Statement of political opinion

Note: This blog post has been retracted, since I no longer think of it as a good representation of how I think about its topic. I may, or may not, have written a better post about the same topic since; check the full list of posts.

Broadly, I am in favor of private property and free markets. For example, I think that it is probable that the extinction of most regulations, of central banking, and of state monopolies of services would be good for mankind. Broadly, I am also in favor of, or at least sympathetic to, restrictive government measures in the personal sphere. For example, I might favor the prohibition of some recreational drugs, censorship of some points of view, and restrictions upon some sexual practices, such as prostitution.

This can seem strange, for it can seem that you ought to be either in favor of intervention or non-intervention, broadly. So I wrote this post to clarify.

0. Contents

1. The state is coercion
2. There are two ends: social utility and moral duty
3. Coercion cannot be a help towards social utility
4. Coercion can be a help towards moral duty
5. Measures
6. Speech

1. The state is coercion

What we call the state or the government works primarily through the use of coercion. This section is merely to be clear on the use of that term – I am using “the state” and “the government” interchangeably, and to refer, not to the constitution of society broadly, nor to any agency that might give order to it on any level, but the organization which Hoppe characterized in these words:

The state, according to the standard definition, is not a regular, specialized firm. Rather, it is defined as an agency characterized by two unique, logically connected features. First, the state is an agency that exercises a territorial monopoly of ultimate decision making. That is, the state is the ultimate arbiter in every case of conflict, including conflicts involving itself. It allows no appeal above and beyond itself. Second, the state is an agency that exercises a territorial monopoly of taxation. That is, it is an agency that unilaterally fixes the price that private citizens must pay for the state's service as ultimate judge and enforcer of law and order.

The way that this organization uses and maintains this monopoly is by using force against those who might challenge it. The way that its law is enforced is by threats of violence – threats which are, generally, not empty.

I will note here that I am mostly in favor of the existence of the state, for reasons which will be clear shortly; and that I believe that it has authority, given by God, to make use of coercion to achieve its ends. I believe that, ideally, these ends ought to be the same ends as the ends of society, which I will lay out next. When speaking of the ends of society at the same time, I may refer to them by the name of “the general good”, or “the common good” – these are ends which society, taken as a whole, ought to achieve.

I also believe that, despite the amazing moral privilege that authority is, which allows the government to take from people without it being theft, nevertheless there are some things which it is immoral for the state to do. The fact that the state ought not to act immorally is a negative restriction upon its activity, while the ends of society are the positive ends of its activity.

2. There are two ends: social utility and moral duty

Society has two ends to achieve, in my opinion.

One is social utility, which means that the lives of men in general should be more pleasant and less painful, according to their own opinion of what this would mean. Reducing pain and suffering, as some liberals are very ready to tell us, is primary; but increasing pleasure is also a public end. It is an end of society to achieve such things as the founding of a new library, when it might be pleasant that it be achieved; putting aside, of course, whether it is good that the state undertake such a founding.

Utility here is made to include the higher pleasures and pains as well as the lower ones, but it is not meant in the “comprehensive” sense from my previous blog post. Comprehensive concerns are divided, in this doctrine, into the other end.

The other end is moral duty. It is an end of society “that every man will do his duty”; society ought to increase virtue and decrease vice, to create more saints and fewer sinners, to “avoid evil and do good”. This end is the primary one, and should always prevail when in conflict with the other; society must, actually, only maximize utility insofar as it does not create vice.

Since I am not a utilitarian, I do not believe that these ends must coincide; and, in fact, I believe that they won’t. Therefore, it is necessary to destroy pleasure and create pain in order to achieve a greater measure of virtue; men must suffer that they may be good.

These are the ends, and no more; equality, order, and anything else which you might find nice, are things that I only value, politically, as means to the achievement of these ends of society. That these be the only ends is in accordance with sound metaphysics, for politics aims at the good of man, and man is body and soul. Utility is the end of flesh, and duty is the end of spirit.

3. Coercion cannot be a help towards social utility

This is something which I believe on the basis of the teachings of the Austrian school of economics, taken broadly, and of Murray Rothbard in particular. 

Any exchange on the free market, indeed any action in the free society, occurs because it is expected to benefit each party concerned. If we may use the term “society” to depict the pattern, the array, of all individual exchanges, then we may say that the free market maximizes social utility, since everyone gains in utility from his free actions.

Coercive intervention, on the other hand, signifies per se that the individual or individuals coerced would not have voluntarily done what they are now being forced to do by the intervener. The person who is coerced into saying or not saying something or into making or not making an exchange with the intervener or with a third party is having his actions changed by a threat of violence. The man being coerced, therefore, always loses in utility as a result of the intervention, for his action has been forcibly changed by its impact.[...]

Since all State actions rest on the fundamental binary intervention of taxation, it follows that no State action can increase social utility, i.e., can increase the utility of all affected individuals.

I cannot claim to have the best understanding of economics, but I think his reasoning is sound, insofar as I have investigated it. I am certainly convinced, broadly, of the supremacy of the Austrian school of economics in method; mathematical modelling of empirical data, as used by the mainstream economists, is a ruse which can be used to prove anything, especially through a few common fallacies.

There is no need to make concessions to inferior economic theory to further legitimize the existence of the state. The state functions purely to increase the pain and suffering of mankind, and decrease its pleasure – very well. As I was saying before, sometimes pain and suffering must be increased.

4. Coercion can be a help towards moral duty

Of course it can. If a man will not keep himself from sinning – especially because some sins, such as usury, only increase social utility – he can be made to do so through coercion.

Here it is that liberals and libertarians, from J.S. Mill to Rothbard himself, have always made the same argument – that there is no reduction in immorality to be had in compelling the inhibition of sin. It is my opinion that they err:

[Frank] Meyer’s reasoning was fatally flawed. In a 1962 column for National Review, he claimed that traditionalism’s cardinal sin – the fundamental error that necessitated its co-mingling with libertarianism – was that “the simulacrum of virtuous acts brought about by the coercion of superior power, is not virtue, the meaning of which resides in the free choice of good over evil.” In layman’s terms: virtuous acts must be those undertaken freely, not under state coercion.

L. Brent Bozell Jr., in his rejoinder, observed (correctly) that, because Meyer was making a theological claim – that is, about the relationship between free will and virtue – it has to be answered in theological terms. And every school of orthodox theology would accept that an act is virtuous regardless of whether it was made freely or not. “We can agree that the freer the choice – i.e., the more difficult it is – the greater the merit,” he writes; but, “by definition, the virtuous act is one that conforms with man’s nature, with the divine patterns of order.”

Simply put, the tradition of philosophy and theology is in agreement against the liberal – a man is, indeed, made more vicious through actually committing a sinful act than he would through merely willing it, and being compelled not to. So there is no reason, in principle, to be against the compulsion of moral behavior, which is a great good if achieved, though always at the expense of utility.

5. Measures

Given these opinions, what actual political measures do I support? I do not have a fully developed doctrine, but my opinion on any point is easily derived from these principles.

I am generally against policies which attempt to use coercion to increase social utility, such as the minimum wage, and labor laws more generally, as usually defended. Even in cases where they do not increase unemployment, the decrease in worker suffering is, and must be, balanced by an increase in suffering elsewhere in society. There is no free lunch.

I am generally in favor of policies which attempt to use coercion to decrease social utility for moral reasons, such as prohibition of drugs or of certain sexual practices. People do not need state coercion to be kept away from “unhealthy” uses of products and be restricted to “healthy” ones – they are perfectly able, in time, to take control of their lives so as to maximize their overall utility. But sometimes it takes force to keep them from sin, especially when sin will cause them pleasure and not pain.

I may be convinced to favor purely tyrannical uses of economic policy, supposing that the state is ruled by wise men. For instance, it is ridiculous for the central bank to issue currency in order to achieve “expansion”, since this will only cause a later recession. But in inflating the currency, it is able to tax its citizens much more than it ever could at gunpoint. This could increase government revenue to be used for moral ends – we just need to be clear that these are really the ends that the government has.

Also, I tend to be against anarcho-capitalism. While a private law society would achieve the best protection at the smallest cost, there would not be unity of laws – there would be nothing, in particular, to force atheists to live under Christian laws. This is a problem which is solved through the existence of the traditional coercive state.

6. Speech

This section is about how I might speak about my opinions later on, so that you may follow along.

I delight in how unintuitive my opinions are. As such, I may sometimes speak in ways that are baffling and shocking, just for fun. For instance:

“The fundamental purpose of the state is to increase the pain and suffering of mankind to optimal levels, whereas without it they would tend to decrease to beneath those levels.”

This is trivially true given my political opinions – the state is a purely utility-reducing entity, and its purpose is to increase virtue and decrease vice through reduction in utility, which is nothing but increase in pain and decrease in pleasure. If society could be more virtuous while suffering more pain, then it is beneath its optimal level of pain and suffering.

It is also, of course, a very funny way to put it. Given my acceptance of Austrian economic opinions and of Catholic moral opinions, I have once been able to make the following, similarly hilarious, statement:

“Usury has a perfectly reasonable function in the economy, increases the well-being of mankind with no material downsides, is evil, and ought to be eradicated.”

It has, of course, spiritual downsides, just not material ones. And it is reasonable, just not from my own premises – I can be ecumenical like that.

Sometimes, I might say that some measure is bad because it reduces oppression, and increases freedom – I am fine with using the language of my enemies here. Yes, freedom must be curtailed, and the people must be oppressed. This is all for the greater good.

I might sometimes call by the name of “counter-utilitarian”, or “contra-utilitarian”, the measures which are meant to be utility-reducing – the ones which I said that I generally favor. The opposite, I suppose, would be “pro-utilitarian”.

If I come up with some other wordings with which to speak of my opinions, I plan to update this section.

Relationships aim at union

The greatest good which two men can do to each other is to unite, that is, to become one soul in two bodies. If they do this, then each one will have gained all the good that was in the other’s soul, and also gain a whole other body to control, with which to fulfill his ends. There is simply no more which a man can give to another than his body and soul – except his estate, of course, which should go with the body. To unite is to achieve the perfection of friendship, and friends hold all things in common.

Union is unachievable on this earth. Simply put, we cannot join our souls to one another and have this new, greater soul, control both of our bodies. It is not something we can do. The closest we can do is to get into relationships, which are perfect insofar as they participate in the ideal of union.

Given any two men, it would be good for them to unite, as described above. Similarly, given any two men, it is good for them to get into a relationship, which is the closest we can get to this. But given the diversity of men, there needs also be a diversity of relationships to accommodate for these differences. They fall into two main kinds – equal, of which the type is friendship, and unequal, of which the type is submission.

Friendship is the ideal case. The two men are almost already united. Their souls are alike and similar in all things. They have the same likes and dislikes, the same habits, and the same knowledge. The goal of friendship is simply to maintain this closeness to a perfect union – for one man to improve the other insofar as he gains any new perfections – and to exchange bodies and estates, that is, do activities together. They can achieve much more of their ends with the aid of the other’s body and estate than on their own.

Submission is the more common case. The two men are different in some respect, which necessarily means that one is better and one is worse. The worse must submit to the better, in the respects in which he is worse – which, since he is worse absolutely speaking, is the preponderance of respects. By this means, they also achieve another kind of closeness to union.

Submission is asymmetrical, of course. The subject does not, initially, gain the use of the master’s body as much as the master gains the use of the subject’s. The mere control of one body over another is sufficient for the economic benefits of submission to be attained, and is therefore common in real life.

But perfect submission is of soul as well as of body. Ideally, every time the worse man submits, he should be taught the wisdom of his master’s command, by word or example, and so become closer to him. Given enough time, and supposing that the master does not gain new perfections more quickly than the subject can catch up with him – which would be impossible in the case of a perfectly good master –, he should become his friend. Which is to say, master and subject would become equals. The subject would no longer need to submit, because he would will the same things the master does.

Friendship attempts to overcome the material obstacles to union – the fact that, being different men, we cannot be of one mind without communication – while submission attempts to overcome spiritual obstacles as well. Both kinds of relationship have the same end, and that end is to give, insofar as we are able on this earth, the greatest good which a man can give.

That fable in Plato’s Symposium, where men also become of one body, is, of course, only a simplistic and carnal image of true union. It is impossible to achieve a better poetic depiction, but it should not be taken literally; to unite our bodies back-to-back like that would be cumbersome, eroding a main benefit of friendship, which is the greater utility of having more bodies.

The inverse law of ignorance and contempt

The less you know, the less you know of your ignorance. The less you care, the less you care that you are uncaring.

These facts follow logically from the nature of things, of course. Your ignorance is only one more thing which you can know better or worse; your ability to care is only one more thing about which you can care more or less. If you are ignorant, you will be ignorant of ignorance; if you are contemptuous, you contemn your contempt.

Last repetition, since I find this phrasing funny: if you don’t know, you don’t know you don’t know; and if you don’t care, you don’t care you don’t care.

This fact is not new, and indeed it is obvious. But despite being known, it lacks a proper name. The entire object of this blog post is to give it a name, so as to refer to it by that name later. It comes up often enough to deserve one.

The fact about ignorance related here is often called “the Dunning-Kruger effect”. This is an incorrect name, because it is a misuse of the study done by Dunning and Kruger. Popular graphs, with confidence peaking at a small height of knowledge, are completely fake and not from the study. So we need another name. And since I am more aware than most people that spirit has two operations, being knowledge and love, I have decided to include the fact about love when giving the name.

As you might have guessed, I have settled, for the moment, on the name that titles this blog post: “the inverse law of ignorance and contempt”. Either side may then be referred to as “the inverse law of ignorance” and “the inverse law of contempt”. But I will suggest some alternative names below; as long as you settle on one, you will be able to refer to this fact more often, which is my object.

• First, you might call it the “inverse law of knowledge and love” and similarly divide it. I don’t think it makes a difference whether you use the positive or the negative words.
• When using the negative words, it seems to make sense also to omit “inverse”, so you might call it the “law of ignorance and contempt” if you prefer.
• Instead of speaking of “laws”, you might emphasize the perplexing nature of this fact by calling it a “paradox”, as in, the “paradox of” knowledge/love/ignorance/contempt.
• Since knowledge and love are the two operations of spirit, I once referred to this as the “paradox of greatness of spirit”, which a friend abbreviated to “PoGoS” – the idea being that spirit may be greater, either in knowledge or in love. You might do that if you want. I have changed my preference of name because I prefer directly naming the two things that the fact is about, rather than an unknown generic name for both of them.

I hope this blog post’s suggestions of terminology will help people speak of this fact more often, when it’s appropriate, and stop misusing the names of Dunning and Kruger. Conveniently, when writing in a hypertext medium, you might hyperlink your favorite name to this blog post, which will allow someone to understand it without your having to explain it, if you want to be brief. I certainly intend to do this in another blog post at some point.

What good is individuality?

Note: This blog post has been retracted, since I no longer think of it as a good representation of how I think about its topic. I may, or may not, have written a better post about the same topic since; check the full list of posts.

Mill, Russell and their like would not shut up about “individuality”, and the “expression of individuality”. Is it even valuable? I wrote this blog post to find out.

In this blog, goodness is rightly divided into the virtuous, the useful and the pleasant. I will not care about other conceptions of goodness.

0. Contents

1. Is it virtuous?
2. Is it useful?
3. Is it pleasant?

1. Is it virtuous?

Individuality

Of course it is not virtuous to be a unique person. No one is better for the reason that he is unique.

However, it is more meritorious to attain to a virtue of which no example can be found in your surroundings; and it will, of course, generate more virtue in others if this is done, since there will now be your example.

Expression of individuality

Given the fact of individuality, is it virtuous to express it? In a certain sense it is – it is honest to give others a true idea of who you really are, and honesty is a virtue.

To that extent, to fail to express your individuality by communicating a wrong impression is an evil and a vice; it is a kind of lie. But to fail by communicating nothing is not evil, as long as it does not lead people, by the silence, to assume you are other than you are.

Of course, there is one caveat. An evil man may think that to publicly commit evil deeds will give others a truer impression of who he is, since otherwise they might be deluded into thinking that he is virtuous. It will do so, but of course, he becomes a significantly more evil man by the fact that he does those evil deeds – up until doing them, he has only thought about doing evil deeds, which is not as bad. It would be sufficient to express his degree of viciousness, at that stage, to communicate his evil thoughts in spoken form, ideally in an appropriate setting.

2. Is it useful?

Individuality

Is it useful to be a unique person? It depends what it is you are unique in.

There seems to be no intrinsic usefulness to someone’s having unique likes and dislikes. It may be useful to him if, for instance, his tastes are particular in being cheaper, so that he may derive more enjoyment while spending less money. The opposite case also exists, however.

Unique likes and dislikes may have great extrinsic usefulness insofar as they are a necessary part of a unique personality which is able to have unique talents and create new true knowledge.

It is, of course, very useful to have unique talents, and more useful than if they are similar talents to those of others – this is the law of comparative advantage.

It is also useful to have unique knowledge, since you are then able to teach others things they didn’t know.

Expression of individuality

It is extremely useful to tell your unique knowledge to others, but it becomes less unique in the process – knowledge is still useful, but much less so, if it remains unique. I am not sure if spreading your true knowledge is an expression of individuality, since the more it is expressed, the less it is individual.

Unique talents are, similarly, only actually useful if they are expressed through their practical application.

To express your unique likes and dislikes is, intrinsically, useless to others. It may be useful, to the person expressing them, insofar as it inspires others to create more of the things you like and less of the things you dislike. This, in turn, is also useful to whomever else profits by this production, but it may be a disutility to someone with conflicting likes and dislikes – that is, who dislikes the new things produced, or likes the things of which fewer were produced.

Of course, a man does not generally know for a fact that his likes and dislikes are unique. If they are not, in fact, unique, they may serve to acquire friendships, as common likes and dislikes often do. There is, therefore, good reason for people to share their likes and dislikes when they think that they might not be unique.

3. Is it pleasant?

Individuality

Is it pleasant to be unique, and different from others?

I think not. Generally, people tend to resent the fact that they are different from everyone else, that no one quite understands them, that they are alone in this world. Others will also resent him for it – people often seem to dislike others for the main reason of their being different.

However, some people seem to take a perverted pleasure in being unique. If you are unique in a sense which clearly makes you better than others, it is, of course, not perverted to take some pleasure in being better, although this can lead to the evil of pride if done wrongly. But some people seem to cope with the loneliness of being unique by supposing that their difference makes them better when it really doesn’t.

Expression of individuality

I think it is clearly pleasant to express yourself. This is, I think, the principal reason why Russell and Mill valued it.

Is it pleasant to others? It is, of course, pleasant in all the ways it is useful – it is pleasant to benefit from someone else’s unique talents or unique knowledge.

I think it is also pleasant in the way it is virtuous – people may appreciate the expression of someone else’s unique personality for the principal reason of the fact that it is true. They may say that it gives them insight into human nature, or at least into the nature of one human person.

The caveat from the usefulness section applies – people may not know for a fact that they are unique, and expressing themselves may allow them to make friends by finding out that they are not, in fact, unique.

The caveat from the virtuousness section also applies – it is usually not pleasant when a vicious man “expresses” his vice, which is, of course, nothing but to bring his vice further into actual existence.

Property, friendship and hierarchy

Some considerations on private property, friendship, and marriage which I thought fit well together into one blog post.

0. Contents

1. Property is of one
2. Friendship is of similars
3. Marriage is hierarchical
4. Notes

1. Property is of one

The perfect form of property ownership is to be owned by a single man, that is, private property, as opposed to common property.

The essential reason for this is that of action conflicts. When property is owned in common, the common owners may have conflicting plans of what to do with the property. Since the plans are conflicting, the same property cannot be used for both: the conflict must be resolved.

There is no perfect method of conflict resolution except the foregone decision of the winner. A majority vote is the best one we have, and yet it may result in a tie when there are even numbers, or it may not solve anything at all if a minority party is sufficiently strong, and willing to resort to violence. The perfect conflict is solved instantly, which is to say, there is no conflict: the owner decides.

In many cases, property must be considered the property of a society, which engages in a joint enterprise. The analogue of private property in the case of a society is hierarchy. Conflict is avoided among the members of a society by its foregone conclusion: the head decides.[1]

This is, I believe, the essential reason why private property is the best form of property; but there are other alleged reasons, which I will not discuss here.

2. Friendship is of similars

Friends are, properly, of one mind. “It is proper to friends to approve and disapprove the same things, and to be delighted in and to be pained by the same things.”[2] “God is ever drawing like towards like, and making them acquainted.”[3]

Against this it was urged[4] that similars can do nothing to each other that they could not do to themselves; hence, they cannot be of use to each other, and therefore cannot be loved by one another. But friendship requires mutual love, and therefore friendship cannot be of similars.

This argument, which is perfectly valid, only seems soluble by denying the major. What, then, do similar friends provide to each other?

I think the answer is another body. Even if friends start with the same knowledge, unable to teach anything to each other, they must of necessity have different pairs of eyes, and, therefore, notice different new things about the world. They can share this new knowledge with each other for mutual benefit. They can also do more things together than apart.

This is the meaning of the assertion that a friend is “a single soul dwelling in two bodies”.[5] Friends are of one mind, and they provide to each other the benefit of additional bodies; there is no conflict in this, because they agree on everything, insofar as the friendship is perfect.[6]

Given this fact, and only given this fact, can we explain the assertion that “friends hold all things in common”[7]. Friends, being alike and similar in all things, can enter upon no action conflicts: they always desire to do the same things with their property. They may consider each other’s property as their own because they are, to some extent, the same person. “Things we do through the agency of our friends count, in a sense, as done by ourselves.”[8]

Partly because of this, friendship is acknowledged by all to be an equal relation; neither friend is the head of the other.

3. Marriage is hierarchical

Another reason why friendship is an equal relation is that a friendship is not a society; it is not created to achieve a specific end or purpose.

When a society is created to achieve an end, some property usually needs to be considered property of the society, so as to divide what is dedicated to the ends of the society as a whole from what may be used to achieve the exclusive ends of its particular members.

For this reason, companies are considered to have property of their own, even when there is no “limitation of liability”; this property is dedicated to achieving the ends of the society, which is, for instance, the making of shoes, in a shoe company. States have their “state-owned” property, to achieve the end of the state, which is the general good;[9] and families also usually have some property as a family, such as a house or a collection of books, in order to achieve the ends of the family, namely the begetting and education of children.

Friendship, by contrast, is not created to achieve some end, and hence no property is properly needed to be owned by the friendship, qua friendship. Friends hold all things in common insofar as they are friends, but if the friendship is faced with the fact of its imperfection – if the friends turn out to have some conflicting desires – there need be no property of which the control is ambiguous. If it comes to it, each friend has his own property.

Moderns, because of their Epicurean sympathies, tend to err by making marriage and family into nothing but a close friendship – one involving living together and having sex, say. They see no necessary connection between marriage and children. As such, they see no need for the existence of societal property of the marriage; couples hold some things in common in just the same way as friends do.

Besides, they deny the perfection of private property, which is affirmed here. It is best for every society which owns societal property to be hierarchical, in order to achieve the perfect resolution of action conflicts among members. This is especially true of a marriage, where a majority vote is impossible, since there are only two members.

It is not necessary, in principle, that the head be the man. But generally, and traditionally, it has been, and not without reason.

The man is, generally, stronger: it is difficult for the stronger party to be the submissive one, since the stronger can easily challenge the rule by threat of violence.[10]

The man was also, traditionally, the only, or the primary, source of income of the household, which made it easy for him to make the choices, since he could threaten not to contribute any more income to the society if its decisions were not his liking.

I believe that these are the essential reasons why the rule of the man was instituted, but there are other alleged reasons, which I will not discuss here.[11]

4. Notes

[1] ‘head’ of the hierarchy, which word is substituted in specific hierarchies for ‘leader’, ‘boss’, ‘chief’, ‘king’, ‘bishop’, ‘Pope’, etc.

[2] SCG, 3, 151.3; Thomas attributes this quotation to Cicero elsewhere – see fn. 10 of page 44 here – but it is actually from Sallust, Bellum Catilinæ, ch. 20.

Addition, 2022-02-20: See also Plato, Republic, 5.462b

[3] Homer as quoted in Plato, Lysis, 214a

[4] Plato, Lysis, 214e

[5] Aristotle, as quoted by Diogenes Laërtius

[6] I might, in a future blog post, attempt to give an explanation of the precise respect in which friends are similar, so as to explain friendships which seem to be very close, and yet between widely different people.

[7] Plato, Phaedrus, 279c; see also Xenophon, Memorabilia, 2.4.6

[8] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 3.3, slightly changed

[9] Whatever the hell the “general good” is. I might make another post about that.

[10] This blog post originally said that the rule of the man is “fitting” for this reason. An update on 2022-01-25 removed this phrasing. The same update also added the following reason, about income, which was not listed before, with strength being the only reason I could originally think of.

Besides these changes, however, the update did not fully bring this blog post to the way I would have written it in this later date, which is why I left in the reference to “Epicurean sympathies”, despite that blog post having since been retracted.

See the newer blog post, which was written on the same day as the update, for more on hierarchy within marriage, in particular.

[11] cf., for instance, C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, book 3, chapter 6 (quoted here)

Arguments from design

Nature can strike us in different ways. Depending on who you are, you will take notice of different things about it, and draw different conclusions about the general character of its operation. Depending on your conclusions, you may be led to think that it was designed, and conclude from this thought that there is a God.

I think that, generally, four kinds of relevant conclusions are arrived at.

0. Contents

1. Nature’s operation is artful
2. Nature’s operation is useful
3. Nature’s operation is lawful
4. No conclusion

1. Nature’s operation is artful

One may, upon examining nature, immediately conclude that it was designed; the character of its working seems immediately to be something that arises out of thoughtful contrivance.

If this happens immediately, it is not concluded from any particular characteristic of the operation of nature which may be stated without reference to art, contrivance, or design; no argument to show that nature is designed is produced. Nature is simply clearly designed, and therefore a designer exists.

Since no arguments can arise from this, none do. We know that it happens because some people report it to be their experience, or because their report seems to imply it. I think it does happen to some people, wherefore I included it; some poetic praises of nature seem to me to communicate it.

2. Nature’s operation is useful

Various things in nature, especially the bodies of living things, are very well adapted to fulfilling various purposes which living things have for them; whence it is concluded that they were designed to fulfill those purposes. Here, purpose has specifically the sense of use: a living creature has some goal in mind, and the operation of nature conveniently concurs with her design.

Arguments for the existence of God that focus on the usefulness of nature may fittingly be called watchmaker arguments, after the most famous example, William Paley’s Natural Theology. There were various watchmaker arguments before and after it, and there will continue to be for as long as people continue to find nature useful.

The earliest watchmaker argument I know of is in Xenophon’s Memorabilia, book 1, chapter 4. Aristodemus admits that “it is reasonable to believe that the things which are good and useful are the workmanship of reason and judgment”, and Socrates points him to the usefulness of the senses for sensing, the usefulness of the teeth for chewing, the usefulness of affections for reproduction, and so on; wherefrom the conclusion follows.

Cicero’s argument in On the Nature of the Gods, book 2, chapter 34, also focuses on the usefulness of nature. “All the parts of the world are so made up that they could not be better fitted for use, or more beautiful to behold”; he explicitly compares it to a clock, prefiguring the pocket watch Paley would employ.

It seems that modern arguments based on “fine-tuning” are also watchmaker arguments, in the sense employed here. The universe is mightily useful for the existence of life.

3. Nature’s operation is lawful

Nature may also seem to run “like clockwork” in another sense: not of being useful, but of being regular – in the sense of “rule-bound”, from regula, not in the weaker sense of “predictable”. Nature’s operation seems to be the result of rules, rather than only described by them; it seems that it could not possibly act differently.

“All nature, indeed, is nothing but a combination of phenomena which follow rules; and nowhere is there any irregularity. When we think we find any such, we can only say that the rules are unknown.” * Arguments that focus on this property are those which I think are most properly called teleological, since Aristotle’s final cause, whence the word is derived, was precisely a metaphysical principle of regularity in nature.

Accordingly, I think Thomas Aquinas’s Fifth Way is the typical example of a teleological argument in the proper sense. On the more popular level, Chapter 4 of G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy runs much in the same vein. “The mere repetition made the things to me rather more weird than more rational”; it is perfectly imaginable, Chesterton argues, that things happen otherwise than as the laws of nature would predict them to, and the fact that they don’t is rather strange and wonderful indeed.

4. No conclusion

Finally, you may look at nature and see no art, use or law to it. Its operation is the result of “chance”; its usefulness is no wonder, given evolution; and its so-called laws only apply very frequently, even constantly as far as we can see it, but not necessarily. This is the opinion which used to be ascribed to David Hume, though the IEP now warns me against doing so. “There is no physical necessity, either in laws or in nature itself. There is no intermediate state between logical necessity on the one hand and sheer contingency on the other.”

It is my opinion that this is the sort of opinion which every atheist must have regarding nature; either way, it seems that this is the opinion which, most frequently, they do have. Sometimes, however, they claim that while the regularities are physically necessary, and not logically, this is a kind of “blind necessity”; things just happen to act for an end.

New, retarded systems

The usefulness of brand-new, retarded philosophical systems is twofold.

First, in that they are retarded; the student need not take them very seriously, or consider how they might apply to the world, given how very obviously they do not. He need only consider the ideas, and their connections to each other, and trace the key mistakes. They are great abstract use cases for the science of logic, and for skills in the interpretation of arguments. It is easier to look for how it is that something is wrong, when it is obvious that it really is wrong.

Second, in that, often just insofar as they are retarded, they are brand-new; the student need not trace a very long chain of references in order to have a ‘full’ understanding of the work, that is, one including its context. The philosopher, in central and important ways, has made all this stuff up; there is no need to consult other works for his sources, since for the most part he has none. His ideas stand or fall (and they probably fall) on their own.

Thus, the student of philosophy may study such new, retarded systems sporadically, on their own, without any close connection with a larger course of study of the history of philosophy, or of philosophy itself. They are an interesting and fruitful intellectual exercise, provided he is up for it; they provide a richer picture of the history, and of philosophy itself, without demanding, for their understanding, much from the reader in return.