Here I call on EconLog readers to try to change my mind!
Let me start with a proverbial throat clearing about what we all know is the difficulty of changing someone’s mind. It is often very difficult, and people are reluctant to change their minds. And we all tend to believe that we are all more open-minded than we actually are. That said, I TO DO I think I am more willing than most to change my mind, even on very fundamental issues that have major implications for life. Two examples: for a significant fraction of my life, I was a fairly devout and believing Christian. But I am now an atheist, because I have encountered a variety of arguments that I found convincing and so have changed my mind on the subject. (It also makes me somewhat skeptical when people say things like “there is no point in debating religion, no one ever changes their mind,” because I (I certainly did, and I know many other people who did, for the same reasons I did.) Second, I ate such a meat-heavy diet that I was pretty close to the people who follow the so-called “carnivore diet” today. But I’ve read Debate between Michael Huemer and Bryan Caplan I stopped eating meat that very day, because I found Huemer’s arguments much more powerful and convincing than Caplan’s. I had no difficulty abandoning my long-held religious beliefs or fundamentally changing my diet and lifestyle once I encountered compelling arguments that were contrary to my own views at the time.
So, here are a few things that I believe to be true and that I think are controversial enough that a number of readers will dispute them. Now, I’m not asking you to try to decide the issue in the comments here – there’s not much one can do in a blog post or comment. Instead, if you disagree with my view on something, What do you think would be the best, strongest and most convincing explanation of the opposing point of view? – an argument that you would personally be willing to endorse? Depending on what happens, I will pick one and read it, and I may turn my reaction into one of my in-depth critiques of several articles.
Now that that’s out of the way, here are some ideas I have in mind.
- Moral realism – the idea that there are objective moral facts about what is right and wrong, regardless of what one thinks of them. In other words, if Nazi Germany had won World War II and conquered the entire world, and all subsequent generations had been raised to believe that the Holocaust was a great good, the fact would still remain that the Holocaust was evil. While this is not exactly an unpopular view of mine (moral realism is the majority (even if philosophers don’t all agree on this, after all), there is still enough disagreement to make it worth exploring. If you lean toward moral antirealism, what book, article, or essay do you think is the best example of it?
- There is nothing morally special about the state. I do not mean that state action is never justified. I mean that nothing justifies state coercion that does not also justify individual coercion. If a situation does not justify individual coercion, it does not justify state coercion either. Again, this does not mean that justified state action is an empty set—because justified individual coercion is not an empty set either. But the two sets are equal, or so it seems to me. Furthermore, I reject what Jason Brennan said. calls the “special immunity thesis” in favor of the “moral parity thesis.” That is, the actions of the state must be evaluated by the same moral standards as those of any other person or organization, and can be legitimately resisted on the same basis. If you disagree and believe that the rightness of coercion does not depend on the circumstances creating the justification, but rather on the WHO If you believe that state agents enjoy special moral immunity from resistance when they act unjustly, which argument do you think is most compelling?
- Equality of outcomes has no intrinsic value. While equality of outcomes may have beneficial effects, these effects are only instrumental. Of course, being “merely” instrumentally beneficial does not mean that something is unimportant. But equality of outcomes has no intrinsic value. Imagine a world where poverty is immense, crippling, and equal, and another world where no one suffers from poverty but some are better off than others. Someone who believes in the intrinsic value of equality of outcomes might still accept that the second world is better. generally – they might admit that the intrinsic value of equality of outcomes is outweighed by the instrumental value of eliminating poverty. But they should still argue that there is at least a certain sense In which the first world is better, even if the second is better overall. To me, there is no sense in which the first world is better – equality of misery and suffering does not create a compensatory good by virtue of its equality. But if you think there is real, intrinsic value in equality of outcomes, what is the best argument you can make to me?
- There is no coherent concept of aggregate decisions or preferences. In other words, phrases like “we, as a society, have decided” this or that are at best misleading shorthand and at worst fundamentally incoherent. There is no meaningful sense that individual decisions can be aggregated into an aggregate social decision, or that individual preferences can somehow be transformed into a meaningful social preference. But perhaps you disagree and think that there is a deeply meaningful concept of social preferences. If so, tell me who makes the strongest argument for this and where I can find it.
I’ll stick with these four for now, but if it proves fruitful, I might try this approach again. Commenters, go for it!
