A while back, I posted about a few different things that I think are true, with a request for people to contribute what might change my mind. Unfortunately, the answers I got were usually what I said I was not looking for. I was hoping to find recommended reading, where people point to books, essays, etc. making what they consider to be the best, perfect case for a counter-opinion, rather than simply pointing out a point they disagree with, followed by a three-sentence explanation. about why.
However, there is a consolation prize – one of the philosophers of the bleeding heart, Matt Zwolinski, recently and coincidentally. posted some thoughts criticize one of the ideas I listed – the thesis of moral equality. This is the idea that, as Zwolinski says, “if something is wrong for people to do, it is wrong for governments to do it.” Or, as Dan Moller says in his book Little Dominion“it should at least give us pause if we encourage social movements that emphasize a moral concept that we reject when we see each other face to face.”
Zwolinski raises two concerns about the moral equivalence thesis. First, the theory of moral equality has strong implications, in that it “implies that almost everything governments do – from criminalizing drugs to social welfare to taxation itself – is illegal.” It also has troubling implications for the issue of children – or at least it seems to have little help to suggest.
The second is to challenge the idea that we cannot “extend social morality to individual behavior.” That is, social behavior may be an emergent phenomenon, “which has a basis but is not reflected in the behavior that causes it.” If so, rules about how we should behave towards individuals, when we see each other face-to-face may be a very poor guide to understanding the rules governing social interaction on a larger scale. If social behavior is “a basic evolutionary phenomenon arising from our collective effort to solve the problems of social pursuit”, we cannot expect to answer those questions completely by referring to the interactions of individuals any more than you can find the ocean from the study of individual H2O molecules.
These are interesting thoughts, but I don’t find them effective in undermining the moral equality thesis. I will have one future post dedicated to each objection, and explain why Zwolinski’s concerns do not appeal to me. But to give a preview – I disagree with Zwolinski’s claim that the thesis of moral equality implies the illegitimacy of things like welfare systems. One can accept moral equality, and then conclude that tax and welfare systems are valid. My next post will provide an argument in favor of a welfare state that assumes the legitimacy of moral equality.
After that, I’ll follow up with another post talking about the objection that comes up, and why I don’t think it undermines moral equality.
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