Digressions&Impressions

Political-Theological Original Sin & Compensation from a Libertarian Point of View

These lands, largely or mostly, were originally taken by the sword, and have ever since been held by the sword. Neither the original robbers, nor any subsequent holders, have ever had any other than a robber’s title to them. And robbery gives no better title to lands than it does to any other property.

No lapse of time can cure this defect in the original title. Every successive holder not only indorses all the robberies of all his predecessors, but he commits a new one himself by withholding the lands, either from the original and true owners, or from those who, but for those robberies, would have been their legitimate heirs and assigns....

The fact that the direct descendants of the original holders of these lands cannot now be individually traced, and reinstated in the property of their ancestors, cannot screen the present holders from their just liability; since the original robbery of the lands, and the entailing them in the families of the original robbers, have not only deprived the direct descendants of the original holders of their rights, but have also deprived all other persons of their natural rights to buy these lands. These other persons, therefore, as well as the direct descendants of the original holders, have a wrong to be redressed. And these two classes, as they cannot now be distinguished from each other, should make common cause...

And do not imagine that the present landholders alone are to be finally held liable. All who have been voluntary accomplices with them—and all who have voluntarily aided in upholding the British government, have been accomplices with them—have justly incurred the same penalty as the landholders themselves. Among these accomplices have been your great manufacturers, merchants, bankers, ship-owners, money-lenders (lenders of money to the government)—everybody, in fact, high or low, who has voluntarily been part and parcel of the British government—have been accomplices in the thousand crimes by which the people at large, throughout the Empire, have been plundered and enslaved. And having been such accomplices, their property may as rightfully be seized for purposes of reparation, as may the lands of the landholders themselves; for every member of a conspiracy shares in the guilt of all the others; and is equally liable with them to be coerced into making restitution and compensation.--Lysander Spooner (1880) "Revolution: The Only Remedy for the Oppressed Classes of Ireland, England, and Other Parts of the British Empire."

Lysander Spooner  [Recall here, here, here, and here], an American abolitionist is, I think, only remembered by Libertarians. In many ways he is a Lockean  and, as the quoted passage reveals, he has a very robust conception of individual property rights. These rights can be inherited and endure long after they have been violated. In context he is discussing the dispossession of the native Irish by the British, but as the final quoted sentence suggests he is willing to generalize the case much more broadly. I am unfamiliar with his views on the rights of native Americans, but because (I) Spooner very clearly denies American exceptionalism throughout his writings and (II) has no special fondness (to put it mildly) for the American form of government, there is no reason to assume his views couldn't be extended to cover the claims of original American inhabitants (if he were to be persuaded that these had some form of property). 

So from sound Lockean principles, Spooner generates a right to compensation for loss of property/country even if this occurred many generations ago. (For example, he is quite clear that much of the British isles have been robbed from original owners since the invasion of the Saxons.) It is worth articulating the further principles Spooner relies to secure this. First, even though present occupants did not commit any crimes they are, first, complicit in the effects of the crime and, second, their occupancy prevents both the heirs of the original title-holders to benefit from the property, but also the counterfactual-would-be-new-owners of it if the (heirs of these) occupants would have been willing to sell or gift their property to them.

In fact, what's attractive about Spooner's approach is that he has, as the final quoted paragraph reveals, a very robust conception of complicity in crimes. And it follows from his account that all who are complicit in an original crime ought to compensate it. (He is quiet about the exact principles of compensation; how to evaluate the original value of the loss; how to figure out who the would be counterfactual-would-be-occupants; if the compensation has to take the place of return of property or payment, etc.) All settler/colonial projects generate obligations to compensation for successive generations.

These obligations are, and this is striking for a Libertarian, rather collective: while the argument goes through the complicity of individual accomplishes, the present inhabitants of a settler/colonial state X are collectively accomplices in the extension of the original theft and violation of rights. Spooner (who clearly has no interest in organized Christianity) here comes close to embracing a collective, original sin account of many states. (He is the kind of libertarian who thinks most actually existing governments are ways for the powerful to oppress the weak.) The bad origin of states generates obligations on present citizens.

Because the present occupants and their governments are tend to fail to meet their obligation to compensate, violence against them, especially the very rich who benefit most from the present status quo, is justified. On Spooner's view many present states are de facto continuation of the state of nature. (This is even more thoroughgoing than Spinoza, who thinks the state of nature is always a life possibility.) 

Spooner does not spell out if there are intermediary steps that heirs of the original victims, accomplices, and beneficiaries must/can take before violence is justified. These gaps in his argument are, alas, characteristic of Spooner who also often seems to embrace commitments that are in tension with each other. So, one would not want to read Spooner for the strengths of his arguments and rigor. In addition, Spooner's positions are often neither pragmatic nor likely to be taken up by those that determine the status quo. But his works reveal that the distinctly American libertarian impulse (with its thoroughgoing embrace of individual property rights) originates in genuine concern for dispossessed others (slaves, irish, colonial inhabitants, workers, etc.) and that the radical implications of this concern are pursued with moral vigour.* Because Spooner rejects quietism, it is a bitter irony that his philosophy which explicitly aims at peace, ends up embracing conditions that would lead to permanent war until states disappear. 

On the Political Philosophy of The Last Jedi (IV): Leadership and Sacrifice

The first time we see Vice-Admiral Holdo in The Last Jedi, we see her through the eyes of Poe Dameron: hotshot flyboy, recently slapped down twice in the Resistance’s scramble to evacuate their compromised base. The first blow to Poe’s ego and stability is his demotion from Commander to Captain by General Leia Organa herself, a suitable reprimand for spearheading the devastatingly costly bombing run which provides the film with its opening set-piece. No sooner has Poe processed this—if indeed he has processed it—than he’s knocked further off balance by the loss of all of the Resistance high command save Leia, who is comatose and out of commission. In this state—stripped of his expected personal authority, with the usual structures of command which he relies on decimated—he looks at the new leader of the remaining Resistance fleet and says incredulously to another pilot: “That’s Admiral Holdo? Battle of Chyron Belt Admiral Holdo? …not what I was expecting.”...

the best visual and sound cue in the entire film: having stayed behind to pilot the heavy cruiser Raddus while the rest of the diminished Resistance escapes to the planet Crait, Holdo eventually chooses to drive her ship while it jumps to lightspeed directly through the First Order’s flagship, destroying a great part of it and preventing the destruction of those last few escapees. She is alone when she does this. She is alone, a captain on a bridge, in her dress and her lovely hair, her mouth set in a firm and determined line, and she doesn’t hesitate.

The film’s director, Rian Johnson, gives her—and us—a silent cut as a reward. My whole theater gasped out loud into the quiet. It is the most striking visual and auditory moment in a film full of striking visual and auditory moments....

What The Last Jedi does—amongst many other things—is present its audience with more than one mode of female power. We have Rey, strong in the Force, dangerous and necessary and emerging from nowhere to be the center of this story; we have Rose, a mechanic and a patriot, willing to make sacrifices and willing to know when sacrifice is not necessary; we have Leia Organa, the pivot on which the Resistance turns. And we have Vice-Admiral Amilyn Holdo, who looks like none of what we expect. Who is nevertheless what the Resistance needs, and worth Poe’s respect, and worth ours....---Arkady Martine@Tor.com [HT Karl Aho & Bryce Huebner].

Martine, who turns out to be a world class scholar, rightly notes that The Last Jedi is, in part, a movie about leadership, including the way(s) power, including gendered power, is wielded. In fact, the whole film is simultaneously, an education in the limitations of the daring, sharp-shooting ace-boy-hero (in this film exemplified by Poe and Luke Skywalker's past. A few days ago, I noted the significance of the fact that Luke Skywalker learns to fight without violence [Gandhi (recall also here and here)]). Martine rightly notes that we (and the ace-boy-hero) have been conditioned to have gendered expectations about how heroes look and how they act. Holdo makes an unimposing first impression, and, through our reactions to her, we are taught our biased expectations.

For, it turns out, Holdo plays a bad hand well. How bad? Well, it is notable that Poe had never met Holdo (a legendary commander) before. The Resistance is literally shrinking in front of our eyes and all the key, surviving members converge upon each other in a confined space (in a vast galaxy). How does she play it? By conserving her forces, having an escape plan, and using (to adopt Darwinian terminology) a costly signal that hides her true intent. She also keeps her eye out on the long-term: rather than forgiving Poe (her ace) because imminent survival is at stake, she punishes his insubordination--he, thereby, has to watch the action rather being the action.   

Martine gives an excellent description of Holdo's last moments of certain death. I want to quote another description (this time by Joe Tonelli) because there is evidence of a kind of collective, convergence of the impact of the scene:

I can still see it in my mind—like a lightning bolt that leaves an imprint on your vision after it crosses the sky. The streak through dark space. The utter silence of selfless self-sacrifice. We were alone with Holdo in the ship, in the void of space, and then—that silence. The theater may have gasped out loud, but I only processed the soundlessness and the light. Raw power and terrible beauty, blindingly combined in a single shot.

It is fair to say that the Holdo's last moments are the most iconic of the movie (which lacks a truly great battle scene). I think this is not just because of the aesthetic flirtation with the sublime. Perhaps, I show my age, but I could not help but think of that silent video image of the second plane hitting the WTC on 9/11. To be sure there are lots of differences, not the least being that Holdo's target is a warship. But crucially, Holdo is not made into a likeable character, as Martine points out, we "are absolutely primed to believe that she’s either a traitor or an incompetent." This is so, even though we can assume that she is pursuing the ends of the resistance. Rather, our view of her changes in virtue of the fact that (a) she did have a workable (not full-proof, but workable) plan and (b) she leads by courageous example, and (c) she stays on the bridge of the ship she is captaining and so does her ordinary duty. She is a hero without dazzlement. And, for these three features of her strength of mind, we (and Poe) come to admire her, post facto.

Now, what I am resisting in the previous paragraph is the further claim that we come to admire her in virtue of the ends that she pursues. While the military run First Order is undeniably neo-fascist, it is by no means obvious the Resistance (which is the off-spring of a slave-holding society) is so virtuous. [That is to say, the moral universe of The Last Jedi is populated with virtuous individuals and groups; but it is an open question if it is capable of supporting a semi-virtuous political order.] For, I am committed to the idea that a hero can serve non-rightful ends. To oversimplify, the criteria for heroicism are spectator-relative. (This is why the exemplary deeds recounted in Greek poetry remain heroic despite changing views on the laws of war and morality more generally unless the narration stops speaking to us.) Of course, I am not denying its easier to recognize, say, the courage of an enemy than her heroicism. And I am also not denying that expressing the sentiment in the previous sentence can be rather dangerous and so may itself take some courage in some contexts.

Let me close. Holdo was able to become a hero in virtue of the fact that despite Poe's insubordination, the lines of commmand and control, and the authority that follows from it, within the Resistance remained firm. It resisted the lure of charismatic leadership (Poe).* One can question if that's really likely in such dire circumstances. even so, here, again, The Last Jedi reveals a larger understanding: for the fact follows naturally and truthfully from the style of Leia's earlier, organizational leadership.

On Katrina, Sandy, Harvey and the Rot in American Governance [No, this post is not about Trump]

Roughly a third of the US population—more than 100 million people—lives in coastal counties [7]. US coastal county populations are also growing much denser than non-coastal counties. Between 1980 and 2008 coastal counties increased population density by 28 percent (excluding Alaska). "Hurricanes and Climate Change" (September 2016) Union of Concerned Scientists

Hurricane Katrina was in 2005.  It was a tragedy that, also, revealed racialized and economic injustice in New Orleans. It was probably also one of the central turning points (fairly or not) when the good fortune of the Bush administration ended. The US has had 12 years since to prepare its major cities against flooding damage in light of increasingly loud climate scientists predicting, in virtue of climate change modelling, increasing flooding and other effects of Hurricanes which are becoming more frequent and powerful.

A lot of attention is paid to Trump's embrace of climate change denial. During the twelve years since Katrina, Hurricane Sandy hit New York in 2012 and caused major damage. These twelve years include the whole of the Obama Administration. I know a lot of attention is focused on President Trump, but he is not responsible for the status quo.  Any particular Administration is responsible for how it responds to natural disasters and how it coordinates relief and reconstruction. (On the political significance of coordination, recall Sabl 's book on Hume.) However, preventing, mitigating, and preparing for major natural disasters transcends administrations and is a matter of structural governance (at local, regional, state, national, and international level [and when aliens discover us, cosmic level]).* What follows ignores the non-trivial significance of disaster-relief (Stateside the task of FEMA) and reconstruction/renewal.  (See Anna Jacobson for a sober perspective.)

The flooded streets of Houston reveal a deep rot in American governance and political life. For, it is a central task of modern states to prevent or mitigate, and prepare for, major natural disasters. It requires long range planning capacity, enormous skill at coordination of knowledge and engineering know-how, the ability to harness financial resources, gigantic control over land-use, and the power to enforce prudential rules and regulations along many different dimensions (health, safety, housing, roads, industrial plants, etc.), and etc.  When levees, dams, and dikes are built the natural order is re-directed and transformed with enormous amount of downstream consequences.

While the Ancients executed great engineering feats, they treated natural disasters as (depending on their metaphysical outlook) fate or chance or divine providence. It could hit anywhere and anytime. Life is fundamentally uncertain. What really matters is how one (or the state) responded to it. (Recall some of my posts on Seneca.)

Starting with Bacon's New Atlantis, I think (or, if Roger Masters is right, perhaps in Machiavelli's response to Leonardo Di Vinci), one sees reflection on ordering society in which nature is domesticated and harnessed for fruitful ends. That the state can prevent natural disasters, and legitimately impose obligations and regulations on citizens in light of this mission, is taken for granted (as common background to appeal to) in Book 2 of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations: "The obligation of building party walls, in order to prevent the communication of fire, is a violation of natural liberty exactly of the same kind with the regulations of the banking trade which are here proposed." (The passage is often quoted. In context Smith is defending his bank regulations.) That is to say, in modern political thought the state confronts natural uncertainty and re-directs to other more fruitful ends (fill in your favorite end, leisure, commerce, the arts,  etc.).

The modernity in this sense of the US is illustrated and exemplified by the impressive history of the United States Army Corps of Engineers. In this agency engineering and state power come together. While nobody would deny that, in  practice, all decisions of USACE, have political significance and may well be informed by some broad political values, it is symbolically significant that this primarily civilian agency is a part of the defense department. This shows that preventing and mitigating natural disasters is a  matter of national security. While being housed in the Department of Defense does not shield the agency from ordinary political debates, it is understood that the mission of USACE is also, in large part, reliant on its technical expertise and impartiality. The rise and flourishing of the Corps is a key causal vector in the rise of America as a Continental power.

I leave it to the experts to explain why the US seems to have become unable (in a political sense) to exercise one of the central task of modern states. But it seems to have lost the ability to marshal the necessary resources to mitigate seriously the effects of (reasonably foreseeable) natural disasters. It is pretty clear that many of the most populated and economically important parts of the US are structurally vulnerable to hurricane-related floodings and tsunamis. All signs suggest that reckless development is increasing (see here Scientific American). This recklessness is mystifying not just because it violates minimal enlightened self-interest, but because the United States government remains quite a powerful and wealthy organization full of talented individuals.

I know that the media will turn this into a question of how Trump performed (or his stance on climate science, or his real estate focus on redevelopment, etc.). We will soon be offered (racialized) tales of heroic-ism and vandalism. My libertarian friends will remind us that private companies perform very well in disaster relief, and soon my Bayesian friends will tout the benefits of widespread adoption of Bayesian modeling in policy sciences (and etc.). But I do not see any signs that the structural rot in the US's governance is being addressed. We have become addicted to watching and discussing (in polarized fashion) Trump's spectacle. My regular readers know I think this is awful, but he is a symptom of a more fundamental weakness in American governance.

 

When Moral Philosophers become Apologists for "Most People's" Warmongering

In this new book, Larry May develops and defends what he claims is a special and new outlook on war: "contingent" pacifism. Pacifists hold that all war is unjustified. Contingent pacifists do not; they agree that it is at least possible for war to be justified. But they also think that very few wars are just and, in particular, that probably no current war or war in the recent past was, nor will any foreseeable future wars be, just. In these latter claims, they seem to disagree with what I shall lamely call "most people." To us it seems obvious that our participation in some wars is justified, presumably a good many more than contingent pacifists think.--Jan Narveson (2015) reviewing Contingent Pacifism: Revisiting Just War Theory @NDPR

Narveson's review of May's book has been bugging me since it first appeared a year and a half ago.* Because I am not an expert on these matters, I hesitated to write about it. But the irritation has not left, so I'll to try to articulate the source of my annoyance, while remaining agnostic on the merits of May's position. This agnosticism is, in part, due to the fact that I still have not gotten around to reading the book. But it is primarily due to the fact that what I object to, in part, is that it seems that in his review Narveson never gets around to grappling with May's position.

It is a peculiar fact that Narveson turns himself into a spokesperson for most people. We are not told the source of his authority or his epistemic access to their thoughts.  We do learn that he thinks his words are representative of most people's views (thoughts, opinions, beliefs--do we know how to really characterize most people's sensibilities toward just war theory?---) because he uses first person plural (us); we may, in fact, understand him as identifying with most people. (We ignore the possibility that they may ask him, who asked you to speak on our behalf?) He never tells us who is included in most people, but from contextual cues one gets the sense that for Narveson most people are (North) Americans that are not Jihadists. Given that Americans make up a small minority of the world's population at a given time (and from the vantage point of (to quote Narveson (see below): "several millennia") it is simply false that Narveson speaks for most people simpliciter. In fact, he ignores the perspectives of the vast majority of human beings to have lived.

Now, I do not mean to suggest that all philosophers have to turn themselves into public gadflies challenging their people's commitments; quite a few respectable philosophers have turned themselves into spokespeople for common sense for a long time. But common sense has two advantages not available to Narveson: (i) one can be committed to common sense while recognizing that few other people embrace it consciously; because (ii) common sense is a philosopher's construct. While there is an interesting, complex relationship between common sense and what most people think, (iii) common sense is not a person or a people, and  so cannot be held accountable (in the same way as people can). To be sure, I am not here arguing against philosophers turning themselves into spokespeople of others by being in their service (say as Dotson does [recall]; see also here on public philosophy). Of course, because philosophy is not a democratic contest, it is possible that Narveson and (forgive the locution) his people are right. So, let me turn to Narveson's central challenge to May:

The fundamental [problem] is this: all of us, I would hope, are "against war." What I mean by that is that we all think that war is a bad thing; we would prefer a world in which what we call "war" doesn't happen -- that international and internal political disagreements are never resolved by force of arms. Unfortunately, to say that is pretty unhelpful in almost all versions of the world we humans have, socially speaking, occupied for several millennia.

More to the point is what, I should think, most of us mean: that in every war, somebody started it, and that that party shouldn't have. That somebody, we think, was/is an aggressor: he is trying to extract some political benefit by the use of lethal force against harmless people, and it is morally wrong to do that. So all wars are wrong in the sense that they happen only because somebody is committing wrongful, unjust actions. This, however, implies nothing in the way of pacifisms. For we also think that if A is attacked, and is innocent, then A has the right to defend himself. What is to be justified is not starting a war, but deciding to use military force to defend those who are attacked by the aggressive party. Is May disputing that? He makes many well-enough-taken points about the dangers of implementing this principle, but he doesn't seem to be fundamentally disputing it, as the out-and-out pacifist would.

Let's agree that this bifurcation is prima facie simplistic. Sometimes it is difficult to say who or what is "being aggressive." But suppose, as most of us surely think, that often it is decidable.

Let's grant, for the sake of argument, that (a) what really matters morally is who started the war and is, thereby, the aggressor;** and that (b) there are facts of the matter that may well determine who started it. But for (b) to work in practice we need an impartial, resourceful outsider/tribunal to establish them. In order to establish (b) we can't rely on our press because they may be well be influenced by nationalism or the government or commercial considerations (not to mention production of so-called fake news]; we also can't rely on our own government, which (when it is the hegemonic power) may well be an interested party (leaving aside the possibility that the government is controlled by commercial or military or foreign interest). I have no idea if most of us would agree that it is best not to be a judge in your own case, but considerations of (well) fairness suggest it. So, in moments of crisis it is by no means obvious that there is mechanism that can decide the matter impartially and fairly in real time (at limited cost, etc.). I am no fan of 'surely,' but surely if we are going to be resolutely realist about the world we humans have, socially speaking, occupied then we should not ignore the non-trivial obstacles to the implementation of certain principles.

As an aside, when I was a student, in the early days after the cold war ended,  I was, I guess, a liberal interventionist; I believed that wars sanctioned by the UN and in accord with international law were justified, especially if they promoted humanitarian ends. American might would secure an international legal order. I had not yet fully grasped that (i) all wars tend to generate enormous amount of human suffering of innocent (and not so innocent) bystanders; (ii) that unique American hegemony entailed that all its wars of choice would also serve partial, primarily American commercial interests; (iii) that establishing an international liberal order on the basis of overwhelming force entails, in practice, open-ended (airstrike) warfare around the globe. (Leaving aside that the this warfare is accompanied by a rhetoric in which those that oppose us are savage, barbaric, etc. [recall my criticism of McMahan]) Given the existence of open-ended warfare, I have grown more realistic and, thereby, a growing sympathy for moral positions that prevent intellectuals like me from becoming spokespeople for the slaughter of innocents (as collateral damage because they were born in unsavory regimes or find themselves in a civil war we, well some of us, at least, are fueling).

Rather than confronting the shaky epistemic foundations of his own position, Narveson decides that the really important (big")"moral question here is are "we...supposed to let the bad guys win? -- on the ground that the innocent may never be sacrificed?" (He then adds a few more rhetorically charged examples.) Again, Narveson is rather quick in deploying the first person plural, but let's leave that aside. Let's think about how to answer this question; if we take the vantage point of "almost all versions of the world we humans have, socially speaking, occupied" the answer is plainly, often yes. If the vantage point is theodicy, then the answer may well be, plainly, no (although God's ways may be opaque to us). Of course, morality may well in particular cases suggest answers  that are neither the former nor the latter. For example, one can grant others the (let's stipulate) legitimate right to self-defense and still recognize that this will entail their defeat. (This happened in several cases he discusses.) Even the invidualized morality of Narveson and his people does not impose on us an open-ended demand to sacrifice ourselves (prosperity, lives, etc.) to defend innocents and their human rights.**

That is, one may well be non-pacifist about other people's right(s) to self-defense and incline toward pacifism when one is asked about the morality of the interventions by a military hegemon. (This is not May's contingent pacificism, but it is not far removed from his spirit.) Of course, in practice the distinction is not clear-cut; NATO, for example finesses the point by treating an attack on one as an attack on all. Moreover, and more important, there may well be a-moral justifications for intervention. Throughout his piece Narveson pretends that if one inclines toward pacifist views one is thereby ipse facto willing to condemn other people's military actions (including "defending legitimate interests").

But a pacifist may well allow that morality is just one dimension from which to evaluate behavior. On the surface, Narveson agrees. He writes that "Among humane and reasonable people, all military activity is strictly subordinate to the political ends being pursued." Indeed, and the pacificist may well come to recognize that some political ends infringe on her morality. She may well decide that short of Stoic withdrawal, in our fallen world, our empire is politically preferable than the alternatives.

Strikingly enough, this position is unavailable to Narveson because he continues the sentence just quoted with "those ends must be in terms of human lives and liberties being defended and promoted  -- not only ours but also those of the citizens of other states, or other civilians involved or significantly affected by the war in question." To simplify: purported morality here becomes the only (legitimate?) political end. Not surprisingly, in practice, this particular morality offers liberal democracies a permanent-moral-get-out-of-jail-card. I don't often speak from the perspective of "almost all versions of the world we humans have, socially speaking, occupied for several millennia," and I have no special fondness for Carl Schmitt, but from that perspective this position is only recognizable as a species of uncritical ideology.

 

 

On Publishing in Times of Turmoil (or worse)

This morning I was reading a draft chapter by one of my talented PhD students, Laura Georgescu. Her (fascinating!) work is on the edge of my own expertise and so the bibliographic notes are (to me!) not standard, that is, they also involve citations to works that I sometimes would not have encountered before. As it happens one of these involved a reference to a paper published in 1943. This caught my attention because one rarely encounters citations to works published in the midst of war when would be researchers are drafted, rationing is in place, and censorship slows things down; not to mention that some of the stuff that gets published is no better than propaganda (or extremely discrete criticism).

Trained up as we are on the opposing trajectories of Heidegger (Nazi) (recall, but also here, and here) and, say, Russell (pacifist sent to jail), we tend to think of war and dictatorship as offering us stark choices. But, I am enough of a historian to know, that in practice many academics find a way to make their peace and muddle on the best they can. While there is little honor, and even some cowardice (sold as prudence or realism) in such a stance, I can't simply reject it because, as I noted yesterday in a different context, one of the great purposes of politics is to make the life of philosophy, the arts, sciences and all the other joyful activities that ennoble our existence possible.

Because the chapter was still in draft (and did not include the dissertation's full bibliography), "Chapman 1943" was all I got in notes 21 & 28. Some googling led me  to Sydney Chapman's "Edmund Halley and Geomagnetism," published in Nature. According to the fine-print it was delivered at Oxford University on 28 may 1943 as the "annual lecture, commemorating Edmond Halley, a great son of Oxford, is devoted to astronomy and terrestrial magnetism." I was pleased to note that Halley (who was a graduate from Oxford) was being honored at Oxford, despite the fact that  he failed to get an appointment there because of his (rather non-Christian Epicurean) religious views. Halley's heretical views are in evidence in the poem he attached to the front of Newton's Principia (see Albury's very fine paper, or my own work on the topic). I was even more pleased to see Chapman start his lecture with his own translation of Halley's poem.*

The lecture itself, which has not received the attention it deserves, is methodologically highly interesting because it is based on original research and mixes contextual, counterfactual, and retrospective analysis (especially, but not only, of Halley's magnetic theories). Some other time I hope  to return to it (but first Laura needs to defend and get her own work on these matters in print.). I was a bit baffled that Chapman had such a subtle interest in the history of magnetism. (I was only familiar with his work on stochastic processes.) But a quick on-line search revealed that by 1940 he was one of the world's leading scholars of geomagnetism and one of the leading scientists of his age.

Much to  my surprise, Chapman allows the war to intrude in his 1943 lecture in his closing lines, which I quote:

For two centuries Halley had no comparable successor in this field, and the magnetic survey of the globe was not renewed with his astounding zeal until in 1905 the young American, Louis Bauer, with the backing of a prince of industry, the one-time poor Scots lad Andrew Carnegie,** resumed the Sisyphean task.

A non-magnetic ship was built for the ocean magnetic survey: unfortunately this was lost by fire in 1929. Later the British Admiralty built another non-magnetic ship,  the Research, which should by now have completed its first voyage had war not intervened. We may hope that when peace returns the great work with which Halley so well began will be taken up again with his own vigour.

These words give evidence of (what we may call) a spirit of scientific progress, (a modestly expressed) faith in victory of the Allies ("when peace returns"),  as well as a subtle reminder of the opportunity costs of war (science is halted, etc.).

I could have stopped here. But I had a nagging feeling that I had seen Chapman's name before in a different context (see here). In WWI, Chapman was, like Russell, a pacifist (although unlike Russell, he was so on religious grounds). He had, in fact, been one of the signatures on the (rather mild) letter of protest sent to Trinity, Cambridge, to protest Russell's dismissal. After the war, Chapman was made to feel unwelcome at Cambridge for his stance and left. Eventually he succeeded Whitehead as the chair in mathematics at Imperial. Interestingly enough, by the time of WWII came around, Chapman gave up on his pacifism in order to combat fascism.***

 

 

On Srinivasian on Nussbaum; on Anger in Politics.

But it is not radical in the sense of being unfamiliar. With the notable exception of black and feminist thinkers who have defended anger as a vital tool of the oppressed, almost all of Western political thought since the Stoics has largely shared Nussbaum’s dim view of anger. Seneca condemned anger as “the most hideous and frenzied of all the emotions,” “closed to reason” and “wholly violent.” It had no place in our personal or political lives.

The liberal tradition in which Nussbaum works has largely inherited this ancient view of things. The public square, if not the private realm, should be a place of cool deliberation rather than hot emotion. But what is radical about Nussbaum’s case against anger is that it puts baldly what is often taken for granted in our political culture. In so doing, Nussbaum inadvertently tells us something about the limits of the liberal worldview she has spent much of her career defending....

But surely many of us experience anger that calls not for revenge but for something else: for the wrongdoer to see just what he has done. Amia Srinivasan A Righteous Fury@The Nation

In her excellent piece, Srinivasan, who is the most exciting young philosopher I am familiar with, has three clear aims at once (two of which on display in the quoted passage: (i) to defend and articulate the constructive political role of the right sort of anger; (ii) to bury the liberal tradition as represented by Nussbaum (and Rawls) and offer "we moderns" a path toward an alternative, political philosophy that draws on "black and feminist thinkers;" in particular, (iii) this alternative view of "politics," recognizes it "is about conflict as much as consensus."+ Most of her piece is devoted to explaining just some of the important political roles of anger, and I will take my agreement over (i) for granted.

I also take for granted, the high stakes presupposed by Srinivasan. For, in passing, she remarks she recognizes that she could well end up with "those of us who might end up against the wall in a revolutionary moment." That is, Srinivasan is acutely aware, not for the first time, of the possibility that with the fracturing of liberalism and the political ascendancy of illiberal forces (as well as the inevitable dislocations and tensions causes by climate change, etc.) we may be entering an age of violent revolution (recall that Trump's brightest defenders expect this, too). 

With Srinivasan I reject the consensus model of politics which I associate with (recall) the technocratic turn in political philosophy (also found in political economy, philosophy of science, etc.) In this model politics aims at justice or efficiency. This image of politics as found in liberal political philosophy (and political economy/economics) is characterized by three features: first, it holds the ideal that with social knowledge and its progress, substantial political disagreement can be eliminated. Second, it presupposes considerable (liberal) value-unanimity in society (this opens the door to all kinds of policy engineering). Third, it is accompanied with  an image of science in which one of the central aims of policy scientists is to achieve consensus (or lack of disagreement).

This is, however, not the only image of politics available from within a more sober liberalism. For, if a (moral) consensus were really possible politics would not be necessary. If conflict is, as Srinivasan suggests, inevitable, then politics can also be a means of containing and redirecting conflict. Elections are a means to arrange the peaceful transfer of power and by holding them regularly you give the losers and supporters a chance to regroup and hope to win next time  -- no emotion is more conducive to political flourishing than hope --, and thereby, to prevent the threat of civil war.* Liberalism's institutions (the rule of law, the franchise, representative governments, markets, free press, etc.) are all, for all their other purposes, means to manage and redirect conflict to allow imperfect beings to cope. The underlying insight is that the liberal state protects (with considerable status quo bias) the powerful and wealthy, but it does so by giving the rest of us a stake in making living together work. Sometimes the liberal cure is worse than the problem; the liberal state can oppress its own citizens and be bellicose abroad.

This is where resentment and anger enter in at the core of the liberal tradition. As Steve Darwall (2006: 84) has rightly emphasized for Adam Smith, who radically differed from Seneca on this point, resentment is a call for respect. As Smith writes, the object of resentment is “chiefly intent upon, is not so much to make our enemy feel pain in his turn, as . . . to make him sensible that the person whom he injured did not deserve to be treated in that manner. What chiefly enrages us against the man who injures or insults us, is the little account which he seems to make of us.” (TMS 2.3.1.5). This resentment and rage are at the root of the very institution of justice, which simultaneously manages conflict, protects the powerful, and provides us a means to respect each of us equally in front of at least one tribunal.

As I noted earlier in the week (and echoing Plato, Madison, Arendt), justice is one of two institutions of society that can be devoted to truth. (The other being the university.) Politics, by contrast, is the site of often conflicting opinion. Anger, public and private, is a natural byproduct of this state affairs because anger is always, as noted by Isaiah, a symptom of badly arranged or injust institutions or bad political leadership (recall also Hume and Spinoza). So, by disallowing anger, by treating it as a mark of un-reason, one removes, some of the best evidence, early warnings as it were, of political problems. 

None of this is to deny that we moderns may wish to be guided and inspired by black and feminist thinkers as Srinivasan urges. These are, indeed in short supply in the liberal tradition (although I have been urging us to recover Sophie De Grouchy's wise brand of liberalism). Given the wreckage caused by liberal politics and economics (in a broad sense) during the last generation, she may well be speaking for many who wish to give a new set of ideas and ideals a chance. It may well be too late to recover and apply the accumulated wisdom of the liberal tradition even if it transcends "the limits" Srinivasan mistakenly ascribes to its "worldview." But as we stand, I fear, at the edge of the precipice, we must resist the lure of a clean break and the bold march forward and find means to resist the ever encroaching violence.

 

 

 

From Suez (via Iraq) to Brexit

“The UK’s relationship with the US has proved strong enough over time to bear the weight of honest disagreement. It does not require unconditional support where our interests or judgments differ.”--The Chilcot Report.

The whole point of publishing an inquiry into the 2003 -- yes that's more than a dozen years ago -- invasion of Iraq during the Summer with three great sporting events (Wimbledon, the Tour, and the European Cup) distracting us is to have a few days of page 2-5 stories and then move to other Summer diversions (an Olympics, some Royal Scandal etc.). Undoubtedly, the Chilcot report will be significant to some lawyers and future historians.

But as it happens, the report appeared after extraordinary weeks in which the hollowness at the center of British political life has been exposed. I don't write the previous sentence with joy (recall). But it is worth remembering that Tony Blair, a bright and energetic even moralistic man capable of winning elections, was once the recipient of the kind of adulation now showered on, say, Justin Trudeau.

Supporting G.W. Bush on Irag and Brexit are freely chosen, self-inflicted wounds that harm lots of innocents locally and elsewhere. On a surface level they have in common the utter lack of contingency planning. This is no small matter; if the capacity of collecting taxes is the bare minimum of being a state; then preparing for worst-case scenarios is the bare minimum of competence in governance. This suggests a very deep rot in the bureaucratic and political functioning of the British state.

On a deeper level they show an utter lack of clarity on the political, economic, and military interests of the UK. The UK's involvement in the Iraq war was, in large part, the product of a misguided commitment to a 'special relationship' that was one-sided and never truly in the UK's interest--it was a species of self-deception. (On the British side, the Iraq war was also a modern kind of imperial project fueled by greed [perhaps a way to advertise British armaments and grab some oil contracts] and pseudo-humanitarianism.) What it showed is that the UK's elites have never figured out a rational foreign policy, say, since the Suez-fiasco (that's 1956). Even the authors of the Chilcot report buy into a narrative that emphasizes the strength of the relationship.

Iraq is directly and indirectly linked to Brexit. Directly, because it means that the key political, economic, and (arguably, I am no expert) military interests of the UK remained undefined, undefended, and unsupported by the public. I mention this because it is common to hear educated observers to complain about 'ignorant voters.' But these were, in fact, never educated in the UK's true interests because the elites never seemed to have grasped it. Here's a non-trivial statistic: the EU accounts for half of the UK's trade.

To be sure, I am willing to allow that the UK's interest are not inside the EU. Mid-sized capitalist, countries can survive without being part of the EU (South Korea, Australia spring to mind). It may well be in the interest of the majority of English citizens to stop being Europe's bankers, let the City dwindle, end being a property/equity hedge-fund for the upper classes, and allow other parts of the economy to flourish. (And, for all I know (and I really don't), the English back their way into this path.)

Finally, Iraq is one of the indirect causes of Brexit. Because among the effects of the political chain-reaction that followed from 'Iraq' and then 'Syria' is the stream of refugees that die nightly on the TV news on the seas and shores of Europe. The British ruling elites have been shameful in their response (this is not to giver other Europeans a pass!); while systematically refusing to use the word 'refugee' (or 'asylum') the prime minister, David Cameron did use “swarm of people.” His government had no moral authority nor a vocabulary and, thus, no shared commitments or emotions to challenge the increasing xenophobia in the 'leave' campaign because its policies had already failed basic decency. Those of us that wish the British well can only hope that the contest between Theresa May and Andrea Leadsom is also the occasion for a number of serious debates over the future. But it is probably too much to expect from people that have risen to the top in this environment.

 

 

Hobbes, Muhammad Ali, and Self-Determination.

When Muhammad Ali famously said, “Man, I ain’t got no quarrel with them Vietcong…they never called me nigger,” he wasn’t just refusing to serve in Vietnam. He was also challenging the ability of the state to define for its citizens whom they should fear and who were their enemies. As Ali said to a group of white college students, who had challenged his position on serving in Vietnam, “You my enemy. My enemy is the white people, not Viet Congs or Chinese or Japanese.”

From the time of Hobbes, one of the leading attributes of sovereignty has been the right of the state to define what threatens a people and how that threat will be responded to. In the state of nature, Hobbes wrote in Elements of the Law, “every man…is judge himself of the necessity of the means, and of the greatness of the danger” he faces. But once we submit to the state, we are forbidden “to be our own judges” of the threats we are facing and how to respond to them. Except in cases of immediate physical threat to ourselves, we must now accede to the sovereign’s assessment of and decision about these threats. The sovereign, as Hobbes says in Leviathan of the state’s control over matters theological, is he “to whom in all doubtfull cases, wee have submitted our private judgments.”

This is why Ali’s challenge to the Vietnam War was so formidable. He wasn’t merely claiming conscientious objector status, though he was. He wasn’t simply claiming the authority of a higher being, though he was. He was asserting the right of the citizen to be the final judge of what threatens or endangers him. In asserting that right, Ali was posing the deepest, most fundamental challenge to the power and authority of the state.

That he also claimed to be more threatened by his own fellow citizens and government than by an officially declared enemy of the state only added to the subversiveness of his challenge. Against the state’s axis of fear, which claims that one’s enemies invariably belong to another country and thus are part and parcel of the international state system, Ali sought to rotate that axis along a different dimension: away from the international state system to the domestic system of social domination and civil subjection.--Corey Robin "Muhammad Ali, Thomas Hobbes, and the Politics of Fear."

I have not double-checked Hobbes's Elements of the Law, but in his beautiful essay Robin is wrong about Leviathan: when it comes to soldiering, Hobbes recognizes that we have a right to second-guess the Sovereign (recall). There is no doubt that Hobbes thinks all able-bodied have an obligation to fight in defense of the survival of the Commonwealth. Refusing to do so is a matter of injustice. But when it comes to wars of choice, however, one may well justly resist to join the armed forces, and leave the fighting to others that have voluntarily joined the armed service (for money or other reasons). He writes:

No man is bound by the words themselves, either to kill himself or any other man; and consequently, that the obligation a man may sometimes have, upon the command of the sovereign, to execute any dangerous or dishonourable office, dependeth not on the words of our submission, but on the intention; which is to be understood by the end thereof. When therefore our refusal to obey frustrates the end for which the sovereignty was ordained, then there is no liberty to refuse; otherwise, there is. Upon this ground a man that is commanded as a soldier to fight against the enemy, though his sovereign have right enough to punish his refusal with death, may nevertheless in many cases refuse, without injustice...But he that enrolleth himself a soldier, or taketh impressed money, taketh away the excuse of a timorous nature, and is obliged, not only to go to the battle, but also not to run from it without his captain's leave. And when the defence of the Commonwealth requireth at once the help of all that are able to bear arms, every one is obliged; because otherwise the institution of the Commonwealth, which they have not the purpose or courage to preserve, was in vain. Hobbes, Leviathan Ch. 21. 

Given that the sovereign is instituted in order to protect life and liberty, it would have been odd if individuals could be asked to put themselves at mortal danger for a reason that falls short of the survival of the state. Whatever the merits of the domino theory, nobody could think that survival of the Republic was at stake in Vietnam. (France -- with fewer resources and nuclear weapons -- suffered a serious defeat in Vietnam, but continued to exist.) So, from Hobbes's perspective, Muhammad Ali was entirely right in his response, that is, to face the sovereign's punishment (and not flee to Canada or fake illness), as well as stand his principled ground.

More subtly, Ali's remarks serve to point to the way to reminding us that ,from a Hobbesian perspective the history of state-sanctioned slavery, Jim Crow, legal segregation, and abuse of the rule of laws to create mass incarceration shows that the United States did not end the state of nature, but continued it by other means. In fact, Ali is right to claim (by implication) the United States represents what Hobbes would call an "imperfect" institution (recall), where civil strife is a consequence of the abuse of law by a faction (see Leviathan Chapter 29). Anticipating Spinoza and Hume, Hobbes argues that social unrest is a consequence of bad government.

I have remarked before that Hobbes's theory is pacific in intent and execution (especially compared to the mercantile and liberal imperial projects that followed during the next two centuries). This is not to deny that, first, Hobbes does not find a solution to the bellicose international arena (where the state of nature exists), and, second, that his domestic project has problematic, absolutists elements (and famously denies a right to revolt). Both failures lead to abuses. But it is wrong to attribute to Hobbes the idea that individuals should defer to the state and ought not decide their own fate when their lives are at stake. We should admire Muhammad Ali for maintaining this insight in the face of enormous intimidation and violence.

On introducing the God(s) in Bacon and Cavendish

"About twenty years after the ascension of our Saviour, it came to pass, that there was seen by the people of Renfusa...within night, (the night was cloudy, and calm,) as it might be some mile into the sea, a great pillar of light; not sharp, but in form of a column, or cylinder, rising from the sea a great way up towards heaven; and on the top of it was seen a large cross of light, more bright and resplendent than the body of the pillar. Upon which so strange a spectacle, the people of the city gathered apace together upon the sands, to wonder; and so after put themselves into a number of small boats, to go nearer to this marvellous sight. But when the boats were come within (about) sixty yards of the pillar, they found themselves all bound, and could go no further; yet so as they might move to go about, but might not approach nearer: so as the boats stood all as in a theatre, beholding this light as an heavenly sign.--Bacon New Atlantis.

A spectacle that introduces wonder and marvel precedes the introduction of a idiosyncratic version of the Christian religion on Bensalem (accompanied by further miracles). As commentators have noted, the reader later learns that the members of the Society of Salomon's House are fully capable of creating the recounted spectacle and other marvels. Given the docile and orderly nature -- itself a marvel -- of the citizens of Bensalem, it's hard not to infer that a properly managed and crafted religion can help pacify a population; New Atlantis shows the reader how this is done. (The previous sentence is compatible with the existence of other forms of pacification.)

A natural question to ask is what problem is the introduction of religion meant to solve on Bensalem? There are hints throughout New Atlantis, that in the remote past [recall] Bensalem had suffered some kind of civil war (or turmoil) that was only settled by King Solamona, who along with other constitutional reforms, founded Salomon's House a few hundred years before the marvelous introduction of Christianity. My own -- anachronistic, Spinozistic -- guess is that the members of the scientific society recognizes that religion is needed to offer the promise of salvation to the non-elite (i.e., the vast number of folk not members of the House of Salomon, who seem to have found the key to extending life indefinitely but don't seem intent on sharing it with the population at large).  

Anyway, I was reminded of Bacon's oblique presentation of how religion was deliberately introduced into society because I was discussing Cavendish's presentation (with Jon Shaheen) of a similar phenomenon:

With that shot off his pistoll into the breast of the chief Priest, wherewith he straight fell down dead; the noise of the pistoll, and the flash of the fire, which they never saw before, and the effect of it upon the Priest, strooke them with such a horror, and did so terrify them, as they all kneeled down imploring mercy, and forgiveness, with trembling limbs, and weeping eyes, whereupon he told them, there was no ways to avoid punishment, but first to fast two dayes from any kinde of nourishment; Next, not to open their lipps to speak, and then to obey whatsoever he shall teach them, as being sent from the Gods; bidding them go home untill their time of fasting were out; and then to return to the Temple again.--Margaret Cavendish, Assaulted and pursued Chastity.

Here the lead characters of Cavendish's short story overawe a native/savage population. What's central in the episode is not the murder of the chief Priest (who was about the sacrifice and cannibalize the heroine,who is disguised as a man, and her/his adopted father) as such, but rather the fact that it is done with unknown technology, which, due to unfamiliarity and surprise, generates awe-inspiring effects (sound, fire, death). This becomes the occasion of the introduction of a new (Deistic) religion, after the two days of enforced fasting, by a (self-appointed) prophet who abolishes human sacrifice. 

That is, Cavendish (whose more familiar Blazing World plays with and rejects themes from New Atlantis) and Bacon both show how technology can be marshaled to create marvelous appearances that are taken as divine signs and, thereby, used to create political power. While it may be tempting to read in these stories a kind of retrospective unmasking of the great monotheistic prophets-legislators, one may also see in them a kind of prophecy (inspired, say, by the Spanish Conquest) of the European, imperial projects. 

 

The Psychologists Aid Ineffective Torture, Hobbes, and Incentives

In spite of the rhetoric employed by Damon and Colby concerning the search for higher moral truths, the basic moral principle that is consistently employed in this psychological literature is the bare Hobbesian one of resolving disagreement, or promoting cooperation. In his book Moral Tribes, Joshua Greene warns that even those who seek pragmatic agreement need “an explicit and coherent moral philosophy, a second moral compass that provides direction when gut feelings can’t be trusted.” So in addition to questioning whether psychological research can vindicate moral norms, we also have to ask whether the minimal moral norm of cooperation employed by psychologists is sufficient to provide them with a reliable moral compass....

When the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence published its extensive report on official torture in December 2014, Jonathan Haidt tweeted a link to an article by Matt Motyl, his former Ph.D. student, claiming that the report would not change anyone’s views on the morality or effectiveness of torture, owing to the phenomenon of cognitive bias, which distorts people’s assessment of the relevant evidence. Motyl warned that none of us should assume that our beliefs about torture are based on facts. Nevertheless, there are established facts. One of them is that psychologists secured enormous financial gains by collaborating in official torture, while also having clear evidence that it was ineffective.

This should be an important lesson concerning our moral frailty, one that should make us wary of conferring moral authority on sources that have no plausible claims to such authority, such as scientists of human behavior. Psychological expertise is a tool that can be used for good or ill. This applies as much to moral psychology as any other field of psychological research. Expertise in teaching people to override their moral intuitions is only a moral good if it serves good ends. Those ends should be determined by rigorous moral deliberation.

Psychologists have long been essential to the military, performing valuable and humane functions, treating returning veterans, devising selection procedures, studying phenomena such as PTSD. But when the defense industry supplies hundreds of millions of dollars a year to support research (both basic and applied) that is related to military psychology, there is always a potential conflict of interest between supplying results that the military wants and producing objective science.--Tamsin Shaw "The Psychologists Take Power," (feb 2016) New York Review of Books.  [HT Jason Stanley on Facebook]

In her important article, in which she brings together several lines of debate, Shaw is right to take influential psychologists to task along five distinct lines:

1. The involvement of psychologists in the torture program of the US Military;
2. The financial incentives of those psychologists (and the APA) involved in the torture program
3.  The deplorable way moral theory is theorized in psychology and/or tacitly presupposed in psychology.
4. The replication crisis in psychology.
5. The psychologists' tendency to present themselves as the experts of the moral.

For those familiar with my previous blogging on the toxic mixture of expert overconfidence and expert lack of ethics, it should come as no surprise that I agree with the thrust of Shaw's article and also many of its details. Yet, Shaw also ends up promoting (a) the wrong solution (a moral theory that can provide a moral compass) to an institutional problem and (b) seems willing to discredit an assumption that she claims "is consistently employed in this psychological literature...the bare Hobbesian one of resolving disagreement, or promoting cooperation" on misguided grounds.  And, while this is not her intention, perhaps, (c) she seems to allow that if torture had been "effective" [this is not defined--it is certainly effective in generating harms to tortured and torturer alike], the psychologists involvement with the torture program would have been vindicated. In what follows I leave (c) aside, and focus on (a-b).

First, incentives matter, and large financial incentives matter a lot in distorting even corrupting integrity of scientists. Not everybody will be so corrupted, but this is why there are policies that favor disclosures, prevent conflicts of interests, etc. While a "moral compass" can help navigate these incentives, there is no reason to think that folk with a PhD an high social status in a specialized discipline have the requisite "moral compass." Unless one is committed to a very strong unity of the virtues thesis, there is simply no reason to expect that the possession of epistemic virtues carries over to possession of a moral compass.

To be sure, I am not against efforts at cultivating a moral compass during the long apprenticeship of PhD and post-doc(s). I have no idea if it would really make a difference in light of extremely corrosive incentives. But the status quo -- shortening of PhDs, increased emphasis on funding success, publication rat-race -- discourage such cultivation. So, unless we reform scientific education massively, this is simply a non-starter. We are much better off looking more carefully at the ways our institutions (including the media machine that makes stars out of scientists ) reward and incentivize successful folk. Universities and funding bodies have a non-trivial role to play here to encourage disclosure, align incentives with humane ends, withhold recognition from torturers, etc.

Second, it sometimes seems that Shaw is also out to discredit "the bare Hobbesian" assumption "of resolving disagreement, or promoting cooperation." But here we need to be careful: if this assumption is fruitful within psychological research and made explicit in that research, then I do not see why it should be given up. After all, (i) minimal assumptions are better than maximal assumptions; (ii) cooperation is not a harm as such (and may be the most one can hope for in many circumstances). That it fails to provide the moral compass  to would-be-torturers is no argument against it as an assumption within psychological research (unless psychologists promote it as a means toward such a compass). After all, there is no reason to think that a Kantian or neo-thomist psychologist is less likely to torture. (It would be nice I were shown to be wrong about this!) As we are increasing learning (Eric Schwitzgebel has made this research popular) knowing full blown moral theory is not exactly conducive to moral behavior.