Version Of Libertarianism Research Articles

Libertarianism in disguise

Abstract This paper argues that the position on free will which is defended in ‘Freedom: An Impossible Reality’ is not, as Tallis claims, a compatibilist view, but actually a version of libertarianism. While endorsing many aspects of that libertarian view itself, the paper raises questions about how one of the central arguments for Tallis’s view is supposed to work, and queries whether it really follows from the fact that we need to stand apart from nature in a certain sense, in order to develop the kind of abstract knowledge that is constituted by the body of scientific law, that our own actions are not mere manifestations of what Tallis calls the ‘habits of nature’. It is also suggested that while a strong case can be made for many varieties of human exceptionalism, Tallis’s view of animal behaviour may be too simple and that there are examples of animal agency which cannot be explained merely by the associative learning which appears to be the highest grade of animal cognition that Tallis countenances.

Libertarianism and Conjoined Twins

This paper presents a new challenge for libertarianism. (Or rather: for any version of libertarianism committed to absolute, indefeasible self-ownership rights). The problem, in a nutshell, is that libertarianism appears to self-destruct in cases where conjoined twins—who share body parts—disagree over what to do with them. The problem is explored, and some solutions are proposed. The verdict is that accepting any of them will make libertarianism harder to defend.

Saving Eternity (and Divine Foreknowledge and Free Will): A Reply to Hasker

William Hasker and I disagree over whether or not appealing to a particular understanding of divine eternity can reconcile divine foreknowledge with libertarian human freedom. Hasker argues that if God had foreknowledge of a particular future choice, that choice cannot be free with libertarian freedom. I hold, to the contrary, that, given a certain theory of time—the view that all times exist equally—it is possible to reconcile divine foreknowledge with libertarian freedom. In a recent article, “Can Eternity be Saved? A Comment on Stump and Rogers”, Hasker makes it clear that one of the fundamental disagreements between us lies in what each of us takes to be required for libertarian free will. In the present paper I outline the version of libertarianism that I find plausible, then explain how a libertarian free choice can be foreknown by God. (I call my approach “Anselmian”, in that it is based on my interpretation of the work of St. Anselm of Canterbury.) Then I will explain why Hasker finds this reconciliation unacceptable since it fails to do justice to what he takes to be required for libertarian freedom. Finally, I will argue that Hasker is wrong to insist upon his analysis of free will.

Libertarianism: A Fifty-Year Personal Retrospective

Abstract This retrospective, covering half a century, is a personal history of modern libertarianism. It provides some historical perspective on the growth of libertarianism and its impact on society, especially for those who were born into an existing libertarian movement, including political and academic paths. As outsiders, Austrians and libertarians can expect more than their share of difficult times and roadblocks, although that situation has improved over time. It also shows the limitations of the political path to liberty and the importance of the Austrian view that society changes via emphasis on sound economic science, its practicality, and its subsequent impact on ideology. Finally, it conveys the importance of solving practical problems and puzzles via the thin, radical version of libertarianism.

The Silicon Doctrine

This article explores and theorises what is here termed the Silicon Doctrine (SD), that is the legal ideology underpinning the libertarian version of the digital economy promoted (among others) by Facebook, Uber, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google. The first part of the text explores the Silicon Doctrine’s Frankensteinian ideological roots. The second part of the text scrutinises three dimensions of the Silicon Doctrine: 1) data extraction; 2) domination of the informational infrastructure; and 3) labour exploitation. This article examines the social contract proposed by Silicon Valley, evaluating its two-sided role as a disruptive breakout from the twentieth century social model, and as a continuation of the neoliberal shock doctrine.

Libertarian Volition and the Problem of Luck

The most important difference between contemporary compatibilist and libertarian theories is not the difference in their positions regarding the truth of the thesis of physical determinism, but their different approaches to the causal role of agents. According to libertarians, volitional acts performed by agents constitute a specific type of causes, which are not themselves caused by other causes. In this respect, event-causal libertarianism is similar to the agent-causal libertarianism, because it insists that in performing a volitional act an agent can choose one of the alternative outcomes without being caused to do so by anything else, where ‘anything else’ includes all the facts about the past and the present. Since event-causal libertarians maintain that volitional acts and the causal role of agents can be explained naturalistically, they must solve the problem of luck, i.e., they must explain how an agent is able to control her choices, given that she can choose one way or another without there being any difference in her state immediately preceding the moment of choice. This problem arises not from the indeterminism per se, but from the way it is coupled with the causal role of agents.In section one, I consider the historical development of compatibilist views on physical determinism and indeterminism. In section two, I present an overview of conditional analyses of alternative possibilities. In section three, I analyze the reasons why libertarians reject any type of conditional analysis, and show that intuitive objections against physical determinism, which portrait it as an obstacle to freedom, are untenable. In section four, I consider the consequence argument and show how it is related to the libertarian condition of sourcehood. In the final section, I analyze the problem of luck and show that it inevitably arises for any version of libertarianism. I demonstrate that indeterminism is a problem for libertarians, although they need it. And it is not a problem for compatibilists, who, while they do not need it, can incorporate it in their theories without facing the problem of luck.

Shades of Libertarianism: A Choice-Theoretic Approach

Why do libertarians disagree? This paper applies the conventional choice theory to answer this question. It is argued that differences among various versions of libertarianism can be conveniently summarized as differences in answers to the following three questions: What are political goods? What is their relative importance? What combinations of political goods are feasible? Based on the answers to these questions, various versions of libertarianism are defined and differences among them are clarified with the help of formal representation. In particular, it is shown that deontological and consequentialist libertarianism are in general mutually compatible, although their particular forms need not be. It is also argued that willingness to sacrifice liberty for other goods does not necessarily imply logical inconsistency. On the general level, the aim of this paper is to show that a simple formal analysis can help to resolve some debates in political philosophy.

Freedom and Self-Creation: Anselmian Libertarianism by Katherin A. Rogers

Reviewed by: Freedom and Self-Creation: Anselmian Libertarianism by Katherin A. Rogers Eileen Sweeney Freedom and Self-Creation: Anselmian Libertarianism. By Katherin A. Rogers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Pp. 248. $74.00 (cloth). ISBN: 978-0-19-874397-2. Katherin Rogers is no stranger to the topic of Anselm and his account of free choice. Her previous book Anselm on Freedom (Oxford University Press, 2008) was dedicated to an exposition of Anselm’s account of the will. While the earlier book did bring Anselm’s view into dialogue with some contemporary arguments and positions, its main focus was Anselm as an historical figure and understanding his views. The present book takes an “Anselmian” position, one grounded in Anselm’s original arguments but that is Rogers’s own, stated in contemporary terms and in response to contemporary debates. She calls it “Anselmian” so as to make explicit its historical roots, its presuppositions, and its entailments. Importantly, Rogers wants to recognize and use, rather than sweep under the rug, “Anselm’s own theist perspective” (3). This is important because it makes explicit the way Anselm’s views are connected to his theism. Rogers points out that all the positions on free will—libertarian, compatibilist, and determinist—have their own grounding intuitions and presuppositions, analogous to Anselm’s theism, and that those need to be outed so that the discussion is as complete as possible. “Intuitions” grounding those views “may be,” as she puts it, “significantly colored by their background worldview” (6). This is true not just for Anselm and other theists but also for thinkers like Daniel Dennett, who frames the questions of whether and what sort of free will we have around the question, “Why do we want free will?” A theist and an Epicurean will answer that question differently. The point is that as philosophers puzzle over narrowly drawn questions, they are motivated by but not transparent about the intuitions that drive them toward defending or critiquing a position on a more minor issue. Further, Rogers argues that since so many arguments about free choice use the conceit of a “controller,” it is simply clearer and easier to use the notion of an omnipotent, omniscient God performing this function [End Page 614] rather than an imagined figure, and thus to make the point incompatibilists like to make more effectively. (Rogers does not argue that elaborate sci-fi creations about mad-scientist controllers are distractions from the issue we actually care about, but she might have.) Rogers also makes the important point that contemporary discussions tend to blur the distinction between “Should we hold you responsible?” and “Are you responsible?” If there is no way your responsibility can be truly assessed, then the questions become elided. Bringing in God as “an ideal observer” can help distinguish these questions: while we may not be able to know, God could. It is important as a way of pointing out (though Rogers does not quite put it this way) that what we really want to know is, are we responsible? And I take it she wants to try to answer that question instead of just moving to the pragmatic question. The book is divided into two basic parts: chapters 1 through 4 explain the basic elements of the Anselmian view, and chapters 5 through 8 defend the Anselmian view from contemporary objections to libertarianism. Rogers defends the Anselmian view against the objections Alfred Mele makes against “internalism,” views that “[focus] on the structure of the immediate choice” (33). She argues that the Anselmian view succeeds against this kind of criticism better than Robert Kane’s version of libertarianism. She takes on Harry Frankfurt’s compatibilism, which attempts to show that we can be responsible even without being able (ultimately) to choose otherwise. She devotes two chapters to what she calls the “luck” problem of libertarianism. If the agent’s choice is undetermined when he might have chosen otherwise and nothing in his past or character dictates that choice, then it seems the choice is a matter of luck. David Hume makes this sort of argument, though Rogers responds to Mele, Peter van Inwagen, and those who have made and criticized libertarian...

The American Revolution Rebooted: Hamilton and Genre in Contemporary Culture

Hamilton: An Musical, while distinctive, is fairly representative of recent cultural productions representing the founding era, fitting the three main characteristics of what this article labels American Revolution rebooted. First, patriotism is assumed of the protagonists, usually heterosexual white men; second, patriotism consists of supporting a personal, libertarian version of freedom; and third, consensus is achieved by the violent expulsion of others.

O’Connor’s argument for indeterminism

Timothy O’Connor has recently defended a version of libertarianism that has significant advantages over similar accounts. One of these is an argument that secures indeterminism on the basis of an argument that shows how causal determinism threatens agency in virtue of the nature of the causal relation involved in free acts. In this paper, I argue that while it does turn out that free acts are not causally determined on O’Connor’s view, this fact is merely stipulative and the argument that he presents for this conclusion begs the question.

Free Will as the Implied Negation of Our Conscious Physical Actions

In this paper, I have explained free will (classical libertarian version) as the implied negation of our conscious physical actions (routine actions). What we come across is liberty, which is purposive. The existence of free will, if possible, can only be traced in those states where our consciousness is in least connection with external world (eg. dreams or above). The spontaneity and absurdity of free will ensures that it will never accompany any purposive action. I have pointed out that it is important to proceed in the inverted direction (from determining free will in mind, to non-moral and then to moral conditions), rather than taking it for granted in morality. I have also tried to give an explanation for the illusion of free will during moral conditions. The major principles which I have used during this conversation are Anomalous Monism (Donald Davidson), Benjamin Libet’s ‘Half-second short delay’, Decision-making theories of Antonio Damasio and Daniel Dennett, Patricia Churchland’s notion of ‘Self-control’, Frankfurt’s ‘Theory of the Hierarchy of desires’ and occasional references to Freud’s and Jung’s psychoanalytic concepts, and Advaita Vedanta’s ‘states of consciousness’, etc.

Libertarian Preferences: A Comment on Callahan and Block

This paper argues that the version of libertarianism represented by Rothbard and Block is characterized by a specific preference structure which does not allow for substitutability between libertarian justice and other goods. I hypothesize that this preference structure is motivated by an attempt to build a logically consistent system; however, the preference structure describing Rothbard-Block libertarianism is but one of many possible logically consistent preference structures. It is therefore possible to reject this version of libertarianism without accepting logical inconsistency.

Are We Agents at All? Helen Steward's Agency Incompatibilism

ABSTRACT In A Metaphysics for Freedom (Steward, Helen. A Metaphysics for Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) and related papers, Helen Steward advances a new argument for incompatibilism. Though she concedes that the luck objection is persuasive with regard to existing versions of libertarianism, she claims that agency itself is incompatible with determinism: we are only agents at all if we are able to settle matters concerning our movements, where settling something requires that prior to our settling it lacked sufficient conditions. She argues that genuine agents settle very fine-grained aspects of their movements: when and how they move, even when and how their neurons fire. In this paper, I advance two linked arguments against agency incompatibilism. I argue, first, that we do not exercise direct control over the fine-grained aspects of our movements. Rather, we control these movements indirectly, by intentionally engaging in broadly individuated action types (regarding which Steward concedes that the compatibilist has a plausible story to tell). Second, I argue that these aspects of our movements are lucky for us and, since this is true, they cannot play the role of grounding our agency.

Libertarianism and the Justice of a Basic Income

Whether justice requires, or even permits, a basic income depends on two issues: 1. Does justice permit taxation to generate revenues for distribution to others? 2. If so, does justice require, or even permit, equal and unconditional distribution for some portion of the tax revenues? I claim the following: 1. although all forms of libertarianism reject the nonconsensual taxation of labor and the products of labor, all but radical right-libertarianism allow a kind of wealth taxation for rights over natural resources, and 2. some versions of libertarianism allow the equal and unconditional distribution of such revenues and some do not.

BIENES CONSTITUCIONALES: EL OBJETIVO DE LA TEORÍA CONSTITUCIONAL

Constitutional Goods de Alan Brudner es un documentado estudio de teoría constitucional que aspira a elaborar el modelo de constitución ideal para el liberalismo político capaz de suscitar la adhesión de las diversas escuelas y tradiciones filosófico-políticas que debaten a propósito del sentido de la razón pública en las democracias constitucionales o los principios básicos que deberían de inspirar la acción de sus gobiernos. Brudner intenta elaborar un modelo de razón pública que suscite un consenso convergente de esas escuelas (liberalismo clásico, igualitarismo, formas liberales del comunitarismo, etcétera), esto es, un tipo de consenso al que, a diferencia del consenso superpuesto de Rawls, se llega a partir de los propios compromisos filosóficos, con lo que no se obliga a velarlos al momento de su elaboración. Para ello mostrará, en un ejercicio de ref inada dialéctica, como las versiones extremas del liberalismo clásico, del igualitarismo o del comunitarismo degeneran en teorías políticas tendencialmente despóticas e incongruentes con sus propios postulados fundamentales. Por ese motivo, todas esas teorías deberían de terminar convergiendo en un modelo de constitución inclusiva elaborada sintéticamente a partir de sus elementos más valiosos. El texto que sigue corresponde al capítulo introductorio de la obra y en él se dan detalles del método de criba de los principios ideales del liberalismo político, de las distintas teorías llamadas a participar en la construcción de la constitución liberal ideal y de otros aspectos relevantes del conjunto de la obra.

Robert Nozick, Libertarian?

We set out a variety of material from Nozick’s work after -Anarchy, State, and Utopia- that tends to show that, despite his protestations of fidelity to libertarianism in-Invariances- and interviews before his death, his thought took directions inconsistent with the version of libertarianism in that book, in which only negative rights (or the ‘ethic of respect’ as he called it later) can be coercively enforced by the State. We explore one interpretive possibility, taking a second look at a footnote in ASU that acknowledges a moral permission to violate the ethic of respect under circumstances of ‘catastrophic moral horror.’

Aquinas & Sartre: On Freedom, Personal Identity, and the Possibility of Happiness (review)

Reviewed by: Aquinas & Sartre: On Freedom, Personal Identity, and the Possibility of Happiness Eileen C. Sweeney Stephen Wang. Aquinas & Sartre: On Freedom, Personal Identity, and the Possibility of Happiness. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009. Pp. xxv + 298. Cloth, $79.95. This well-written volume consists of paired chapters on human being, understanding, freedom, and happiness on Aquinas and Sartre. Stephen Wang's project is to use Sartre to reveal the more "radical" aspects of Aquinas's thought and to use Aquinas to "unlock the meaning" of Sartre's more radical claims (xiii). There is a great deal that is fresh and illuminating in this rapprochement between two thinkers most would not join together. Because the aim is to bring the thinkers into conversation, Wang avoids any temptation merely to repeat their technical language. Overall, his account is helpful as a counter to distorted readings of Aquinas that overemphasize the determination of human ends and actions by nature, as well as his intellectualism and realism. Similarly countered are extreme readings of Sartre as an irrationalist and radical voluntarist. In the account of understanding, Wang points out that Sartre eschews both idealism and realism, arguing that, on the one hand, "consciousness adds nothing to being" but, on the other, it "reveals what is there through negation" (113). Aquinas occupies similar ground, Wang contends, holding that reason can observe the present reality in a number of different ways, not just one (211). The will decides which of the many ways something might be considered or ignored, choosing what to attend to. For both Aquinas and Sartre, then, what we know is prompted by human concerns and purposes. In the account of freedom, Wang rightly resists the conclusion that for Aquinas, scope for freedom is created only by our lack of knowledge (that we simply do not know which path is the best) combined with the imperfection of any of the goods we choose, arguing for a more substantive freedom. However, it is hard to equate even this more libertarian version of Aquinas's position with Sartrian anguish at human existence undetermined by essence. Sartre would surely not accept Aquinas's claim that the will would be determined to choose the universal, perfect good, retaining only the option to will nothing at all (Summa Theologiae IaIIae, q.10, a.2). The point at which the connection between Aquinas and Sartre becomes the most tenuous is in the discussion of happiness. While it is crucially true for both Aquinas and Sartre that true and complete human happiness cannot be found within the bounds of human life, Wang emphasizes this common ground to the detriment of the diametrically opposed conclusions they reach about what this means. Wang nudges Sartre toward Aquinas in two ways on the topic of happiness. First he argues that the freedom Sartre asserts is impossible without postulating some sort of transcendent goal (268); and further, he suggests a friendly [End Page 130] amendment to Sartre's claim that "we have an existential goal that cannot actually exist" to "we have an existential goal without understanding how it can exist" (269). What one must affirm about this amendment is that it pushes Aquinas towards the second formulation as well, over and against the all-too-common claim that for Aquinas we do understand how it exists. However, Wang tends to take the darkness out of Sartre's view. While we can say, with Aquinas, that the "human world only makes sense if there is something beyond the totality of the world," we have to admit that Sartre tried to think exactly the world as not making sense. And to howl in protest at its absurdity. Thus, Sartre's "philosophical melodrama" (42) is absolutely essential to him. Focusing on the common ground between Aquinas and Sartre tends to take the drama out of Sartre and produce anodyne claims to which they and many others could assent, e.g. that we are in time "choosing to become through free acts what we are not by nature" (57) and that "we are free to act because we are free to understand the world in different ways" (151). In this sense, the project...

Farewell to the luck (and Mind) argument

In this paper I seek to defend libertarianism about free will and moral responsibility against two well-known arguments: the luck argument and the Mind argument. Both of these arguments purport to show that indeterminism is incompatible with the degree of control necessary for free will and moral responsibility. I begin the discussion by elaborating these arguments, clarifying important features of my preferred version of libertarianism—features that will be central to an adequate response to the arguments—and showing why a strategy of reconciliation (often referred to as “deliberative libertarianism”) will not work. I then consider four formulations of the luck argument and find them all wanting. This discussion will place us in a favorable position to understand why the Mind argument also fails.

The truth in compatibilism and the truth of libertarianism

The paper offers the outlines of a response to the often-made suggestion that it is impossible to see how indeterminism could possibly provide us with anything that we might want in the way of freedom, anything that could really amount to control, as opposed merely to an openness in the flow of reality that would constitute the injection of chance, or randomness, into the unfolding of the processes which underlie our activity. It is suggested that the best first move for the libertarian is to make a number of important concessions to the compatibilist. It should be conceded, in particular, that certain sorts of alternative possibilities are neither truly available to real, worldly agents nor required in order that those agents act freely; and it should be admitted also that it is the compatibilist who tends to give the most plausible sorts of analyses of many of the ‘can’ and ‘could have’ statements which seem to need to be assertible of those agents we regard as free. But these concessions do not bring compatibilism itself in their wake. The most promising version of libertarianism, it is argued, is based on the idea that agency itself (and not merely some special instances of it which we might designate with the honorific appellation ‘free’) is inconsistent with determinism. This version of libertarianism, it is claimed, can avoid the objection that indeterminism is as difficult to square with true agential control as determinism can sometimes seem to be.

Restoring the Right Constitution?

After years of relative neglect, the past few decades have witnessed a dramatic renewal of interest in the natural law tradition within philosophical circles. This natural law renaissance, however, has yet to bear much fruit within American constitutional discourse, especially among commentators on the left. In light of its low profile within contemporary constitutional debates, an effort to formulate a natural law constitutionalism is almost by definition an event worthy of sustained attention. In Restoring the Lost Constitution, Randy Barnett draws heavily upon a natural law theory of constitutional legitimacy to argue in favor of a radically libertarian reading of the Constitution. Barnett's important book, and the substantial commentary it has generated, may well help to generate interest in natural law constitutionalism. Unfortunately, his libertarian emphasis on unfettered rights of property and contract is likely to reinforce the notion that natural law theorizing is an activity best left to those on the rightmost end of the political spectrum. It would be a mistake, however, to understand Barnett's libertarian version of natural law constitutional theory as exhausting the possibilities of the tradition. Although Barnett's theory of constitutional legitimacy is infused with language drawn from the broader natural law framework, his natural rights theory, as he calls it, actually departs in significant ways from the classical natural law tradition. Moreover, there are substantial reasons to favor a version of natural law with implications for state power that are far more progressive than Barnett's. Nor does Barnett establish, as he attempts to do, that the Constitution itself somehow locks us into a commitment to his libertarian, natural rights version of natural law theory. Indeed, without changing much in Barnett's account, it is possible to convert his theory from one that supports the conservative goal of limiting the power of government, restricting it to the narrow task of facilitating or preserving property and contract rights, into one that justifies a far more progressive view.