Is Liberty Possible? Charles Fried (1981)

[@Gabriel-pt3ci]

Marvelous conferences! Thank you, @Philosophy Overdose. I am amazed that I haven't spotted Fried works before. It is a very detailed thinker, with evident competences raging from epistemology, philosophy of language, metaphysics and legal theory, economics bearing upon his political philosophy. Nice stuff!

[@philosophyoftrucking]

No one loves the sound of this guy’s voice more than he does.

[@CarlosAugustoScalassaraPrando]

👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

[@longcastle4863]

At least he’s not an uhher and ummer

[@philosophyoftrucking]

@@longcastle4863 absolutely

[@hegzneptune7327]

That's your takeaway from this video? I feel sorry for you man...

[@StevenDykstra-u3b]

Better luck and/or talent is being discussed. But, the composite government burden approaches IRS declared income. So, should the question be is it proper for a government (certainly at the federal level) dedicated to promote the general welfare be (more and more) little more than a class tool? It is an honest question.

[@henry6525]

Liberty based on the ability to live the life a person wishes and free, unobstructed choice is impossible. Why? Because it is incompatible with the authorities'/government's strive for power and, therefero, maximum control.

[@kanalarchis]

His argument against full individual liberty, i.e. full protection from collective claims, is that "To be indifferent to the happiness of others is to devalue our own moral worth." This is an invalid argument, because value is subjective. You cannot "devalue" something in general, because objective value doesn't exist. You can only devalue it in your own subjective value scale. By being indifferent to the happiness of someone else I say nothing about the general value of happiness and therefore the value of my own happiness. All I do is to say that, in my own values, his happiness doesn't rank high. But my own happiness may still rank very high in my own scale of values. I acknowledge, only, that my happiness may not matter to him, like his happiness doesn't matter to me. That's fair. Full liberty is possible, if his happiness doesn't create obligations ("collective claims") on me and my happiness doesn't create obligations on him.

[@longcastle4863]

We can be involved in having our idea of a meaningful life while still not, therefore, interfering in the meaningful lives of others, as long as we both agree to live under a single broad ethic (under which, no doubt, a cascade of laws in escalating detail would ensue): _What is best for the species?_ Meaning both the present, but especially the future species.

[@Gabriel-pt3ci]

I think that the answer to the problem you spotted can be given in terms of the following circumvention. To be indifferent to the happiness of other is to devalue our own happiness is a normative claim of consistency. Descriptively, a whole lot of human beings have disregarded the potential happiness of others and still hold in high regard their own (subjectively). He doesn't mean that that state of affairs is unobtainable. It is actually the world we live on, and specially the world which brings about the concerns of political philosophy. What Fried is trying to get at is a normative claim. The claim is that, upon closer unprejudiced inspection of our own beliefs, if we value our happiness and are indifferent to the happiness of others we are to be charged with a kind of inconsistency. Why? There I think he mentioned at some point that he is a Kantian, and this gives of us a clue. The categorical imperative in the form that is close to the golden rule, "act according to the maxims that you can admit as a general rule" (roughly glossed, I'm sorry), preclude us to be indifferent to the happiness of others because to act according to a maxim that partially implies to be indifferent to the happiness of others is to be prepared to receive indifference from others. And therefore, if you are prepared to accept such an indifference towards your happiness is because you cannot regard your own happiness as important enough.

[@kanalarchis]

@@Gabriel-pt3ci A rational egoist expects others to also be egoists, and is consistent in that sense. He doesn't have any expectations from others to oblige to his interests, and he has no duty to oblige to theirs. This is indeed what we all are, as a matter of fact. Normatively, should we be altruistic? To whatever extent one wants to be, he can, and he may expect that by serving others they may decide to serve him back, but there is no compelling reason to accept and impose altruism as a duty. A rational egoist has an interest in defending his liberty from the imposition of such duties to serve, and expects resistance if he tries to use others as instruments by imposing on them the duty to serve him. He too (the rational egoist) respects the Kantian categorical imperative (to not treat others as instruments for your own interests), even if he doesn't see that as a categorical imperative (moral duty) but merely as a hypothetical imperative (to avoid retaliation). Moral egoists have a compelling self-serving reason to respect the liberty of others, as long as they respect his, and this is the libertarian contract (see the work of Jan Narveson) where there is a mutual recognition of negative rights by default, and, given their autonomy, individuals are free to exchange positive obligations too if they want to. (E.g. I assume the duty to mow your lawn and you assume the duty to pay me.) So, full liberty is possible, and within that state individuals are free to exchange obligations, but the key is that this is done voluntarily. If one prefers to do nothing for anyone, he can, he has no duty to serve and no positive right to be served.

[@kvaka009]

​@kanalarchis "value is subjective" which means validity is irrelevant for moral debates regarding value. Which means everything you've said after that, since it is an argument, is self-refuting since you are claiming to be doing something that you yourself implied is impossible-- arguing about values. In that since, your argument is self defeating. Which is the original point.

[@kanalarchis]

@@kvaka009 interesting counterargument, but not at all original. It has been argued before that moral relativism doesn't lead to nihilism, like economic value subjectivity doesn't make it impossible to agree on a price to trade at. (On the contrary, for trade to happen it is necessary that one party values the item he buys more than the money he pays, and that the other party values more the money than the item he sells, otherwise the trade wouldn't happen.). In the case of moral values, we don't all have to agree on what's right and wrong in order to coexist and to lead moral lives. Don't confuse agent relativism with speaker relativism. In agent relativism "If a nation of cannibals think it's ok to be cannibals who am I to say it isn't, therefore anything goes if someone thinks it goes." That is nihilistic. But a speaker relativist says something different: "I understand that there is no objective moral value in anything, since Hume pointed that out, but I have my own preferences, as do the cannibals, and in my view they are doing something I don't like, something that seems wrong to me." Ok? You follow me. That something is not objectively wrong (how could anything be?) doesn't mean it cannot be subjectively wrong. Actually, something can _only_ be subjectively wrong, unless you believe wrongness is something like mass or length to be measured objectively. Something can _only_ be wrong in the eyes of someone. Now, what happens if you are a cannibal and I think it's wrong to eat humans? We either fight or we negotiate. War is expensive, sο usually people prefer to compromise somewhere in the middle. For example, we may agree it's ok for you to eat humans, provided they consent to it, or as long as you don't kill them to eat them, and I would make it perfectly clear that my flesh is not available to you. And you would draw the line somewhere, like "fine, I won't eat you, but you cannot tell me to not eat the corpse of someone who shares the value of cannibalism with me." So, much like in economic transactions, moral transactions can also happen in the presence of subjective values.

[@longcastle4863]

Of course liberty is possible. It just depends on whether the human species is willing to care about and for itself as a species-and balance that with providing as much as possible equal opportunities for all to live their most meaningful possible lives. If anything, such an arrangement would almost certainly produce the highest number and largest ratio of beneficial discoveries for humankind. Win win But this is also, especially, where, I believe this speaker errors. For the bottom line of value (of what is of value) is not the person / the individual, but the species. While nevertheless agreeing that within that ethical sphere is room for many heroes or benefactors of humankind. Of the Nietzschean type, perhaps, but also probably not.