





Alabama Philosophical Society 2002 Presidential Address:

Why Does Justice Have Good Consequences?

Roderick T. Long

Auburn University

Delivered at the APS meeting in Orange Beach

26 October 2002



1. The Problem Stated



Today I'm hoping to make you puzzled about a problem that has puzzled me on and off over the years. Misery loves company, I suppose -- though the problem doesn't actually puzzle me at the moment, because at the moment I think I've got a solution to it. But I've thought this before, and found myself deceived; so I'm not breaking out the champagne just yet.



The problem is this: why does justice have good consequences?



By "justice" I mean the moral system of rights, or more precisely, the virtue concerned with respecting such rights. By "good consequences" I mean not optimal consequences, nor exceptionlessly good consequences, but at least a reliable tendency to produce good consequences, both for oneself and for others. More precisely, to say that justice has good consequences is to say that a policy of respecting people’s rights will ordinarily promote, or at least not require great sacrifices of, the well-being of three groups: those whose rights are being respected, those doing the respecting, and third parties.



The question is: why should this be so?



There are two simple answers to this question. If either of them were true, there would be no puzzle. But I don't think either of them is true.





2. The No-Such-Explanandum Solution



Why does justice have good consequences? One simple answer would be: it doesn't. When Socrates refused to act unjustly, he annoyed his neighbours and got himself killed. Hence his commitment to justice apparently brought little benefit either to himself or to others. Think, too, of Rawls' famous characterisation of justice:

Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust. Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override. For this reason justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others. It does not allow that the sacrifices imposed on a few are outweighed by the larger sum of advantages enjoyed by many. Therefore in a just society the liberties of equal citizenship are taken as settled; the rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests. … These propositions seem to express our intuitive conviction of the primacy of justice. 1

Whatever I choose, I choose either as a consumer's good (a first-order good) or as a producer's good (a higher-order good). Utilitarianism of any sort regards morality as a producer's good, a means of producing happiness; but indirect utilitarianism maintains, in effect, that the most effective way to promote happiness is to treat morality as if it were a consumer’s good, even though it isn’t one. But is it really possible to adopt the attitude that indirect utilitarianism recommends? When I choose morality "as if" it were a consumer's good, either it really becomes a consumer's good for me, or else it remains a producer’s good and I am only pretending. There is no third possibility.



Suppose it does become a consumer's good for me. In that case, I am no longer a consistent utilitarian, since in my actions I reveal a preference for morality as an end in itself. [Utilitarians sometimes recommend] treating a principle as inherently binding at the everyday level while recognizing its contingency on utilitarian outcomes at the reflective level …. but doesn’t this just amount to advising us to form inconsistent preferences? And if the preferences on which I ordinarily act do treat morality as a consumer's good, in what sense can it be said that I really regard it as a producer's good? On the other hand, suppose that morality remains a producer's good for me. [E]very action embodies a means-end scheme … [E]ven when I choose to act morally, my choice commits me to rejecting morality in counterfactual situations … where immorality would be a more effective means to the end, and this commitment is a blot on my character now. (Hence the Kantian insistence on the importance of maxims rather than actions.)



It has often been claimed that indirect utilitarianism is unstable, and must collapse either into direct utilitarianism on the one hand or into "rules fetishism" on the other. This can be interpreted as a psychological claim about the likely results of trying to maintain a utilitarian attitude, in which case its truth or falsity is an empirical matter. By transposing the familiar stability objection into a praxeological key, however, what I’ve been trying to show is that indirect utilitarianism is not just causally but conceptually unstable. If I treat morality as a consumer's good, I must reject utilitarianism on pain of inconsistency; if I treat morality as a producer's good, I thereby exhibit a moral character or disposition that utilitarian considerations themselves condemn. But I must treat morality in one way or the other; hence utilitarianism is praxeologically self-defeating. The praxeologist cannot be a direct utilitarian, since praxeological reasoning itself shows us that the utilitarian’s goal depends on social cooperation, which in turn requires the kind of stable and consistent commitment to principles that a direct utilitarian cannot have. Nor can the praxeologist be an indirect utilitarian, since praxeological considerations force a choice between treating morality as a producer's good (in which case we're back with direct utilitarianism) and treating it as a consumer's good (in which case utilitarianism prescribes its own rejection). We may have utilitarian reasons for adopting moral commitments, but once we have adopted them, we can no longer regard them as resting on purely utilitarian foundations -- because so regarding them would alter their status as commitments. 4

principium essendi of X: that in virtue of which X is so.



principium cognoscendi of X: that in virtue of which X may be recognised as being so.

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metaphysical counterfactual: What if it were actually the case that p?



epistemic counterfactual: What if I were to come to believe that p?

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The thesis that wrongness is (identical with) contrariety to a loving God’s commands must be metaphysically necessary if it is true. That is, it cannot be false in any possible world if it is true in the actual world. For if it were false in some possible world, then wrongness would be non-identical with contrariety to God's commands in the actual world as well, by the transitivity of identity, just as Matthew and Levi must be non-identical in all worlds if they are non-identical in any. … If it is necessary that ethical wrongness is contrariety to a loving God's commands, it follows that no actions would be ethically wrong if there were not a loving God. This consequence will seem (at least initially) implausible to many, but I will try to dispel as much as I can of the air of paradox. It should be emphasized, first of all, that my theory does not imply what would ordinarily be meant by saying that no actions are ethically wrong if there is no loving God. If there is no loving God, then the theological part of my theory is false; but … in that case ethical wrongness is the property with which it is identified by the best remaining alternative theory. 8

I. Ethical wrongness = contrariety to the commands of a loving God.



II. Ethical wrongness exists.



III. A loving God exists.



IV. If (III) were false, then (I) would be true and (II) would be false.



V. If (III) is false, then (I) is false and (II) is true.

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1. Conduct X has good consequences.

2. Conduct X expresses respect for persons.

3. Having good consequences is a principium essendi of justice.

4. Expressing respect for persons is a principium cognoscendi of justice.

5. Conduct X is just.

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1. Conduct X expresses respect for persons.

2. Conduct X has good consequences.

3. Expressing respect for persons is a principium essendi of justice.

4. Having good consequences is a principium cognoscendi of justice.

5. Conduct X is just.

[T]he equality that Locke and Jefferson speak of is equality in authority: the prohibition of any "subordination or subjection" of one person to another. Since any interference by A with B's liberty constitutes a subordination or subjection of B to A, the right to liberty follows straightforwardly from the equality of "power and jurisdiction." ...



[S]ocioeconomic equality and legal equality both fall short of the radicalism of Lockean equality. For neither of those forms of equality calls into question the authority of those who administer the legal system; such administrators are merely required to ensure equality, of the relevant sort, among those administered. Thus socioeconomic equality, despite the bold claims of its adherents, does no more to challenge the existing power structure than does legal equality. Both forms of equality call upon that power structure to do certain things; but in so doing, they both assume, and indeed require, an inequality in authority between those who administer the legal framework and everybody else.



The libertarian version of equality is not circumscribed in this way. [E]quality in authority entails denying to the legal system’s administrators – and thus to the legal system itself – any powers beyond those possessed by private citizens …. Lockean equality involves not merely equality before legislators, judges, and police, but, far more crucially, equality with legislators, judges, and police. …



The case against socioeconomically egalitarian legislation is … an egalitarian one; for such legislation invariably involves the coercive subordination or subjection of dissenting individuals to the taxes and regulations imposed by government decision makers, and thus presupposes an inequality in authority between the former and the latter.



Nor would an anarchistic version of socialism fare any better; as long as some people are imposing redistributive policies by force or threat of force on unconsenting others, we have inequality in authority between the coercers and the coerced, regardless of whether those doing the coercing are public citizens or private individuals, and regardless of whether they represent a majority or a minority. Nor would a Hobbesian jungle, where anyone is free to impose her will on anyone else, embody equality in authority; for as soon as one person does succeed in subordinating another, an inequality in authority emerges.



The Hobbesian jungle might represent equal opportunity for authority, but in this context the libertarian favors equality of outcome. (That, incidentally, is why the right to liberty is inalienable.) Only defensive uses of force are justified, since these restore equality in authority rather than violating it. By the same token, an idealized democracy in which every citizen had an equal chance to get into a position of political power would also represent only equal opportunity for authority, not equality of outcome, and so would likewise offend against Lockean equality. To a libertarian, the saying "anyone can grow up to become president," if it were true, would have the same cheery ring as "anyone might be the next person to assault you." 10

[A]ll propositions of economic theory refer to things which are defined in terms of human attitudes toward them .... I am not certain that the behaviorists in the social sciences are quite aware of how much of the traditional approach they would have to abandon if they wanted to be consistent or that they would want to adhere to it consistently if they were aware of this. It would, for instance, imply that propositions of the theory of money would have to refer exclusively to, say, "round disks of metal, bearing a certain stamp," or some similarly defined physical object or group of objects. 12



That the objects of economic activity cannot be defined in objective terms but only with reference to a human purpose goes without saying. Neither a "commodity" or an "economic good," nor "food" or "money," can be defined in physical terms .... Economic theory has nothing to say about the little round disks of metal as which an objective or materialist view might try to define money. ... Nor could we distinguish in physical terms whether two men barter or exchange or whether they are playing some game or performing some ritual. Unless we can understand what the acting people mean by their actions any attempt to explain them, that is, to subsume them under rules ... is bound to fail. 13



Take such things as tools, medicine, weapons, words, sentences, communications, and acts of production -- or any one particular instance of these. I believe these to be fair samples of the kind of objects of human activity which constantly occur in the social sciences. It is easily seen that all these concepts (and the same is true of more concrete instances) refer not to some objective properties possessed by the things, or which the observer can find out about them, but to views which some other person holds about the things. These objects cannot even be defined in physical terms, because there is no single physical property which any one member of a class must possess. These concepts are not merely abstractions of the kind we use in all physical sciences; they abstract from all the physical properties of the things themselves. ... [W]e do not even consciously or explicitly know which are the various physical properties of which an object would have to possess at least one to be a member of a class. The situation may be described schematically by saying that we know the objects a, b, c,..., which may be physically completely dissimilar and which we can never exhaustively enumerate, are objects of the same kind because the attitude of X toward them all is similar. But the fact that X's attitude toward them is similar can again be defined only by saying that he will react toward them by any one of the actions a, b, g ,..., which again may be physically dissimilar and which we will not be able to enumerate exhaustively, but which we just know to "mean" the same thing. ...



As long as I move among my own kind of people, it is probably the physical properties of a bank note or a revolver from which I conclude that they are money or a weapon to the person holding them. When I see a savage holding cowrie shells or a long, thin tube, the physical properties of the thing will probably tell me nothing. But the observations which suggest to me that the cowrie shells are money to him and the blowpipe a weapon will throw much light on the object -- much more light than these same observations could possibly give if I were not familiar with the concept of money or a weapon. In recognizing the things as such, I begin to understand the people’s behavior. I am able to fit [the object] into a scheme of actions which "make sense" just because I have come to regard it not as a thing with certain physical properties but as the kind of thing which fits into the pattern of my own purposive action. ...



[A]s we go from interpreting the actions of men very much like ourselves to men who live in a very different environment, it is the most concrete concepts which first lose their usefulness for interpreting the people’s actions and the most general or abstract which remain helpful longest. My knowledge of the everyday things around me, of the particular ways in which we express ideas or emotions, will be of little use in interpreting the behavior of the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego. But my understanding of what I mean by a means to an end, by food or a weapon, a word or a sign, and probably even an exchange or a gift, will still be useful and even essential in my attempt to understand what they do. ...



From the fact that whenever we interpret human action as in any sense purposive or meaningful ... we have to define both the objects of human activity and the different kinds of action themselves, not in physical terms but in terms of the opinions or intentions of the acting persons, there follow some very important consequences; namely, nothing less than that we can, from the concepts of the objects, analytically conclude something about what the actions will be. If we define an object in terms of a person’s attitude toward it, it follows, of course, that the definition of the object implies a statement about the attitude of the person toward the thing. When we say that a person possesses food or money, or that he utters a word, we imply that he knows that the first can be eaten, that the second can be used to buy something with, and that the third can be understood -- and perhaps many other things. 14



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