What Can Change My Mind?

Here, I invite EconLog readers to try to change my mind!

Let me begin with the proverbial clearing of the throat for what we all know is the age-old difficulty of changing one’s mind. Doing so is often very difficult, and people are reluctant to change their minds. And we are all biased to believe that we are all more open-minded than we really are. That said, I do I think I’m better than most at being willing to change my mind, even on the most important issues with major life implications. Two examples – for a significant part of my life, I was a devout and religious Christian. But now I don’t believe in God, because I faced a variety of arguments that I found convincing and thus I changed my mind on this matter. (This makes me skeptical when people say things like “it’s pointless to argue about religion, no one ever changes their mind,” because I I certainly did, and I know many others who have, for the same reasons as mine.) Second, I used to eat so much heavy meat that I was very close to people who adhere to the so-called “carnivore diet. ” today. But I read Michael Huemer and Bryan Caplan’s debate about vegetarianism, and I stopped eating meat that day, because I found Huemer’s arguments much stronger and more convincing than Caplan’s. I had no problem abandoning my long-held religious beliefs or fundamentally changing my diet and lifestyle when I encountered persuasive arguments that contradicted my views at the time.

So, here are a few things that I believe to be true, which I think, are so controversial that a number of readers would argue against them. Now, I’m not asking you to try to judge the issue in the comments here – there’s only so much one can do in a blog post or comment. Instead, if you disagree with my take on something, what you would hold to be the best, strongest, most convincing account of the opposite point of view – a debate that you personally would like to close? Depending on what comes up, I’ll pick one and read it, and I might turn my reaction into one of my more in-depth posts.

With that section out of the way, here are a few ideas I have in mind.

1. Moral truth – the idea that there are definite moral truths about right and wrong, regardless of what anyone thinks. That is, if Nazi Germany had won WWII and gone on to conquer the world, and all subsequent generations were raised to believe that the Holocaust was a great thing, it would still be possible that the Holocaust was wrong. Although this is not an unpopular opinion of mine (practical behavior is the majority look among philosophers, after all, there is still enough disagreement to make it worth exploring. If you are morally inclined, what book or article or story do you think is the best?
2. There is nothing morally special about the state. By this I am not saying that the action of the state will never be justified. What I am saying is that there is nothing that justifies coercion by the state that does not justify the coercion of a person. If the situation does not justify the coercion of the individual, it does not justify the coercion of the state either. Again, this does not mean that the fixed state action is the empty set – because the fixed individual coercion is also not the empty set. But the two sets are equal, at least it seems to me. Additionally, I reject that Jason Brennan phone calls the “special immunity thesis” in favor of the “moral equality thesis.” That is, the actions of the state must be evaluated by the same moral standards as any other person or organization, and can be justifiably challenged on the same basis. If you disagree and believe that the justification of coercion does not depend on the circumstances giving rise to the justification but instead WHO compelling, what argument do you know that supports this? Or if you believe that agents of the state enjoy special moral immunity against opposition when they act improperly, which argument do you think makes the strongest case for this?
3. Equality of outcome has no intrinsic value. Although there may be significant benefits to equity of outcome, the benefits are only practical. Of course, just being “profitable” doesn’t mean something is irrelevant. But still, the balance of the result is not important in itself. Imagine a country with extreme, crippling, equal poverty, and another country where no one suffers from any poverty but some live better than others. A person who believes in the intrinsic value of equal outcomes may still accept that the second world is better general – they may allow the intrinsic value of equal outcomes to be exceeded by the useful value of poverty alleviation. But they still have to argue that there is at least one some idea where the first world is better, even if the second is better overall. To me, there is no sense that the first world is better – the equality of misery and suffering does not create good because of its equality. But if you think there is real, intrinsic value in equal outcomes, what’s the best argument you can point me to?
4. There is no coherent concept of collective decisions or preferences. That is, phrases such as “we as a society have decided” that this is also a misleading summary, and at worst it does not hold together. There is no sound sense in which individual decisions can be aggregated into a general social decision, or individual preferences somehow amount to meaningful social preferences. But maybe you disagree, and believe that there is some deep objective sense of social preferences. If so, tell me who makes the strongest argument for that case and where I can find it.

I’ll leave it at these four for now, but if this proves fruitful I may try this method again. Commenters, relax!