User:Pluke/philosophy/Politics


 * Politics: How shall we live together?
 * Normative - how things should be
 * cupidity - greed for money or possessions

Hobbes - Social Contract
Civil science contains factual and normative components

Human nature leading to state of nature
Humans are not social by nature, they are for: This all leads to a state of nature
 * profit, glory, recognition, and self-preservation
 * FEAR of losing status, defensive or aggressive
 * Diffidemce, competition, glory
 * "The first foundation of natural Right is that each man can protect his life and limbs as much as he can"
 * the condition of man is a condition of warre of every one against every one. ... everyman has a right to everything, even to another's body.
 * laws of nature most conducive to our self preservation
 * self-preservation is morally right, therefore Laws of nature are moral laws.
 * 'Seek peace! (if others do)'

Social Contract

 * OBJECTION - Rousseau and Dawkins - state of nature is man being kind to one another
 * OBJECTION - Social contract assumes morality "For he that performeth first has no assurance the other will perform after, because the bonds of words are too weak"
 * COUNTER - King to reinforce it
 * OBJECTION - democracy

Political obligation
Even if the social contract is true and needed, why should we feel obliged to follow it or a monarch enforcing it? The idea must be that we follow laws because they are laws, not because they hold any truth value(?). It must explain how all or most people have political obligations

Consent theory

 * Express - with give an explicit indication of our agreement, e.g. oath of allegiance
 * But voting isn't enough as we have no right to disobey
 * Tacit - signal our intent by remaining silent or inactive, or using motorways and benefiting from the police (!!!!)
 * But when have we given our tacit consent to support governments
 * residency counts as tacit consent (Socrates, says we can move away), but can we leave?
 * Hypothetical - if we were given the choice we would have chosen to agree to the laws
 * We make no choice in agreeing to laws (lawn mowing example)
 * If hypothetical consent is correct and we would have given consent then fine (but such a level of omniscience eludes us)
 * Philosophical Anarchism - most citizens lack political obligation

Fair Play
Therefore, those who restrict their liberty are owed a right to similar submission by others who also benefit from the scheme; i.e., they are obligated to support and comply with the law.


 * 1) joint enterprize
 * 2) restricts your liberty
 * 3) similar submission from all who have benefitted
 * But does receipt of benefits justify obligation


 * Simmonds adds a clause: "The benefits received must have been voluntarily accepted."
 * there is a distinction between voluntary acceptance & consent. Ex: Jones and the well


 * PA example, music playing all day, expects you to take part in it:
 * One could still fail to endorse it; feel it as an imposition even while enjoying the benefits. In that case, for Simmons, we are not obligated, b/c we have not voluntarily accepted the benefits.


 * Public goods - consumption of one person doesn't leave less for others, unfeasible to prevent people accessing benefits
 * many feel that the prices required to pay for accepting public good are too high a price (military service etc.)

Natural duty of justice
“we are to comply with and to do our share in just institutions when they exist and apply to us”
 * Weak - institutions apply to me because I have grown up near them (any?!)
 * Strong - They apply to me because I have been involved with them, voluntarily or consented

otiose - serving no practical purpose

Distributive Justice

 * Nozick - rejects all fair play arguments
 * Simmons - voluntarily accepted benefits lead to fair play obligations. But majority of people haven't voluntarily accepted them
 * Arneson - fair play obligations acceptable for public goods

Equal Basic Liberties
similar system of liberty for all

Principle of fair equality of opportunity
offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity
 * Birth Order - first born are statistically more successful
 * Family and economic circumstances statistically taint your performance

The difference principle
The greatest benefit of the least advantaged. 4 ,50,100 OVER 3,100,150. Looking at primary goods and not happiness
 * Wealth gap an injustice - Yes Rawls - No Nozick

Veil of ignorance
We pick the least worst case situation. We don't deal with averages, even if other methods over average better outcome, we stick with the one that in its worst case does us least damage.
 * Two rules - one shot, of great importance, knowledge of probabilities is unknown

Distributive Justice II
Individuals have rights. Nozick claims that a free market protects those fundamental rights
 * Rawls’s critique of utilitarianism. Rights affirm ‘our separate existences’, and so take seriously the ‘existence of distinct individuals who are not resources for others’. example - a tool
 * Nozick - rights to body, mind, and income
 * Just acquisition

Lockean Provisio
Limits the harm of acquiring things: ‘A process normally giving to a permanent bequeathable property right in a previously unowned thing will not do so if the position of others no longer at liberty to use the thing is thereby worsened’ - example of water holes


 * Just transfer - From each as they choose, to each as they are chosen’.
 * Rectification - how to rectify past violations of above - One alternative: restore the counterfactual, i.e., restore the victim’s material welfare to the level she would have been had no past violations of rights occurred.

Fairness isn't important, it's all about people's rights

Wilt Chamberlain

 * 1) Initial State D1
 * 2) Wilt plays good basketball so moves to D2 with people paying money to see him
 * Fan's right to pay extra quarter to see Wilt
 * Wilt's right to sign a contract
 * Wilt's right to keep all the money that has been given him


 * OBJECTION - We must assume that we have absolute property rights over things that we come to own through voluntary transfer

Self Ownership and Holdings

 * 1) people own themselves and their natural assets
 * 2) people own whatever flows from what they own
 * 3) people's owning flow from their natural assets (royal lineage, bill gates)
 * Therefore people are entitled to their holdings

"Taxation is on par with forced labour"


 * OBJECTION - why is absolute control over holdings required to live a self-determining life?


 * OBJECTION - Can’t derive ‘forced labor’ argument from idea of self-ownership alone. Must also appeal to some conception of world-ownership and the Lockean proviso. We can self-own without needing external entities. Hair weaver creates a hairstyle.  Do they own the hair(?)