In the event you learn the supplemental materials to which I hyperlink with the diligence I anticipate and require, pricey reader (tongue is firmly in cheek right here!), you should have learn this paper I referenced that examines proposed symmetry breakers between the modal ontological argument for the existence of god and the reverse modal ontological argument towards the existence of god. One of many symmetry breakers, and the response to it, jogged my memory of one thing F. A. Hayek stated when evaluating the idea of “social justice.”
The symmetry breaker in query is the deontic symmetry breaker, which offers with deontic properties. Deontic properties are properties associated to what must be the case, “properties of obligation and permission (e.g., rightness, wrongness, oughtness, etc.)”, that are distinct from evaluative properties that cope with “properties of value and disvalue (e.g., goodness, badness, etc.)” The deontic symmetry breaker goes as follows (with quotation eliminated):
God is outlined as a most excellent being. However a most excellent being must exist. So, God must exist. However what must be the case is presumably the case. Therefore, God presumably exists.
Due to this fact, in accordance with this proposed symmetry breaker, we’ve got motive to desire premise 1 of the modal ontological argument over premise 1 of the reverse modal ontological argument.
One objection to this comes from William Vallicella, who argues that deontic properties can’t sensibly be utilized to non-agential contexts. That’s, it doesn’t make sense to talk of what ought or ought not be the case in conditions that aren’t below the management of any agent:
As Vallicella places the concern, “every state of affairs that ought to be or ought not to be necessarily involves an agent with power sufficient to either bring about or prevent the state of affairs in question.” But when deontic properties are inapplicable to non-agential contexts, then it isn’t true that God must exist—there is no such thing as a agent with the ability to result in or forestall God’s existence, and so the context at hand is non-agential.
This notion of the inapplicability of deontic properties to non-agential contexts jogged my memory of Hayek’s criticism of social justice, an concept concept he maintained “does not belong to the category of error but to that of nonsense, like the term ‘a moral stone.’” To Hayek, the rationale “social justice” was nonsense is as a result of the outcomes of social processes are non-agential. There aren’t any brokers with enough data and energy to result in or forestall particular finish outcomes of social processes.
As Hayek put it in The Mirage of Social Justice, the second quantity of Legislation, Laws, and Liberty: “If we apply the terms to a state of affairs, they have meaning only in so far as we hold someone responsible for bringing it about or allowing it to come about…Since only situations which have been created by human will can be called just or unjust, the particulars of a spontaneous order cannot be just or unjust.” And the shortcoming of brokers to regulate the outcomes of social processes isn’t precisely an concept that’s solely held by these on the political proper – Friedrich Engels likewise stated “What each individual wills is obstructed by everyone else, and what emerges is something that no one willed.” So that you may be on the left, even the very far left, and nonetheless acknowledge that the outcomes of social processes are past anybody’s management.
To make use of an analogy, suppose there’s a father who intentionally favors a few of his youngsters over others. He intentionally showers his favored little one with love, consideration, and sources, whereas outright neglecting and ignoring his different youngsters. This, Hayek would say, is unjust, as a result of the outcomes skilled by the youngsters are fully agential. However the outcomes of huge and complex social processes are non-agential, and to talk of these outcomes as simply or unjust, as in the event that they have been analogous to the hypothetical father above, is nonsensical.
However not everybody shares Hayek’s take that the outcomes of social processes can’t be managed in a reliably agential means. Jeffrey Friedman wrote extensively of people that maintain to a “simple-society ontology” and who believed that sure actors (politicians, technocrats, and many others.) can reliably management social outcomes in a means that’s analogous to the hypothetical father’s capability to regulate the way in which he treats his personal youngsters. Thus, the extra one holds to a simple-society ontology, the extra doubtless they’re to embrace “social justice” and discover it a significant venture, as a result of they imagine social outcomes are in reality below dependable agential management. Friedman described how such folks expressed themselves in political polling knowledge:
Conversely, as Hibbing and Theiss-Morse present with focus-group and survey proof, disillusionment and anger can comply with from the notion that authorities is failing to behave. The authors’ offended, disillusioned respondents didn’t enable that inaction could be brought on by arguments about which actions will succeed or what their results could be, not to mention that such arguments could be justified. Quite the opposite: they appeared to agree that, as one put it, all it could take to resolve the extant issues is for the 2 events’ leaders to get collectively and say to one another, “There’s a problem. We won’t leave this room until it’s fixed.”…The respondents’ power dissatisfaction with elected officers was due, it could appear, to the conviction that the officers had unhealthy intentions, not insufficient data, such that they intentionally, willfully declined to resolve issues they knew tips on how to resolve.
These voters believed that “the reason social problems persist is that elected officials have ‘the ability but not the will to take care of the nation’s problems.’ The ability was, for them, the easy part, or so it seems; the hard part was the will.” However for those who suppose that politicians and technocrats haven’t solved social issues as a result of they merely don’t know the way to take action, then you definitely lose the power to meaningfully ascribe deontic properties. This doesn’t imply one can’t nonetheless ascribe evaluative properties to sure outcomes, and communicate of the goodness or badness of such outcomes. If a landslide that no person created and no person might have prevented wipes out a village tomorrow, I can ascribe evaluative properties to that occasion (“it’s a tragedy this happened”) although it is senseless to ascribe deontic properties to that occasion (“all those rocks and mud ought not to have overrun that village.”) However individuals who harbor a simple-society ontology can lose sight of the excellence between evaluative claims and deontic claims – main them to imagine that an consequence that’s evaluatively unhealthy is subsequently deontically unjust. However this can be a mistake, and we must always resist falling into it.
