And in general, he didn’t seem to be saying about moral views.
Sorry, that’s missing a word: “he didn’t seem to be saying anything about moral views”. This was in reference to your earlier comment,
So you can have diversity of moral views, but not when those views would be relevant to the subject at hand? We couldn’t let morally icky views into discussions where they are relevant, though Friedman would still allow them to be employed where their icky moral views would not infringe on the topic they’re hired for.
in which you seemed to be saying that Friedman would be saying that we could sometimes reject people based on their moral views, and sometimes not. My response was that Friedman didn’t seem to be saying anything about rejecting or accepting people based on their moral views. He only said that people could be rejected if they held positions which the discipline they were being hired for had considered and rejected as clearly untrue, indicating that the people were actually incompetent for that discipline.
As for the empirical facts that I see in the quote, it seems to be implying that various policies have different consequences and that the observed empirical consequences of apartheid aren’t necessarily worse than those of the policy that South Africa actually ended up with, as measured on some generally accepted moral criteria (not being familiar with the arguments, I can’t say anything more specific than that).
The original faculty applicant under consideration was a “supporter of South African Apartheid.” He hasn’t committed to any fact that could be untrue, he has a preference. Most people would classify it as a moral (or immoral) preference.
For the empirical facts you see, you’ve projected a utilitarian viewpoint on the guy which he just may not have. But let’s even go with that. Aren’t judgments of whether apartheid is better or worse than other systems still moral judgments?
Looking back at the quote, Friedman is just so wrong about the Marxist. He’s saying that a Marxist would be an asset in a physics department but not an economics department. Wrong. I’m opposed to Marx and his theories, but given intellectual history, of course a Marxist would be an asset in an economics department.
(And yes, he didn’t literally say the Marxist wouldn’t be an asset, only that they didn’t “need” to hire him. But interpreted that way, the Marxist as asset versus Marxist not strictly needed is an apples to orange comparison with little point.)
Sorry, that’s missing a word: “he didn’t seem to be saying anything about moral views”. This was in reference to your earlier comment,
in which you seemed to be saying that Friedman would be saying that we could sometimes reject people based on their moral views, and sometimes not. My response was that Friedman didn’t seem to be saying anything about rejecting or accepting people based on their moral views. He only said that people could be rejected if they held positions which the discipline they were being hired for had considered and rejected as clearly untrue, indicating that the people were actually incompetent for that discipline.
As for the empirical facts that I see in the quote, it seems to be implying that various policies have different consequences and that the observed empirical consequences of apartheid aren’t necessarily worse than those of the policy that South Africa actually ended up with, as measured on some generally accepted moral criteria (not being familiar with the arguments, I can’t say anything more specific than that).
The original faculty applicant under consideration was a “supporter of South African Apartheid.” He hasn’t committed to any fact that could be untrue, he has a preference. Most people would classify it as a moral (or immoral) preference.
For the empirical facts you see, you’ve projected a utilitarian viewpoint on the guy which he just may not have. But let’s even go with that. Aren’t judgments of whether apartheid is better or worse than other systems still moral judgments?
Looking back at the quote, Friedman is just so wrong about the Marxist. He’s saying that a Marxist would be an asset in a physics department but not an economics department. Wrong. I’m opposed to Marx and his theories, but given intellectual history, of course a Marxist would be an asset in an economics department.
(And yes, he didn’t literally say the Marxist wouldn’t be an asset, only that they didn’t “need” to hire him. But interpreted that way, the Marxist as asset versus Marxist not strictly needed is an apples to orange comparison with little point.)