If the activity strikes me as theft, and most people as theft, then this is pretty good evidence that it’s like theft. It’s not conclusive or anything, but still good evidence.
If slavery strikes a slave-owner as right to property, and most people in the slave-owner’s society as right to property, is that also pretty good evidence that slavery is right to property?
If homosexuality strikes a person as unnatural, and most of the people in his society as unnatural, is that pretty good evidence that homosexuality is unnatural?
The beliefs of a particular society at a particular time provide pretty weak evidence, at best.
As I said my argument doesn’t hang on the comparison with theft. … If you like, ignore my point about economic interest. It’s not very important.
In that case, we shall leave that aside for now.
Though my having an ethical opinion is some evidence that this opinion is true or in the region of the truth.
Behold the wrath of Lob’s theorem. (Short version: I believe yo momma is fat. Since I’m a rational agent, my belief is evidence for it. Thus I can assert with high certainty that yo momma is fat.)
I couldn’t follow your printing press argument, I think largely because it involved some complicated sarcasm
I note that the sentence was 4 lines long. Not exactly optimal for comprehension, I guess… I’ll come back to the Catholic Church later. For now...
I take it you wish to argue that CR law is immoral or impracticable? And how your filesharing a book helps to undermine that law?
I take it that this is you major point?
Fine, but before we discuss the morality of copyright… I’d ask if you still maintain (1) the following
In cases where the law itself is immoral and breaking it can serve to undermine the law, it’s even a good thing.
And also if you maintain that (2) the Pirate Bay serves to undermine copyright.
Given (1) and (2), I take it you also maintain that (3) if copyright were immoral, setting up the Pirate Bay would be moral?
In addition, do you also maintain that (4) even if copyright were immoral, downloading something from the Pirate Bay would still be an immoral act?
If slavery strikes a slave-owner as right to property, and most people in the slave-owner’s society as right to property, is that also pretty good evidence that slavery is right to property? If homosexuality strikes a person as unnatural, and most of the people in his society as unnatural, is that pretty good evidence that homosexuality is unnatural?
Sure.
It just turns out to be overwhelmed by other evidence that points to these assertions being either false or meaningless. Lots of things are evidence—sometimes even strong evidence—for all kinds of claims, including false claims.
Once we’re talking about probabilistic arguments that affect confidence levels, it’s entirely possible to have legitimate arguments that favor a false conclusion. That’s why cherry-picking evidence is such an effective rhetorical technique, and why continuing to look for and evaluate new evidence is important.
Sure. It just turns out to be overwhelmed by other evidence that points to these assertions being either false or meaningless.
The argument I had in mind was that the beliefs of a particular society are inherently weak evidence for whether something is ethical, and reasonably strong evidence of this can only be gained by looking at the trends of such beliefs in different societies over time.
Of course, I didn’t actually make a case for any of that, but instead went with “This ‘evidence’ gave us absurd results on these few occasions, therefore it must be invalid!!” which is obviously not a valid argument.
It’s clear I’m getting carried away by my own rhetoric here. I’ll try to cut down on the rhetoric and focus on what I actually want to say.
If slavery strikes a slave-owner as right to property, and most people in the slave-owner’s society as right to property, is that also pretty good evidence that slavery is right to property?
Taboo right to property.
If homosexuality strikes a person as unnatural, and most of the people in his society as unnatural, is that pretty good evidence that homosexuality is unnatural?
I don’t see what the point of that would be. What I was saying was ‘a behaviour was/is classified by most people as X’, where X generally has the connotation of perfectly OK/utterly wrong. I doubt unpacking X would offer any insight. (Except for the obvious one that X is a group of things that do not belong together; but isn’t that obvious just from what I said?)
For a start, you have to make clear if they are two-place or one-place words. If a sentence strikes a person as ungrammatical, and most of the people in his society as ungrammatical, is that pretty good evidence that that sentence is ungrammatical? Of course it is; indeed, that’s about as strong evidence for that as I can imagined. If a technology strikes a person as impossible, and most of the people in his society as physically impossible, is that pretty good evidence that that technology is impossible? Not very: even Kelvin thought Heavier-than-air flying machines were impossible. Now, is unnatural more like ungrammatical or more like impossible? That depends on what unnatural means.
If slavery strikes a slave-owner as right to property, and most people in the slave-owner’s society as right to property, is that also pretty good evidence that slavery is right to property?
That follows from what I said, and I think it true. But Dave said what I would say, so I’ll leave it at that. I think that in general people’s ethical opinions are substantial, though certainly not conclusive, evidence for the truth of those opinions. Just as the opinions of a doctor are strong evidence for the truth of a medical opinion, so to with this. Only, in the case of ethics, we are all experts if anyone is.
Behold the wrath of Lob’s theorem.
None of this seems to have anything to do with Lob’s theorem, which is about formal proofs and self reference within logical systems. If I’m mistaken, please correct me. As it stands, reference to it seems like a very abstract and pretty unhelpful metaphor.
And also if you maintain that (2) the Pirate Bay serves to undermine copyright.
I’d like some help with (2), as I’m not very familiar with how PB does this. Does PB make it less likely that CR law to exist in the future? If CR law is immoral (which isn’t implausible to me) and PB does this, then the conclusion that setting up and supporting PB would itself be plausible.
In addition, do you also maintain that (4) even if copyright were immoral, downloading something from the Pirate Bay would still be an immoral act?
I would maintain this in the face of (3) if filesharing in infringement of CR law was done with the aim of self-interest and if it had no plausible connection to making CR laws less likely in the future.
I think that in general people’s ethical opinions are substantial, though certainly not conclusive, evidence for the truth of those opinions.
I disagree with that, but arguing it in the general case would take us on a long-winded tangent. As long as we agree that the majority ethical opinion is found to be wrong rather frequently (with sufficient frequency to suspect that we might have discovered another flaw recently), the exact degree to which different kinds of evidence are reliable are irrelevant.
None of this seems to have anything to do with Lob’s theorem, which is about formal proofs and self reference within logical systems.
The relevant explanation is in the post that the word ‘before’ links to. Basically, if you consider your own belief as evidence for something, you can believe anything and have evidence for it. (The evidence being your own belief in it.)
Does PB make it less likely that CR law to exist in the future?
Is that what you mean by ‘undermine’? It may or may not affect the probability of CR laws existing in the future, but what it does is enable large-scale violations of CR law and thus make it very difficult to enforce. That is what I mean by ‘undermine’.
I would maintain this in the face of (3) if filesharing in infringement of CR law was done with the aim of self-interest and if it had no plausible connection to making CR laws less likely in the future.
I really don’t get what you’re getting at here. Violations of the law are only moral if they help in the repeal of the law, but not in and of themselves? But… why say the law is immoral, unless it prevents moral acts or rewards immoral acts?
Ah, I guess the answer to that is in the question itself. A law can be immoral, yet some parts of it can be perfectly moral.
So let me add to my original conditions: (2.5) That if free sharing of copyrighted materials were moral, copyright law would be immoral?
And (4.5) Even if free sharing of copyrighted materials were moral, downloading something off the Pirate Bay would still be immoral, as it must, by your definition of ‘personal gain’, lead to personal gain for the downloader?
Basically, if you consider your own belief as evidence for something, you can believe anything and have evidence for it. (The evidence being your own belief in it.)
I think it’s pretty reasonable to consider my belief for something as evidence for it, but I agree that this can’t be the end of the story. For instance, I consider my belief that my car is green as evidence for the greenness of my car, but because I also have reason to believe that I’m familiar with the color of my car, I have reliable eyesight, there’s no reason that it might have been repainted recently, etc. The point is, the opinion of an expert (in a loose sense of the word) is evidence for the truth of that opinion, and I am an expert on the color of my car.
I’m also a competent ethical agent, or at any rate no less (though probably no more) competent than most people. If something once struck me as stealing, that’s a good reason to believe that it was. It’s not conclusive, but it’s significant evidence. If I didn’t think this, I don’t think I could practically operate in the world.
Violations of the law are only moral if they help in the repeal of the law, but not in and of themselves? But… why say the law is immoral, unless it prevents moral acts or rewards immoral acts?
Right. The reason you violate the law matters to the morality of the violation. In other words, the morality of an act is directly informed by the fact that it is a violation of the law and by the attitude of the agent with respect to the law. If you have good reason to think CR law is immoral, and you violate it with the aim of removing the law and have good reason to think your violation will accomplish that task, then I think this would be hard to question morally. One is taking a stand.
If one is violating CR law because it saves you $25 on a book, and maybe it will remove the law but there’s no clear path there, and really one doesn’t bother over that because saving money was the goal, then I think this is pretty straightforwardly immoral.
(2.5) That if free sharing of copyrighted materials were moral, copyright law would be immoral?
Agreed, though the antecedent seems obviously false (in absence of the legal problem, this activity is pretty much morally neutral). If by ‘moral’ you mean ‘morally permissible’ (in the way brushing your teeth is) then I don’t agree, since laws forbidding morally permissible things (like distributing your own currency) are absolutely necessary.
And (4.5) Even if free sharing of copyrighted materials were moral, downloading something off the Pirate Bay would still be immoral, as it must, by your definition of ‘personal gain’, lead to personal gain for the downloader?
If by ‘moral’ you mean ‘permissible’, then yes: if it is permissible morally but illegal, than violating that law just because it’s convenient to you or saves you some money is immoral. If by ‘moral’ you mean ‘morally good’ then I’d need more information on the nature of the good act.
Basically, if you consider your own belief as evidence for something, you can believe anything and have evidence for it. (The evidence being your own belief in it.)
I think it’s pretty reasonable to consider my belief for something as evidence for it
The trick to remember is not to double-count your belief. You shouldn’t take your belief as both a prior and evidence, nor should you count your belief along with the evidence that generated that belief. Evidence screens off belief in much the same way argument screens off authority.
Normally, one would include beliefs in one’s priors, and thus would not count them as evidence.
The trick to remember is not to double-count your belief. You shouldn’t take your belief as both a prior and evidence, nor should you count your belief along with the evidence that generated that belief. Evidence screens off belief in much the same way argument screens off authority.
That’s a good point. I may be committing this error in this case, but I’m not sure. My position was basically that my impression that filesharing was ethically similar to stealing counts as good reason to think that filesharing is ethically similar to stealing, because I’m a competent moral evaluator. The thing that makes this claim suspect, to me at least, is that the reasons for my having the impression that filesharing is ethically similar to theft are rather opaque, and what reasons I can give don’t determine the point.
In light of these suspicions, I don’t want to put any weight on the theft comparison. I brought it up initially in haste, and it’s been made clear to me that it’s not a helpful way of talking about the subject.
Why is filesharing (and I assume we mean of works not meant for free digital distribution) more similar to stealing than it is to borrowing a book from a friend or borrowing a book from the library?
In cases where it breaks the law, because it breaks the law. In other words, I’m taking the violation of the law to be an important part of the action description.
So if stealing were legal, it wouldn’t be objectionable? If it still would be, then I contend there is still a significant difference between stealing and filesharing.
In legal positivism, there is a sharp conceptual divide between what the law is and what the law should be. The law is simply the price society has set for certain acts (Serial killer—death penalty, jaywalking - $100, etc). Why did the law set those particular prices? One can’t figure it out by only looking at the enacted law.
I hope that law is enacted by reference to our moral beliefs. But one cannot consistently assert that law is the table of prices and that one can define our moral beliefs based on what is enacted into law.
One can avoid the whole issue by asserting that property is more than simply the legal institution. That’s called natural law.
But one cannot consistently assert that law is the table of prices and that one can define our moral beliefs based on what is enacted into law.
But that’s not what I’ve claimed. I’ve said that the current law is good evidence for what law should be, just as current medical practice is good evidence for what a doctor should do in a given case. This is nothing other than the claim that in our attempt to do something well, we should look in part to our previous attempts. I can’t understand how this would be controversial unless you were taking me to say “current law determines the optimal legal system”, but this is far, far stronger than anything I’ve said, especially under a Bayesian understanding of ‘evidence’.
One can avoid the whole issue by asserting that property is more than simply the legal institution. That’s called natural law.
One can’t, and shouldn’t, avoid the issue at all, certainly not by simply asserting anything. We should address the issue and perhaps argue that property is more than simply a legal institution. It’s a view I’m quite open to, if you wish to make the case for it.
I’ve said that the current law is good evidence for what law should be, just as current medical practice is good evidence for what a doctor should do in a given case.
It does not seem to me that the process through which laws are made in my country is an optimizing process for finding “what law should be”. It appears to me more like an optimizing process for finding “what laws would benefit politicians, their families, and their friends.” The feedback loop through which it’s supposed to be the case that politicians get benefited by passing good laws is currently not working very well, at least in part thanks to ideology and anti-epistemologies.
Copyright extension is actually a really great example of this. It strikes me as extremely unlikely that the optimal copyright term would be monotonically increasing, now to effectively two human lifetimes. This doesn’t look like the result of a “quality of law” optimization; it looks like the result of a “money extraction for my buddies” optimization.
It appears that I’m misunderstanding this comment you made. When asked what the difference was between filesharing and lending a book, you said that one was legal and one wasn’t. That’s true, but why should it be true?
If you think the law is evidence of the optimal social order, then you should be able to articulate why this is the optimal social ordering. I could try to articulate the basis using historical practice and different technological capacity. But argument screens off authority, so there’s no value to invoking law in making that explanation.
t appears that I’m misunderstanding this comment you made. When asked what the difference was between filesharing and lending a book, you said that one was legal and one wasn’t. That’s true, but why should it be true?
My claim to Anubhav has been that violating a law for one’s profit is immoral, and this is regardless of the quality of the law violated. So the question ‘why should this law be a law at all’ doesn’t directly bear on the issue. That said, I’ve also agreed that violating a law, where the law is unjust and where the violation makes the removal of the law more likely, may even be a good thing. So none of this hangs on any claim about how laws ought to be made.
If you think the law is evidence of the optimal social order, then you should be able to articulate why this is the optimal social ordering.
I take law to be straightforward evidence for the optimal social order: in any case where we are living in a society stable enough to consider the adjustment of the laws, the optimal and short-term practically achievable social order will look something very much like the current social order. I have some serious objections to the article you link to, but that seems like a digression.
Hmm, I suppose it seems to me that if the law serves to enforce desired social arrangements, then the law absolutely is evidence of the optimal social arrangement, so long as we have reason to expect that the citizens of a polity in general desire an optimal social arrangement. Which seems defensible to me. And it need not be defensible in this particular instance (perhaps CR laws serve the interests only of a minority against the public good) for my case to go through. Namely, that the violation of a law belongs in the description of an action under ethical evaluation.
And it need not be defensible in this particular instance (perhaps CR laws serve the interests only of a minority against the public good) for my case to go through. Namely, that the violation of a law belongs in the description of an action under ethical evaluation.
This doesn’t follow from my premise. When the law provided that hiding fugitive slaves was illegal, that did not make hiding fugitive slaves immoral.
The claim that there is an independent “respect for the law” variable necessary for predicting human behavior is a contested thesis. For example, empirical evidence seems to support the assertion that crackdowns on minor vandalism reduce the frequency of more significant crime like car theft. But it’s less clear whether that extends to reducing major crime (like rape and murder).
When the law provided that hiding fugitive slaves was illegal, that did not make hiding fugitive slaves immoral.
Right, but as I said, counterexamples aren’t a big deal here: for my argument to go though I need to be able to claim that the law is a good evidence concerning perscriptions to the public good, etc. It need not be the case that any given law be such. The possibility that they are all directed against the public good is too absurd to consider.
For public choice reasons, there’s no basis for believing that a law is directed at the public good simply because it has been enacted and carries legal force. Especially when narrow interests have reason to have much stronger opinions than the public as a whole.
The possibility that they are all directed against the public good is too absurd to consider.
That’s not a big deal here; for your argument to fail to go through, we need to be able to claim that the law isn’t good evidence concerning prescriptions for the public good, because a significant proportion of it was written by short-sighted men with no idea of the long-term consequences of their decisions, and an even more significant proportion of it was written to favour special interests.
because a significant proportion of it was written by short-sighted men with no idea of the long-term consequences of their decisions, and an even more significant proportion of it was written to favour special interests.
This is an empirical claim for which I would want some empirical evidence. I’m very wary of anything which looks like political cynicism.
This is an empirical claim for which I would want some empirical evidence.
Same for your assertion that most laws are written for the public good. Yours seems to be the more indefensible prior, since I’m sure you’ll agree that every single ancient/medieval government turned out laws that overwhelmingly favoured entrenched elites over common people. Given that, if modern governments have truly stopped doing that, that would be something extraordinary which merits an explanation.
Also, there’s the fact that short-sighted men are more numerous than far-sighted ones (or would you dispute that as well?), and that the public interest is a small target in the wide space of possible laws, (or do you dispute this, claiming that a large proportion of all possible laws are in the public interest?) you’d expect more bad laws (defined as laws which hinder the public interest, whether intentionally or as a side effect) to get passed than good ones. Then there’s the fact that representatives of special interests can contact those in power more easily than their constituents can. (Dispute that if you will, I have no interest in defending it. It’s easy enough to test: Just try contacting Joe Biden and see how that goes.)
If you don’t dispute any of this, you probably have some over-riding factors in mind that would make it less surprising that despite all this, a large fraction of laws somehow still turn out to be in the public interest.
Same for your assertion that most laws are written for the public good.
True, though I think Tim’s formulation alone lends it some credence: the law is (on his premises) an expression of the publicly desired social arrangements, and the public can be taken to desire the optimal social arrangements, then the law is evidence (not conclusive evidence, but evidence) for what the optimal social arrangements are.
This obviously doesn’t follow for all laws, but it should follow generally. Some laws may serve private interests or incompetently written, but on the whole that can’t be true. No such polity would last a year.
I’m sure you’ll agree that every single ancient/medieval government turned out laws that overwhelmingly favoured entrenched elites over common people.
I’m familiar with only a few ancient legal systems. (ETA: and there’s a strong survivorship bias for the best ones, since the really bad ones tended not to have written law codes). They’re a mixed bag. But I think favoring entrenched elites over common people probably does serve the common good pretty effectively (though so does doing the opposite, and both can be bad too). Legal systems which clearly worked against the public good on the whole, like the various oligarchies set up in Athens following the Peloponnesian war, didn’t last long. I think the only time you really get laws that work on the whole against the public good are in cases where those laws are imposed by a conquerer.
Almost all legal systems on the whole are good on the whole. Some (like ours, and I say this almost regardless of where you live) are vastly better than others. Places that are lawless are really, really horrible. I haven’t spent any time in these places (South Africa is the closest I’ve come) but I’ve spent a lot of time reading about them, especially ancient ones. We’re very lucky to have our bad legal systems.
claiming that a large proportion of all possible laws are in the public interest?
Right, exactly. There are good questions to be raised about any given law, but legal systems on the whole are good for people. Very, very rarely do they do more harm than good. That’s one of the reasons why I think breaking the law is morally significant in every case, though not in every case morally wrong.
Legal systems which clearly worked against the public good on the whole, like the various oligarchies set up in Athens following the Peloponnesian war, didn’t last long.
Of course, if you restrict your search entirely to metal-wielding literate societies seen through the eyes of their own historians (whose expectations of normalcy were completely different from ours) you might get a skewed image of things.
But I think favoring entrenched elites over common people probably does serve the common good pretty effectively (though so does doing the opposite).
We seem to be operating on different definitions of ‘common good’. My definition is along the lines of ‘something that raises the average (standard of living/utilon count/something like that) of a population’. There’s no way that favouring a few people at the expense of a population greater than theirs by two orders of magnitude would do that. (Given the law of diminishing returns, at least.)
The next paragraph is a non-sequitur. I never argued for lawlessness. If I didn’t like my phone, I wouldn’t throw it away and and resolve never to use a phone again. I’d look for a better phone.
Right, exactly. There are good questions to be raised about any given law, but legal systems on the whole are good for people.
Another non-sequitur. I asked about every possible law, not every law that is passed.
Of course, if you restrict your search entirely to metal-wielding literate societies seen through the eyes of their own historians (whose expectations of normalcy were completely different from ours) you might get a skewed image of things.
You brought up ancient societies, and it’s impossible that you have alternative sources. Are you now saying that this isn’t a good place to look for evidence?
My definition is along the lines of ‘something that raises the average (standard of living/utilon count/something like that) of a population’.
That’s far more minimal than my understanding of the term, but that works for me. And remember that I’m just trying to argue that the law on the whole serves the public good on the whole. Not that every given law serves the public good.
If you have good reason to think CR law is immoral, and you violate it with the aim of removing the law and have good reason to think your violation will accomplish that task, then I think this would be hard to question morally
Or I might incidentally violate it in the course of doing whatever morally good act it supposedly prevents.
If by ‘moral’ you mean ‘morally good’ then I’d need more information on the nature of the good act.
Do you contend that (6) capitalism is morally good? By and large, it improves the quality of people’s lives over time. However, most people engage in capitalism motivated by personal gain.
Therefore… If you agree with [6], do you still maintain that (7) entering into capitalism with the aim of personal gain is immoral, even though a large number of people doing it results in the morally good outcome described in [6]?
And if you say ‘no’ to [7], do you maintain (8) that [7] would be immoral if capitalism were illegal?
None of these questions make a lot of sense to me unless we first sort out what you mean by ‘morally good’: positively morally good or merely permissible? And I don’t think I would want to say anything like ‘capitalism’ could have a moral valance. Moral predicates attach, it seems to me, to people and their actions first and foremost. I suppose that’s up for debate.
That said and so far as I understand your terms, my answer to (6) is ‘no’, and (7) is ‘no’, and (8) is ‘no’
my answer to (6) is ‘no’, and (7) is ‘no’, and (8) is ‘no’
wait what? So you’re saying that capitalism isn’t morally good, but engaging in it with the aim of personal profit is? That seems to contradict everything you’ve been saying so far.
Unless of course you maintain that...
Moral predicates attach, it seems to me, to people and their actions first and foremost.
(and presumably not to abstract philosophies like capitalism)
How can you say that with a straight face after spending several days debating the morality of a law?
wait what? So you’re saying that capitalism isn’t morally good, but engaging in it with the aim of personal profit is? That seems to contradict everything you’ve been saying so far.
So far as I understand the terms (I’ve asked you to clarify them for me) ‘morally good’ and ‘morally bad’ are contraries, not contradictories. So it’s perfectly possible for something to be neither. I think capitalism, pursuing capitalism for personal gain, and outlawing capitalism are all morally neutral. In part, because these things are too far from the proper objects of moral predicates to earn them one way or the other.
How can you say that with a straight face after spending several days debating the morality of a law?
Well, I think if you review my posts, you’ll find that I’ve never called CR law moral. I’ve called the violation of it under certain aims immoral. The violation is an action undertaken by an individual.
I’ve said that the polity and its laws have moral value, but I don’t think the predicate ‘morally good’ really applies to them. The difference being that the polity and its laws are a significant condition on the moral worth of our own actions and lives. I’m reluctant to call a polity morally good because it could only earn this predicate quite indirectly.
I think capitalism, pursuing capitalism for personal gain, and outlawing capitalism are all morally neutral.
That’s just what I said: That the claim was absurd unless you maintain that the morality of abstract concepts is undefined.
Well, I think if you review my posts, you’ll find that I’ve never called CR law moral. I’ve called the violation of it under certain aims immoral. The violation is an action undertaken by an individual.
You have, however, said that it is possible for a law to be immoral, in which case violating it with the aim of hastening its removal from the books is moral.
So… you’re saying that it’s possible for a law to be immoral, but not for a law to be moral? Or that a law may be moral, but the morality of things like capitalism is necessarily undefined?
So… you’re saying that it’s possible for a law to be immoral, but not for a law to be moral? Or that a law may be moral, but the morality of things like capitalism is necessarily undefined?
I think, in an indirect sense, laws may be moral or immoral. I should think it unsurprising that I should be reluctant to say something so underdefined and general as ‘capitalism is immoral’. My claim is that a certain kind of action, namely one in which a law is knowingly violated for the sake of one’s own profit, is often immoral. The moral quality of the law violated may sometimes produce exceptions to this, but it does not simply follow that an immoral law may be violated with moral impunity.
That said, the case you were originally recommending falls well shy of this gray borderline. You were originally saying that it would be a failure of some kind not to violate the law for the sake of one’s convenience and profit in the case of acquiring books. Since you were explicit that the intention here was the pursuit of one’s self-interest and not the undermining of an immoral law (even if you took this to be a side effect), these finer points seem a little off the track.
If you think CR law is unjust then prescribe to people a plan to have it removed. The widespread violation of the law seems unlikely to do this: note that this tends to make laws more draconian, not less. The large scale public protest of internet communities and companies seems on the other hand to be extraordinarily effective and in the mean time is no kind of legal violation. If I were to audit someone’s time and computer memory, and find that they spent little or no time organizing such protests but had many thousands of dollars worth of illegally acquired CR protected content on their hard drive, I think I would fairly come to the conclusion that their behavior is motivated by nothing other than self-interest. And I don’t think it would be surprising or controversial to say that such a person is behaving immorally insofar as they are breaking the law in that pursuit.
If slavery strikes a slave-owner as right to property, and most people in the slave-owner’s society as right to property, is that also pretty good evidence that slavery is right to property?
If homosexuality strikes a person as unnatural, and most of the people in his society as unnatural, is that pretty good evidence that homosexuality is unnatural?
The beliefs of a particular society at a particular time provide pretty weak evidence, at best.
In that case, we shall leave that aside for now.
Behold the wrath of Lob’s theorem. (Short version: I believe yo momma is fat. Since I’m a rational agent, my belief is evidence for it. Thus I can assert with high certainty that yo momma is fat.)
I note that the sentence was 4 lines long. Not exactly optimal for comprehension, I guess… I’ll come back to the Catholic Church later. For now...
I take it that this is you major point?
Fine, but before we discuss the morality of copyright… I’d ask if you still maintain (1) the following
And also if you maintain that (2) the Pirate Bay serves to undermine copyright.
Given (1) and (2), I take it you also maintain that (3) if copyright were immoral, setting up the Pirate Bay would be moral?
In addition, do you also maintain that (4) even if copyright were immoral, downloading something from the Pirate Bay would still be an immoral act?
Sure.
It just turns out to be overwhelmed by other evidence that points to these assertions being either false or meaningless. Lots of things are evidence—sometimes even strong evidence—for all kinds of claims, including false claims.
Once we’re talking about probabilistic arguments that affect confidence levels, it’s entirely possible to have legitimate arguments that favor a false conclusion. That’s why cherry-picking evidence is such an effective rhetorical technique, and why continuing to look for and evaluate new evidence is important.
Just sayin’.
The argument I had in mind was that the beliefs of a particular society are inherently weak evidence for whether something is ethical, and reasonably strong evidence of this can only be gained by looking at the trends of such beliefs in different societies over time.
Of course, I didn’t actually make a case for any of that, but instead went with “This ‘evidence’ gave us absurd results on these few occasions, therefore it must be invalid!!” which is obviously not a valid argument.
It’s clear I’m getting carried away by my own rhetoric here. I’ll try to cut down on the rhetoric and focus on what I actually want to say.
Taboo right to property.
Taboo unnatural.
I don’t see what the point of that would be. What I was saying was ‘a behaviour was/is classified by most people as X’, where X generally has the connotation of perfectly OK/utterly wrong. I doubt unpacking X would offer any insight. (Except for the obvious one that X is a group of things that do not belong together; but isn’t that obvious just from what I said?)
For a start, you have to make clear if they are two-place or one-place words. If a sentence strikes a person as ungrammatical, and most of the people in his society as ungrammatical, is that pretty good evidence that that sentence is ungrammatical? Of course it is; indeed, that’s about as strong evidence for that as I can imagined. If a technology strikes a person as impossible, and most of the people in his society as physically impossible, is that pretty good evidence that that technology is impossible? Not very: even Kelvin thought Heavier-than-air flying machines were impossible. Now, is unnatural more like ungrammatical or more like impossible? That depends on what unnatural means.
That follows from what I said, and I think it true. But Dave said what I would say, so I’ll leave it at that. I think that in general people’s ethical opinions are substantial, though certainly not conclusive, evidence for the truth of those opinions. Just as the opinions of a doctor are strong evidence for the truth of a medical opinion, so to with this. Only, in the case of ethics, we are all experts if anyone is.
None of this seems to have anything to do with Lob’s theorem, which is about formal proofs and self reference within logical systems. If I’m mistaken, please correct me. As it stands, reference to it seems like a very abstract and pretty unhelpful metaphor.
I’d like some help with (2), as I’m not very familiar with how PB does this. Does PB make it less likely that CR law to exist in the future? If CR law is immoral (which isn’t implausible to me) and PB does this, then the conclusion that setting up and supporting PB would itself be plausible.
I would maintain this in the face of (3) if filesharing in infringement of CR law was done with the aim of self-interest and if it had no plausible connection to making CR laws less likely in the future.
I disagree with that, but arguing it in the general case would take us on a long-winded tangent. As long as we agree that the majority ethical opinion is found to be wrong rather frequently (with sufficient frequency to suspect that we might have discovered another flaw recently), the exact degree to which different kinds of evidence are reliable are irrelevant.
The relevant explanation is in the post that the word ‘before’ links to. Basically, if you consider your own belief as evidence for something, you can believe anything and have evidence for it. (The evidence being your own belief in it.)
Is that what you mean by ‘undermine’? It may or may not affect the probability of CR laws existing in the future, but what it does is enable large-scale violations of CR law and thus make it very difficult to enforce. That is what I mean by ‘undermine’.
I really don’t get what you’re getting at here. Violations of the law are only moral if they help in the repeal of the law, but not in and of themselves? But… why say the law is immoral, unless it prevents moral acts or rewards immoral acts?
Ah, I guess the answer to that is in the question itself. A law can be immoral, yet some parts of it can be perfectly moral.
So let me add to my original conditions: (2.5) That if free sharing of copyrighted materials were moral, copyright law would be immoral?
And (4.5) Even if free sharing of copyrighted materials were moral, downloading something off the Pirate Bay would still be immoral, as it must, by your definition of ‘personal gain’, lead to personal gain for the downloader?
I think it’s pretty reasonable to consider my belief for something as evidence for it, but I agree that this can’t be the end of the story. For instance, I consider my belief that my car is green as evidence for the greenness of my car, but because I also have reason to believe that I’m familiar with the color of my car, I have reliable eyesight, there’s no reason that it might have been repainted recently, etc. The point is, the opinion of an expert (in a loose sense of the word) is evidence for the truth of that opinion, and I am an expert on the color of my car.
I’m also a competent ethical agent, or at any rate no less (though probably no more) competent than most people. If something once struck me as stealing, that’s a good reason to believe that it was. It’s not conclusive, but it’s significant evidence. If I didn’t think this, I don’t think I could practically operate in the world.
Right. The reason you violate the law matters to the morality of the violation. In other words, the morality of an act is directly informed by the fact that it is a violation of the law and by the attitude of the agent with respect to the law. If you have good reason to think CR law is immoral, and you violate it with the aim of removing the law and have good reason to think your violation will accomplish that task, then I think this would be hard to question morally. One is taking a stand.
If one is violating CR law because it saves you $25 on a book, and maybe it will remove the law but there’s no clear path there, and really one doesn’t bother over that because saving money was the goal, then I think this is pretty straightforwardly immoral.
Agreed, though the antecedent seems obviously false (in absence of the legal problem, this activity is pretty much morally neutral). If by ‘moral’ you mean ‘morally permissible’ (in the way brushing your teeth is) then I don’t agree, since laws forbidding morally permissible things (like distributing your own currency) are absolutely necessary.
If by ‘moral’ you mean ‘permissible’, then yes: if it is permissible morally but illegal, than violating that law just because it’s convenient to you or saves you some money is immoral. If by ‘moral’ you mean ‘morally good’ then I’d need more information on the nature of the good act.
The trick to remember is not to double-count your belief. You shouldn’t take your belief as both a prior and evidence, nor should you count your belief along with the evidence that generated that belief. Evidence screens off belief in much the same way argument screens off authority.
Normally, one would include beliefs in one’s priors, and thus would not count them as evidence.
That’s a good point. I may be committing this error in this case, but I’m not sure. My position was basically that my impression that filesharing was ethically similar to stealing counts as good reason to think that filesharing is ethically similar to stealing, because I’m a competent moral evaluator. The thing that makes this claim suspect, to me at least, is that the reasons for my having the impression that filesharing is ethically similar to theft are rather opaque, and what reasons I can give don’t determine the point.
In light of these suspicions, I don’t want to put any weight on the theft comparison. I brought it up initially in haste, and it’s been made clear to me that it’s not a helpful way of talking about the subject.
Why is filesharing (and I assume we mean of works not meant for free digital distribution) more similar to stealing than it is to borrowing a book from a friend or borrowing a book from the library?
In cases where it breaks the law, because it breaks the law. In other words, I’m taking the violation of the law to be an important part of the action description.
So if stealing were legal, it wouldn’t be objectionable? If it still would be, then I contend there is still a significant difference between stealing and filesharing.
This is a question of whether or not property is a legal institution or something more. I’m inclined to think the former. What do you say?
In legal positivism, there is a sharp conceptual divide between what the law is and what the law should be. The law is simply the price society has set for certain acts (Serial killer—death penalty, jaywalking - $100, etc). Why did the law set those particular prices? One can’t figure it out by only looking at the enacted law.
I hope that law is enacted by reference to our moral beliefs. But one cannot consistently assert that law is the table of prices and that one can define our moral beliefs based on what is enacted into law.
One can avoid the whole issue by asserting that property is more than simply the legal institution. That’s called natural law.
But that’s not what I’ve claimed. I’ve said that the current law is good evidence for what law should be, just as current medical practice is good evidence for what a doctor should do in a given case. This is nothing other than the claim that in our attempt to do something well, we should look in part to our previous attempts. I can’t understand how this would be controversial unless you were taking me to say “current law determines the optimal legal system”, but this is far, far stronger than anything I’ve said, especially under a Bayesian understanding of ‘evidence’.
One can’t, and shouldn’t, avoid the issue at all, certainly not by simply asserting anything. We should address the issue and perhaps argue that property is more than simply a legal institution. It’s a view I’m quite open to, if you wish to make the case for it.
It does not seem to me that the process through which laws are made in my country is an optimizing process for finding “what law should be”. It appears to me more like an optimizing process for finding “what laws would benefit politicians, their families, and their friends.” The feedback loop through which it’s supposed to be the case that politicians get benefited by passing good laws is currently not working very well, at least in part thanks to ideology and anti-epistemologies.
Copyright extension is actually a really great example of this. It strikes me as extremely unlikely that the optimal copyright term would be monotonically increasing, now to effectively two human lifetimes. This doesn’t look like the result of a “quality of law” optimization; it looks like the result of a “money extraction for my buddies” optimization.
It appears that I’m misunderstanding this comment you made. When asked what the difference was between filesharing and lending a book, you said that one was legal and one wasn’t. That’s true, but why should it be true?
If you think the law is evidence of the optimal social order, then you should be able to articulate why this is the optimal social ordering. I could try to articulate the basis using historical practice and different technological capacity. But argument screens off authority, so there’s no value to invoking law in making that explanation.
(As for natural law—no thanks).
My claim to Anubhav has been that violating a law for one’s profit is immoral, and this is regardless of the quality of the law violated. So the question ‘why should this law be a law at all’ doesn’t directly bear on the issue. That said, I’ve also agreed that violating a law, where the law is unjust and where the violation makes the removal of the law more likely, may even be a good thing. So none of this hangs on any claim about how laws ought to be made.
I take law to be straightforward evidence for the optimal social order: in any case where we are living in a society stable enough to consider the adjustment of the laws, the optimal and short-term practically achievable social order will look something very much like the current social order. I have some serious objections to the article you link to, but that seems like a digression.
Why? If one thinks that the law serves to enforce desired social arrangements, then the law is not evidence of the optimal social arrangement.
Hmm, I suppose it seems to me that if the law serves to enforce desired social arrangements, then the law absolutely is evidence of the optimal social arrangement, so long as we have reason to expect that the citizens of a polity in general desire an optimal social arrangement. Which seems defensible to me. And it need not be defensible in this particular instance (perhaps CR laws serve the interests only of a minority against the public good) for my case to go through. Namely, that the violation of a law belongs in the description of an action under ethical evaluation.
This doesn’t follow from my premise. When the law provided that hiding fugitive slaves was illegal, that did not make hiding fugitive slaves immoral.
The claim that there is an independent “respect for the law” variable necessary for predicting human behavior is a contested thesis. For example, empirical evidence seems to support the assertion that crackdowns on minor vandalism reduce the frequency of more significant crime like car theft. But it’s less clear whether that extends to reducing major crime (like rape and murder).
Right, but as I said, counterexamples aren’t a big deal here: for my argument to go though I need to be able to claim that the law is a good evidence concerning perscriptions to the public good, etc. It need not be the case that any given law be such. The possibility that they are all directed against the public good is too absurd to consider.
For public choice reasons, there’s no basis for believing that a law is directed at the public good simply because it has been enacted and carries legal force. Especially when narrow interests have reason to have much stronger opinions than the public as a whole.
For instance.
That’s not a big deal here; for your argument to fail to go through, we need to be able to claim that the law isn’t good evidence concerning prescriptions for the public good, because a significant proportion of it was written by short-sighted men with no idea of the long-term consequences of their decisions, and an even more significant proportion of it was written to favour special interests.
This is an empirical claim for which I would want some empirical evidence. I’m very wary of anything which looks like political cynicism.
Same for your assertion that most laws are written for the public good. Yours seems to be the more indefensible prior, since I’m sure you’ll agree that every single ancient/medieval government turned out laws that overwhelmingly favoured entrenched elites over common people. Given that, if modern governments have truly stopped doing that, that would be something extraordinary which merits an explanation.
Also, there’s the fact that short-sighted men are more numerous than far-sighted ones (or would you dispute that as well?), and that the public interest is a small target in the wide space of possible laws, (or do you dispute this, claiming that a large proportion of all possible laws are in the public interest?) you’d expect more bad laws (defined as laws which hinder the public interest, whether intentionally or as a side effect) to get passed than good ones. Then there’s the fact that representatives of special interests can contact those in power more easily than their constituents can. (Dispute that if you will, I have no interest in defending it. It’s easy enough to test: Just try contacting Joe Biden and see how that goes.)
If you don’t dispute any of this, you probably have some over-riding factors in mind that would make it less surprising that despite all this, a large fraction of laws somehow still turn out to be in the public interest.
True, though I think Tim’s formulation alone lends it some credence: the law is (on his premises) an expression of the publicly desired social arrangements, and the public can be taken to desire the optimal social arrangements, then the law is evidence (not conclusive evidence, but evidence) for what the optimal social arrangements are.
This obviously doesn’t follow for all laws, but it should follow generally. Some laws may serve private interests or incompetently written, but on the whole that can’t be true. No such polity would last a year.
I’m familiar with only a few ancient legal systems. (ETA: and there’s a strong survivorship bias for the best ones, since the really bad ones tended not to have written law codes). They’re a mixed bag. But I think favoring entrenched elites over common people probably does serve the common good pretty effectively (though so does doing the opposite, and both can be bad too). Legal systems which clearly worked against the public good on the whole, like the various oligarchies set up in Athens following the Peloponnesian war, didn’t last long. I think the only time you really get laws that work on the whole against the public good are in cases where those laws are imposed by a conquerer.
Almost all legal systems on the whole are good on the whole. Some (like ours, and I say this almost regardless of where you live) are vastly better than others. Places that are lawless are really, really horrible. I haven’t spent any time in these places (South Africa is the closest I’ve come) but I’ve spent a lot of time reading about them, especially ancient ones. We’re very lucky to have our bad legal systems.
Right, exactly. There are good questions to be raised about any given law, but legal systems on the whole are good for people. Very, very rarely do they do more harm than good. That’s one of the reasons why I think breaking the law is morally significant in every case, though not in every case morally wrong.
Of course, if you restrict your search entirely to metal-wielding literate societies seen through the eyes of their own historians (whose expectations of normalcy were completely different from ours) you might get a skewed image of things.
We seem to be operating on different definitions of ‘common good’. My definition is along the lines of ‘something that raises the average (standard of living/utilon count/something like that) of a population’. There’s no way that favouring a few people at the expense of a population greater than theirs by two orders of magnitude would do that. (Given the law of diminishing returns, at least.)
The next paragraph is a non-sequitur. I never argued for lawlessness. If I didn’t like my phone, I wouldn’t throw it away and and resolve never to use a phone again. I’d look for a better phone.
Another non-sequitur. I asked about every possible law, not every law that is passed.
You brought up ancient societies, and it’s impossible that you have alternative sources. Are you now saying that this isn’t a good place to look for evidence?
That’s far more minimal than my understanding of the term, but that works for me. And remember that I’m just trying to argue that the law on the whole serves the public good on the whole. Not that every given law serves the public good.
Or I might incidentally violate it in the course of doing whatever morally good act it supposedly prevents.
Do you contend that (6) capitalism is morally good? By and large, it improves the quality of people’s lives over time. However, most people engage in capitalism motivated by personal gain.
Therefore… If you agree with [6], do you still maintain that (7) entering into capitalism with the aim of personal gain is immoral, even though a large number of people doing it results in the morally good outcome described in [6]?
And if you say ‘no’ to [7], do you maintain (8) that [7] would be immoral if capitalism were illegal?
None of these questions make a lot of sense to me unless we first sort out what you mean by ‘morally good’: positively morally good or merely permissible? And I don’t think I would want to say anything like ‘capitalism’ could have a moral valance. Moral predicates attach, it seems to me, to people and their actions first and foremost. I suppose that’s up for debate.
That said and so far as I understand your terms, my answer to (6) is ‘no’, and (7) is ‘no’, and (8) is ‘no’
wait what? So you’re saying that capitalism isn’t morally good, but engaging in it with the aim of personal profit is? That seems to contradict everything you’ve been saying so far.
Unless of course you maintain that...
(and presumably not to abstract philosophies like capitalism)
How can you say that with a straight face after spending several days debating the morality of a law?
So far as I understand the terms (I’ve asked you to clarify them for me) ‘morally good’ and ‘morally bad’ are contraries, not contradictories. So it’s perfectly possible for something to be neither. I think capitalism, pursuing capitalism for personal gain, and outlawing capitalism are all morally neutral. In part, because these things are too far from the proper objects of moral predicates to earn them one way or the other.
Well, I think if you review my posts, you’ll find that I’ve never called CR law moral. I’ve called the violation of it under certain aims immoral. The violation is an action undertaken by an individual.
I’ve said that the polity and its laws have moral value, but I don’t think the predicate ‘morally good’ really applies to them. The difference being that the polity and its laws are a significant condition on the moral worth of our own actions and lives. I’m reluctant to call a polity morally good because it could only earn this predicate quite indirectly.
That’s just what I said: That the claim was absurd unless you maintain that the morality of abstract concepts is undefined.
You have, however, said that it is possible for a law to be immoral, in which case violating it with the aim of hastening its removal from the books is moral.
So… you’re saying that it’s possible for a law to be immoral, but not for a law to be moral? Or that a law may be moral, but the morality of things like capitalism is necessarily undefined?
I think, in an indirect sense, laws may be moral or immoral. I should think it unsurprising that I should be reluctant to say something so underdefined and general as ‘capitalism is immoral’. My claim is that a certain kind of action, namely one in which a law is knowingly violated for the sake of one’s own profit, is often immoral. The moral quality of the law violated may sometimes produce exceptions to this, but it does not simply follow that an immoral law may be violated with moral impunity.
That said, the case you were originally recommending falls well shy of this gray borderline. You were originally saying that it would be a failure of some kind not to violate the law for the sake of one’s convenience and profit in the case of acquiring books. Since you were explicit that the intention here was the pursuit of one’s self-interest and not the undermining of an immoral law (even if you took this to be a side effect), these finer points seem a little off the track.
If you think CR law is unjust then prescribe to people a plan to have it removed. The widespread violation of the law seems unlikely to do this: note that this tends to make laws more draconian, not less. The large scale public protest of internet communities and companies seems on the other hand to be extraordinarily effective and in the mean time is no kind of legal violation. If I were to audit someone’s time and computer memory, and find that they spent little or no time organizing such protests but had many thousands of dollars worth of illegally acquired CR protected content on their hard drive, I think I would fairly come to the conclusion that their behavior is motivated by nothing other than self-interest. And I don’t think it would be surprising or controversial to say that such a person is behaving immorally insofar as they are breaking the law in that pursuit.
To add to TheOtherDave’s reply, note policy debates should not appear one-sided.