Michael Huemer’s book The Problem of Political Authority examines various arguments given in favor of establishing the existence of political authority, which he defines as a property containing two aspects:
(i) Political legitimacy: the right, on the part of a government, to make certain sorts of laws and enforce them by coercion against the members of its society – in short, the right to rule.
(ii) Political obligation: the obligation on the part of citizens to obey their government, even in circumstances in which one would not be obligated to obey similar commands issued by a nongovernmental agency.
Huemer spends several chapters examining the most popular arguments for establishing political authority and finds them all lacking. He does take care to point out that this, in itself, does not automatically lead to a conclusion that governments should be abolished:
If there is no authority, does it follow that we ought to abolish all governments? No. The absence of authority means, roughly, that individuals are not obligated to obey the law merely because it is the law and/or that agents of the state are not entitled to coerce others merely because they are agents of the state. There might still be good reasons to obey most laws, and agents of the state might still have adequate reasons for engaging in enough coercive action to maintain a state.
Huemer devotes two chapters to examining social contract theory as an argument for political authority – the first on traditional social contract theory as proposed by John Locke, and the second on more modern social contract theories based on the idea that a government could have hypothetically been arranged as a result of a social contract, and that real-world authority and obligations are created out of this hypothetical agreement.
Huemer pretty convincingly refutes both forms of social contract theory. Among his arguments is that all forms of the social contract argument (whether historical, implicit, or hypothetical) lack any of the features needed for a contract to generate valid agreement or obligations. For example, some people argue that by accepting government services, people are showing that they have implicitly consented to pay taxation as part of the social contract. Huemer argues that doesn’t work, because taking an action indicates consent to some scheme only if you could reasonably believe that had you not taken that action, the scheme would not be imposed upon you. Suppose I forcibly compel you to buy cookies I bake – one hundred dollars for a half-dozen cookies, every month. Let’s say that I later find out that you ate some of the cookies. It would be obviously absurd to say that you eating the cookies shows you had implicitly consented to the transaction, and it was therefore a valid agreement. You’d still have been forced to give me the hundred dollars regardless.
There’s one more issue I have with social contract theory that Huemer doesn’t describe. In order for a contract to be validly binding, it needs to be clear exactly what the contract contains. Yet even among social contract theorists, there is surprisingly little agreement here. They’ll all agree that a social contract exists, but wildly disagree about what that contract actually entails. People on the left and the right will both object that some law or institution “violates the social contract” but disagree about which laws or institutions do so, and what the violated terms are.
Note, this can’t be resolved by something as simple as pointing to the existing set of laws (or the Constitution, perhaps) and declaring that those laws are what represent the social contract. For one, if the social contract just means “whatever laws are currently on the books,” no social contract theorist would have any grounds to argue some existing law or institutional arrangement is in violation of the social contract. Given how frequently social contract theorists make this claim, it’s clear that the social contract is not the same thing as the existing set of legislation or legal institutions. Second, and more fundamentally, the social contract is itself supposed to be what provides an explanation for why the government has the authority to create legislation in the first place. So using existing legislation or legal institutions to try to demonstrate the existence or content of the social contract is question-begging. If existing legislation or state institutions are “the social contract” then it’s meaningless to say the social contract is what justifies existing legislation or state institutions.
In practice, much social contract theory discourse seems to be little more than different people equivocating over the term “social contract” to mean “whatever arrangements I, personally, happen to favor.” Now, maybe I’m wrong about that, but there is a way to test. If social contract theorists were attempting to work out what the contents of this unwritten social contract really are (rather than using it as a Trojan Horse to smuggle in their own policy views), we should frequently expect to see social contract theorists highlights aspects of what the social contract contains that they might dislike. Jason Brennan made a similar criticism of much of Constitutional legal theory, arguing that it tends to follow this process:
1. Start with a political philosophy–a view of what you want the government to be able to do and what you want to the government to to be forbidden from doing.
2. Take the Constitution as a given.
3. Reverse engineer a theory of constitutional interpretation such that it turns out–happily!–that the Constitution forbids what you want it to forbid and allows what you want it to allow.
When I read academic writing by constitutional legal theorists, it seems like basically everyone (conservatives, liberals, libertarians) does this. Isn’t that bizarre? For example, why don’t more libertarian legal theorists just say, “Yes, the Constitution allows X, even though X ought to be forbidden, and so to that extent, the Constitution is bad.” Why don’t we see more left-liberals saying, “A just society would allow X, but, alas, our Constitution forbids X and is to that extent a bad Constitution.” We do sometimes see this, but for the most part, people of every ideology tend to argue that the Constitution allows or forbids exactly what they would want it to allow or forbid.
In the same way, I can’t recall any social contract theorists arguing “the social contract unfortunately allows X which should be forbidden and it forbids arrangement Y which should be permitted.” It always seems that whatever the terms of this social contract are, it just so happens to contain the exact terms that are most conducive to the political ideology of the person arguing about the importance of upholding the social contract. Any real-world contract with contents so hopelessly indeterminate would never be validly binding. I see no reason why a hypothetical social contract would be either.
READER COMMENTS
nobody.really
Mar 28 2025 at 11:02am
Many people have proposed amendments to the US Constitution. Those would seem to be occasions when someone has explicitly concluded that the Constitution says something that they wish it didn’t, and was to that extend a bad Constitution.
steve
Mar 28 2025 at 11:33am
That’s a fair point but I think what Kevin describes is more the norm. People find ways to interpret the law to mean what they think it should mean. If you ever spend a lot of time around lawyers I think this applies to the law in general and not just the constitution. Also, my sense is that amendments are often suggested because they think that the current interpretations of the constitution are wrong and they want to make sure people see things their way.
Steve
Kevin Corcoran
Mar 28 2025 at 11:34am
Right, but what you said seems to be basically in agreement with what Brennan was saying in the quoted section, or at least it doesn’t contradict what he said. As you put it, there are “occasions” when we see that happening, just as Brenna allowed that “we do sometimes see this.” But the point is that this represents a very small total volume of the discussion – the vast majority of it takes the form of “here’s why this thing I want is Constitutional!” rather than “here’s why the Constitution should allow for this thing I want, even though it currently doesn’t!”
But, yes, there are exceptions. One that comes to mind is Alan Dershowitz. He is very much of the opinion that private citizens should not be able to have guns. But respectably, he’s been very clear that “widespread gun ownership is bad and socially destructive because XZY” are arguments that the Second Amendment should be repealed – and he has been very critical of his fellow left-wing thinkers who try to argue “widespread gun ownership is bad and socially destructive because XYZ, therefore the Second Amendment doesn’t protect the right to gun ownership.”
nobody.really
Mar 31 2025 at 3:39am
George Bernard Shaw, “The Living Pictures”, The Saturday Review, LXXIX (April 6, 1895), 443, reprinted in Our Theatres in the Nineties (1932). Vol. 1, at 79-86.
Roger McKinney
Mar 28 2025 at 11:31am
Interesting! I would add that Locke distorted the contract theory a little. Theologians at the University of Salamanca during the Reformation came to with the original. They said God gave the job of punishing criminals to everyone. But people decided it was too much of a burden and could be done better by specialists. So, they created the state and gave it that limited role. If it collected more in taxes than needed for that limited role, it committed theft.
The Biblical justification for government is Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not murder and prohibitions of kidnapping. But the Torah government had no state. It has God given civil laws and judges. The people enforced the judge’s decisions.
Most cultures prohib theft and murder. That’s the justification for government. It’s not a justification for a state.
robc
Mar 28 2025 at 3:33pm
The biblical justification for government is in 1 Samuel 8. And can be paraphrased as “I will give you what you want…good and hard.”
nobody.really
Mar 28 2025 at 2:28pm
Winston Churchill, Speech to the House of Commons (Nov. 11, 1947).
I like this “working hypothesis” philosophy. You don’t find social contract theory persuasive? Great; which theory do you find superior?
I’ve exchanged a few posts with Pierre Lemieux and Mactuol on this question. I argue that coercion, not freedom, is man’s natural state, and if we are to minimize it, we need specific interventions. You may find the theory of state wanting–but do you find it worse than the law of the jungle?
Here is the most recent exchange between Lemieux and Mactuol, which I think summarizes their views well:
Mactuol:
Pierre Lemieux:
I thank Mactuol for this stark statement of the challenge posed to liberal theory by this insider/outsider dynamic. It seems intuitive to me that people tend to divide themselves into groups that vaguely distingusih between insiders and outsiders–and that this dynamic likely has something to do with the emergence of states and a sense of when people will feel justified wielding collective force against others.
I find Lemieux’s response entirely appropriate, but also inadequate. Yes, we all acknowledge that people can wield force inappropriately. And because we struggle to identify the precise circumstances when force may be justified, and to create mechanisms to limit the use of force to those circumstancs, some people offer the conclusion that force is NEVER justified. I find this conclusion facile, because I believe it would revert to the law of the jungle. So I find myself attracted to some version of social contract theory–not because I fail to see its limitations (although I may), but mostly because I fail to see a superior alternative.
Kevin Corcoran
Mar 28 2025 at 3:33pm
Interesting as much of that content is, it all seems a bit orthogonal to the post. You seem to be using “social contract theory” and “democracy” as though they were related, but that’s not the case. In political philosophy, social contract theory is about what justifies a government in general – the specific type of government itself is a separate issue. You can believe democracy is the best available option – even the best possible option – while still rejecting social contract theory. Or you can be a social contract theorist but reject democracy. Hobbes, after all, was a social contract theorist but also a monarchist. On the other hand, Huemer rejects social contract theory, but he does allow that nonetheless government can still be justified. (He also agrees with you on the relative superiority of democracy to other forms of government, for what that’s worth, so stressing that point won’t break any new ground in that discussion.)
You say you believe that in the absence of some kind of government, the result would be “the law of the jungle.” Huemer would also agree that if in the absence of government society would collapse into a primitive state of constant warfare, then government would be justified. But “anarchy is untenable and government is necessary to prevent social collapse” does zero work in support of social contract theory – because those are just separate questions. Interesting questions, to be sure, but still separate. “Government is necessary to prevent social collapse, social contract theory justifies government, therefore social contract theory is true” is an invalid inference.
Huemer spends the second half of his book arguing that anarchism is tenable. I wasn’t persuaded by that part of his book, so I am not an anarchist. And I do think that democracy is probably the best available option, although I think its scope should be far more limited than it is currently. But I do think there is some need for caution in this statement:
I think this is a really bad way to think about things. Once upon a time, someone might have sincerely said the following:
Before the germ theory of disease, there were no superior alternatives to the miasma theory. But that by itself did not give a reason to think the miasma theory of disease was true. And someone who acted according to the miasma theory based on their sincere inability to envision a superior alternative would end up causing more harm than good – as doctors generally did, for quite a lot of human history. You don’t need to embrace a bad theory just because you can’t think of a better one. It’s not true that a bad explanation is better than no explanation at all. Particularly for a reason once outlined by Bastiat – “The worst thing than can happen to a good cause is, not to be skillfully attacked, but to be ineptly defended” holds true here too. If you convince people that social contract theory really is what justifies government, but it then turns out that the arguments in favor of social contract theory are just transparently terrible (as they in fact are), you may very well end up shooting yourself in the foot. If I was to think that the absence of government would lead to sufficiently terrible outcomes to render government necessary – and I do – the absolute last thing in the world I would want to do is try to use social contract theory to pitch that idea.
nobody.really
Mar 28 2025 at 5:11pm
Fair enough about democracy–and a good point about Hobbes; I hadn’t reflected on that.
Nevetheless, I began by quoting Churchill not to defend democracy, but to defend the idea of embracing the least bad theory you can find, rather than agnosticism, as your working hypothesis. This is a strategy defended by Francis Bacon (“Truth will sooner come out from error than from confusion”) and arguably by Thomas Kuhn (Structure of Scientific Revolution, 1962).
Indeed, Kuhn argues that there was nothing unscientific about many earlier, now abandoned, scientific theories. Rather, ALL scientific theories leave questions unresolved–which leaves opportunities for new developments and new scientific revolutions.
Imagine you lived in 1687, when Issac Newton published his Principia Mathematica, establishing a unified theory of physics. Would you have told people “Reject that nonsense! It’s imperfect! I’m confident a superior theory will come along in 300 years or so….”
When Albert Einstein published his theory of relativity, would you have made a similar claim? “Reject this nonsense! I bet quantum theory is just around the corner!”
And today, do you urge engineers to refrain from making any calculations, lest some new phyical theory arise? Or would you encourage them to make their calculations using the best available theory currently at hand–yes, even facing the threat that the theories will later be shown the be incomplete or wrong, and that, with the benefit of hindsight, we will see that their work led people to assume more risk than they understood at the time?
This is one of the weaknesses I find in libertarianism: In a drive to avoid responsiblity for imperfect action, people embrace perfect inaction. I suspect 100% of human action is imperfect action–yet somehow we’re at the top of the food chain. Go figure.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays, First Series (1841), “Self-Reliance”
George Patton, War As I Knew It (1947)
(When was the last time you saw Emerson and Patton quoted for the same proposition?)
Kevin Corcoran
Mar 28 2025 at 5:23pm
There’s a key difference between some of the examples you cite above, such as Newtonian physics and the advancements made down that line, and the case I was talking about. My objection to social contract theory isn’t that it’s merely “imperfect.” I agree all theories humans come up with will always be imperfect – that’s the best we can hope for given that we’re half a chromosome away from being chimpanzees. (At least, according to evolutionary theory!)
But Newtonian physics, while imperfect, was still a good theory, in that it explained far more than it left unexplained, and it enabled people to make accurate predictions about (almost!) everything they could observe. The miasma theory of disease, by contrast, was not merely an “imperfect” theory that still explained a fair amount and helped make decently accurate predictions. The miasma theory left people actively misinformed and letting it guide ones decision-making led to more harm than good. Hence why I didn’t say you shouldn’t embrace an imperfect theory because you can’t think of a better one. I said you shouldn’t embrace a bad theory just because you can’t think of a better one. Those are very different statements. Newtonian physics was an imperfect but good theory. The miasma theory of disease was a bad theory.
If your claim is that its better to believe a really good theory that repeatedly makes strong, testable predictions consistently and accurately even if it’s imperfect than to reject it in favor of epistemic nihilism – well, sure, I agree with that. But that doesn’t bear on what I was saying. My point was that it’s better to suspend judgment than let your decisions be guided by a bad theory that actively misinforms someone and makes their decision making worse, like the miasma theory. I take social contract theory to be far more analogous to the miasma theory of disease – wrong to the degree it actively misinforms – than it is like Newtonian theories of physics – informative and useful though still imperfect.
nobody.really
Mar 28 2025 at 6:31pm
1: Great; so you don’t like social contract theory. Whataya got instead?
2: As you ascend the steps to the lecturn on January 6, 2021, you realize that the crowd before you intends to storm the Capitol and perhaps hang Mike Pence. Moreover, you see that your kids are enthusiastic participants in this crowd. What do you say to that crowd?
Kevin Corcoran
Mar 28 2025 at 9:08pm
It’s still not clear to me why I need to have something else. To shift away from politics and into a different domain for a moment – consider morality. I do not know the correct moral theory. I don’t think anyone else does either. All moral theories (that I know of, anyway) have strong objections and devastating counter examples. Nonetheless, I still have moral beliefs. Now, suppose I take the bold moral stance that “we ought not torture children for fun.” And let’s say I find someone else who agrees with me, and tells me they derive that belief from Moral Theory X. I tell them that while I share that specific belief, I reject Moral Theory X, because the arguments for it are unpersuasive and commit a number of elementary logical fallacies, and the theory itself doesn’t actually explain anything we’re interested in explaining, and it also has a number of patently absurd and obviously false implications. If they then replied “Great, so you don’t like Moral Theory X. Whatcha got instead?” I’d be perfectly fine not needing to offer some Alternative Moral Theory. I’m perfectly happy to carry on believing we ought not torture babies for fun while declining to offer some alternative theory.
Once upon a time, people believed that bad crops were caused by witches doing mischief and that this required witches be hunted down and punished. If some skeptical person suggested the Witchcraft Theory was a bad explanation for crop failures and that maybe we shouldn’t respond by burning ladies at the stake, I’m sure some other people would have objected with “Okay then how do you explain sudden crop failures? Whatcha got instead? Sure there may be weaknesses with the ‘burn women alive for witchcraft theory’ but I fail to see a superior alternative.’”
I’d probably say something like “don’t do that.”
Less cheekily, I suppose what you’re trying to go for here is that one should stress to these people the importance of the social contract, a key component of which is respecting the outcomes of elections and the peaceful transfer of power they bring. But, deprived of social contract theory, what is one to do then?
But I don’t see how this move would help you. By and large*, the people making up that crowd for that dreadful event were people who very much believed in social contract theory. Their whole bit wasn’t that there was no social contract. Their (factually incorrect and deluded) belief was that the election was being stolen, and that it was the other side that was breaking the social contract through the deep state and election fraud etc etc, and they were the ones defending the social contract by trying to prevent a fraudulent election. On the factual matter of whether the election was in fact fraudulent and stolen, you and I are on the same page. But on the theoretical level of the social contract, those people were more in your camp than mine.
*Insert standard disclaimer that at least some participants were probably mentally ill or politically indifferent but just wanted to engage in chaos, etc.
nobody.really
Mar 29 2025 at 1:16am
It’s great to be agnostic if you think nothing’s at stake. The point of the two questions is to raise the idea that there might be something at stake.
I regard the January 6 riot not as evidence for or against social contract theory, but as evidence of a general deterioration of social cohesion.
I don’t regard political theories as true or false per se; I regard them as more or less persuasive. I suspect more persuasive theories tend to promote social cohesion. I suspect less persuasive theories are less likely to promote social cohesion. And I suspect having no theory at all is the most likely to lead to nihilism.
Thomas Jefferson wrote some really great stuff in the Declaration of Independence. Did he mean it? Hard to say; after all, he continued to own slaves. But the point is that he wrote as if HE ACTUALLY BELIEVED THERE WAS SOMETHING AT STAKE. This was not just an intellectual exercise for him. Jefferson seemed like a pretty smart guy, and I suspect smart people can always harbor doubts. But he did not write as if he did.
So you gaze out over the mob, including your kids. WOULD YOU PERCEIVE THAT THERE WAS SOMETHING AT STAKE? If so, would that perception prompt you to try to say something beyond, “Gosh, I hope you don’t try to storm the Capitol and kill the Vice President–although, to be honest, I have no basis for my views; it’s just a personal preference, like my preference for vanilla ice cream”?
I believe in human falibility–and thus, pleading agnosticism will almost always provide the best cover against the accusation of having said something wrong. So now the mob marches off to the Capitol with your kids skipping merrily along. If the primary thought in your mind is, “Wow, I hope no one will be able to accuse me of having said something that require me to post a retraction,” then I won’t fault you for your posture; it would be a rational response given what you perceive to be at stake.
Kevin Corcoran
Mar 29 2025 at 7:32am
This isn’t clear to me, at least not as a general statement. In the witch burning example, it seems to me that agnosticism about the cause of crop failures would clearly be the better move, despite the fact that when crops failed there was indeed something very important at stake. (Pun not intended) “Oh sure, it’s great that you’re agnostic about what’s causing these crop failures, but let me remind you that something is at stake! Now are you going to help us burn these women at the stake? Or are you going to let your drive to avoid any imperfect action lead you to perfect inaction??”
Fair enough, but for my money, social contract theory is by far the least persuasive. Hence my earlier comment – “If you convince people that social contract theory really is what justifies government, but it then turns out that the arguments in favor of social contract theory are just transparently terrible (as they in fact are), you may very well end up shooting yourself in the foot.” While no particular theory of political authority is persuasive, social contract theory is among the worst in that respect. Theories rooted in consequentialism, for example, are far, far less bad (and much closer to being persuasive) than social contract theory. Here’s how Michael Huemer briefly describes consequentialist theories of political authority in his book:
This line of thinking commits far fewer blatant errors and is far less disconnected from reality than social contract theory, and it also holds much more explanatory power over what we are actually interesting in explaining, unlike social contract theory. And it has far fewer absurd implications as well.
Again, it’s not clear why. I don’t hold a particular theory of political authority, yet I am not nihilistic in this regard. And as already mentioned, I don’t subscribe to any particular moral theory either, but that doesn’t make me a moral nihilist either. On the contrary, I’m very much a moral realist. Nor am I at all unusual in either respect. In Haidt’s book The Righteous Mind (which I recall you referencing many times so I’m assuming you’ve read it), he shows psychological research with abundant evidence that conservatives often fail to outline much of a moral theory to explain various moral beliefs – yet this did not have lead to them abandoning their moral beliefs and embracing nihilism. Quite the contrary, in fact. Do you have any particular line of evidence to support your suspicion, or are you resting it entirely on what you, personally, happen to suspect?
This seems like an odd thing to come around to. Again, as mentioned above, I do not subscribe to a particular moral theory, yet I believe torturing children for fun is objectively morally wrong. It seems strange to suggest that therefore in my mind not torturing children is “just a personal preference, like my preference for vanilla ice cream.” (For the record, I always preferred licorice ice cream.) It seems like you’re setting up a dichotomy where any position someone holds either must be derived from some theory, no matter how bad the theory is, no matter how weak the arguments for the theory are, and no matter how many absurd things the theory implies, or that position has “no basis” and is “just a personal preference” no more substantial that one’s own favorite kind of ice cream. But…that’s just obviously not the case. So the whole framework you’re setting up here just doesn’t seem to hold any force, as far as I can see.
nobody.really
Mar 30 2025 at 4:47am
Thanks for these responses. These discussions help me understand your views a bit better—and helps me understand MY OWN views a LOT better
1: Regarding the quest for the least bad theory of state—
At last we’re making progress! So when addressing the mob before the January 6 riot, would you be motivated to speak about the beneficial consequences of using legal processes to pursue their ends, and the harmful consequences of pursuing vigilante justice?
2: Regarding a mob’s drive to burn witches for the crop failure—I’m reminded of Herman Melville’s novella Billy Budd. Member of the British navy Billy Budd is provoked into striking a superior officer, who then dies. This happened while the British were under threat from the French navy and there had been a rash of mutinies within the British navy. Mutinies could result in the deaths of officers and those loyal to them, the loss of ships, and often the eventual executions/imprisonments/ floggings/deportations of the mutineers and those accused (rightly or not) of collaborating with them. All the other officers are sympathetic to the well-liked Budd. But Captain Vere knows that his own crew is on the verge of mutiny and believes that a failure to enforce naval discipline uniformly would be perceived as a show of arbitrary favoritism, perhaps sparking a rebellion. Thus, the officers vote to enforce the rule requiring Budd’s execution. Budd understands the tragic circumstances they all face, and goes to his death saying “God Bless Captain Vere!”
Moral: Maintaining social cohesion may require sacrifice, including the death of the innocent—but loss of social cohesion may result in even greater death and destruction. True, Vere could have chosen to keep his conscience clean by pardoning Budd, even if this invited a mutiny. But Vere (and Budd) thought the stakes posed by the threat of mutiny (and the looming threat of France) justified a different course of action, even if this entailed Vere’s complicity in the death of an innocent man.
Perhaps we could call this reasoning “consequentialist”?
If a mob were planning to kill someone they think is a witch who caused crop failure—without more—I would feel free to oppose this plan, reminding them that weather and disease are basically random events. Recall how we had a really good harvest last year? Did it occur to you to thank this alleged witch for causing that result—or at least for not preventing it? No—because you don’t actually believe that she has such powers. You’re just frustrated and looking for someone to blame—and there just isn’t anyone to blame.
But imagine I knew that all these farmers were persuaded that there must be a cause—and their primary thesis was that God was angry with each of them and wanted them to kill themselves and their families. Now imagine a minority view arose that the problem was actually just one witch’s evilness. In that context, I might feel greater reluctance to trying to shut down that point of view—because the primary consequence I would fear would be wholesale family slaughter.
In these games of truth and consequences, I don’t regard truth is the most salient variable; I embrace consequentialism. See Victor Frankel’s Man’s Search for Meaning (1946) (on helping prisoners in Nazi death camps maintain the will to live—even if this means supporting their delusional ambitions for the future).
3: Having views unsupported by theory—
Hm. Moral realism doesn’t qualify as a moral theory? I hadn’t considered that distinction before.
Hm again. First, I recalled Haidt making this claim about liberals rather than conservatives. More significantly, I had understood Haidt’s claim to imply that people DO have something that prompts their moral decisions, but that they are not conscious of it or (especially in the case of Western liberals) actively try to deny it because it conflicts with their self-concept. I had imagined that the development of moral theories often entails trying to articulate and justify this thing that guilds our judgments.
And here I reflect on Haidt’s statement from Righteous Mind, p. 5: “[T]hinking about moral issues (such as whether abortion is wrong) seemed different from thinking about other kinds of questions (such as where to go to dinner tonight) because of the much greater need to provide reasons justifying your moral judgments to other people.” [Emphasis added.] Admittedly, this statement reflected Haidt’s views before beginning grad school, so perhaps the reader is supposed to understand that his evolved view abandoned this perspective.
I surmise that “moral realism” entails having moral views, but skipping that whole “articulate and justify” thang? You have articulated views about torturing kids, and about ice cream, and feel no need to justify either. And maybe this is one of the lessons of Haidt’s thesis that I had not adequately digested: that efforts to rationalize moral judgments are futile; there is no THERE there. That is not a perspective I had really considered before.
You summarize my thoughts well.
I sense you feel a distinction between your views of child torture and your views of ice cream, and regard this distinction as obvious. But how would a person who does not embrace moral realism observe this obvious distinction? Specifically, I raised these issues in the context of persuasion: Prompting people (such as the January 6 rioters) to change their behavior or point of view. I had imagined a rational appeal arguing that rioting would violate some theory. If we jettison theory, is there a way to make a direct appeal to moral realism? (“What you are planning to do is objectively WRONG. I know it in my gut, and you know it in yours!”)
Does moral realism rely on visceral reaction? I could imagine trying to discourage people from torturing kids by encouraging them to identify with the child viscerally—no theory required. Yet when Hayek identifies the three sources of human values, he acknowledges that tribalism will provide the most viscerally rewarding source of values—yet he encourages us to resist this appeal. Likewise, in Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis questions why people regard homosexual sex as so immoral. He acknowledges that the idea triggers a kind of visceral disgust, but he argued that this was a poor guide for making moral judgments. I suspect most people would have a visceral aversion to open-heart surgery. Etc, etc. All this causes me to doubt that visceral reactions provide a reliable guide to values.
You’ve given me a lot to mull over–even if it’s far afield from social contract theory!
Kevin Corcoran
Mar 30 2025 at 8:12am
Just a relatively few quick points of clarification on some issues (with relatively little in the way of full on responses, because, as you correctly note, this has all gone rather far afield!)
In the abstract, I suppose so, although I suppose in the more literal situation an angry mob would not be likely to be conducive to that kind of discussion. Honestly I doubt I’d have much of anything I could say in that situation – being a rousing public speaker to energetic mobs is not really in my skill set.
Yes, one can create thought experiments were the only options available are “bad” and “even worse,” with the consequences of the “even worse” being sufficiently terrible to justify (or even require?) taking the “bad” action. There are many thought experiments where I’m willing to bite the “bad” bullet. But I’m more cautious about the real world implications. One can create thought experiments regarding free speech where I might be willing to bite the “bad” bullet in favor of censorship, but I still find myself favoring free speech in the real world as a Schelling fence for real world policy, because opening the door leads to everyone wanting to restrict speech insisting their favored restriction meets that criteria and the end result would be even worse than permitting those hypothetical restrictions. A similar situation – suppose that you’re a prison guard and you know a prisoner is innocent, but an angry mob, convince of his guilt, storms the prison and demands you turn him over for a lynching, and if you refuse to do so there will be a riot causing massive property damage and loss of innocent life. Maybe consequentialism says turn him over? Or maybe consequentialism says don’t do so, because establishing that people can seize prisoners for summary execution by threatening to riot will lead to even worse consequences in the long run.
Moral realism is a metaethical theory, not a moral theory. Metaethics doesn’t examine what is right (or wrong) – metaethics examines what right (or wrong) is. In the opening lines of Ethical Intuitionism (highly recommended!), Michael Huemer describes the distinction as such:
Moral realism is a metaethical theory, one that addresses the nature of right and wrong, good and bad, etc. This is distinct from a moral or ethical theory – those are theories that try to explain why some action is right or wrong, or good or bad. For example, a deontologist, a divine command theorist, and consequentialist walk into a bar and all three of them agree that murder is objectively wrong. Thus, they all agree on the metaethical question. But they disagree in terms of moral theory – that is, they disagree about why the act of murder is wrong, or what makes the act of murder wrong. The deontologist says it’s wrong because it violates rights, the divine command theorist says it’s wrong because it is contrary to God’s will, and the consequentialist says it’s wrong because it produces bad consequences.
This is also why, contrary to popular belief, one can be a consequentialist and a moral realist. It depends on how you answer the question of what makes the consequences of something good. For example, you talk about how various actions might be justified to maintain social cohesion and prevent social collapse. We can call that consequentialist theory. But there’s still the metaethical question of whether maintaining social cohesion and a thriving flourishing society has the property of being good or desirable, etc? Plugging that into how Huemer puts it,
Regarding Haidt,
What Haidt showed was cases of moral dumbfounding – getting people to explain why they disapproved of something in thought experiments carefully designed to neutralize all common answers given. Liberal students, upon discovering their theory of right and wrong couldn’t explain why they judged an action wrong ended up abandoning the moral belief and concluding the action was not really wrong or bad. Conservative students, on the other hand, continued to hold to their moral beliefs even when their theoretical explanations couldn’t explain what made it bad or wrong.
No. Again, I’d recommend reading Huemer’s book Ethical Intuitionism – his explanation will be far more thorough than my summary could possibly hope to be.
Kevin Corcoran
Mar 30 2025 at 10:57am
Here I am already coming back with another comment even after saying my last one would be, well, my last one, but I remembered another book I recently read you might find worth checking out that would also illustrate some of what I’m taking about via moral realism and moral theory. The book is called Answering Moral Skepticism by Shelly Kagen. Kagen describes a hypothetical disagreement he might have with a pacifist about the use of violence in self-defense:
Moral realism, which Kagen defends in this book, is a metaethical question rather than a matter of moral theory. But there was one other point he makes that also seemed relevant to our earlier discussion:
Similarly, you seemed to indicate that for a belief (political? moral? any and all?) to be reasonably justified and legitimately held, it must have a certain feature F, that is, “derived from a theoretical inference.” But that leaves me untroubled because there are all kinds of ways for knowledge and beliefs (in all the above domains) to be obtained and justified other than through a theoretical inference. Theoretical inference is one way, of course, to obtain or justify beliefs, but it is hardly The One And Only True Method of doing so such that any belief or idea not derived from this One And Only True Method is immediately categorized as a personal preference with no basis. (There is also the question of how one justifies the belief that “derived from theoretical inference” is in fact the only thing that separates justified beliefs from insubstantial personal preferences. Is that belief, itself, only justifiable through a theoretical inference, and if not justified that way is it therefore an insubstantial personal preference like ice cream flavors? If not, the belief is self-defeating. If yes, the belief becomes question-begging.) Thus I can cheerfully concede that many of my beliefs lack F (they were not derived through a theoretical inference), but carry on untroubled.
nobody.really
Mar 30 2025 at 3:51pm
This is just consequentialism again. You haven’t described a situation in which you would reject picking “bad” consequences over “even worse.” You’re just describing situations in which you reject the “even worse” consequences–albeit consequences that accrue over a longer horizon.
I’m reminded of Into the Woods’ “Last Midnight,” when everyone is facing imminent death from a rampaging giant argry that the boy Jack had killed her husband:
WITCH: Nothing we can do. [Well,] not exactly true:
We could always give her the boy.
[But] no, of course what really matters
Is the blame, someone you can blame.
Fine, if that’s the thing you enjoy–
Placing the blame–
If that’s the aim,
Give me the blame. Just give me the boy.
OTHERS: No! No!
WITCH: No.
You’re so nice.
You’re not good. You’re not bad. You’re just nice.
I’m not good. I’m not nice. I’m just right.
I’m the Witch….
David Seltzer
Mar 28 2025 at 6:44pm
Kevin: I think the term Ambiguity in the title is key. By definition, ambiguity means inexact and open to more than one interpretation. From a social contract perspective, politics is the search for what every individual wants. The non-contractarian view, a “good” transcends individuals and politics becomes a search for it. Like one searching for truth in science. In the complex world of myriad subjective preferences, who determines what that “good” is. A dictator? Or 60 percent of voters? Or unanimous agreement from citizens.
Mactoul
Mar 29 2025 at 6:55am
Failure of social contract theories to provide satisfaction is irrelevant to the question of general legitimacy of the State.
States exist so the only question could be of legitimacy of particular states.
State is an irreducible — to derive it from individuals is futile.
Liberal theories deny too the role of armed might of a people in holding a particular territory as a possession. Individuals don’t do that individually, only a group is capable.
So, instead of a contract between individuals, we start with a group of individuals holding a territory.
But these individuals are not just any random individuals. They already agree regarding the law. There were no people without the law. In this sense, the State is irreducible.
So, liberal theories start with sovereign individuals with their properties coming together and pooling their sovereignty.
But it is possible to deny the sovereign individual. It is the group bound with the law– that is sovereign and the private property is logically subsequent.
Jon Murphy
Mar 30 2025 at 10:06am
You claim that the state is “irreducible,” but your entire thesis depends on individuals existing before the State. You imply so several times in your post.
Mactoul
Mar 30 2025 at 11:01pm
I stated specifically that there are no people without the law. In this sense the State, which is the nexus of laws and customs of a people, has always been.
Even a random group of men is apt to get itself rule-bound and get politically organized.
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