Compatibilism and servitude

Suppose determinism and compatibilism are true. Imagine that a clever alien crafted a human embryo and the conditions on earth so as to produce a human, Alice, who would end up living in ways that served the alien’s purposes, but whose decisions to serve the alien had the right kind of connection with higher-order desires, reasons, decision-making faculties, etc. so that a compatibilist would count them as right. Would Alice's decisions be free?

The answer depends on whether we include among the compatibilist conditions on freedom the condition that the agent’s actions are not intentionally determined by another agent. If we include that condition, then Alice is not free. But it is my impression that defenders of compatibilism these days (e.g., Mele) have been inclining towards not requiring such a non-determination-by-another-agent condition. So I will take it that there is no such condition, and Alice is free.

If this is right, then, given determinism and compatibilism, it would be in principle possible to produce a group of people who would economically function just like slaves, but who would be fully free. Their higher-order desires, purposes and values would be chosen through processes that the compatibilist takes to be free, but these desires, purposes and values would leave them freely giving all of their waking hours to producing phones for a mega-corporation in exchange for a bare minimum of sustenance, and with no possibility of choosing otherwise.

That's not freedom. I conclude, of course, that compatibilism is false.

Two kinds of moral relativism

A moral relativist has a fundamental choice whether to define moral concepts in terms of moral beliefs or non-doxastic moral attitudes such as disapproval.

In my previous post, I argued that defining moral concepts in terms of moral beliefs leads is logically unacceptable.

I now want to suggest that neither option is really very appealing. Consider first this case:

1. Bob believes he ought to turn Carl in for being a runaway slave. But his emotions and attitudes do not match that belief. He hides Carl and feels morally good about hiding Carl despite his belief. (Bob may or may not be like Huck Finn.)

A relativist who defines morality in terms of beliefs, has to say that Bob is doing wrong in hiding Carl. That seems mistaken. It seems that mere belief is less important than actual attitudes. Thus, if something is to define morality for Bob, it is his attitudes, not his mere beliefs.

So far, we have support for a relativist’s defining moral concepts in terms of non-doxastic moral attitudes. But now consider:

2. Alice thinks of herself as a progressive, and thinks that racism is wrong. Nonetheless, her moral attitudes do not evince genuine disapproval of racist behavior, say when she is with friends who tell racist jokes.

If we define right and wrong in terms of non-doxastic moral attitudes, then our implicit biases unacceptably affect what is morally right and wrong, so that racist behavior turns out to be permissible for Alice, her beliefs to the contrary notwithstanding.

So, neither approach is satisfactory.

Slavery, forced marriage and unjust laws

Slavery is the ownership of one person by another. Since a person no more owns another than a thief owns the purloined goods, there has never been any slavery. But of course there have been institutions thought to be slavery: institutions in which a person was thought to be the property of another. These were not institutions of slavery in the above strict sense but forms of unjust imprisonment, kidnapping, etc.

This seems to be merely a point about words, and a mistaken one at that. “Of course, Alexander II ended serfdom in Russia while Lincoln ended slavery in the US. Words mean what they are used to mean, and to dispute historical claims like these is to be like the fusty grammarian who claims that ‘It’s me’ is bad English.”

I agree that the question of words is unimportant. But here is what is important. Institutions are defined in large part by their norms. It is a defining feature of the norms of slavery (and, with some differences, of serfdom) that one person has property-style rights over another who has onerous obligations corresponding to these rights. But in fact, nobody has such rights over another, and the supposed obligations do not obtain. The institution that the “masters” saw themselves as a part of did not in fact exist, because the rights and obligations that they took to be integral to the institution did not, and could not, in fact exist.

We can use the term “slavery” (and cognates in other languages) for that non-existent institution, just as we use the term “phlogiston” for the substance that chemists mistakenly believed in before oxygen was discovered.

But we could also use distinguish and use two terms. Maybe slavery_h is the historical form of social organization that actually (and deplorably) existed and slavery_n is the normative institution that the masters_h (and maybe some of the slaves_h, as well) incorrectly thought to exist and thought to be coextensive with slavery_h.

Again, the words don’t matter, but it matters that there was a morally condemnable attempt to create a certain social institution which attempt failed because the norms that were attempted to be instituted were incapable of institution.

This is a pattern we find in many other cases. There is no such thing as a forced marriage, since the norms of love and sexuality that define marriage do not come into existence apart from the free consent of the parties. But of course over the course of history there have been morally condemnable attempts to force people—especially women—into the institution of marriage. These attempts always failed, and what the victims were forced into was a different institution, one subjecting them to such injustices as kidnapping, unjust imprisonment, rape, etc.

Thomas Aquinas, similarly, holds that there are no unjust laws. Of course, legislators may attempt to enact laws that would be unjust (or they may simply be exercising power and not even trying to legislate). But when they do so, they fail to enact laws. What they enact are mere demands masquarading as laws (philosophical anarchists think all “laws” are like that). Again, the question of words is unimportant, but what is important is the pattern: the legislator is deplorably attempting to create a social institution—a law—and failing to do so, but instead creating another institution.

The particular cases of this pattern are interesting, and so is the pattern itself. A central part of the pattern is an attempt to create an institution (or an instance of an institution) that misfires, and instead another institution is created that is widely but mistakenly thought to be the one that was the target of the attempt. But the cases of slavery, forced marriage and unjust laws also share another feature that not all the cases of misfiring do. For instance, suppose due to an honest mistake in the counting of ballots, there is a mistake as to who the mayor of a town is. The false mayor then attempts to legislate something quite just. The attempt fails, because the false mayor lacks the standing to legislate. But there need be nothing morally deplorable here, as there is in the slavery, forced marriage and unjust law cases.

Moreover, the three cases I started with are not just morally deplorable, but there seems to be an important connection between moral evil and performative misfire. Slavery_h is morally horrific, but slavery_n would be even worse, as the slaves_n would be under genuine obligations to do the enforced labor required of them and not to escape. This would, as it were, make morality itself complicit with the master, and the properly formed conscience of the slave into a whip in the master’s hand. And the same holds in the other two cases: morality itself would be a tool of oppression.

There are, alas, times when morality is a tool of oppression. The duties that exist between relatives are frequently exploited by repressive regimes as a means of social control: If you are an Uyghur or Tibetan defecting to a free country and speaking out against the Chinese regime, your relatives back home will suffer, and this restricts your activity because of the duties you have to your relatives. But the kinds of cases where the wicked use morality as a lever against the righteous seem different and less direct from what would be the case if slavery, forced marriage and unjust laws had the normative force that they pretend to. It is a mere coincidental effect of duties to family when these duties make it morally impossible or difficult to stand up to a wicked regime. But it would be of the very nature of the norms induced by slavery, forced marriage and unjust laws—if these norms really came into existence—that they would oppress.

This still leaves an interesting puzzle, which different moral theories will answer differently: Why is it the case that morality does not innately oppress?

Objection: Maybe slavery_h does create norms, but not moral norms.

Response: I myself don’t think there are any non-moral norms. But in any case slavery_h does not create any kind of obligation on the slave to obey the master, whether moral or not, except in some, but not all, cases a prudential one.

From suicide to slavery

I've been thinking about an argument with this logical form:

1. If suicide is permissible, then slavery is permissible.
2. Slavery is not permissible.
3. So, suicide is not permissible.

Of course, the most controversial premise is (1), though I could also imagine a defender of suicide denying (2) in the case of voluntary enslavement. One reason to accept (1) is something like this:

4. If suicide is permissible, then we have ultimate authority over our own lives.
5. If we have ultimate authority over our own lives, then it is permissible and valid for us to sell ourselves into slavery.
6. If it is permissible and valid for us to sell ourselves into slavery, then slavery is permissible.
7. So, if suicide is permissible, then slavery is permissible.

By "valid", I mean that the sale would actually work: that authority over our lives would be transferred to another. The notion of "ultimate authority" is rather foggy and I think (4) and (5) can be questioned. But I still think it's an argument worth developing, as all three premises (4)-(6) have some plausibility.

Another line of thought in favor of (1) is:

8. If suicide is permissible, it is permissible and valid to deputize another to unconditionally kill one.
9. If it is permissible and valid to deputize another to unconditionally kill one, it is permissible and valid to deputize another to kill one at will.
10. If it is permissible and valid to deputize another to kill one at will, then it is permissible and valid to sell oneself into slavery.
11. If it is permissible and valid to sell oneself into slavery, then slavery is permissible.

Here, valid deputization is a deputization that actually succeeds in giving the other the requisite authority. The thought behind (10) is that if one give life-and-death authority over oneself to another, one can a fortiori give the other kinds of authority that define the master-slave relationship.

Self-ownership and organ sale

1. Things owned can be permissibly traded, barring special circumstances.
2. Trade in persons is never permissible.
3. Thus, no one owns a person. (By 1-3)
4. Thus, no person owns herself. (By 4)

(By the same argument, God doesn't own us, either. We belong to God, of course, but not by way of ownership.)

Let's continue thinking about self-ownership:

5. If x is not simple and I own every proper part of x, I own x.
6. I don't own myself. (By 4 and as I am a person)
7. I am not simple.
8. So, there is a proper part of me that I don't own. (By 5-7)
9. All my proper parts are on par with respect to my ownership of them.
10. So, I don't own any of my proper parts. (By 8-9)

While I think the conclusion of this argument is true, I am less convinced by it than by the earlier argument. I think 9 is not completely convincing given dualism: spiritual parts perhaps aren't on par with physical. I am far from sure about 7. And I could see ways of questioning 5. Still, it's an argument worth thinking about.

Suppose the argument is correct. Then we have a further interesting argument:

11. My organs are proper parts of me.
12. It's wrong or impossible for me to sell what I don't own.
13. So it's wrong or impossible for me to sell my organs. (By 10-12)

While I am sympathetic to the conclusion, I worry that this argument may equivocate on "organs". Aristotle says that a severed finger is a finger in name alone. Perhaps 11 is true of a kidney as it is found in me, but once the kidney is removed from me, the kidney perishes and a new kidney-like object—a kidney only in name—comes into existence. The kidney-like object is not a part of me, and it is this kidney-like object that is being sold, not the kidney that was a part of me. Still, this isn't clear: maybe the kidney that was a part of me is what is sold, since it is for the loss of it that I am being compensated if "I sell my kidney."

More worryingly, if the above argument were sound, it seems it would be sound with "organs" replaced by "hair". But it doesn't seem wrong or impossible for me to sell my hair. Perhaps, though, we should modify 9 to read:

9*. If I own any one of my living proper parts, I own all my living proper parts and a fortiori all my non-living proper parts.

Then the conclusion is weaker than 10:

10*. I don't own any of my living parts.

This could allow me to sell my hair and some gold atoms in my body, but not my kidney.