I decided to move some discussion from this post up to the top level here. Specifically, Watoosh wrote: "Well, if violence is defined as initiation of force (which, of course, presupposes certain property rights), then I think Rockwell is correct..." Well, if we define cats as elephants, then many people keep elephants in their house. More seriously, firstly, violence is not usually defined that way. It's defined as, you know, violence, so that, say, someone may respond violently or non-violently to someone who aggresses against them. Otherwise, it would make no sense to say, for instance, "He punched me, but I did not stoop to violence in response." And, secondly, the libertarian usage of "initiation of force" is very offbeat. If I wander onto someone's meadow, most people would not say I had "initiated force" -- I mean, sure, I used "force" against the earth to push off walking, but that's not force directed against...
Yes, indeed. Speaking of Hobbes, Gene, I was thinking about you when I wrote this:
ReplyDeletehttp://econospeak.blogspot.com/2014/06/thomas-hobbes-call-your-office.html
Kevin, are you in Montreal this weekend?
ReplyDeleteNo. I'm an idiot: I didn't realize I now need a passport to go to Canada until a colleague informed me last week. There's no way I could get one in time. I was really looking forward to it: I have a paper arguing that Smith, pace received opinion, was not an ethical subjectivist; that, influenced by Hume but not persuaded, he put the old wine of a traditonal non-subjectivist ethics in a Humean sentimentalist bottle.
ReplyDeleteMy friend heard two people talking on the subway:
Delete1: You need a passport to go to Canada?!
2: Yes, they treat it as if it's a separate country.
David Hume was an ethical subjectivist? I think he was a meta-ethical non-cognitivist, but I don't know how this might imply subjectivism.
DeleteSamson: I should have been more careful here. In the paper, I use " subjectivist," perhaps solecistically, to mean either expressivist theories, or theories that make ethical truths just truths about what we approve. So I put Hume on the Euthypro side of the debate with Socrates.
ReplyDelete