is that the story is about you.

Those are the personal risks.

Now what of the political risks?

One way of introducing a course like this would be to promise you that by reading these books and debating these issues, you will become a better, more responsible citizen; you will examine the presuppositions of public policy, you will hone your political judgment, you will become a more effective participant in public affairs.

But this would be a partial and misleading promise.

Political philosophy, for the most part, hasn't worked that way.

You have to allow for the possibility that political philosophy may make you a worse citizen rather than a better one or at least a worse citizen before it makes you a better one, and that's because philosophy is a distancing, even debilitating, activity. And you see this, going back to Socrates, there's a dialogue, the Gorgias, in which one of Socrates' friends, Callicles, tries to talk him out of philosophizing.

Callicles tells Socrates "Philosophy is a pretty toy if one indulges in it with moderation at the right time of life. But if one pursues it further than one should, it is absolute ruin."

"Take my advice," Callicles says, "abandon argument. Learn the accomplishments of active life, take for your models not those people who spend their time on these petty quibbles but those who have a good livelihood and reputation and many other blessings."

So Callicles is really saying to Socrates "Quit philosophizing, get real, go to business school." And Callicles did have a point.

He had a point because philosophy distances us from conventions, from established assumptions, and from settled beliefs.

Those are the risks, personal and political.

And in the face of these risks, there is a characteristic evasion.

The name of the evasion is skepticism, it's the idea -- well, it goes something like this -- we didn't resolve once and for all either the cases or the principles we were arguing when we began and if Aristotle and Locke and Kant and Mill haven't solved these questions after all of these years, who are we to think that we, here in Sanders Theatre, over the course of a semester, can resolve them?

And so, maybe it's just a matter of each person having his or her own principles and there's nothing more to be said about it, no way of reasoning.

That's the evasion, the evasion of skepticism, to which I would offer the following reply.

It's true, these questions have been debated for a very long time but the very fact that they have recurred and persisted may suggest that though they're impossible in one sense, they're unavoidable in another.

And the reason they're unavoidable, the reason they're inescapable is that we live some answer to these questions every day.

So skepticism, just throwing up your hands and giving up on moral reflection is no solution.

Immanuel Kant described very well the problem with skepticism when he wrote "Skepticism is a resting place for human reason, where it can reflect upon its dogmatic wanderings, but it is no dwelling place for permanent settlement."

"Simply to acquiesce in skepticism," Kant wrote, "can never suffice to overcome the restlessness of reason."

I've tried to suggest through these stories and these arguments some sense of the risks and temptations, of the perils and the possibilities.

I would simply conclude by saying that the aim of this course is to awaken the restlessness of reason and to see where it might lead.

Thank you very much.

Like, in a situation that desperate, you have to do what you have to do to survive.

-You have to do what you have to do?

You got to do what you got to do, pretty much.

without any food, you know, someone just has to take the sacrifice.

Someone has to make the sacrifice and people can survive.

Alright, that's good.

What's your name?

Marcus.

-Marcus, what do you say to Marcus?

Last time, we started out last time with some stories, with some moral dilemmas about trolley cars and about doctors and healthy patients vulnerable to being victims of organ transplantation.

We noticed two things about the arguments we had, one had to do with the way we were arguing.

We began with our judgments in particular cases.

We tried to articulate the reasons or the principles lying behind our judgments.

And then confronted with a new case, we found ourselves reexamining those principles, revising each in the light of the other.

And we noticed the built in pressure to try to bring into alignment our judgments about particular cases and the principles we would endorse on reflection.

We also noticed something about the substance of the arguments that emerged from the discussion.

We noticed that sometimes we were tempted to locate the morality of an act in the consequences, in the results, in the state of the world that it brought about.

And we called this consequentialist moral reasoning.

But we also noticed that in some cases, we weren't swayed only by the result.

Sometimes, many of us felt, that not just consequences but also the intrinsic quality or character of the act matters morally.

Some people argued that there are certain things that are just categorically wrong even if they bring about a good result, even if they saved five people at the cost of one life.

So we contrasted consequentialist moral principles with categorical ones.

Today and in the next few days, we will begin to examine one of the most influential versions of consequentialist moral theory.

And that's the philosophy of utilitarianism.

Jeremy Bentham, English political philosopher gave first the first clear systematic expression to the utilitarian moral theory.

And Bentham's idea, his essential idea, is a very simple one.

With a lot of morally intuitive appeal, Bentham's idea is the following, the right thing to do; the just thing to do is to maximize utility.

What did he mean by utility?

He meant by utility the balance of pleasure over pain, happiness over suffering.

Here's how he arrived at the principle of maximizing utility.

He started out by observing that all of us, all human beings are governed by two sovereign masters: pain and pleasure.

We human beings like pleasure and dislike pain.

And so we should base morality, whether we're thinking about what to do in our own lives or whether as legislators or citizens, we're thinking about what the laws should be.

The right thing to do individually or collectively is to maximize, act in a way that maximizes the overall level of happiness.

Bentham's utilitarianism is sometimes summed up with the slogan "The greatest good for the greatest number." With this basic principle of utility on hand, let's begin to test it and to examine it by turning to another case, another story, but this time, not a hypothetical story, a real life story, the case of the Queen versus Dudley and Stevens.

British law case that's famous and much debated in law schools.

Here's what happened in the case.

I'll summarize the story then I want to hear how you would rule, imagining that you were the jury.

A newspaper account of the time described the background.

A sadder story of disaster at sea was never told than that of the survivors of the yacht, Mignonette.

The ship floundered in the South Atlantic, There were four in the crew, Dudley was the captain, Stevens was the first mate, Brooks was a sailor, all men of excellent character or so the newspaper account tells us.

The fourth crew member was the cabin boy, Richard Parker, He was an orphan, he had no family, and he was on his first long voyage at sea.

He went, the news account tells us, rather against the advice of his friends.

He went in the hopefulness of youthful ambition, thinking the journey would make a man of him.

Sadly, it was not to be.

The facts of the case were not in dispute.

A wave hit the ship and the Mignonette went down.

The four crew members escaped to a lifeboat.

The only food they had were two cans of preserved turnips, no fresh water.

For the first three days, they ate nothing.

On the fourth day, they opened one of the cans of turnips and ate it.

The next day they caught a turtle.

Together with the other can of turnips, the turtle enabled them to subsist for the next few days.

And then for eight days, they had nothing.

No food. No water.

Imagine yourself in a situation like that, what would you do?

Here's what they did.

By now the cabin boy, Parker, is lying at the bottom of the lifeboat in the corner because he had drunk seawater against the advice of the others and he had become ill and he appeared to be dying.

Dudley, the captain, suggested that they should all have a lottery, that they should draw lots to see who would die to save the rest.

Brooks refused.

He didn't like the lottery idea.

We don't know whether this was because he didn't want to take the chance or because he believed in categorical moral principles.

But in any case, no lots were drawn.

The next day there was still no ship in sight so Dudley told Brooks to avert his gaze and he motioned to Stevens that the boy, Parker, had better be killed.

Dudley offered a prayer, he told the boy his time had come, and he killed him with a pen knife, stabbing him in the jugular vein.

Brooks emerged from his conscientious objection to share in the gruesome bounty.

For four days, the three of them fed on the body and blood of the cabin boy.

True story.

And then they were rescued.

Dudley describes their rescue in his diary with staggering euphemism.

as we were having our breakfast, a ship appeared at last.

The three survivors were picked up by a German ship.

They were taken back to Falmouth in England where they were arrested and tried.

Brooks turned state's witness.

Dudley and Stevens went to trial.

They didn't dispute the facts.

They claimed they had acted out of necessity; that was their defense.

They argued in effect better that one should die so that three could survive.

The prosecutor wasn't swayed by that argument.

He said murder is murder, and so the case went to trial.

Now imagine you are the jury.

And just to simplify the discussion, put aside the question of law, let's assume that you as the jury are charged with deciding whether what they did was morally permissible or not.

How many would vote 'not guilty', that what they did was morally permissible?

And how many would vote 'guilty', what they did was morally wrong?

A pretty sizeable majority.

Now let's see what people's reasons are and let me begin with those who are in the minority.

Let's hear first from the defense of Dudley and Stevens.

Why would you morally exonerate them?

What are your reasons?

Yes.

I think it is morally reprehensible but I think that there is a distinction between what's morally reprehensible and what makes someone legally accountable.

In other words, as the judge said, what's always moral isn't necessarily against the law and while I don't think that necessity justifies theft or murder or any illegal act, at some point your degree of necessity does, in fact, exonerate you from any guilt.

Okay. Good. Other defenders.

Other voices for the defense.

Moral justifications for what they did. Yes.

Thank you.

I just feel like in the situation that desperate, you have to do what you have to do to survive.

You have to do what you have to do.

Yeah, you've got to do what you've got to do.

Pretty much.

If you've been going someone just has to take the sacrifice, someone has to make the sacrifice and people can survive.

And furthermore from that, let's say they survive and then they become productive members of society who go home and start like a million charity organizations and this and that I mean they benefited everybody in the end. -Yeah.

So, I mean I don't know what they did afterwards, they might have gone and like, I don't know, killed more people, I don't know.

Whatever but. -What?

Maybe they were assassins.

What if they went home and they turned out to be assassins?

What if they'd gone home and turned out to be assassins? Well!

You'd want to know who they assassinated.

That's true too. That's fair.

That's fair. I would want to know who they assassinated.

All right. That's good.

What's your name?

Marcus.

Marcus. All right.

We've heard a defense, a couple of voices for the defense.

Now we need to hear from the prosecution.

Most people think what they did was wrong. Why?

Yes. -One of the first things that I was thinking was they haven't been eating for a really long time maybe they're mentally like affected and so then that could be used as a defense, a possible argument that they weren't in the proper state of mind, they weren't making decisions they might otherwise be making.

And if that's an appealing argument that you have to be in an altered mindset to do something like that, it suggests that people who find that argument convincing do think that they were acting immorally.

But what do you- I want to know what you think. You defend them.

I'm sorry, you vote to convict, right?

Yeah, I don't think that they acted in a morally appropriate way.

And why not?

What do you say, here's Marcus, he just defended them.

He said -- you heard what he said.

Yes.

That you've got to do what you've got to do in a case like that. -Yeah.

-What do you say to Marcus?

That there's no situation that would allow human beings to take the idea of fate or the other people's lives in their own hands, that we don't have that kind of power.

Good. Okay.

Thank you.

And what's your name?

Britt.

Britt. Okay. Who else?

What do you say? Stand up.

I'm wondering if Dudley and Steven had asked for Richard Parker's consent in you know, dying, if that would exonerate them from an act of murder and if so, is that still morally justifiable?

That's interesting.

All right. Consent.

Wait wait, hang on.

What's your name?

Kathleen.

Kathleen says suppose they had that, what would that scenario look like?

So in the story Dudley is there, pen knife in hand, but instead of the prayer or before the prayer, he says "Parker, would you mind?"

"We're desperately hungry", as Marcus empathizes with, "we're desperately hungry.

You're not going to last long anyhow."

-Yeah. You can be a martyr.

"Would you be a martyr?

How about it Parker?"

Then what do you think?

Would it be morally justified then?

Suppose Parker in his semi-stupor says "Okay."

I don't think it would be morally justifiable but I'm wondering if -- Even then, even then it wouldn't be?

-No.

You don't think that even with consent it would be morally justified?

Are there people who think who want to take up Kathleen's consent idea and who think that that would make it morally justified?

Raise your hand if it would, if you think it would.

That's very interesting.

Why would consent make a moral difference?

Why would it? Yes.

Well, I just think that if he was making his own original idea and it was his idea to start with, then that would be the only situation in which I would see it being appropriate in any way because that way you couldn't make the argument that he was pressured, you know it's three-to-one or whatever the ratio was.

Right. -And I think that if he was making a decision to give his life and he took on the agency to sacrifice himself which some people might see as admirable and other people might disagree with that decision.

So if he came up with the idea, that's the only kind of consent we could have confidence in morally then it would be okay.

Otherwise, it would be kind of coerced consent under the circumstances, you think.

Is there anyone who thinks that even the consent of Parker would not justify their killing him?

Who thinks that? Yes.

Tell us why. Stand up.

I think that Parker would be killed with the hope that the other crew members would be rescued so there's no definite reason that he should be killed because you don't know when they're going to get rescued so if you kill him, it's killing him in vain, do you keep killing a crew member until you're rescued and then you're left with no one because someone's going to die eventually?

Well, the moral logic of the situation seems to be that, that they would keep on picking off the weakest maybe, one by one, until they were rescued.

And in this case, luckily, they were rescued when three at least were still alive.

Now, if Parker did give his consent, would it be all right, do you think or not?

No, it still wouldn't be right.

-And tell us why it wouldn't be all right.

First of all, cannibalism, I believe, is morally incorrect so you shouldn't be eating human anyway.

So cannibalism is morally objectionable as such so then, even on the scenario of waiting until someone died, still it would be objectionable.

Yes, to me personally, I feel like it all depends on one's personal morals and like we can't sit here and just, like this is just my opinion, of course other people are going to disagree, but -- Well we'll see, let's see what their disagreements are and then we'll see if they have reasons that can persuade you or not.

Let's try that. All right.

Now, is there someone who can explain, those of you who are tempted by consent, can you explain why consent makes such a moral difference?

What about the lottery idea?

Does that count as consent?

Remember at the beginning,

Dudley proposed a lottery,

suppose that they had agreed to a lottery, then how many would then say it was all right?

Suppose there were a lottery, cabin boy lost, and the rest of the story unfolded, then how many people would say it was morally permissible?

So the numbers are rising if we had a lottery.

Let's hear from one of you for whom the lottery would make a moral difference.

Why would it?

I think the essential element, in my mind, that makes it a crime is the idea that they decided at some point that their lives were more important than his, and that, I mean, that's kind of the basis for really any crime.

Right? It's like my needs, my desires are more important than yours and mine take precedent.

And if they had done a lottery where everyone consented that someone should die and it's sort of like they're all sacrificing themselves to save the rest.

Then it would be all right?

A little grotesque but --.

-But morally permissible?

Yes.

-And what's your name?

Matt.

-So Matt, for you,

what bothers you is not the cannibalism but the lack of due process.

I guess you could say that.

Right? And can someone who agrees with Matt say a little bit more about why a lottery would make it, in your view, morally permissible.

Go ahead.

The way I understood it originally was that that was the whole issue is that the cabin boy was never consulted about whether or not something was going to happen to him, even with the original lottery whether or not he would be a part of that, it was just decided that he was the one that was going to die.

Right, that's what happened in the actual case.

Right.

But if there were a lottery and they'd all agreed to the procedure, you think that would be okay?

Right, because then everyone knows that there's going to be a death, whereas the cabin boy didn't know that this discussion was even happening, there was no forewarning for him to know that "Hey, I may be the one that's dying."

All right.

Now, suppose everyone agrees to the lottery, they have the lottery, the cabin boy loses, and he changes his mind.

You've already decided, it's like a verbal contract.

You can't go back on that, you've decided, the decision was made.

If you know that you're dying for the reason of others to live.

If someone else had died, you know that you would consume them so -- Right. But then you could say, "I know, but I lost".

I just think that that's the whole moral issue is that there was no consulting of the cabin boy and that's what makes it the most horrible is that he had no idea what was even going on.

That had he known what was going on, it would be a bit more understandable.

All right. Good. Now I want to hear -- so there are some who think it's morally permissible led by Marcus.

Then there are some who say the real problem here is the lack of consent, whether the lack of consent to a lottery, to a fair procedure or, Kathleen's idea, lack of consent at the moment of death.

And if we add consent, then more people are willing to consider the sacrifice morally justified.

I want to hear now, finally, from those of you who think even with consent, even with a lottery, even with a final murmur of consent by Parker, at the very last moment, it would still be wrong.

And why would it be wrong?

That's what I want to hear. Yes.

Well, the whole time I've been leaning off towards the categorical moral reasoning and I think that there's a possibility I'd be okay with the idea of a lottery and then the loser taking into their own hands to kill themselves so there wouldn't be an act of murder, but I still think that even that way, it's coerced.

Also, I don't think that there is any remorse, like in Dudley's diary, "We're eating our breakfast,' it seems as though he's just sort of like, you know, the whole idea of not valuing someone else's life.

So that makes me feel like I have to take the --

You want to throw the book at him when he lacks remorse or a sense of having done anything wrong.

Right.

So, all right. Good.

Are there any other defenders who say it's just categorically wrong, with or without consent?

Yes. Stand up. Why?

I think undoubtedly

the way our society is shaped murder is murder.

Murder is murder in every way and our society looks at murder down on the same light and I don't think it's any different in any case.

Good. Let me ask you a question.

There were three lives at stake versus one.

Okay.

The one, the cabin boy, he had no family, he had no dependents, these other three had families back home in England; they had dependents; they had wives and children.

Think back to Bentham.

Bentham says we have to consider the welfare, the utility, the happiness of everybody.

We have to add it all up so it's not just numbers, three against one; it's also all of those people at home.

In fact, the London newspaper at that time and popular opinion sympathized with them, Dudley and Stevens, and the paper said if they weren't motivated by affection and concern for their loved ones at home and their dependents, surely they wouldn't have done this.

Yeah and how is that any different from people on a corner trying, with the same desire to feed their family.

I don't think it's any different.

I think in any case, if I'm murdering you to advance my status, that's murder, and I think that we should look at all that in the same light instead of criminalizing certain activities and making certain things seem more violently savage when in the same case, it's all the same, it's all the same act and mentality that goes into murder, necessity to feed your family so -- Suppose it weren't three, Suppose the stakes are even bigger.

Suppose the stakes are even bigger?

I think it's still the same deal.

You think Bentham is wrong to say the right thing to do is to add up the collective happiness?

You think he's wrong about that?

I don't think he's wrong but I think murder is murder in any case.

Well, then Bentham has to be wrong.

If you're right, he's wrong.

Okay, then he's wrong. I'm right.

All right. Thank you.

Well done. All right.

Let's step back from this discussion and notice how many objections have we heard to what they did?

We heard some defenses of what they did.

The defenses had to do with necessity, their dire circumstance and, implicitly at least, the idea that numbers matter.

And not only numbers matter but the wider effects matter; their families back home, their dependents.

Parker was an orphan, no one would miss him.

So if you add up, if you try to calculate the balance of happiness and suffering, you might have a case for saying what they did was the right thing.

Then we heard at least three different types of objections.

We heard an objection that said what they did was categorically wrong, like here at the end, categorically wrong, murder is murder, it's always wrong even if it increases the overall happiness of society, a categorical objection.

But we still need to investigate why murder is categorically wrong.

Is it because even cabin boys have certain fundamental rights?

And if that's the reason, where do those rights come from if not from some idea of the larger welfare or utility or happiness?

Question number one.

Others said a lottery would make a difference, a fair procedure Matt said, and some people were swayed by that.

That's not a categorical objection exactly.

It's saying everybody has to be counted as an equal even though at the end of the day, one can be sacrificed for the general welfare.

That leaves us with another question to investigate.

Why does agreement to a certain procedure, even a fair procedure, justify whatever result flows from the operation of that procedure?

Question number two.

And question number three, the basic idea of consent.

Kathleen got us on to this.

If the cabin boy had agreed himself, and not under duress, as was added, then it would be all right to take his life to save the rest and even more people signed on to that idea.

But that raises a third philosophical question: What is the moral work that consent does?

Why does an act of consent make such a moral difference, that an act that would be wrong, taking a life without consent, is morally permissible with consent?

To investigate those three questions, we're going to have to read some philosophers.

And starting next time, we're going to read Bentham and John Stuart Mill, utilitarian philosophers.

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Justice 02 Putting a Price Tag on Life / How to Measure Pleasure 给生命一个价格标签/如何衡量快乐

Last time, we argued about the case of The Queen v. Dudley & Stephens, the lifeboat case, the case of cannibalism at sea.

And with the arguments about the lifeboat in mind, the arguments for and against what Dudley and Stephens did in mind, let's turn back to the philosophy, the utilitarian philosophy of Jeremy Bentham.

Bentham was born in England in 1748.

At the age of 12, he went to Oxford.

At 15, he went to law school.

He was admitted to the Bar at age 19 but he never practiced law.

Instead, he devoted his life to jurisprudence and moral philosophy.

Last time, we began to consider Bentham's version of utilitarianism.

The main idea is simply stated and it's this: The highest principle of morality, whether personal or political morality, is to maximize the general welfare, or the collective happiness, or the overall balance of pleasure over pain; in a phrase, maximize utility.

Bentham arrives at this principle by the following line of reasoning: We're all governed by pain and pleasure, they are our sovereign masters, and so any moral system has to take account of them.

How best to take account?

By maximizing.

And this leads to the principle of the greatest good for the greatest number.

What exactly should we maximize?

Bentham tells us happiness, or more precisely, utility - maximizing utility as a principle not only for individuals but also for communities and for legislators."What, after all, is a community?" Bentham asks.

It's the sum of the individuals who comprise it.

And that's why in deciding the best policy, in deciding what the law should be, in deciding what's just, citizens and legislators should ask themselves the question if we add up all of the benefits of this policy and subtract all of the costs, the right thing to do is the one that maximizes the balance of happiness over suffering.

That's what it means to maximize utility.

Now, today, I want to see whether you agree or disagree with it, and it often goes, this utilitarian logic, under the name of cost-benefit analysis, which is used by companies and by governments all the time.

And what it involves is placing a value, usually a dollar value, to stand for utility on the costs and the benefits of various proposals.

Recently, in the Czech Republic, there was a proposal to increase the excise tax on smoking.

Philip Morris, the tobacco company, does huge business in the Czech Republic.

They commissioned a study, a cost-benefit analysis of smoking in the Czech Republic, and what their cost-benefit analysis found was the government gains by having Czech citizens smoke.

Now, how do they gain?

It's true that there are negative effects to the public finance of the Czech government because there are increased health care costs for people who develop smoking-related diseases.

On the other hand, there were positive effects and those were added up on the other side of the ledger.

The positive effects included, for the most part, various tax revenues that the government derives from the sale of cigarette products, but it also included health care savings to the government when people die early, pension savings -- you don't have to pay pensions for as long - and also, savings in housing costs for the elderly.

And when all of the costs and benefits were added up, the Philip Morris study found that there is a net public finance gain in the Czech Republic of $147,000,000, and given the savings in housing, in health care, and pension costs, the government enjoys savings of over $1,200 for each person who dies prematurely due to smoking.

Cost-benefit analysis.

Now, those among you who are defenders of utilitarianism may think that this is an unfair test.

Philip Morris was pilloried in the press and they issued an apology for this heartless calculation.

You may say that what's missing here is something that the utilitarian can easily incorporate, namely the value to the person and to the families of those who die from lung cancer.

What about the value of life?

Some cost-benefit analyses incorporate a measure for the value of life.

One of the most famous of these involved the Ford Pinto case.

Did any of you read about that?

This was back in the 1970s.

Do you remember what the Ford Pinto was, a kind of car?

Anybody?

It was a small car, subcompact car, very popular, but it had one problem, which is the fuel tank was at the back of the car and in rear collisions, the fuel tank exploded and some people were killed and some severely injured.

Victims of these injuries took Ford to court to sue.

And in the court case, it turned out that Ford had long since known about the vulnerable fuel tank and had done a cost-benefit analysis to determine whether it would be worth it to put in a special shield that would protect the fuel tank and prevent it from exploding.

They did a cost-benefit analysis.

The cost per part to increase the safety of the Pinto, they calculated at $11.00 per part.

And here's -- this was the cost-benefit analysis that emerged in the trial.

Eleven dollars per part at 12.5 million cars and trucks came to a total cost of $137 million to improve the safety.

But then they calculated the benefits of spending all this money on a safer car and they counted 180 deaths and they assigned a dollar value, $200,000 per death, and then the costs to repair, 105 the replacement cost for 2,000 vehicles, it would be destroyed without the safety device $700 per vehicle.

So the benefits turned out to be only $49.5 million and so they didn't install the device.

Needless to say, when this memo of the Ford Motor Company's cost-benefit analysis came out in the trial, it appalled the jurors, who awarded a huge settlement.

Is this a counterexample to the utilitarian idea of calculating?

Because Ford included a measure of the value of life.

Now, who here wants to defend cost-benefit analysis from this apparent counterexample?

Who has a defense?

Or do you think this completely destroys the whole utilitarian calculus?

Yes?

Well, I think that once again, they've made the same mistake the previous case did, that they assigned a dollar value to human life, and once again, they failed to take account things like suffering and emotional losses by the families.

I mean, families lost earnings but they also lost a loved one and that is more valued than $200,000.

Right and -- wait, wait, wait, that's good. What's your name?

Julie Roteau .

So if $200,000, Julie, is too low a figure because it doesn't include the loss of a loved one and the loss of those years of life, what would be - what do you think would be a more accurate number?

I don't believe I could give a number.

I think that this sort of analysis shouldn't be applied to issues of human life.

I think it can't be used monetarily.

So they didn't just put too low a number, Julie says.

They were wrong to try to put any number at all.

All right, let's hear someone who - You have to adjust for inflation.

You have to adjust for inflation.

All right, fair enough.

So what would the number be now?

This was 35 years ago.

Two million dollars.

Two million dollars?

You would put two million?

And what's your name?

Voytek Voytek says we have to allow for inflation.

We should be more generous.

Then would you be satisfied that this is the right way of thinking about the question?

I guess, unfortunately, it is for - there needs to be a number put somewhere, like, I'm not sure what that number would be, but I do agree that there could possibly be a number put on the human life.

All right, so Voytek says, and here, he disagrees with Julie.

Julie says we can't put a number on human life for the purpose of a cost-benefit analysis.

Voytek says we have to because we have to make decisions somehow.

What do other people think about this?

Is there anyone prepared to defend cost-benefit analysis here as accurate as desirable?

Yes? Go ahead.

I think that if Ford and other car companies didn't use cost-benefit analysis, they'd eventually go out of business because they wouldn't be able to be profitable and millions of people wouldn't be able to use their cars to get to jobs, to put food on the table, to feed their children.

So I think that if cost-benefit analysis isn't employed, the greater good is sacrificed, in this case.

All right, let me add.

What's your name?

Raul.

Raul, there was recently a study done about cell phone use by a driver when people are driving a car, and there was a debate whether that should be banned.

Yeah.

And the figure was that some 2,000 people die as a result of accidents each year using cell phones.

And yet, the cost-benefit analysis which was done by the Center for Risk Analysis at Harvard found that if you look at the benefits of the cell phone use and you put some value on the life, it comes out about the same because of the enormous economic benefit of enabling people to take advantage of their time, not waste time, be able to make deals and talk to friends and so on while they're driving.

Doesn't that suggest that it's a mistake to try to put monetary figures on questions of human life?

Well, I think that if the great majority of people try to derive maximum utility out of a service, like using cell phones and the convenience that cell phones provide, that sacrifice is necessary for satisfaction to occur.

You're an outright utilitarian.

Yes. Okay.

All right then, one last question, Raul.- Okay.

And I put this to Voytek, what dollar figure should be put on human life to decide whether to ban the use of cell phones?

Well, I don't want to arbitrarily calculate a figure, I mean, right now.

I think that - You want to take it under advisement?

Yeah, I'll take it under advisement.

But what, roughly speaking, would it be?

You got 2,300 deaths. - Okay.

You got to assign a dollar value to know whether you want to prevent those deaths by banning the use of cell phones in cars. - Okay.

So what would your hunch be?

How much? A million?

Two million?

Two million was Voytek's figure. - Yeah.

Is that about right?- Maybe a million.

A million?- Yeah.

You know, that's good.

Thank you. -Okay.

So, these are some of the controversies that arise these days from cost-benefit analysis, especially those that involve placing a dollar value on everything to be added up.

Well, now I want to turn to your objections, to your objections not necessarily to cost-benefit analysis specifically, because that's just one version of the utilitarian logic in practice today, but to the theory as a whole, to the idea that the right thing to do, the just basis for policy and law is to maximize utility.

How many disagree with the utilitarian approach to law and to the common good?

How many agree with it?

So more agree than disagree.

So let's hear from the critics.

Yes?

My main issue with it is that I feel like you can't say that just because someone's in the minority, what they want and need is less valuable than someone who is in the majority.

So I guess I have an issue with the idea that the greatest good for the greatest number is okay because there are still - what about people who are in the lesser number?

Like, it's not fair to them.

They didn't have any say in where they wanted to be.

All right.

That's an interesting objection.

You're worried about the effect on the minority.

Yes.

What's your name, by the way?

Anna.

Who has an answer to Anna's worry about the effect on the minority?

What do you say to Anna?

Um, she said that the minority is valued less.

I don't think that's the case because individually, the minority's value is just the same as the individual of the majority.

It's just that the numbers outweigh the minority.

And I mean, at a certain point, you have to make a decision and I'm sorry for the minority but sometimes, it's for the general, for the greater good.

For the greater good.

Anna, what do you say?

What's your name?

Yang-Da.

What do you say to Yang-Da?

Yang-Da says you just have to add up people's preferences and those in the minority do have their preferences weighed.

Can you give an example of the kind of thing you're worried about when you say you're worried about utilitarianism violating the concern or respect due the minority?

And give an example.

Okay. So, well, with any of the cases that we've talked about, like for the shipwreck one, I think the boy who was eaten still had as much of a right to live as the other people and just because he was the minority in that case, the one who maybe had less of a chance to keep living, that doesn't mean that the others automatically have a right to eat him just because it would give a greater amount of people a chance to live.

So there may be certain rights that the minority members have, that the individual has that shouldn't be traded off for the sake of utility?

Yes.

Yes, Anna? You know, this would be a test for you.

Back in Ancient Rome, they threw Christians to the lions in the Colosseum for sport.

If you think how the utilitarian calculus would go, yes, the Christian thrown to the lions suffers enormous excruciating pain.

But look at the collective ecstasy of the Romans!

Yang-Da.

Well, in that time, I don't -- if -- in modern day of time, to value the -- to give a number to the happiness given to the people watching, I don't think any, like, policymaker would say the pain of one person, of the suffering of one person is much, much -- is, I mean, in comparison to the happiness gained, it's - No, but you have to admit that if there were enough Romans delirious enough with happiness, it would outweigh even the most excruciating pain of a handful of Christians thrown to the lion.

So we really have here two different objections to utilitarianism.

One has to do with whether utilitarianism adequately respects individual rights or minority rights, and the other has to do with the whole idea of aggregating utility or preferences or values.

Is it possible to aggregate all values to translate them into dollar terms?

There was, in the 1930s, a psychologist who tried to address this second question.

He tried to prove what utilitarianism assumes, that it is possible to translate all goods, all values, all human concerns into a single uniform measure, and he did this by conducting a survey of young recipients of relief, this was in the 1930s, and he asked them, he gave them a list of unpleasant experiences and he asked them, "How much would you have to be paid to undergo the following experiences?" and he kept track.

For example, how much would you have to be paid to have one upper front tooth pulled out?

Or how much would you have to be paid to have one little toe cut off?

Or to eat a live earthworm six inches long?

Or to live the rest of your life on a farm in Kansas?

Or to choke a stray cat to death with your bare hands?

Now, what do you suppose was the most expensive item on that list? - Kansas!

Kansas?

You're right, it was Kansas.

For Kansas, people said they'd have to pay them - they have to be paid $300,000.

What do you think was the next most expensive?

Not the cat.

Not the tooth.

Not the toe.

The worm!

People said you'd have to pay them $100,000 to eat the worm.

What do you think was the least expensive item?

Not the cat.

The tooth.

During the Depression, people were willing to have their tooth pulled for only $4,500.

What?

Now, here's what Thorndike concluded from his study.

Any want or a satisfaction which exists exists in some amount and is therefore measurable.

The life of a dog or a cat or a chicken consists of appetites, cravings, desires, and their gratifications.

So does the life of human beings, though the appetites and desires are more complicated.

But what about Thorndike's study?

Does it support Bentham's idea that all goods, all values can be captured according to a single uniform measure of value?

Or does the preposterous character of those different items on the list suggest the opposite conclusion that maybe, whether we're talking about life or Kansas or the worm, maybe the things we value and cherish can't be captured according to a single uniform measure of value?

And if they can't, what are the consequences for the utilitarian theory of morality?

That's a question we'll continue with next time.

All right, now, let's take the other part of the poll, which is the highest experience or pleasure.

How many say Shakespeare?

How many say Fear Factor?

No, you can't be serious.

Really?

Last time, we began to consider some objections to Jeremy Bentham's version of utilitarianism.

People raised two objections in the discussion we had.

The first was the objection, the claim that utilitarianism, by concerning itself with the greatest good for the greatest number, fails adequately to respect individual rights.

Today, we have debates about torture and terrorism.

Suppose a suspected terrorist was apprehended on September 10th and you had reason to believe that the suspect had crucial information about an impending terrorist attack that would kill over 3,000 people and you couldn't extract the information.

Would it be just to torture the suspect to get the information or do you say no, there is a categorical moral duty of respect for individual rights?

In a way, we're back to the questions we started with about Charlie Carson organ transplant.

So that's the first issue.

And you remember, we considered some examples of cost-benefit analysis, but a lot of people were unhappy with cost-benefit analysis when it came to placing a dollar value on human life.

And so that led us to the second objection.

It questioned whether it's possible to translate all values into a single uniform measure of value.

It asks, in other words, whether all values are commensurable.

Let me give you one other example of an experience.

This actually is a true story.

It comes from personal experience that raises a question at least about whether all values can be translated without loss into utilitarian terms.

Some years ago, when I was a graduate student, I was at Oxford in England and they had men's and women's colleges.

They weren't yet mixed and the women's colleges had rules against overnight male guests.

By the 1970s, these rules were rarely enforced and easily violated, or so I was told.

By the late 1970s, when I was there, pressure grew to relax these rules and it became the subject of debate among the faculty at St. Anne's College, which was one of these all-women's colleges.

The older women on the faculty were traditionalists.

They were opposed to change unconventional moral grounds.

But times have changed and they were embarrassed to give the true grounds for their objection and so they translated their arguments into utilitarian terms."If men stay overnight", they argued, "the costs to the college will increase." "How?" you might wonder."Well, they'll want to take baths and that'll use up hot water," they said.

Furthermore, they argued, "We'll have to replace the mattresses more often." The reformers met these arguments by adopting the following compromise.

Each woman could have a maximum of three overnight male guests each week.

They didn't say whether it had to be the same one or three different provided, and this was the compromise, provided the guest paid 50 pence to defray the cost to the college.

The next day, the national headline in the national newspaper read, "St. Anne's Girls, 50 Pence A Night." Another illustration of the difficulty of translating all values, in this case, a certain idea of virtue, into utilitarian terms.

So, that's all to illustrate the second objection to utilitarianism, at least the part of that objection, that questions whether utilitarianism is right to assume that we can assume the uniformity of value, the commensurability of all values and translate all moral considerations into dollars or money.

But there is a second aspect to this worry about aggregating values and preferences.

Why should we weigh all preferences that people have without assessing whether they're good preferences or bad preferences?

Shouldn't we distinguish between higher pleasures and lower pleasures?

Now, part of the appeal of not making any qualitative distinctions about the worth of people's preferences, part of the appeal is that it is nonjudgmental and egalitarian.

The Benthamite utilitarian says everybody's preferences count and they count regardless of what people want, regardless of what makes different people happy.

For Bentham, all that matters, you'll remember, are the intensity and the duration of a pleasure or pain.

The so-called "higher pleasures or nobler virtues" are simply those, according to Bentham, that produce stronger, longer pleasure.

Yet a famous phrase to express this idea, the quantity of pleasure being equal, pushpin is as good as poetry.

What was pushpin?

It was some kind of a child's game, like tiddlywinks."Pushpin is as good as poetry", Bentham says.

And lying behind this idea, I think, is the claim, the intuition, that it's a presumption to judge whose pleasures are intrinsically higher or worthier or better.

And there is something attractive in this refusal to judge.

After all, some people like Mozart, others Madonna.

Some people like ballet, others bowling.

Who's to say, a Benthamite might argue, who is to say which of these pleasures, whose pleasures are higher, worthier, nobler than others?

But is that right, this refusal to make qualitative distinctions?

Can we altogether dispense with the idea that certain things we take pleasure in are better or worthier than others?

Think back to the case of the Romans in the Colosseum.

One thing that troubled people about that practice is that it seemed to violate the rights of the Christian.

Another way of objection to what's going on there is that the pleasure that the Romans take in this bloody spectacle, should that pleasure, which is abased, kind of corrupt, degrading pleasure, should that even be valorized or weighed in deciding what the general welfare is?

So here are the objections to Bentham's utilitarianism and now, we turn to someone who tried to respond to those objections, a latter-day utilitarian, John Stuart Mill.

So what we need to examine now is whether John Stuart Mill had a convincing reply to these objections to utilitarianism.

John Stuart Mill was born in 1806.

His father, James Mill, was a disciple of Bentham's, and James Mill set about giving his son, John Stuart Mill, a model education.

He was a child prot®¶g®¶, John Stuart Mill.

He knew Greek at the age of three, Latin at eight, and age 10, he wrote "A History of Roman Law." At age 20, he had a nervous breakdown.

This left him in a depression for five years, but at age 25, what helped lift him out of this depression is that he met Harriet Taylor.

She and Mill got married, they lived happily ever after, and it was under her influence that John Stuart Mill tried to humanize utilitarianism.

What Mill tried to do was to see whether the utilitarian calculus could be enlarged and modified to accommodate humanitarian concerns, like the concern to respect individual rights, and also to address the distinction between higher and lower pleasures.

In 1859, Mill wrote a famous book on liberty, the main point of which was the importance of defending individual rights and minority rights, and in 1861, toward the end of his life, he wrote the book we read as part of this course, "Utilitarianism." He makes it clear that utility is the only standard of morality, in his view, so he's not challenging Bentham's premise.

He's affirming it.

He says very explicitly, "The sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable is that people actually do desire it." So he stays with the idea that our de facto actual empirical desires are the only basis for moral judgment.

But then, page eight, also in chapter two, he argues that it is possible for a utilitarian to distinguish higher from lower pleasures.

Now, for those of you who have read Mill already, how, according to him, is it possible to draw that distinction?

How can a utilitarian distinguish qualitatively higher pleasures from lesser ones, base ones, unworthy ones? Yes?

If you've tried both of them and you prefer the higher one, naturally, always.

That's great.

That's right.

What's your name?- John.

So as John points out, Mill says here's the test.

Since we can't step outside actual desires, actual preferences that would violate utilitarian premises, the only test of whether a pleasure is higher or lower is whether someone who has experienced both would prefer it.

And here, in chapter two, we see the passage where Mill makes the point that John just described."Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it -- in other words, no outside, no independent standard -- then, that is the more desirable pleasure." What do people think about that argument?

Does it succeed?

How many think that it does succeed of arguing within utilitarian terms for a distinction between higher and lower pleasures?

How many think it doesn't succeed?

I want to hear your reasons.

But before we give the reasons let's do an experiment of Mill's claim.

In order to do this experiment, we're going to look at three short excerpts of popular entertainment.

The first one is a Hamlet soliloquy.

It'll be followed by two other experiences.

See what you think.

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god!

The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals - and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

Man delights not me.

Imagine a world where your greatest fears become reality.

Ahh! They're biting me!

Each show, six contestants from around the country battle each other in three extreme stunts.

Ow!

These stunts are designed to challenge the contestants both physically and mentally.

Six contestants, three stunts, one winner.

Yes! Whooo!

Fear Factor.

Hi-diddily-ho, pedal-to-the-metal-o-philes.

Flanders, since when do you like anything cool?

Well, I don't care for the speed but I can't get enough of that safety gear.

Helmets, roll bars, caution flags...

I like the fresh air...and looking at the poor people in the infield.

Dang, Cletus, why'd you have to park by my parents?

Now, Honey, they's my parents too.

I don't even have to ask which one you liked most.

The Simpsons, how many liked The Simpsons most?

How many Shakespeare?

What about Fear Factor?

How many preferred Fear Factor?

Really?

People overwhelmingly like The Simpsons better than Shakespeare.

All right, now, let's take the other part of the poll, which is the highest experience or pleasure.

How many say Shakespeare?

How many say Fear Factor?

No, you can't be serious.

Really? What?

All right, go ahead.

You can say it.

I found that one the most entertaining.

I know, but which do you think was the worthiest, the noblest experience?

I know you found it the most entertaining.

If something is good just because it is pleasurable, what does it matter whether you have sort of an abstract idea of whether it is good by someone else's sense or not?

All right, so you come down in the straight Benthamite side.

Who is to judge and why should we judge, apart from just registering and aggregating de facto preference?

All right, that's fair enough.

And what's your name?

Nate, okay, fair enough.

All right, so how many think The Simpsons is actually, apart from liking it, is actually the higher experience?

Higher than Shakespeare?

All right, let's see the vote for Shakespeare again.

How many think Shakespeare is higher?

All right.

So why is it -- ideally, I'd like to hear from someone, is there someone who thinks Shakespeare is highest but who preferred watching The Simpsons?

Yes?

Like, I guess just sitting and watching The Simpsons, it's entertaining because they make jokes and they make us laugh.

But like, someone has to tell us that Shakespeare was this great writer.

We had to be taught how to read him, how to understand him.

We had to be taught how to kind of take in Rembrandt, how to analyze a painting.

But let me -- what's your name?

Anisha.

Anisha, when you say someone told you that Shakespeare is better -- Right.

Are you accepting it on blind faith?

You voted that Shakespeare is higher only because the culture tells you that or teachers tell you that or do you actually agree with that yourself?

Well, in the sense that Shakespeare no, but earlier you made an example of Rembrandt.

I feel like I would enjoy reading a comic book more than I would enjoy kind of analyzing Rembrandt because someone told me it was great, you know. - Right.

So some of this seems to be, you're suggesting, a kind of a cultural convention and pressure.

We're told what books, what works of art are great. - Right.

Who else?

Yes?

Although I enjoyed watching The Simpsons more in this particular moment, in justice, if I were to spend the rest of my life considering the three different video clips shown, I would not want to spend that remainder of my life considering the latter two clips.

I think I would derive more pleasure from being able to branch out in my own mind sort of considering more deep pleasures, more deep thoughts.

And tell me your name.

Joe.

Joe, so if you had to spend the rest of your life on a farm in Kansas with only Shakespeare or the collected episodes of The Simpsons, you would prefer Shakespeare?

What do you conclude from that about John Stuart Mill's test that the test of a higher pleasure is whether people who have experienced both prefer it?

Can I cite another example briefly?

Yeah.

In Neurobiology last year, we were told of a rat who was tested a particular center in the brain where the rat was able to stimulate his brain and caused itself intense pleasure repeatedly.

The rat did not eat or drink until it died.

So the rat was clearly experiencing intense pleasure.

Now, if you ask me right now if I would rather experience intense pleasure or have a full lifetime of higher pleasure, I would consider intense pleasure to be low pleasure.

I would right now enjoy intense pleasure but -- yes, I would.

I certainly would.

But over a lifetime, I would think that a majority here would agree that they would rather be a human with higher pleasure than be that rat with intense pleasure for a momentary period of time.

Now, in answer to your question, I think this proves that - or I won't say "proves." I think the conclusion is that Mill's theory that when a majority of people are asked what they would rather do, they will answer that they would rather engage in a higher pleasure.

So you think that this support Mill's you think Mill is onto something here?

I do.

All right, Is there anyone who disagrees with Joe and who thinks that our experiment disproves Mill's test, shows that that's not an adequate way, that you can't distinguish higher pleasures within the utilitarian framework?

Yes?

If whatever is good is truly just whatever people prefer, it's truly relative and there's no objective definition, then there will be some society where people prefer Simpsons more.

Anyone can appreciate The Simpsons but I think it does take education to appreciate Shakespeare as much.

All right, you're saying it takes education to appreciate higher true things.

Mill's point is that the higher pleasures do require cultivation and appreciation and education.

He doesn't dispute that.

But once having been cultivated and educated, people will see, not only see the difference between higher and lower pleasures, but will actually prefer the higher to the lower.

You find this famous passage from John Stuart Mill."It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.

And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their side of the question." So here, you have an attempt to distinguish higher from lower pleasures.

So going to an art museum or being a couch potato and swilling beer, watching television at home.

Sometimes, Mill agrees, we might succumb to the temptation to do the latter, to be couch potatoes.

But even when we do that out of indolence and sloth, we know that the pleasure we get gazing at Rembrandts in the museum is actually higher because we've experienced both, and it is a higher pleasure gazing at Rembrandts because it engages our higher human faculties.

What about Mill's attempt to reply to the objection about individual rights?

In a way, he uses the same kind of argument, and this comes out in chapter five.

He says, "I dispute the pretensions of any theory which sets up an imaginary standard of justice not grounded on utility." But still, he considers justice grounded on utility to be what he calls "the chief part and incomparably, the most sacred and binding part of all morality." So justice is higher, individual rights are privileged, but not for reasons that depart from utilitarian assumptions.

Justice is a name, for certain moral requirements, which, regarded collectively, stand higher in the scale of social utility and are, therefore, of more paramount obligation than any others.

So justice, it is sacred.

It's prior.

It's privileged.

It isn't something that can easily be traded off against lesser things.

But the reason is ultimately, Mill claims, a utilitarian reason once you consider the long-run interests of humankind, of all of us as progressive beings.

If we do justice and if we respect rights, society as a whole will be better off in the long run.

Well, is that convincing or is Mill actually, without admitting it, stepping outside utilitarian considerations in arguing for qualitatively higher pleasures and for sacred or especially important individual rights?

We haven't fully answered that question because to answer that question, in the case of rights and justice, will require that we explore other ways, non-utilitarian ways of accounting for the basis of rights and then asking whether they succeed.

As for Jeremy Bentham, who launched utilitarianism as a doctrine in moral and legal philosophy, Bentham died in 1832 at the age of 85.

But if you go to London, you can visit him today literally.

He provided in his will that his body be preserved, embalmed, and displayed in the University of London, where he still presides in a glass case with a wax head, dressed in his actual clothing.

You see, before he died, Bentham addressed himself to a question consistent with his philosophy.

Of what use could a dead man be to the living?

One use, he said, would be to make one's corpse available to the study of anatomy.

In the case of great philosophers, however, better yet to preserve one's physical presence in order to inspire future generations of thinkers.

You want to see what Bentham looks like stuffed?

Here is what he looks like.

There he is.

Now, if you look closely, you will notice that the embalming of his actual head was not a success, so they substituted a waxed head and at the bottom, for verisimilitude, you can actually see his actual head on a plate.

You see it?

Right there.

So, what's the moral of the story?

The moral of the story - and by the way, they bring him out during meetings of the board at University College London and the minutes record him as present but not voting.

Here is a philosopher in life and in death who adhered to the principles of his philosophy.

We'll continue with rights next time.

Don't miss the chance to interact online with other viewers of Justice.

Join the conversation, take a pop quiz, watch lectures you've missed, and learn a lot more.

It's at justiceharvard.org.

Justice 03 Free to Choose / Who Owns Me? 自由选择/我属于谁？

When we finished last time, we were looking at John Stuart Mill's attempt to reply to the critics of Bentham's Utilitarianism.

In his book Utilitarianism Mill tries to show that critics to the contrary it is possible within the utilitarian framework to distinguish between higher and lower pleasures.

It is possible to make qualitative distinctions of worth and we tested that idea with the Simpsons and the Shakespeare excerpts.

And the results of our experiment seem to call into question Mill's distinction because a great many of you reported that you prefer the Simpsons but that you still consider Shakespeare to be the higher or the worthier pleasure.

That's the dilemma with which our experiment confronts Mill.

What about Mill's attempt to account for the especially weighty character of individual rights and justice in chapter five of Utilitarianism.

He wants to say that individual rights are worthy of special respect.

In fact, he goes so far as to say that justice is the most sacred part and the most incomparably binding part of morality.

But the same challenge could be put to this part of Mill's defense.

Why is justice the chief part and the most binding part of our morality?

Well, he says because in the long run, if we do justice and if we respect rights, society as a whole will be better off in the long run.

Well, what about that?

What if we have a case where making an exception and violating individual rights actually will make people better off in the long run?

Is it all right then to use people?

And there is a further objection that could be raised against Mill's case for justice and rights.

Suppose the utilitarian calculus in the long run works out as he says it will such that respecting people's rights is a way of making everybody better off in the long run.

Is that the right reason?

Is that the only reason to respect people?

If the doctor goes in and yanks the organs from the healthy patient who came in for a checkup to save five lives, there would be adverse effects in the long run.

Eventually, people would learn about this and would stop going in for checkups.

Is it the right reason?

Is the only reason that you as a doctor won't yank the organs out of the healthy patient that you think, well, if I use him in this way, in the long run more lives would be lost?

Or is there another reason having to do with intrinsic respect for the person as an individual?

And if that reason matters and it's not so clear that even Mill's utilitarianism can take account of it, fully to examine these two worries or objections, to Mill's defense we need to push further.

And we need to ask in the case of higher or worthier pleasures are there theories of the good life that can provide independent moral standards for the worth of pleasure?

If so, what do they look like?

That's one question.

In the case of justice and rights, if we suspect that Mill is implicitly leaning on notions of human dignity or respect for person that are not strictly speaking utilitarian, we need to look to see whether there are some stronger theories of rights that can explain the intuition which even Mill shares, the intuition that the reason for respecting individuals and not using them goes beyond even utility in the long run.

Today, we turn to one of those strong theories of rights.

Strong theories of right say individuals matter not just as instruments to be used for a larger social purpose or for the sake of maximizing utility, individuals are separate beings with separate lives worthy of respect.

And so it's a mistake, according to strong theories or rights, it's a mistake to think about justice or law by just adding up preferences and values.

The strong rights theory we turn to today is libertarianism.

Libertarianism takes individual rights seriously.

It's called libertarianism because it says the fundamental individual right is the right to liberty precisely because we are separate individual beings.

We're not available to any use that the society might desire or devise precisely because we are individual separate human beings.

We have a fundamental right to liberty, and that means a right to choose freely, to live our lives as we please provided we respect other people's rights to do the same.

That's the fundamental idea.

Robert Nozick, one of the libertarian philosophers we read for this course, puts it this way: Individuals have rights.

So strong and far reaching are these rights that they raise the question of what, if anything, the state may do.

So what does libertarianism say about the role of government or of the state?

Well, there are three things that most modern states do that on the libertarian theory of rights are illegitimate or unjust.

One of them is paternalist legislation.

That's passing laws that protect people from themselves, seatbelt laws, for example, or motorcycle helmet laws.

The libertarian says it may be a good thing if people wear seatbelts but that should be up to them and the state, the government, has no business coercing them, us, to wear seatbelts by law.

It's coercion, so no paternalist legislation, number one.

Number two, no morals legislation.

Many laws try to promote the virtue of citizens or try to give expression to the moral values of the society as a whole.

Libertarian say that's also a violation of the right to liberty.

Take the example of, well, a classic example of legislation authored in the name of promoting morality traditionally have been laws that prevent sexual intimacy between gays and lesbians.

The libertarian says nobody else is harmed, nobody else's rights are violated, so the state should get out of the business entirely of trying to promote virtue or to enact morals legislation.

And the third kind of law or policy that is ruled out on the libertarian philosophy is any taxation or other policy that serves the purpose of redistributing income or wealth from the rich to the poor.

Redistribution is a ®C if you think about it, says the libertarian is a kind of coercion.

What it amounts to is theft by the state or by the majority, if we're talking about a democracy, from people who happen to do very well and earn a lot of money.

Now, Nozick and other libertarians allow that there can be a minimal state that taxes people for the sake of what everybody needs, the national defense, police force, judicial system to enforce contracts and property rights, but that's it.

Now, I want to get your reactions to this third feature of the libertarian view.

I want to see who among you agree with that idea and who disagree and why.

But just to make it concrete and to see what's at stake, consider the distribution of wealth in the United States.

United States is among the most inegalitarian society as far as the distribution of wealth of all the advanced democracies.

Now, is this just or unjust?

Well, what does the libertarian say?

Libertarian says you can't know just from the facts I've just given you.

You can't know whether that distribution is just or unjust.

You can't know just by looking at a pattern or a distribution or result whether it's just or unjust.

You have to know how it came to be.

You can't just look at the end stage or the result.

You have to look at two principles.

The first he calls justice in acquisition or in initial holdings.

And what that means simply is did people get the things they used to make their money fairly?

So we need to know was there justice in the initial holdings?

Did they steal the land or the factory or the goods that enabled them to make all that money?

If not, if they were entitled to whatever it was that enabled them to gather the wealth, the first principle is matched.

The second principle is did the distribution arise from the operation of free consent, people buying and trading on the market?

As you can see, the libertarian idea of justice corresponds to a free market conception of justice provided people got what they used fairly, didn't steal it, and provided the distribution results from the free choice of individual's buying and selling things, the distribution is just.

And if not, it's unjust.

So let's, in order to fix ideas for this discussion, take an actual example.

Who's the wealthiest person in the United States ®C wealthiest person in the world?

Bill Gates.

It is. That's right.

Here he is.

You'd be happy, too.

Now, what's his net worth?

Anybody have any idea?

That's a big number.

During the Clinton years, remember there was a controversy donors?

Big campaign contributors were invited to stay overnight in the Lincoln bedroom at the White House?

I think if you've contributed twenty five thousand dollars or above, someone figured out at the median contribution that got you invited to stay a night in the Lincoln bedroom, Bill Gates could afford to stay in the Lincoln bedroom every night for the next sixty six thousand years.

Somebody else figured out, how much does he get paid on an hourly basis?

And so they figured out, since he began Microsoft, I suppose he worked, what 14 hours per day, reasonable guess, and you calculate this net wealth, it turns out that his rate of pay is over 150 dollars, not per hour, not per minute 150 dollars per second 187 which means that if on his way to the office, Gates noticed a hundred dollar bill on the street, it wouldn't be worth his time to stop and pick it up.

Now, most of you will say someone that wealthy surely we can tax them to meet the pressing needs of people who lack in education or lack enough to eat or lack decent housing.

They need it more than he does.

And if you were a utilitarian, what would you do?

What tax policy would you have?

You'd redistribute in a flash, wouldn't you?

Because you would know being a good utilitarian that taking some, a small amount, he'd scarcely going to notice it, but it will make a huge improvement in the lives and in the welfare of those at the bottom.

But remember, the libertarian theory says we can't just add up an aggregate preferences and satisfactions that way.

We have to respect persons and if he earned that money fairly without violating anybody else's rights in accordance with the two principles of justice in acquisition and in justice in transfer, then it would be wrong, it would be a form of coercion to take it away Michael Jordan is not as wealthy as Bill Gates but he did pretty well for himself.

You wanna see Michael Jordan.

There he is.

His income alone in one year was 211 he made another 47 million dollars in endorsements for a Nike and other companies.

So his income was, in one year, $78 million.

To require him to pay, let's say, a third of his earnings to the government to support good causes like food and health care and housing and education for the poor, that's coercion, that's unjust.

That violates his rights.

And that's why redistribution is wrong.

Now, how many agree with that argument, agree with the libertarian argument that redistribution for the sake of trying to help the poor is wrong?

And how many disagree with that argument?

All right, let's begin with those who disagree.

What's wrong with the libertarian case against redistribution?

Yes.

I think these people like Michael Jordan have received we're talking about working within a society and they receive a larger gift from the society and they have a larger obligation in return to give that through redistribution, you know, you can say that Michael Jordan may work just as hard as some who works, you know, doing laundry 12 hours, 231 I don't think it's fair to say that, you know, it's all on him, on his, you know, inherent, you know, hard work.

All right, let's hear from defenders of libertarianism.

Why would it be wrong in principle to tax the rich to help the poor?

Go ahead.

My name is Joe and I collect skateboards.

I've since bought a hundred skateboards.

I live in a society of a hundred people.

I'm the only one with skateboards.

Suddenly, everyone decides they want a skateboard.

They come to my house, they take my they take 99 of my skateboards.

I think that is unjust.

Now, I think in certain circumstances it becomes necessary to overlook that unjustness, perhaps condone that injustice as in the case of the cabin boy being killed for food.

If people are on the verge of dying, perhaps it is necessary to overlook that injustice, but I think it's important to keep in mind that we're still committing injustice by taking people's belongings or assets.

Are you saying that taxing Michael Jordan, say, at a 33 percent tax rate for good causes to feed the hungry is theft?

I think it's unjust.

Yes, I do believe it's theft but perhaps it is necessary to condone that theft.

But it's theft.

Yes.

Why is it theft, Joe?

Because -- Why is it like your collection of skateboards?

It's theft because, or at least, in my opinion and by the libertarian opinion he earned that money fairly and it belongs to him.

So to take it from him is by definition theft.

All right, let's hear if there is°≠ Who wants to reply to Joe?

Yes, go ahead.

I don't think this is necessarily a case in which you have 99 skateboards and the government°≠ or you have a hundred skateboards and the government is taking 99 of them.

It's like you have more skateboards than there are days in a year.

You have more skateboards that you're going to be able to use in your entire lifetime and the government is taking part of those.

And I think that if you are operating in a society in which the government's not ®C in which the government doesn't redistribute wealth, then that allows for people to amass so much wealth that people who haven't started from this very the equal footing in our hypothetical situation, that doesn't exist in our real society get undercut for the rest of their lives.

So you're worried that if there isn't some degree of redistribution of some or left at the bottom, there will be no genuine equality of opportunity.

All right, the idea that taxation is theft, Nozick takes that point one step further.

He agrees that it's theft.

He's more demanding than Joe.

Joe says it is theft, maybe in an extreme case it's justified, maybe a parent is justified in stealing a loaf of bread to feed his or her hungry family.

So Joe I would say, what would you call yourself, a compassionate quasi-libertarian?

Nozick says, if you think about it, taxation amounts to the taking of earnings.

In other words, it means taking the fruits of my labor.

But if the state has the right to take my earning or the fruits of my labor, isn't that morally the same as according to the state the right to claim a portion of my labor?

So taxation actually is morally equivalent to forced labor because forced labor involves the taking of my leisure, my time, my efforts, just as taxation takes the earnings that I make with my labor.

And so, for Nozick and for the libertarians, taxation for redistribution is theft, as Joe says, but not only theft is morally equivalent to laying claim to certain hours of a person's life and labor, so it's morally equivalent to forced labor.

If the state has a right to claim the fruits of my labor, that implies that it really has an entitlement to my labor itself.

And what is forced labor?

Forced labor, Nozick points out, is what, is slavery, because if I don't have the right, the sole right to my own labor, then that's really to say that the government or the political community is a part owner in me.

And what does it mean for the state to be a part owner in me?

If you think about it, it means that I'm a slave, that I don't own myself.

So what this line of reasoning brings us to is the fundamental principle that underlies the libertarian case for rights.

What is that principle?

It's the idea that I own myself.

It's the idea of self possession if you want to take right seriously.

If you don't want to just regard people as collections of preferences, the fundamental moral idea to which you will be lead is the idea that we are the owners or the propietors of our own person, and that's why utilitarianism goes wrong.

And that's why it's wrong to yank the organs from that healthy patient.

You're acting as if that patient belongs to you or to the community.

But we belong to ourselves.

And that's the same reason that it's wrong to make laws to protect us from ourselves or to tell us how to live, to tell us what virtues we should be governed by, and that's also why it's wrong to tax the rich to help the poor even for good causes, even to help those who are displaced by the Hurricane Katrina.

Ask them to give charity.

But if you tax them, it's like forcing them to labor.

Could you tell Michael Jordan he has to skip the next week's games and go down to help the people displaced by Hurricane Katrina?

Morally, it's the same.

So the stakes are very high.

So far we've heard some objections to the libertarian argument.

But if you want to reject it, you have to break in to this chain of reasoning which goes, taking my earnings is like taking my labor, but taking my labor is making me a slave.

And if you disagree with that, you must believe in the principle of self possession.

Those who disagree, gather your objections and we'll begin with them next time.

Anyone like to take up that point? Yes.

I feel like when you live in a society, you'd give up that right.

I mean, technically, if I want to personally go out and kill someone because they offend me, that is self possession.

Because I live in a society, I cannot do that.

Victoria, are you questioning the fundamental premise of self possession?

Yes. I think that you don't really have self possession if you choose to live in a society because you cannot just discount the people around you.

We were talking last time about libertarianism.

I want to go back to the arguments for and against the redistribution of income.

But before we do that, just one word about the minimal state, Milton Friedman, the libertarian economist, he points out that many of the functions that we take for granted as properly belonging to government don't.

They are paternalist.

One example he gives is social security.

He says it's a good idea for people to save for their retirement during their earning years but it's wrong.

It's a violation of people's liberty for the government to force everyone whether they want to or not to put aside some earnings today for the sake of their retirement.

If people want to take the chance or if people want to live big today and live a poor retirement, that should be their choice.

They should be free to make those judgments and take those risks.

So even social security would still be at odds with the minimal state that Milton Friedman argued for.

It sometimes thought that collective goods like police protection and fire protection will inevitably create the problem of free riders unless they're publicly provided.

But there are ways to prevent free riders.

There are ways to restrict even seemingly collective goods like fire protection.

I read an article a while back about a private fire company, the Salem Fire Corporation, in Arkansas.

You can sign up with the Salem Fire Corporation, pay a yearly subscription fee, and if your house catches on fire, they will come and put out the fire.

But they won't put out everybody's fire.

They will only put it out if it's a fire in the home of a subscriber or if it starts to spread and to threaten the home of a subscriber.

The newspaper article just told the story of a home owner who had subscribed to this company in the past but failed to renew his subscription.

His house caught on fire.

The Salem Fire Corporation showed up with its trucks and watched the house burn, just making sure that it didn't spread.

The fire chief was asked, well, he wasn't exactly the fire chief.

I guess he was the CEO.

He was asked how can you stand by with fire equipment and allow a person's home to burn?

He replied, once we verified there was no danger to a member's property, we had no choice but to back off according to our rules.

If we responded to all fires, he said, there would be no incentive to subscribe.

The homeowner in this case tried to renew his subscription at the scene of the fire.

But the head of the company refused.

You can't wreck your car, he said, and then buy insurance for it later.

So even public goods that we take for granted that's being within the proper province of government can many of them in principle be isolated, made exclusive to those who pay.

That's all to do with the question of collective goods and the libertarians injunction against paternalism.

But let's go back now to the arguments about redistribution.

Now, underlying the libertarian's case for the minimal state is a worry about coercion, but what's wrong with coercion?

The libertarian offers this answer: To coerce someone, to use some person for the sake of the general welfare is wrong because it calls into question the fundamental fact that we own ourselves the fundamental moral fact of self possession or self ownership.

The libertarian's argument against redistribution begins with this fundamental idea that we own ourselves.

Nozick says that if the society as a whole can go to Bill Gates or go to Michael Jordan and tax away a portion of their wealth, what the society is really asserting is a collective property right in Bill Gates or in Michael Jordan.

But that violates the fundamental principle that we belong to ourselves.

Now, we've already heard a number of objections to the libertarian argument.

What I would like to do today is to give the libertarians among us a chance to answer the objections that have been raised and some have been some have already identified themselves and have agreed to come and make the case for libertarianism to reply to the objections that have been raised.

So raise your hand if you are among the libertarians who's prepared to stand up for the theory and respond to the objections.

You are?

Alex Harris.

Alex Harris, who's been a star on the web blog.

All right, Alex, come here.

Stand up.

Come.

We'll create a libertarian corner over here.

And who else?

Other libertarians who will join.

What's your name?

John.

John?

Sheffield.

John Sheffield.

Who else wants to join?

Other brave libertarians who are prepared to take on Yes, what's your name?

Julia Rotto.

Julia Rotto.

Julia, come join us over there.

Now, while the ®C while team libertarian Julie, John, Alex.

While team libertarian is gathering over there, let me just summarize the main objections that I've heard in class and on the website.

Objection number one®C and here I'll come down to- I wanna talk to team libertarian over here.

So objection number one is that the poor need the money more.

That's an obvious objection, a lot more than -- thanks ®C than do Bill Gates and Michael Jordan.

Objection number two, it's not really slavery to tax because at least in a democratic society it's not a slave holder.

It's congress.

It's a democratic°™ you're smiling, Alex, already.

You're confident you can reply to all of these?

So taxation by consent of the governed is not coercive.

Third, some people have said don't the successful like Gates owe a debt to society for their success that they repay by paying taxes.

Who wants to respond to the first one, the poor need the money more?

All right, and you're?

John.

John. All right, John, what's the, here I'll hold it.

All right.

The poor need the money more.

That's quite obvious.

I could use the money.

You know, I certainly wouldn't mind if Bill Gates give me a million dollars.

I mean, I'd take a thousand.

But at some point you have to understand that the benefits of redistribution of wealth don't justify the initial violation of the property right.

If you look at the argument the poor need the money more, at no point in that argument do you contradict the fact that we've extrapolated from, agreed upon principles that people own themselves.

We've extrapolated that people have property rights and so whether or not it would be a good thing or a nice thing or even a necessary thing for the survival of some people, we don't see that that justifies the violation of the right that we've logically extrapolated.

Good. Okay.

And so that also, I mean, there still exist this institution of like individual philanthropy.

Milton Friedman makes this argument- All right, so Bill Gates can give to charity if he wants to.

Right.

But it would still be wrong to coerce him.

Exactly.

To meet the needs of the poor.

Exactly.

Are the two of you happy with that reply?

Anything to add?

All right, go ahead. Julie?

Julia, yes.

I think I can also add, it's okay.

I guess I could add that there's a difference between needing something and deserving something.

I mean, in an ideal society everyone's needs would be met but here we're arguing what do we deserve as a society and, yeah.

And the poor don't deserve don't deserve the benefits that would flow from taxing Michael Jordan to help them.

Based on what we've covered here I don't think you deserve something like that.

All right, let me push you a little bit on that, Julia.

The victims of Hurricane Katrina are in desperate need of help.

Would you say that they don't deserve help that would come from the federal government through taxation?

Okay, that's a difficult question.

I think this is a case where they need help, not deserve it, but I think, again, if you had a certain level of requirements to meet sustenance, you're gonna need help, like, if you don't have food or a place to live, that's a case of need.

So need is one thing and deserve is another.

Exactly.

All right.

Who would like to reply?

Yes.

Going back to the first point that you made about the property rights of individual.

The property rights are established and enforced by the government, which is a democratic government, and we have representatives to enforce those rights.

If you live in a society that operates under those rules, then it should be up to the government to decide how those resources[inaudible]taxation are distributed because it is through the consent of the government.

If you disagree with it, you don't have to live in that society where that operates.

All right, good, so, and tell me your name.

Raul.

Raul is pointing out, actually, Raul is invoking point number two.

If the taxation is by the consent of the governed, it's not coerced.

It's legitimate.

Bill Gates and Michael Jordan are citizens of the United States.

They get to vote for congress.

They get to vote their policy convictions just like everybody else.

Who would like to take that one on? John?

Basically, what the libertarians are objecting to in this case is the middle 80 percent deciding what the top ten percent are doing for the bottom ten percent.

Wait, wait, wait, John.

Majority.

Don't you believe in democracy?

Well, right, but at some point -- Don't you believe in, I mean, you say 80 percent, Majority rule is what?549 The majority.

Exactly, but -- In a democracy.

Aren't you for democracy?

Yes, I'm for democracy, but Hang on, hang on, hang on.

Democracy and mob rule aren't the same thing.

Mob rule?

Mob rule, exactly.

In an open society you have a recourse to address that through your representatives.

And if the majority of the consent of those who are governed doesn't agree with you, then you know, you're choosing to live in a society and you have to operate under what the majority the society concludes.

All right, Alex, on democracy.

What about that?

The fact that I have one, you know, five hundred thousandth of the vote for one representative in congress is not the same thing as my having the ability to decide for myself how to use my property rights.

I'm a drop in the bucket and, you know, well -- You might lose the vote.

Exactly.

And they might take -- And I will.

I mean, I don't have the decision right now of whether or not to pay taxes.

If I don't, I get locked in jail or they tell me to get out of the country.

But, Alex, Alex, let me make a small case for democracy.

And see what you would say.

Why can't you, we live in a democratic society with freedom of speech.

Why can't you take to the Hustings, persuade your fellow citizens that taxation is unjust and try to get a majority?

I don't think that people should be, should have to convince 280 million others simply in order to exercise their own rights, in order to not have their self ownership violated.

I think people should be able to do that without having to convince 280 million people.

Does that mean you are against democracy as a whole?

I -- no.

I just believe in a very limited form of democracy whereby we have a constitution that severely limits the scope of what decisions can be made democratically.

All right, so you're saying that democracy is fine except where fundamental rights are involved.

Yes.

And I think you could win.

If you're going on the Hustings, let me add one element to the argument you might make.

You can say put aside the economic debates, taxation.

Suppose the individual right to religious liberty were at stake, then, Alex, you could say, on the Hustings.

Surely, you would all agree that we shouldn't put the right to individual liberty up to a vote.

Yeah, that's exactly right, and that's why we have a constitutional amendments.and why do we make it so hard to amend our constitution.

So you would say that the right to private property, the right of Michael Jordan to keep all the money he makes at least to protect it from redistribution is the same kind of right with the same kind of weight as the right to freedom of speech, the right to religious liberty, rights that should trump what the majority wants.

Absolutely.

The reason why we have a right to free speech is because we have a right to own ourselves, to exercise our voice in any way that we choose.

All right, good.

All right, so there we°™ All right, who would like to respond to that argument about democracy being- Okay, up there. Stand up.

I think comparing religion economics it's not the same thing.

The reason why Bill Gates is able to make so much money is because we live in an economically and socially stable society.

And if the government didn't provide for the poor as ten percent as you say through taxation, then we would need more money for police to prevent crime and so, either way, there would be more taxes taken away to provide what you guys call the necessary things that the government provides.

What's your name?

Anna.

Anna, let me ask you this.

Why is the fundamental right to religious liberty different from the right Alex asserts as a fundamental right to private property and to keep what I earn?

What's the difference between the two?

Because you wouldn't have- You wouldn't be able to make money, you wouldn't be able to own property if there wasn't that socially, like, if society wasn't stable, and that's completely different from religion.

That's like something personal, something that you can practice on your own in your own home or like me practicing my religion is not going to affect the next person.

But if I'm poor and I'm desperate, like I might commit a crime to feed my family and that can affect others.

Okay, good, thank you.

Would it be wrong for someone to steal a loaf of bread to feed his starving family?

Is that wrong?

I believe that it is.

This is -- Let's take a quick poll of the three of you.

You say, yes, it is wrong.

Yes.

John?

It violates property rights.

It's wrong.

Even to save a starving family?

I mean there are definitely other ways around that and by justifying, no, hang on, hang on, before you laugh at me.

Before justifying the act of stealing, you have to look at violating the right that we've already agreed exists, the right of self possession and the possession of, I mean, your own things.

We agree on property rights.

All right, we agree at stealing.

Yeah, we agree at stealing.

So property rights is not the issue.

All right, but -- So why is it wrong to steal even to feed your starving family?

Sort of the original argument that I made in the very first question you asked.

The benefits of an action don't justify, don't make the action just.

Do what, what would you say, Julia?

Is it all right to steal a loaf of bread to feed a starving family or to steal a drug that your child needs to survive?

I think, I'm okay with that, honestly.

Even from the libertarian standpoint, I think that, okay, saying that you can just take money arbitrarily from people who have a lot to go to this pool of people who need it, but you have an individual who's acting on their own behalf to kind of save themselves and then I think you said they, for any idea like self possession, they are also in charge of protecting themselves and keeping themselves alive so, therefore, even for a libertarian standpoint, that might be okay.

All right, that's good, that's good.

All right, what about number three up here?

Isn't it the case that the successful, the wealthy, owe a debt.

They didn't do that all by themselves.

They had to cooperate with other people that they owe a debt to society and that that's expressed in taxation.

You wanna take that on, Julia?

Okay, this one, I believe that there is not a debt to society in the sense that how did these people become wealthy?

They did something that society valued highly.

I think that society has already been giving, been providing for them if anything, I think it's°≠ everything is cancelled out.

They provided a service to society and society responded by somehow they got their wealth, so I think that -- So be concrete.

In the case of Michael Jordan, some°≠ I mean, to illustrate your point.

There were people who helped him make the money, the teammates, the coach, people who taught him how to play.

But they've, you're saying, but they've all been paid for their services.

Exactly, and society derived a lot of benefit and pleasure from watching Michael Jordan play.

I think that that's how he paid his debt to society.

All right, good.

Who would, anyone likes to take up that point? Yes.

I think that there's a problem here with that we're assuming that a person has self possession when they live in a society.

I feel like when you live in a society, you give up that right.

I mean, technically, if I want to personally go out and kill someone because they offend me, that is self possession.

Because I live in a society I cannot do that.

I think it's kind of equivalent to say because I have more money, I have resources that can save people's lives, is it not okay for the government to take that from me?

Self possession only to a certain extent because I'm living in a society where I have to take account of the people around me.

So are you question, what's your name?

Victoria.

Victoria, are you questioning the fundamental premise of self possession?

Yes.

I think that you don't really have self possession if you choose to live in a society because you cannot just discount the people around you.

All right, I want to quickly get the response of the libertarian team to the last point.

The last point builds on, well, maybe it builds on Victoria's suggestion that we don't own ourselves because it says that Bill Gates is wealthy, that Michael Jordan makes a huge income, isn't wholly their own doing.

It's the product of a lot of luck and so we can't claim that they morally deserve all the money they make.

Who wants to reply to that?

Alex?

You certainly could make the case that it is not°≠ their wealth is not appropriate to the goodness in their hearts, but that's not really the morally relevant issue.

The point is that they have received what they have through the free exchange of people who have given them their holdings, usually in exchange for providing some other service Good enough.

I want to try to sum up what we've learned from this discussion, but, first, let's thank John, Alex, and Julia for a really wonderful job.

Toward the end of the discussion just now Victoria challenged the premise of this line of reasoning that's libertarian logic.

Maybe, she suggested, we don't own ourselves after all.

If you reject the libertarian case against redistribution, there would seem to be an incentive to break in to the libertarian line of reasoning at the earliest, at the most modest level, which is why a lot of people disputed that taxation is morally equivalent to forced labor.

But what about the big claim, the premise, the big idea underlying the libertarian argument?

Is it true that we own ourselves or can we do without that idea and still avoid what libertarians want to avoid creating a society in an account of justice where some people can be just used for the sake of other people's welfare or even for the sake of the general good?

Libertarians combat the utilitarian idea of using people as means for the collective happiness by saying the way to put a stop to that utilitarian logic of using persons is to resort to the intuitively powerful idea that we are the proprietors of our own person.

That's Alex and Julia and John and Robert Nozick.

What are the consequences for a theory of justice and in account of rights of calling into question the idea of self possession?

Does it mean that we're back to utilitarianism and using people and aggregating preferences and pushing the fat man off the bridge?

Nozick doesn't himself fully develop the idea of self possession.

He borrows it from an earlier philosopher, John Locke.

John Locke accounted for the rise of private property from the state of nature by a chain of reasoning very similar to the one that Nozick and the libertarians use.

John Locke said private property arises because when we mix our labor with things, unowned things, we come to aquire a property right in those things.

And the reason?

The reason is that we own our own labor, and the reason for that?

We are the proprietors, the owners of our own person.

Justice 04 This Land is my Land / Consenting Adults 这片土地是我的土地/满合法年龄的成年人

Today, we turn to John Locke.

On the face of it, Locke is a powerful ally of the libertarian.

First, he believes, as libertarians today maintain, that there are certain fundamental individual rights that are so important that no government, even a representative government, even a democratically elected government, can override them.

Not only that, he believes that those fundamental rights include a natural right to life, liberty, and property, and furthermore he argues that the right to property is not just the creation of government or of law.

The right to property is a natural right in the sense that it is prepolitical.

It is a right that attaches to individuals as human beings, even before government comes on the scene, even before parliaments and legislatures enact laws to define rights and to enforce them.

Locke says in order to think about what it means to have a natural right, we have to imagine the way things are before government, before law, and that's what Locke means by the state of nature.

He says the state of nature is a state of liberty.

Human beings are free and equal beings.

There is no natural hierarchy.

It's not the case that some people are born to be kings and others are born to be serfs.

We are free and equal in the state of nature and yet, he makes the point that there is a difference between a state of liberty and a state of license.

And the reason is that even in the state of nature, there is a kind of law.

It's not the kind of law that legislatures enact.

It's a law of nature.

And this law of nature constrains what we can do even though we are free, even though we are in the state of nature.

Well what are the constraints?

The only constraint given by the law of nature is that the rights we have, the natural rights we have we can't give up nor can we take them from somebody else.

Under the law of nature, I'm not free to take somebody else's life or liberty or property, nor am I free to take my own life or liberty or property.

Even though I am free, I'm not free to violate the law of nature.

I'm not free to take my own life or to sell my self into slavery or to give to somebody else arbitrary absolute power over me.

So where does this constraint, you may think it's a fairly minimal constraint, but where does it come from?

Well, Locke tells us where it comes from and he gives two answers.

Here is the first answer."For men, being all the workmanship of one omnipotent, and infinitely wise maker," namely God, "they are His property, whose workmanship they are, made to last during His, not one another's pleasure." So one answer to the question is why can't I give up my natural rights to life, liberty, and property is well, they're not, strictly speaking, yours.

After all, you are the creature of God.

God has a bigger property right in us, a prior property right.

Now, you might say that's an unsatisfying, unconvincing answer, at least for those who don't believe in God.

What did Locke have to say to them?

Well, here is where Locke appeals to the idea of reason and this is the idea, that if we properly reflect on what it means to be free, we will be led to the conclusion that freedom can't just be a matter of doing whatever we want.

I think this is what Locke means when he says, "The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it which obliges everyone: and reason, which is that law, teaches mankind who will but consult it that all being equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions." This leads to a puzzling paradoxical feature of Locke's account of rights.

Familiar in one sense but strange in another.

It's the idea that our natural rights are unalienable.

What does "unalienable" mean?

It's not for us to alienate them or to give them up, to give them away, to trade them away, to sell them.

Consider an airline ticket.

Airline tickets are nontransferable.

Or tickets to the Patriots or to the Red Sox.

Nontransferable tickets are unalienable.

I own them in the limited sense that I can use them for myself, but I can't trade them away.

So in one sense, an unalienable right, a nontransferable right makes something I own less fully mine.

But in another sense of unalienable rights, especially where we're thinking about life, liberty, and property, or a right to be unalienable makes it more deeply, more profoundly mine, and that's Locke's sense of unalienable.

We see it in the American Declaration of Independence.

Thomas Jefferson drew on this idea of Locke.

Unalienable rights to life, liberty, and as Jefferson amended Locke, to the pursuit of happiness.

Unalienable rights.

Rights that are so essentially mine that even I can't trade them away or give them up.

So these are the rights we have in the state of nature before there is any government.

In the case of life and liberty, I can't take my own life.

I can't sell myself into slavery any more than I can take somebody else's life or take someone else as a slave by force.

But how does that work in the case of property?

Because it's essential to Locke's case that private property can arise even before there is any government.

How can there be a right to private property even before there is any government?

Locke's famous answer comes in Section 27."Every man has a property in his own person.

This nobody has any right to but himself." "The labor of his body and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his." So he moves, as the libertarians later would move, from the idea that we own ourselves, that we have property in our persons to the closely connected idea that we own our own labor.

And from that to the further claim that whatever we mix our labor with that is un-owned becomes our property."Whatever he removes out of the state that nature has provided, and left it in, he has mixed his labor with, and joined it to something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property." Why? Because the labor is the unquestionable property of the laborer and therefore, no one but the laborer can have a right to what is joined to or mixed with his labor.

And then he adds this important provision, "at least where there is enough, and as good left in common for others." But we not only acquire our property in the fruits of the earth, in the deer that we hunt, in the fish that we catch but also if we till and plow and enclose the land and grow potatoes, we own not only the potatoes but the land, the earth."As much land as a man tills, plants, improves, cultivates and can use the product of, so much is his property.

He by his labor encloses it from the commons.

So the idea that rights are unalienable seems to distance Locke from the libertarian.

Libertarian wants to say we have an absolute property right in ourselves and therefore, we can do with ourselves whatever we want.

Locke is not a sturdy ally for that view.

In fact, he says if you take natural rights seriously, you'll be led to the idea that there are certain constraints on what we can do with our natural rights, constraints given either by God or by reason reflecting on what it means really to be free, and really to be free means recognizing that our rights are unalienable.

So here is the difference between Locke and the libertarians.

But when it comes to Locke's account of private property, he begins to look again like a pretty good ally because his argument for private property begins with the idea that we are the proprietors of our own person and therefore, of our labor, and therefore, of the fruits of our labor, including not only the things we gather and hunt in the state of nature but also we acquire our property right in the land that we enclose and cultivate and improve.

There are some examples that can bring out the moral intuition that our labor can take something that is unowned and make it ours, though sometimes, there are disputes about this.

There is a debate among rich countries and developing countries about trade-related intellectual property rights.

It came to a head recently over drug patent laws.

Western countries, and especially the United States say, "We have a big pharmaceutical industry that develops new drugs.

We want all countries in the world to agree to respect the patents." Then, there came along the AIDS crisis in South Africa, and the American AIDS drugs were hugely expensive, far more than could be afforded by most Africans.

So the South African government said, "We are going to begin to buy a generic version of the AIDS antiretroviral drug at a tiny fraction of the cost because we can find an Indian manufacturing company that figures out how the thing is made and produces it, and for a tiny fraction of the cost, we can save lives if we don't respect that patent." And then the American government said, "No, here is a company that invested research and created this drug.

You can't just start mass producing these drugs without paying a licensing fee." And so there was a dispute and the pharmaceutical company sued the South African government to try to prevent their buying the cheap generic, as they saw it, pirated version of an AIDS drug.

And eventually, the pharmaceutical industry gave in and said, "All right, you can do that." But this dispute about what the rules of property should be, of intellectual property of drug patenting, in a way, is the last frontier of the state of nature because among nations where there is no uniform law of patent rights and property rights, it's up for grabs until, by some act of consent, some international agreement, people enter into some settled rules.

What about Locke's account of private property and how it can arise before government and before law comes on the scene?

Is it successful?

How many think it's pretty persuasive?

Raise your hand.

How many don't find it persuasive?

All right, let's hear from some critics.

What is wrong with Locke's account of how private property can arise without consent? Yes?

Yes, I think it justifies European cultural norms as far as when you look at how Native Americans may not have cultivated American land, but by their arrival in the Americas, that contributed to the development of America, which wouldn't have otherwise necessarily happened then or by that specific group.

So you think that this is a defense, this defense of private property in land...

Yes, because it complicates original acquisition if you only cite the arrival of foreigners that cultivated the land.

I see. And what's your name?- Rochelle.

Rochelle?- Yes.

Rochelle says this account of how property arises would fit what was going on in North America during the time of the European settlement.

Do you think, Rochelle, that it's a way of defending the appropriation of the land?

Indeed, because I mean, he is also justifying the glorious revolutions.

I don't think it's inconceivable that he is also justifying colonization as well.

Well, that's an interesting historical suggestion and I think there is a lot to be said for it.

What do you think of the validity of his argument though?

Because if you are right that this would justify the taking of land in North America from Native Americans who didn't enclose it, if it's a good argument, then Locke's given us a justification for that.

If it's a bad argument, then Locke's given us a mere rationalization that isn't morally defensible.

I'm leaning to the second one...- You're leaning toward the second one.

But that's my opinion as well.

All right, well, then, let's hear if there is a defender of Locke's account of private property, and it would be interesting if they could address Rochelle's worry that this is just a way of defending the appropriation of land by the American colonists from the Native Americans who didn't enclose it.

Is there someone who will defend Locke on that point?

Are you going to defend Locke?

Like, you're accusing him of justifying the European basically massacre of the Native Americans.

But who says he is defending it?

Maybe the European colonization isn't right.

You know, maybe it's the state of war that he talked about in his Second Treatise, you know.

So the wars between the Native Americans and the colonists, the settlers, that might have been a state of war that we can only emerge from by an agreement or an act of consent and that's what would have been required fairly to resolve...

Yes, and both sides would have had to agree to it and carry it out and everything.

But what about when, what's your name?- Dan.

But Dan, what about Rochelle says this argument in Section 27 and then in 32 about appropriating land, that argument, if it's valid, would justify the settlers' appropriating that land and excluding others from it, you think that argument is a good argument?

Well, doesn't it kind of imply that the Native Americans hadn't already done that?

Well, the Native Americans, as hunter-gatherers, didn't actually enclose land.

So I think Rochelle is onto something there.

What I want to -- go ahead, Dan.

At the same time, he is saying that just by picking an acorn or taking an apple or maybe killing a buffalo on a certain amount of land, that makes it yours because it's your labor and your labor would enclose that land.

So by that definition, maybe they didn't have fences around little plots of land but didn't...

They were using it.

Yes. By Locke's definition, you can say...

So maybe by Locke's definition, the Native Americans could have claimed a property right in the land itself.

Right, but they just didn't have Locke on their side, as she points out.

All right, good. Okay, that's good.

One more defender of Locke. Go ahead.

Well, I mean, just to defend Locke, he does say that there are some times in which you can't take another person's land.

For example, you can't acquire a land that is common property so people, in terms of the American Indians, I feel like they already have civilizations themselves and they were using land in common.

So it's kind of like what an analogy to what he was talking about with like the common English property.

You can't take land that everybody is sharing in common.

Oh, that's interesting. That's interesting.

And also, you can't take land unless you make sure that there is as much land as possible left for other people to take as well.

So if you're taking common, so you have to make sure that whenever you take land that there is enough left for other people to use...- Right....that's just as good as the land that you took, so...

That's true.

Locke says there has to be this right to private property in the earth is subject to the provision that there be as much and as good left for others. What's your name?

Right. I'm Feng.

So Feng, in a way, agrees with Dan that maybe there is a claim within Locke's framework that could be developed on behalf of the Native Americans.

Here is the further question.

If the right to private property is natural, not conventional, if it's something that we acquire even before we agree to government, how does that right constrain what a legitimate government can do?

In order, finally, to see whether Locke is an ally or potentially a critic of the libertarian idea of the state, we have to ask what becomes of our natural rights once we enter into society.

We know that the way we enter into society is by consent, by agreement to leave the state of nature and to be governed by the majority and by a system of laws, human laws.

But those human laws are only legitimate if they respect our natural rights, if they respect our unalienable rights to life, liberty, and property.

No parliament, no legislature, however democratic its credentials, can legitimately violate our natural rights.

This idea that no law can violate our right to life, liberty, and property would seem to support the idea of a government so limited that it would gladden the heart of the libertarian after all.

But those hearts should not be so quickly gladdened because even though for Locke, the law of nature persists once government arrives, even though Locke insists on limited government, government limited by the end for which it was created, namely the preservation of property, even so, there is an important sense in which what counts as my property, what counts as respecting my life and liberty are for the government to define.

That there be property, that there be respect for life and liberty is what limits government.

But what counts as respecting my life and respecting my property, that is for governments to decide and to define.

How can that be?

Is Locke contradicting himself or is there an important distinction here?

In order to answer that question, which will decide Locke's fit with the libertarian view, we need to look closely at what legitimate government looks like for Locke, and we turn to that next time.

Nicola, if you didn't think you'd get caught, would you pay your taxes?

I don't think so.

I would rather have a system personally that I could give money to exactly those sections of the government that I support and not just blanket support of it.

You'd rather be in the state of nature, at least on April 15th.

Last time, we began to discuss Locke's state of nature, his account of private property, his theory of legitimate government, which is government based on consent and also limited government.

Locke believes in certain fundamental rights that constrain what government can do, and he believes that those rights are natural rights, not rights that flow from law or from government.

And so Locke's great philosophical experiment is to see if he can give an account of how there could be a right to private property without consent before government and legislators arrive on the scene to define property.

That's his question. That's his claim.

There is a way Locke argues to create property, not just in the things we gather and hunt, but in the land itself, provided there is enough and as good left for others.

Today, I want to turn to the question of consent, which is Locke's second big idea.

Private property is one; consent is the other.

What is the work of consent?

People here have been invoking the idea of consent since we began since the first week.

Do you remember when we were talking about pushing the fat man off the bridge, someone said, "But he didn't agree to sacrifice himself.

It would be different if he consented." Or when we were talking about the cabin boy, killing and eating the cabin boy.

Some people said, "Well, if they had consented to a lottery, it would be different.

Then it would be all right." So consent has come up a lot and here in John Locke, we have one of the great philosophers of consent.

Consent is an obvious familiar idea in moral and political philosophy.

Locke says that legitimate government is government founded on consent and who, nowadays, would disagree with him?

Sometimes, when the ideas of political philosophers are as familiar as Locke's ideas about consent, it's hard to make sense of them or at least to find them very interesting.

But there are some puzzles, some strange features of Locke's account of consent as the basis of legitimate government and that's what I'd like to take up today.

One way of testing the plausibility of Locke's idea of consent and also of probing some of its perplexities is to ask just what a legitimate government founded on consent can do, what are its powers according to Locke.

Well, in order to answer that question, it helps to remember what the state of nature is like.

Remember, the state of nature is the condition that we decide to leave, and that's what gives rise to consent.

Why not stay there?

Why bother with government at all?

Well, what is Locke's answer to that question?

He says there are some inconveniences in the state of nature but what are those inconveniences?

The main inconvenience is that everyone can enforce the law of nature.

Everyone is an enforcer, or what Locke calls "the executor" of the state of nature, and he means executor literally.

If someone violates the law of nature, he is an aggressor.

He is beyond reason and you can punish him.

And you don't have to be too careful or fine about gradations of punishment in the state of nature.

You can kill him.

You can certainly kill someone who comes after you, who tries to murder you.

That's self defense.

But the enforcement power, the right to punish, everyone can do the punishing in the state of nature.

And not only can you punish with death people who come after you seeking to take your life, you can also punish a thief who tries to steal your goods because that also counts as aggression against the law of nature.

If someone has stolen from a third party, you can go after him. Why is this?

Well, violations of the law of nature are an act of aggression.

There is no police force.

There are no judges, no juries, so everyone is the judge in his or her own case.

And Locke observes that when people are the judges of their own cases, they tend to get carried away, and this gives rise to the inconvenience in the state of nature.

People overshoot the mark.

There is aggression.

There is punishment and before you know it, everybody is insecure in the enjoyment of his or her unalienable rights to life, liberty, and property.

Now, he describes in pretty harsh and even grim terms what you can do to people who violate the law of nature."One may destroy a man who makes war upon him ...for the same reason that he may kill a wolf or a lion.

Such men have no other rule, but that of force and violence," listen to this, "and so may be treated as beasts of prey, those dangerous and noxious creatures, that will be sure to destroy to you if you fall into their power", so kill them first.

So, what starts out as a seemingly benign state of nature where everyone is free and yet where there is a law and the law respects people's rights, and those rights are so powerful that they're unalienable.

What starts out looking very benign, once you look closer, is pretty fierce and filled with violence, and that's why people want to leave.

How do they leave?

Well, here is where consent comes in.

The only way to escape from the state of nature is to undertake an act of consent where you agree to give up the enforcement power and to create a government or a community where there will be a legislature to make law and where everyone agrees in advance, everyone who enters, agrees in advance to abide by whatever the majority decides.

But then the question, and this is our question and here is where I want to get your views, then the question is what powers, what can the majority decide?

Now, here, it gets tricky for Locke because you remember, alongside the whole story about consent and majority rule, there are these natural rights, the law of nature, these unalienable rights, and you remember, they don't disappear when people join together to create a civil society.

So even once the majority is in charge, the majority can't violate your inalienable rights, can't violate your fundamental right to life, liberty, and property.

So here is the puzzle.

How much power does the majority have?

How limited is the government created by consent?

It's limited by the obligation on the part of the majority to respect and to enforce the fundamental natural rights of the citizens.

They don't give those up.

We don't give those up when we enter government.

That's this powerful idea taken over from Locke by Jefferson in the Declaration.

Unalienable rights.

So, let's go to our two cases.

Remember Michael Jordan, Bill Gates, the libertarian objection to taxation for redistribution?

Well, what about Locke's limited government?

Is there anyone who thinks that Locke does give grounds for opposing taxation for redistribution?

Anybody? Go ahead.

If the majority rules that there should be taxation, even if the minority should still not have to be taxed because that's taking away property, which is one of the rights of nature.

All right so, and what's your name?- Ben.

Ben. So if the majority taxes the minority without the consent of the minority to that particular tax law, it does amount to a taking of their property without their consent and it would seem that Locke should object to that.

You want some textual support for your view, for your reading of Locke, Ben?

Sure.

All right. I brought some along just in case you raised it.

If you have your texts, look at 138, passage 138."The supreme power," by which Locke means the legislature, "cannot take from any man any part of his property without his own consent, for the preservation of property being the end of government and that for which men enter into society, it necessarily supposes and requires that people should have property." That was the whole reason for entering society in the first place, to protect the right to property.

And when Locke speaks about the right to property, he often uses that as a kind of global term for the whole category, the right to life, liberty, and property.

So that part of Locke, that beginning of 138, seems to support Ben's reading.

But what about the part of 138, if you keep reading, "Men, therefore, in society having property, they have such a right to the goods, which by the law of the community are theirs." Look at this."And that no one can take from them without their consent." And then at the end of this passage, he says, "So it's a mistake to think that the legislative power can do what it will and dispose of the estates of the subject arbitrarily or take any part of them at pleasure." Here's what's elusive.

On the one hand, he says the government can't take your property without your consent.

He is clear about that.

But then he goes on to say, and that's the natural right to property.

But then, it seems that property, what counts as property is not natural but conventional defined by the government."The goods of which by the law of the community are theirs." And the plot thickens if you look ahead to Section 140.

In 140, he says, "Governments can't be supported without great charge.

Government is expensive and it's fit that everyone who enjoys his share of the protection should pay out of his estate." And then here is the crucial line."But still, it must be with his own consent, i.e. the consent of the majority, giving it either by themselves, or through their representatives." So what is Locke actually saying?

Property is natural in one sense but conventional in another.

It's natural in the sense that we have a fundamental unalienable right that there be property, that the institution of property exist and be respected by the government.

So an arbitrary taking of property would be a violation of the law of nature and would be illegitimate.

But it's a further question, here is the conventional aspect of property, it's a further question what counts as property, how it's defined and what counts as taking property, and that's up to the government.

So the consent, here, we're coming back to our question, what is the work of consent?

What it takes for taxation to be legitimate is that it be by consent, not the consent of Bill Gates himself if he is the one who has to pay the tax, but by the consent that he and we, all of us within the society, gave when we emerged from the state of nature and created the government in the first place.

It's the collective consent.

And by that reading, it looks like consent is doing a whole lot and the limited government consent creates isn't all that limited.

Does anyone want to respond to that or have a question about that?

Go ahead. Stand up.

Well, I'm just wondering what Locke's view is on once you have a government that's already in place, whether it is possible for people who are born into that government to then leave and return to the state of nature?

I mean, I don't think that Locke mentioned that at all in the...

What do you think?

Well, I think, as the convention, it would be very difficult to leave the government because you are no longer, because nobody else is just living in the state of nature.

Everybody else is now governed by this legislature.

What would it mean today, you're asking.

And what's your name?- Nicola.

Nicola, to leave the state.

Supposed you wanted to leave civil society today.

You want to withdraw your consent and return to the state of nature.

Well, because you didn't actually consent to it.

You were just born into it.

It was your ancestors who joined.

Right. You didn't sign the social contract. I didn't sign it.

Exactly.

All right, so what does Locke say there? Yes?

I don't think Locke says you have to sign anything.

I think that he says that it's kind of implied consent.

Implied?

Taking government's services, you are implying that you are consenting to the government taking things from you.

All right, so implied consent.

That's a partial answer to this challenge.

Now, you may not think that implied consent is as good as the real thing.

Is that what you're shaking your head about, Nicola?

Speak up. Stand up and speak up.

I don't think that necessarily just by utilizing the government's various resources that we are necessarily implying that we agree with the way that this government was formed or that we have consented to actually join into the social contract.

So you don't think the idea of implied consent is strong enough to generate any obligation at all to obey the government?

Not necessarily, no.

Nicola, if you didn't think you'd get caught, would you pay your taxes?

I don't think so. I would rather have a system, personally, that I could give money to exactly those sections of the government that I support and not just blanket support of it.

You'd rather be in the state of nature, at least on April 15th.

But what I'm trying to get at is do you consider that you are under no obligation, since you haven't actually entered into any act of consent, but for prudential reasons, you do what you're supposed o do according to the law?

Exactly.

If you look at it that way, then you're violating another one of Locke's treatises, which is that you can't take anything from anyone else.

Like, you can't take the government's services and then not give them anything in return.

If you want to go live in the state of nature, that's fine, but you can't take anything from the government because by the government's terms, which are the only terms under which you can enter the agreement, say that you have to pay taxes to take those things.

So you are saying that Nicola can go back into the state of nature if she wants to but she can't drive on Mass. Ave.?

Exactly.

I want to raise the stakes beyond using Mass. Ave.and even beyond taxation.

What about life?

What about military conscription?

Yes, what do you say? Stand up.

First of all, we have to remember that sending people to war is not necessarily implying that they'll die.

I mean, obviously, you're not raising their chances here but it's not a death penalty.

So if you're going to discuss whether or not military conscription is equivalent to suppressing people's right to life, you shouldn't approach it that way.

Secondly, the real problem here is Locke has this view about consent and natural rights.

But you're not allowed to give up your natural rights either.

So the real question is how does he himself figure it out between "I agree to give up my life, give up my property" when he talks about taxes or military conscription for the fact.

But I guess Locke would be against suicide, and that's still my own consent.

I agree by taking my life.

All right, good. All right, what's your name?- Eric.

So Eric brings us back to the puzzle we've been wrestling with since we started reading Locke.

On the one hand, we have these unalienable rights to life, liberty, and property, which means that even we don't have the power to give them up, and that's what creates the limits on legitimate government.

It's not what we consent to that limits government.

It's what we lack the power to give away when we consent that limits government.

That's the point at the heart of Locke's whole account of legitimate government.

But now, you say, "well, if we can't give up our own life, if we can't commit suicide, if we can't give up our right to property, how can we then agree to be bound by a majority that will force us to sacrifice our lives or give up our property"?

Does Locke have a way out of this or is he basically sanctioning an all-powerful government, despite everything he says about unalienable rights?

Does he have a way out of it?

Who would speak here in defense of Locke or make sense, find a way out of this predicament?

Yes.- All right, go ahead.

I feel like there is a general distinction we made between the right to life that individuals possess and the fact that the government cannot take away a single individual's right to life.

I think if you look at conscription as the government picking out certain individuals to go fight in war, then that would be a violation of their natural right to life.

On the other hand, if you have conscription, let's say a lottery for example, then in that case I would view that as the population picking their representatives to defend them in the case of war, the idea being that since the whole population cannot go out there to defend its own right to property, it picks its own representatives through a process that's essentially random and then these sort of elected representatives go out and fight for the rights of the people.

It works very similar, it works just like an elected government, in my opinion.

All right, so an elected government can conscript citizens to go out and defend the way of life, the community that makes the enjoyment of rights possible?

I think it can because to me, it seems that it's very similar to the process of electing representatives for legislature.

Although here, it's as if the government is electing by conscription certain citizens to go die for the sake of the whole.

Is that consistent with respect for a natural right to liberty?

Well, what I would say there is there is a distinction between picking out individuals and having a random choice of individuals. Like ...

Between picking out...let me make sure, between picking out individuals, let me... what's your name?

Gokul.

Gokul says there's a difference between picking out individuals to lay down their lives and having a general law.

I think this is the answer Locke would give, actually, Gokul.

Locke is against arbitrary government.

He is against the arbitrary taking, the singling out of Bill Gates to finance the war in Iraq.

He is against singling out a particular citizen or group of people to go off and fight.

But if there is a general law such that the government's choice, the majority's action is non-arbitrary, it doesn't really amount to a violation of people's basic rights.

What does count as a violation is an arbitrary taking because that would essentially say, not only to Bill Gates, but to everyone, there is no rule of law.

There is no institution of property.

Because at the whim of the king, or for that matter, of the parliament, we can name you or you to give up your property or to give up your life.

But so long as there is a non-arbitrary rule of law, then it's permissible.

Now, you may say this doesn't amount to a very limited government, and the libertarian may complain that Locke is not such a terrific ally after all.

The libertarian has two grounds for disappointment in Locke.

First, that the rights are unalienable and therefore, I don't really own myself after all.

I can't dispose of my life or my liberty or my property in a way that violates my rights.

That's disappointment number one.

Disappointment number two, once there is a legitimate government based on consent, the only limits for Locke are limits on arbitrary takings of life or of liberty or of property.

But if the majority decides, if the majority promulgates a generally applicable law and if it votes duly according to fair procedures, then there is no violation, whether it's a system of taxation or a system of conscription.

So it's clear that Locke is worried about the absolute arbitrary power of kings, but it's also true, and here is the darker side of Locke, that this great theorist of consent came up with a theory of private property that didn't require consent that may, and this goes back to the point Rochelle made last time, may have had something to do with Locke's second concern, which was America.

You remember, when he talks about the state of nature, he is not talking about an imaginary place."In the beginning," he says, "All the world was America." And what was going on in America?

The settlers were enclosing land and engaged in wars with the Native Americans.

Locke, who was an administrator of one of the colonies, may have been as interested in providing a justification for private property through enclosure without consent through enclosure and cultivation, as he was with developing a theory of government based on consent that would rein in kings and arbitrary rulers.

The question we're left with, the fundamental question we still haven't answered is what then becomes of consent?

What work can it do?

What is its moral force?

What are the limits of consent?

Consent matters not only for governments, but also for markets.

And beginning next time, we're going to take up questions of the limits of consent in the buying and selling of goods.

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