Dmitry Chernikov’s Blog

Material cause: stinkiness is caused by the predominance of certain molecules in the air, and it “participates” in maximal stinkiness which is a gas or even a solid packed with stinky molecules.

Formal cause: the bust of Mises is an imperfect version of the real Mises who is the archetype for the bust.

Efficient cause: any machine producing an effect participates in an ideal machine, as described by TRIZ.

Final cause: imperfect human happiness becomes perfect in whatever place in which there are no evils to drag you down.

So, a lot of things seem amenable to this treatment of finding perfect models for imperfect partakers in those models. Surely, “being, goodness, and every other perfection” are, too. Of course, that we can conceive of such a thing does not necessarily mean that it exists. But if, as per the 2nd way, all perfections, including existence, are caused in things, the cause must exist and be perfect simply. Therefore, there must exist a paragon of perfection of those things. And that’s God.

This is a remarkable article by Philippa Foot, stunning us with countless examples of how the word “good” is used. But, unbeknownst to her, all of these uses come under one of three categories: physical, moral, or metaphysical. Foot objects against the argument that reduces goodness to “that which is chosen.” And she is right: this is merely physical goodness created under conditions of scarcity, in which certain lesser goods (from the point of view of the agent choosing) must be set aside for the sake of some greater good. Goods are chosen (or, better, chosen things are called goods) for the sake of satisfying some desire.

On the contrary, a good knife is a moral knife, in that it, too, must live up to an ideal, though a man-made one. As long as a knife cuts at all, it remains essentially a knife, while sharpness is its accident or virtue. Of course, a knife does not love its virtue, being only an inanimate object; nor does its sharpness make the knife “worthy of happiness,” as virtue makes humans. But the point stands: sharpness is a moral good in a knife. The ideal of the knify goodness, again, depends on human purpose. If in some possible world objects that looked exactly like knives were used for a different purpose, such as marking plots of land, then they would not be “knives.” But that’s a purely semantic point.

A good farmer is a farmer who lives up to some standard of farming, again, a virtue or, more properly, an art. Foot wonders who is responsible for the creation of “moral” standards for things and operations. Well, you know, people do. Is it really that important? I think not, but our author’s examples illustrate my theory brilliantly.

Here’s Ron Paul on earmarks.

And here’s Mises, discussing the same issue 60 years ago:

Those advocation a restriction of the parliament’s prerogatives in budgeting and taxation issues or even a complete substitution of authoritarian government for representative government are blinded by the chimerical image of a perfect chief of state. This man, no less benevolent than wise, would be sincerely dedicated to the promotion of his subjects’ lasting welfare. The real Fuhrer, however, turns out to be a mortal man who first of all aims at the perpetuation of his own supremacy and that of his kin, his friends, and his party. As far as he may resort to unpopular measures, he does so for the sake of these objectives. He does not invest and accumulate capital. He constructs fortresses and equips armies.

The much talked about plans of the Soviet and Nazi dictators involved restriction of current consumption for the sake of “investment.” The Nazis never tried to suppress the truth that all these investments were designed as a preparation for the wars of aggression that they planned. The Soviets were less outspoken at the beginning. But later they proudly declared that all their planning was directed by considerations of war preparedness. History does not provide any example of capital accumulation brought about by a government. (Human Action, 850)

One thing Obama surely agrees with Bush is that, “If this were a dictatorship, it’d be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I’m the dictator.”

One version of emotivism claims that moral statements are “action-guiding” commands: “X is good” means “Do X!” The trouble with that is that a command can be obeyed or disobeyed, and one needs a reason to obey it. I mean, who are you to tell me what to do? The obvious rejoinder to “Do X!” is “Why should I?” And that brings up back to cognitivism and even naturalism: “You should, because in doing it you will conform your soul to the Good or because you will enjoy it,” which is a proposition which is either true or false, and also a reduction of the term “good” either to conformance to a moral ideal or to pleasure.

Modern civilization is a product of the philosophy of laissez faire. It cannot be preserved under the ideology of government omnipotence. Statolatry owes much to the doctrines of Hegel. However, one may pass over many of Hegel’s inexcusable faults, for Hegel also coined the phrase “the futility of victory.” To defeat the aggressors is not enough to make peace durable. The main thing is to discard the ideology that generates war. (Human Action, 832)

For the common man a victory of the state he subsists under rings hollow: it brings him no material advantage, only loss. The producers do not benefit from the obliteration of their suppliers and customers; the consumers do not benefit from the less advanced division of labor and the diminution of the quantity and quality of the goods available.

Intellectual property issues are hot among libertarians now, spurred by Jeffrey Tucker’s live blogging of Against Intellectual Monopoly and renewed interest in Stephan Kinsella’s “Against Intellectual Property.” Below I attempt to sketch a theory of copyrights and trade secrets.

The crucial term relevant to IP is “information” whose nature it is to reside in minds in the form of beliefs or knowledge (say, justified true beliefs or something of that sort) or imagination. But information can also be encoded in a material medium. A bust of Ludwig von Mises is form in matter; a human being is soul-in-body (or body-in-soul). A file containing a trade secret is encoded into a CD; again, matter arranged in some form. Note that “form” here is not “shape” but the answer to the question “What is this thing?” It is information describing the thing. Matter is the answer to the question “What is this thing made of?” The same form can inhere in multiple parcels of matter.

Forms can be of things we wouldn’t call “material objects”; thus, the physical laws of the universe as a whole (whatever it is) are one of the forms of the universe. The laws of economics are a form of society: when you ask “What is a society of human beings?,” a key part of the answer would be explanatory statements such as “division of labor makes a society more productive,” and “most societies use money which originates according to the regression theorem,” and so on; in other words, everything that describes how societies function. (Of course, many laws of economics apply to isolated individuals, as well, and moreover, the life of a society is lived entirely in its members, but the point stands: a society is informed; it is not chaotic.)

Not all forms need to be in matter or in minds. Angels and God, according to classical philosophy, are “pure forms.”

Alright, you can own a parcel of matter, because the control of it is exclusive, and so property is a way to resolve any potential disputes as to who gets to use that parcel how. A form is a universal: it exists in many, that is, it can be attached to numerous parcels of matter. But there are no free-floating forms at least in this world; there are only forms-in-matter. Therefore, you can never own a form as such; you can only own forms-in-matter. But one bust of Ludwig von Mises is not numerically identical to another bust of Mises, because the matter that is formed in Mises’s likeness is different in the two cases. Therefore, they are different objects and can have different owners.

Even more obvious is the case of ideas in people’s minds or images they form in their minds’ eyes. Even if you have first conceived of a cube, created the first cube, and showed to it to me, then the picture of a cube I have in my mind (say, I close my eyes and picture a cube, rotate it in various ways, contemplate its properties, etc.) and the knowledge of what a cube is cannot exclusively belong to you. For how can something as intimate as the contents of my own mind be your property? I may be required by moral scruples to give you credit for the invention of a cube; history may remember you as the first to come up with a cube; discussing cubes without mentioning your name may be called plagiarism in the academia, but you can’t possibly own my knowledge or the products of my imagination. Like one’s body, these things are one’s “natural property.” It’s outrageous to think, absent a rather bizarre contract of the right sort, that you can order me to stop imagining a cube. We will see later in what sense you can forbid me from teaching about cubes to other people, that is, from copying the cube-related information into another person’s mind.

A question with respect to numerical identity arises in the case of ideas, as well. Is the form-in-your-mind numerically the same as the form-in-my-mind (it may be qualitatively the same). The best we can say for this claim is that any form-in-a-mind is not encoded in matter. But, of course, they are still not identical. For example, it is possible that the form-in-your-mind can cease to exist if you forget it or if you die, but the allegedly same form-in-my-mind will still exist. You can improve upon your form, while my form will remain the same. The principle of the indiscernibility of identicals is not controversial, and so if two things have different properties, then they are not numerically identical. Again, they can for that reason have different owners.

The only claim you can have to the contents of my mind is via non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). You will tell me a secret, you say, but only if I agree not to tell anyone. That’s fine, but if the secret has been somehow revealed, including, unlawfully, by me, the new knowers are under no obligation not to use it or to reveal it further. Now Rothbard objects to this position with respect to copyrights: “no one can acquire a greater property title in something than has already been given away or sold.” (The Ethics of Liberty, 123) Therefore, I can’t, even if I spill the beans, imbue the new knowers with rights greater than those that I myself lawfully had. However, if the original owner does that himself, then full rights can be transferred. I suggest that Rothbard’s intuition here can be to an extent adjusted. It’s not that you possess a property right to the idea in my mind; it’s that we have agreed to an exchange of services. You give me something valuable — a secret. I give you something valuable in return — my silence. You own a “piece of me,” my body, such that I cannot tell anyone, by speaking or writing or doing anything whatever, what I have learned. Perhaps I even have a positive duty to take steps to ensure that the information I am privy to does not leak out. E.g., if you tell a masseur to go a little lower and to the left, then he is duty-bound to do just that. His body is temporarily under your control, the control having been paid for. Same with NDAs: I am under contractual constraints not to move my tongue and other bodily parts in such a way as to reveal the secret. But if someone finds out from me or in any other way, then he is not as duty-bound as I am, unless I, too, have bound him by an NDA.

In other words, there are two differences between ideas and material things: first, ideas are only partially scarce, in that they don’t have to be economized; second, ideas can be copied from lump of matter to lump of matter and from mind to mind, rather than moved from being owned by one person to being owned by another. Thus, creating a new instance of an idea is not moving an old one. It is rather creating something new by using the original as prototype or source.

It follows that if A sells an orange to B while withholding for himself the right to destroy the orange, call it destroyright, then if B sells the same orange to C, then he must let C know that A remains the holder of the destroyright. If C wants to annihilate the orange, then he’ll have to take it up with A. Suppose now that we were living in the Star Trek universe (heaven forfend). A notable feature of this universe is replicators: machines that can make an exact copy of a material object. Let it be that for a latinum coin you give me access to your replicator so I can copy your orange, to which you hold all the rights except the destroyright, myself. What rights should be assigned to the replicated orange? I can’t imagine anyone arguing that I ought to lack the destroyright to the new orange which I have just created. Consider the following scenario: the original orange’s pattern was copied into the replicator, and after that the original orange was eaten (let’s think of that as different from “destroying” it). The pattern persists in the replicator for six months, and everyone forgets about it. Then during a routine maintenance I discover the pattern and use it to make a brand new orange. Will it still be insisted that I do not own the destroyright to it?

If you so far agree with me, then as I have shown, the idea-in-my-mind is numerically distinct from the qualitatively-the-same-idea-in-your-mind, even though the reason why it’s distinct is that it is instantiated not in two different parcels of matter (like the oranges) but rather in two different minds. So, analogously, I possess all the rights to it, including destroyright. It is true that, unlike the replicated orange, the idea is immaterial, but what of it? The important thing is that the thing be valuable, be a good, not whether it’s material or not. Finally, everything I’ve said about destroyright seems to apply to copyright, as well.

In his Simple Rules for a Complex World Richard Epstein considers a case of “joint ownership by mistake.” Suppose that a piece of marble came under your control without your knowing that it actually belonged to someone else, Smith. You go ahead and in good faith carve a statue out of the marble. Then the misunderstanding is clarified, and both you and Smith contend for the ownership of the statue. To whom should it revert? Epstein characterizes the conflict as your labor versus Smith’s capital good. Notice how different this situation is from the one posed by IP: if I reprint a book to which Smith owns or “owns” a copyright, then both the labor and the materials are mine: the most that Smith can claim is that he supplied the form, while I supplied the matter and labor. But I have argued that there is no such thing as ownership of standalone forms. Hence the analogy fails.

It appears on reflection that those who did not formally consent to an NDA are not bound by it, even if non-disclosure agreements can be enforced as a special kind of contract. For example, suppose that you encounter a file stamped “Top secret. Authorized personnel only,” and you are not one of such personnel. Is it your duty not to read the secret file, even if the file is just lying there unattended? Is it a kind of theft? Rothbard would probably say that it would be theft, because you have no right to the information in the file. On the other hand, Rothbard also contends that in the case of bribery it is he who takes the bribe who is guilty of some crime, while he who offers the bribe is within his rights; similarly, being careless with the secrets you know may be a violation of your contract, while merely listening to or reading a secret is nothing of the sort. This is a tricky question, so what would be the Rothbard’s response? The correct response?

The original one.

Consider some examples:

(1) A runaway trolley driver can steer it on track A, killing 5, or on track B, killing 1.

(2) In order to survive, person Q needs the entire dose of the drug available at the hospital; but persons P₁, …, P₅ at the same hospital can be saved with just 1/5 of the dose each.

(3) A sheriff can save 5 innocent men from a lynch mob by covertly framing 1 innocent man.

(4) An evil tyrant gives you the following choice: either you torture 1 man or he tortures 5.

These can be approached in different ways. First, as illustrating the distinction between rule and act utilitarianism (RU / AU). Here the AU choice is the best, lest we be accused of rule worship.

Second, as negative duties not to harm vs. positive duties to give aid. In (1) the driver can’t help but violate someone’s rights, and so he might as well minimize the harm done. In (2) the conflict is between different ways to benefit, and so again we want to end up with the best consequences. In (3) the innocent man has a right not to be killed, but then so are the 5 men who would die if he lives. From the point of view of an impartial observer, the sheriff ought to frame, but from the point of view of the sheriff there is a conflict between a duty not to kill and a duty to provide aid. If he acts as a utilitarian, then he’ll have to live with an uneasy thought that he was a murderer. The problem with (4) is that it is an instance of blackmail, and we may decide to have a policy not to give in to blackmailers, and therefore refuse to torture (so as not to encourage more blackmail).

Third, as a conflict between duty and supererogation. Society demands that we respect the libertarian rights of others. But benefiting others, doing works of mercy, and so on are supererogatory from the point of view of the rather undemanding moral ideal imposed on everyone by the requirements of social cooperation. The question then is, does it work to “make up” for failing to do your duty with supererogation, as in (3) and (4)? If I am a killer for the Russian Mafia yet donate copious amounts of money to the Church, are my sins forgiven?

Fourth, as illustrating the principle of double effect (DE). In (2) we don’t intend the death of Q, and so our decision is moral, according to DE. However, if the scenario instead required us to evaluate chopping Q up and grafting his body parts onto Ps, then we would intend Q’s death as an essential means to our end rather than merely foresee it as accidentally accompanying our end. (We surely can’t say: “We want to get your body parts, but we don’t want to kill you.”) Similarly, in (4) we can refuse to torture, justifying this choice by saying that we foresee the suffering of the 5 but do not intend it.

Mises writes on this very topic that “soldiery virtues” are not good in themselves; and, in fact, whoever thinks that “must, to be consistent, likewise acknowledge as noble virtues the daring, intrepidity, and contempt for death of the robber.” (Liberalism, 24)

So, can courage be a vice? Is it better to be an insane vampire than a sane one? We should consider two aspects of the will: it must (1) love and hate the right things and (2) do so with the right intensity. With respect to (1), the malicious will manifests itself in deeds that are contrary to some moral virtue. Take a person who desires vengeance for a murdered relative. Aquinas writes that “if [the avenger's] intention is directed chiefly to the evil of the person on whom he takes vengeance and rests there, then his vengeance is altogether unlawful: because to take pleasure in another’s evil belongs to hatred, which is contrary to the charity whereby we are bound to love all men.” (ST, II-II, 108, 1) Vengeance in this case is a corruption of justice.

Were the 9/11 terrorists courageous or cowardly? The evidence for the former is that they went to their deaths for their cause, such as to retaliate on America as a whole against the foreign policy of the federal government. The evidence for the latter is that they targeted defenseless people, although this may be interpreted not as the vice of cowardliness but as the virtue of narrow prudence. Surely, the terrorists would not have been wise to select for an attack, say, an aircraft carrier which is probably very hard to sink, and who’d care about it anyway? But destroying the Towers and the Pentagon (full of effete bureaucrats) made more sense, especially given the goal to inflict terror. (However, the terrorists did not have prudence rightly understood, in that they considered an evil action to be good; nor justice, because their Islam-induced moral ideal was faulty; nor fear of the law, because the murdered people did not deserve their fate.)

But as for (2), consider first a vending machine. It is surely “just” in its “actions”: you get that candy bar that you paid for. And yet, because it does not love, it cannot merit, i.e., justice is not a virtue for it. Secondly, contrast justice with mercy. A person who loves intensely enough might have mercy on someone to whom a less charitable person would have given what he deserved. Here even all the moral virtues may be insufficient to justify a person with a hard heart.

So, just as correct conscience binds per se, and erring conscience binds (though not necessarily excuses) per accidens, so perhaps the following solution will suffice: justice, prudence, etc. are virtues per se, but, given a malicious will, they cease to be virtues per accidens.

Yes, insofar as they find fulfillment in 2nd-order desires to correct or counteract 1st-order desires. Without temptations there would be no need for virtues: human powers would on their own incline to good only.

Now is that man virtuous who adheres to virtue with great difficulty and inner struggle or one who adheres to it with ease and pleasure? Well, the word “difficulty” here is ambiguous. It can mean that the man has entrenched vices, or it can mean simply strong temptations from the “outside.” For example, if a person is poor, if or a valuable item is unguarded, then stealing may tempt him more than it would a man in a different situation. The temptation will be greater and call for greater restraint in anybody in one set of circumstances as opposed to another. On the other hand, to a thoroughly just man even a thought to steal something simply will not occur, regardless of how tempting this action might seem to a less upright individual.

So, an ardent desire to be good coupled with a vicious character may testify to the person’s goodness, in that he is proceeding, or trying to, in the right direction. He has potential or virtue-in-the-making. But an equally ardent enjoyment of one’s own virtue coupled with actual not merely potential virtue testifies to one’s goodness much more.

What’s the difference between an art or skill and a virtue? The obvious one that comes to mind is that virtues are essential to human survival, and, while so is some art, if its possessor is to participate in social cooperation, no particular art is essential. On the other hand, each virtue, by quickening its chakra (remember that the chakra system is a model of the human soul; if there is a better model, let me know, but so far I’m sticking with this one), makes human existence possible.

A second distinction is more pertinent. Aquinas expresses it as follows: with virtues it is better to fail involuntarily than to fail voluntarily; with arts it’s the other way around. (ST, II-I, 21, 2, reply 2) Why? A virtue, as I have mentioned below, is a combination of a moral ideal, conformance to that ideal, and enjoyment of that conformance. So, being vicious on purpose undermines the virtue altogether, because by stipulation you enjoy failing or enjoy being vicious. An art, on the other hand, is merely an ideal of technique + conformance to that ideal and does not presuppose pleasure in being skilled or in performing skillful actions. Therefore, failing deliberately does not corrupt the art nor is a sign of incompetence, while failing involuntarily has both of these features and therefore is the worse of the two. Philippa Foot puts the matter this way: “a virtue is not, like a skill or an art, a mere capacity: it must actually engage the will.” (Virtues and Vices, 8)

It might be objected that a doctor who kills his patient voluntarily is worse than one who kills him involuntarily. This is true but only because killing voluntarily is a murder and an injustice. But the doctor’s skill is still questioned less in the first scenario than it is in the second.

“What is history, but a disgusting and painful detail of the butcheries of conquerors, and the woeful calamities of the conquered?” – Anti-Federalist #3.

Friendship imposes on one greater duties than social cooperation in general. It is the essence of friendship that friends ought to treat each other with more care than strangers ought to. But becoming friends with someone is not going above and beyond the call of duty impressed upon one by the larger society. This is because friendship is not a sacrifice; presumably, A in befriending B, wants and benefits from the friendship. Friendship, indeed, is mutual: if A is a friend to B, then B must needs be a friend to A. So, even though in becoming a friend to someone, a person is taking upon himself additional obligations, this is not an instance of supererogation, because it is not a heroic or saintly act; on the contrary, it enriches one’s life and is enjoyed. There can be supererogation within friendship: for example, let A and B be casual acquaintances, and let B ask A to help him move. Now A might be perturbed by this request: why must he do the heavy lifting for B if they are not close friends? Agreeing to help can be construed as supererogatory, because A is under no obligation to help. But, though you don’t have to be friends with anybody, cultivating a friendship is not going beyond the call of duty relative to a state of no-friendship, because friendship is like trade: it is to mutual delight.

I don’t understand why I have to leaf through The Oxford Book of American Poetry in search of poems that actually rhyme. But here are a couple of delightful ones:

Dawn

An angel, robed in spotless white,
Bent down and kissed the sleeping Night.
Night woke to blush; the sprite was gone.
Men saw the blush and called it Dawn.

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if I had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Happy St. Patrick’s day!

1. Mitchell Jones writes: “Being alive surely presupposes access to food; but, just as surely, it does not presuppose that you have a right to access to food, or even that the particular food to which you have access is yours by right. (Consuming stolen food can sustain life and the ability to argue.)” This is reminiscent of Rothbard: “Similarly, if someone says that every man has a ‘natural right’ to three square meals a day, it is glaringly obvious that this is a fallacious natural law or natural rights theory; for there are innumerable times and places where it is physically impossible to provide three square meals for all, or even for the majority, of the population.” (The Ethics of Liberty, 43) But perhaps in order to argue as efficiently as possible, the debaters need three square meals a day. Has Hoppe proven too much again?

2. One can accept that he has no right to his body but keep using it in violation of his own norms. Or, as David Ramsay Steele argues, one can agree that he does have the right to his body but add that he opposes having this right: “It is mistaken to hold that having private property is being in favor of private property, or vice versa. Someone who owns private property might be against private property. Someone who owns no private property might be in favor of private property. Acting so as to exercise a right is not necessarily to claim or endorse that right, and does not commit one to favor that right.”

I don’t think this criticism works, however, because the right in question here is a natural right, derived from natural law, in this case a philosophical analysis of argumentation procedures. It’s not like this is a piece of positive legislation by Congress which the arguer wants repealed. It is just as absurd to oppose this law, Hoppe wants to say, as it is to oppose the law of gravity. You can abandon a particular item, by marking what was previously yours as “unowned,” but you can’t claim that you can’t in principle own anything or that no one can.

See also: a full critique.

Alasdair MacIntyre has brought to my attention the distinction in Aquinas between synderesis and conscientia. The former Aquinas understands as a natural habit comprising knowledge of first principles in morality, sort of obvious synthetic a priori notions:

In the field of moral conduct there are similar first principles of action, such as: “evil must be avoided, good done”; “Do not to others what you would not wish to be done to yourself”; “Parents should be honored”; “We should live temperately and act justly”. Such as these are self-evident truths in the field of moral conduct which any sane person will admit if he understands them.

Synderesis, according to St. Thomas, is not a power, but a (practical) virtue like (speculative) understanding, because “‘rational powers regard opposite things.’ But ’synderesis’ does not regard opposites, but inclines to good only,” just as understanding is inclined to truth only. For as long as a man lives, there is in him something which “incites to good, and murmurs at evil, inasmuch as through first principles we proceed to discover, and judge of what we have discovered.” (ST, I, 79, 12) Synderesis is “indelible” and “survives in even the wickedest human being, to distinguish it from that consciousness of good and evil which can be extinguished,” (Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, 184) and this latter is conscientia which is “a dictate of the practical reason deciding that any particular action is right or wrong.”

I am not sure what to make of this. By cleaving synderesis from conscience, is Aquinas attempting to split prudence into the a priori and a posteriori components, similar to how the speculative reason is split into understanding and science/knowledge? Or does synderesis supply the axioms, and conscience, a set of conclusions in any particular situation? I have argued that any judgment of right and wrong will necessarily also be accompanied by a 2nd-order desire to do what is right for the sake of preserving and increasing conformity to a moral ideal. But that desire can be overridden by vicious 1st-order passions. So, it appears that there is first the natural habit to judge aright (in the intellect), and second, a desire to do what is judged to be right (in the will). Now if “[c]onscience can be laid aside,” (I, 79, 13) where is this done? Is the cause of the laying aside in the will or the intellect? MacIntyre suggests the latter, because a conclusion of the conscience can be either invalid or unsound. But notice what Aquinas asserts of understanding: “blindness of mind [arises] from lust” (II-II, 15, 3) So, the final choice can be of evil, even given the correct deliverances of both synderesis and conscience and the (temporarily weak) desire to act on those deliverances: “To understand the truth is, in itself, beloved by all; and yet, accidentally it may be hateful to someone, in so far as a man is hindered thereby from having what he loves yet more.” (1)

St. Thomas also argues that erring conscience binds. That means that one can fail to do what conscience dictates. Raymond Smullyan, in his wonderful puzzle book The Lady or the Tiger?, imagines a place populated by both humans and vampires, and by sane and insane individuals. A human always tells the truth, while a vampire knows the truth but always lies; a sane person knows the truth, while an insane person imagines what is true to be false and what is false to be true. Thus, sane humans will always tell the truth; and so will insane vampires: e.g., an insane vampire thinks that 2 + 2 ≠ 4 but lies about it and says that 2 + 2 is 4. So, similarly, a person with a corrupt conscience and malicious will may end up doing the right thing: he will judge erroneously, and yet fail to do what the erring conscience demands! It seems therefore that sin can insert itself into both the deliberation of what one ought to do or what is right and into the final choice, even if the deliberation has yielded the right conclusions. Thus, (1) prudence can be more or less developed; and (2) the strength of will to abide by what is right can be greater or less.

All our natural duties, including those demanded by a hyper-refined 1st-level morality such as act utilitarianism, can be grounded in our duties to God as Creator. Remember that the existence of God can be demonstrated by natural reason, or so I like to believe. So, God or God’s nature, if you will, is going to be a significant part of any natural morality. It is clear, for example, that we are part of God’s creation, and our foremost duty is not to screw things up. Make God’s creation pretty, is what we are to do. We as a species are to flourish, as per God’s first commandment in His capacity precisely as Creator: “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” (Gen 1:28) (Hear that, treehuggers? Rule. The garden is for man; not vice versa. Man is the pinnacle of creation in the physical universe, fundamentally different from everything else in it, and it is his good achieved that makes the entire creation pleasing for God. Everything lower must conspire to serve the higher. Or be made to conspire if it resists.) And how are we to flourish? By mastering our environment, learning the laws of nature and economics, on the basis of these sciences developing technology (again, both natural and social), and enjoying our time here.

Contrast it with the duties to God as Lord, clarified in the parable of the rich fool:

The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. He thought to himself, “What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.”

Then he said, “This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I’ll say to myself, ‘You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.’”

But God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?”

This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God. (Lk 12:16-21)

Clearly, enjoying life as a natural man on Earth is not enough for Jesus.

Thus, “you shall not kill” and “you shall not steal” are matters of justice, in particular, matters of the derivative from justice virtue of religion in which man gives what is due to God as Creator. Ultimately, “you shall be naturally virtuous” and “you shall be a good utilitarian” can be justified (rather than merely explained as arising out of some natural sentiment or whatever) as making God’s pleased with His creation. (And we care for God’s enjoyment, because, as before, the lower, in this case, us, serves the higher, in this case, God.)

Mises writes that in society man

is free in the sense that the laws and the government do not force him to renounce his autonomy and self-determination to a greater extent than the inevitable praxeological law does. What he foregoes is only the animal freedom of living without any regard to the existence of other specimens of his species. What the social apparatus of compulsion and coercion achieves is that individuals whom malice, shortsightedness, or mental inferiority prevent from realizing that by indulging in acts that are destroying society they are hurting themselves and all other human beings, are compelled to avoid such acts. (Human Action, 281)

But it is our natural duty to God to benefit the human society and each individual in it as the measures of the goodness of the world. Hence the justification for Mises-style utilitarianism is clear.

As a last point, note what I am not saying. I am not saying that God tells us what to do. On the contrary, “God made man from the beginning, and left him in the hand of his own counsel.” (Sir 15:14) If I am at all promoting anything like the divine command theory of morality, it’s only in the sense of God’s telling us: “Be at your natural best.” (Just as He will later tell us: “Be at your grace-infused best.”) But I am not at all saying that all the more particular moral rules according to nature cannot be discerned by our own powers.

A = A. Trivial? Disgusting! On the contrary, I deny that A is A. My desk is not really my desk; it is actually brown. Dmitry Chernikov is not really Dmitry Chernikov; he is actually Napoleon (you knew I’d snap sooner or later, didn’t you?). So, forget it. For no A, except God, is A, A.

Homework: think about what this means.

Hint: maybe I don’t want A to be A (i.e., maybe A is whatever the hell I want it to be).

Hint #2: it’s not like everything is a freaking pure act.

Hint #3: a process has only limited identity.

Hint #4 (you don’t really need this one): everything is to the extent that it reveals itself in what it does.

Update. To avoid misunderstanding, I am criticizing the law of identity as a metaphysical not a logical law.

What a beautiful argument!

So, we have:

P(F|E) = 1 / (1 + P(E|F’)/P(E|F))

Then if P(E|F) > 0.5 > P(E|F’), then the hypothesis is confirmed (in that its probability becomes greater than the prior of 0.5).

I spent a whole semester in Spring ‘06 studying supererogation, but now it seems to be an exceedingly simple concept.

Remember that I have divided virtue into 3 parts: the moral ideal, the degree of conformance to that ideal, and the enjoyment of that conformance.

Supererogation is defined as going above and beyond the call of duty. It comprises all actions that are praiseworthy but not required. Now what imposes a duty on me? Obviously, my moral ideal or ideals. Supererogation then means exceeding the demands of any moral ideal that I have or the act of upgrading my moral ideal.

The ideal may be imposed on me by myself (in which case we must again refer to the trinity within), by other people, or by God. These are also the very agents who offer praise for supererogatory actions.

For example, consider utilitarianism. If my ideal is to be a perfect utilitarian, then it is impossible to supererogate. But if my ideal is to be reasonably prudent, than a spectacular calculation of some complex maneuver exceeds this ideal: it is praiseworthy but not required. (It may be required to achieve some end, but not morally.)

Again, if I want to be perfect in virtue as God is perfect, then I cannot supererogate. But if I want merely to be good enough to be a member of polite society, then I can exceed the demands of this ideal by, say, striving to be holy.

Or: salvation may be assured by my being a decent enough chap. But if I want not only to avoid hellfire but to enter heaven in glory, then I must something quite a bit more, such as exhaust myself in work.

Or, finally: if my ideal is not to kill, then it can be exceeded by giving life. In so doing I will go above and beyond the call of duty as I see it.

Note that there is no such thing as the “ideal ideal.” Each ideal is as unique as the person who has it.

If I continuously go beyond what my present ideal requires of me, then I may upgrade the ideal itself. Then the actions that were previously supererogatory will no longer be such.

Of course, ideals conflict. What other people expect of me differs from what I expect of myself and from what God expects of me. So, I may praise myself without society’s praising me. Or vice versa: others may laud me for saving a child from a burning building, but I may consider it to be only a duty, even something “everyone would have done in my place.”