Parfit's Thought Experiments Concerning Persons

In my last posting on Parfit I began to discuss how he responds to the Kantian injunction concerning treating persons as ends in his 2002 lectures. Today I want to look further at these lectures in terms of how he utilises thought-experiment arguments to prosecute his understanding of how the Formula of Humanity's injunction should be understood. I am not in this posting going to address the question of whether the use of thought-experiments in the manner that Parfit does is plausible from a Kantian viewpoint though this question, as raised by Allen Wood's response to these lectures, will be discussed sometime in the future since that response is one of the ones Parfit includes in volume 2 of On What Matters.


In the last posting we had reached Parfit's understanding of how to comprehend the two parts of the Formula of Humanity and the introduction of examples that occurs next is part of his way of testing the understanding of the formula at this point. Essentially Parfit produces now some classic "trolley problem" arguments of the type that Judith Jarvis Thompson initially introduced into moral philosophy. As originally formulated by Thompson these problems literally refer to potential outcomes when faced with runaway trains. Parfit introduces three examples that fairly closely parallel Thompson's originals. Firstly he refers to the "Lifeboat" example in which one person (termed "White") is stuck on a rock somewhere whilst five others are elsewhere and our lifeboat can either rescue White or the five others but not both. Secondly, Parfit invokes "tunnel" in which a runaway train is heading towards five people but could be redirected away from them, at, however, the cost of hitting and killing poor old White. Finally, in "Bridge" the train is again aiming at the five but there isn't a parallel track but we could, using a trap-door, get White off a Bridge above the track into the path of the on-coming train thus saving the five. (The second two are pretty transparent replicas of two of Thompson's originals.)


In terms of "outcomes" alone all three examples have the same structure of enabling us to act in such a way that we save the five at the expense of the one. However, the manner in which this outcome is produced is different in each case as, in "Lifeboat", it's simply the case that, given the constraints of time, there's no way to save the five and the one and so a trade-off between them seems plausible in which we justify our action through a classic commissions/omissions defence. In "Tunnel" the saving of the five happens more directly through a fore-seen harm being produced to the one which we have directly brought about (so that the commissions/omissions defence we could give in "Lifeboat" isn't here available). Finally, in "Bridge" we, even more directly, aim at harming White in order to save the five and often it is with this example that intuition rings an alarm bell leading many to reject this action despite plausibly having sacrificed White in the two previous cases.


If "Bridge" is a case where many object, some draw a line earlier and rule out the action even in "Tunnel" on the grounds that we have an over-riding duty not to directly harm so that White can't be made the victim there either. If you don't draw the line at "Tunnel", however, there are less obvious reasons than might be thought why you should do so in the case of "Bridge". Now, Parfit's point in bringing in these thought-experiments is not to repeat the arguments that have swirled ever since Thompson set out the originals of these cases but rather to see what difference application of the two sub-principles he takes the Formula of Humanity to comprise of, make to the cases under consideration.


Recall that Parfit divided the Formula of Humanity into two sub-parts that he described as incarnating a Rational Consent notion and a Mere Means principle. Rational Consent taken alone implies treating people in ways to which they could, in principle, give rational consent even if, in the actual cases under consideration, they don't manifest the tendency to give such consent (or perhaps wouldn't if we were in a position to ask them). With regard to this principle Parfit assumes that White could give Rational Consent to sacrificing themselves with the proviso that this sacrifice would (or would at least tend) to save the other five. So the Rational Consent principle alone, on Parfit's construal, would not rule out taking action that produced this outcome.


It might next be asked whether the addition of the Mere Means principle would make any difference to Parfit's verdict here but he takes it to be the case that it wouldn't affect the verdict since, if we treat people in accord with the Rational Consent principle, then we wouldn't be violating the Mere Means principle. Taking the examples in turn, "Lifeboat" doesn't seem problematic since here we can see what would be meant by "Rational Consent" in terms of how White might, assuming a Rawslian veil of ignorance, adopt the position of thinking that the five should here be saved were they to be asked about the example without knowing whether they were a member of the five or the one left, unfortunately, to the fate of the waves.


Given this argument Parfit also takes it to be true that there would be no relevant difference between the case of "Lifeboat" and "Tunnel". Viewed in relation to "Rational Consent" alone Parfit also thinks that there is no relevant difference again between "Lifeboat" and "Bridge" though this is, as indicated above, certainly a counter-intuitive result. However, at this point we may still be unconvinced that the application of the Mere Means principle could validate the same outcome in the case of "Bridge" at least as Parfit's suggestion about Rational Consent has done.


In considering this objection Parfit mentions one understanding of the Mere Means principle that runs counter to the one he has adopted and that is the view of Robert Nozick who, in Anarchy, State & Utopia, presents the Mere Means principle as a basis for appeal to deontological side-constraints that overcome the consequentialist reasoning that Parfit has adopted up to this point. On Nozick's view the side-constraint in question enables one to deny that it is right to sacrifice someone in order to achieve an end they have not consented to the adoption of. Noticeably, Nozick's reading requires not just that the Mere Means principle is understood differently from how Parfit has presented but also alters the understanding of what is involved in reference to consent as here actual consent makes an appearance rather than Parfit's ideas of "rational" consent.


Parfit states that the Nozickian view requires us to view the Mere Means principle in such a way that it it becomes sufficient for someone to be treated as a mere means if we act towards them in a way that they have not actually consented to (and subsequently harm them in the process). If this is the implication of Nozick's understanding of Mere Means then Parfit has a reply ready to hand as it may be necessary (as he gives an additional example to show) that someone be injured (in ways to which they have not actually consented) in a relatively minor way in order that someone else be saved from a much worse fate and yet we wouldn't generally regard that as sufficient to say that the injured person had been treated merely as a means. This riposte to Nozick's case is, however, surely insufficient since, in the examples under consideration the level of harm involved is life-threatening and not only does that undermine actual consent being available but it destroys all conditions of agency as such.


Parfit considers this riposte but not, I think, in its full sense since he views it only in terms of limitation of harm, not in terms of protecting the conditions of agency as such. Later Parfit does arrive at consideration of such a case which is considered in a very classic consequentialist way. This is the case he dubs "Catastrophe" where we can prevent some awful event occurring only at the cost of killing some innocent person. This does directly involve consideration of undercutting of the conditions of agency and it is treated in traditional way through maximisation of the good. 


If Parfit's pattern of reasoning is here somewhat predictable he does use it to modify Nozick's objection through formulation of a "harm principle" that states that it is plausible to harm people without their consent in order to achieve a good aim so long as the harm in question is not "disproportionate" with regard to the aim. Parfit does give a final consideration to the objection from agency I have mentioned stating that Thompson assumes that there is some absolute value attaching to it such that it cannot be over-ridden whatever the supposed good outcome in question. Assuming that someone maintains this view Parfit proposes a modified version of his 'harm principle'  that allows lesser harms to be inflicted on people without their consent assuming the good end is the basis of this.


Part of the point of this whole "trolley" discussion on Parfit's part has been to bolster his argument that we cannot apply the Mere Means principle directly to our evaluation of actions. Rather than applying it to the evaluation of actions it should apply, on Parfit's conception, only to the evaluation of attitudes. This produces the outcome that the second half of the Formula of Humanity is now understood in one way when it applies to evaluation of attitudes (where the Mere Means principle applies) and another at the level of evaluation of actions (where it is replaced by the Harm principle). However there is another element to the Formula of Humanity which has yet to be considered and that is its reference to "respect" for rational nature and the way in which this is treated in the first of Parfit's 2002 lectures will be the subject of my next posting on Parfit.

Related articles

• Parfit, Humanity and Consent (II) (kantinternational.blogspot.com)
• Parfit, Humanity and Consent (III) (kantinternational.blogspot.com)
• Parfit, Smith and "Subjective" Theories of Reasons (I) (kantinternational.blogspot.com)
• Parfit, Humanity and Consent (kantinternational.blogspot.com)
• Parfit, Humanity and Consent (IV) (kantinternational.blogspot.com)
• Simon Blackburn's Review of Parfit (kantinternational.blogspot.com)
• Mark Schroeder's Review of Parfit (kantinternational.blogspot.com)
• Parfit's "All or None" Argument (kantinternational.blogspot.com)
• Parfit, Smith and the "Dualism of Practical Reason" (kantinternational.blogspot.com)
• Parfit's "Agony Argument" (kantinternational.blogspot.com)
• Parfit on Moral Concepts (kantinternational.blogspot.com)
• Parfit's "Incoherence Argument" (kantinternational.blogspot.com)
• Goodness and "Subjective" Theories of Reasons (kantinternational.blogspot.com)

Humanity, Law and Partiality

When responding in an earlier posting to some arguments of Robert Nozick I indicated some problems with the suggestion he makes to the effect that it is individuals who are picked out by Kant's formula of humanity. This, I suggested, was not as obvious as Nozick seemed to think. An argument for a different posting would concern the degree to which the formula of humanity is, in any case, relevant at all to the discussion of Kantian political theory. But in this posting I want to try to examine the way in which the construction of rationality in the formula of humanity is such as to point away from individuality if, by individuality, we mean a specific and partial attention to given persons as particulars.


The formula of humanity itself makes clear when it is stated that it is precisely not intended to distinguish between persons:


"So act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means" (Ak. 4: 429).


The point here is that humanity, whether it is found in oneself or in any one else should always be treated as an end, due to its status as an end-in-itself. Since this is so the specific possession of it in a given individual cannot be the point. This is the source of an argument against Kant since the partiality that is at work in personal relationships may seem thus ruled out. I don't think that this is so but don't want to argue this question in this particular posting. Instead, I simply want to point to the formulation as ruling out the understanding that what is specifically of interest to Kant in the formula of humanity can be some special status ascribed to individuals. The point of the formula of humanity seems to be precisely to argue against such a view.


Implications drawn out from the formula of humanity concern the nature of law. So Kant later argues that we are subject only to laws given by ourselves which are nonetheless universal. When formulating this point Kant also makes clear the ground of the respect attaching to humanity stating that it is the possible giving of universal law that is the proper object of respect and that "the dignity of humanity consists just in this capacity to give universal law, though with the condition of also itself being subject to this very lawgiving" (Ak. 4: 440).


This claim is the basis of Kant's cleavage between moral theories grounded on autonomy and those that are in their basis heteronomous. Only the former give the true inner ground of morality according to him so any theory that based morality on something else would fall into the area of the dialectic of morality. If there are grounds then for partiality, and I will suggest in a later posting that there are, such grounds are not formulated and could not be formulated by taking individuality as a prime moral value where this value was taken from the formula of humanity. So Nozick's attempt to suggest otherwise is not faithful to Kant.

Deontological Side-Constraints

In my previous postings on the notion of deontology I neglected to discuss one use of it in moral theory that has been influential. This is the understanding of deontology not purely as a thesis concerning independent value but rather as one specifying constraints on action. This understanding of deontology is used, for example, by Robert Nozick in Anarchy, State and Utopia.


Utilitarians are typically taken not to have a clear theory of justice since notions that are usually taken to be important by those who want a theory of justice are regarded as fungible for utilitarians. Nozick gives an example of this when he discusses the idea of a "utilitarianism of rights". Such a form of utilitarianism would involve commitment to the notion that non-violation of rights is an ultimate goal but a consequence of this could be that a particular violation of rights in relation to a given person was itself taken to be worthwhile in principle due to the way this would safeguard rights in general. So, when a mob rushes through a town to lynch a man they think is guilty of a certain offence it might safeguard rights generally to sacrifice him.


In reply to this view Nozick develops, and is one of the first to develop, a view of deontology that works by reference to a notion of constraints. The suggestion here is that such an understanding of rights is distinct from building rights into a theory as an outcome as it was precisely building it into the outcomes that produced the paradox of the utilitarianism of rights. In response to this idea you could either indirectly promote rights rather than taking them as your direct object or you can specify them as distinct from any notion of outcome. If we take the latter view then rights are a side-constraint on any form of moral accounting we may wish to adopt.


However, whilst this argument thus far appears clear enough there are two additional steps required for it to point in the direction Nozick wishes. Firstly, the notion of rights as such a side-constraint is somewhat vacuous without a specification of the bearers of such rights. Who are they? Individuals on Nozick's view and he uses two ideas to connect the conception of individuals as bearers of rights to the notion of rights as side-constraints. The first idea is the invocation of Kant's formula of humanity understood as a reference to the specific quality of each given individual. This is further supplemented by use of John Rawls' argument that the separateness of persons has to be given due weight in moral theory.


There are a number of problems with the argument when it is presented as fully as this. Firstly, the Rawlsian link is a weak one tested against the utilitarian since there can be given arguments to the effect that the principle of the separateness of persons begs the question against utilitarianism. Secondly, the understanding of the formula of humanity as a formula intended primarily to safeguard individuals has odd aspects to it since the notion of humanity in question appears not to feature reference to any notion of particularity. Finally, even if deontological considerations are to be presented in terms of binding side-constraints on other actions it is still not as obvious as Nozick's argument suggests that rights would have this absolute standing that fitted them to fill the side-constraint in question. 


Of the three possible objections I have mentioned to Nozick's argument the one that matters most in response to his overall libertarian theory is the one that indicates some problem with identifying the humanity formula as one that is concerned principally with individuals. However, this is the one that, further investigation of the humanity formula will suggest, can be most readily pressed against Nozick. This is due not just to the way the humanity formula has a generality to it that Nozick seems to miss but also to its connection with Kantian moral psychology. Expect more on this in further postings.

Cosmopolitanism, Coercion and Immigration

As I mentioned in yesterday's posting there has recently appeared a response from Tim Waligore to an earlier posting on this blog. Yesterday I tackled one aspect of Tim's response which concerned the reference I made earlier to the notion of the "social contract" and whether I could simply move from the general account of coercion in the "Introduction" to the Doctrine of Right to the discussion of the social contract that is specifically discussed under the heading of Public Right. However, the more important point Tim raised against my earlier published position concerned a cosmopolitan objection to the reasoning I gave when prescinding from the detail of an argument concerning immigration controls in the journal Political Theory.


First it's necessary to place this discussion back in context. The argument in Political Theory to which I was responding concerned the question of whether immigration controls are coercive. One of the parties to the debate argued that they are coercive whilst the other suggested that they are not but merely acts of "prevention". Basically the distinction is that some acts are ones that you can be prevented from doing without it following that you have been coerced. So if I refuse someone's request to marry me I haven't coerced them but I have prevented them from carrying something out. Similarly it may be that preventing someone from coming to a country by erecting an immigration barrier does stop them from carrying out their purpose without it following that this means that they have been coerced. Now, the reason I proceeded to prescind from the specifics of the debate was because it struck me that both parties to it effectively subscribed to a view of politics that was broadly informed by the views of Robert Nozick. On those views acts of coercion require some special justification as the nature of "right" is not defined in terms of coercion but rather more loosely by reference to something understood as "autonomy" where this notion appears to have some vague connection to the Kantian term but which Kant does not use in political philosophy. In response I was suggesting that a Kantian view is quite different since, on this view, right and authorization to use coercion are intimately connected, Kant even writing at one point that they "mean one and the same thing" (Ak. 6: 232). So my decision to prescind from the detail of the argument concerning immigration controls was based on an attempt to reach a more fundamental question of political philosophy.


However Tim's reply to my earlier posting raises a question which suggests that the response I made to the debate in Political Theory concealed a problem, a problem that, effectively prevents my being able, as easily as I thought in any case, from being able to prescind from the debate over immigration controls. There are two strands to Tim's challenge. The first concerns the way the "social contract" is referred to when Kant mentions it in his discussion of Private Right. This occurs towards the conclusion of Kant's discussion of acquisition when he writes that the problem of its justification requires reference to a notion of original acquisition before going on to write: "even if it is solved through the original contract, such acquisition will always remain only provisional unless this contract extends to the entire human race" (Ak. 6: 266).


This points to the first rationale Kant gives for a connection between the social contract and cosmopolitan considerations. To it can be added a second one to which Tim also refers. This is the very beginning of the discussion of Public Right where we find:

Since the earth's surface is not unlimited but closed, the concepts of the right of a state and of a right of nations lead inevitably to the idea of a right for a state of nations (ius gentium) or cosmopolitan right (ius cosmopoliticum). So if the principle of outer freedom limited by law is lacking in any one of these three possible forms of rightful condition, the framework of all the others is unavoidably undermined and must finally collapse. (Ak. 6: 311)

Kant's concluding comment here is fairly drastic but clearly indicates the importance of the connection he felt there was between the different elements of right. Cosmopolitan right and international right are here distinguished though the difference between them is not clear at this point of the text.


Tim's general point is that the will of a given state is, by reference to other states, still a specific will, the reasoning that Kant uses to suggest that the relationship between states constitutes a state of nature. In this situation the existent state appears to those not included within its boundaries simply as a power so that whilst the state needs no specific justification for coercion in regard to its citizens it does require some justification with regard to non-citizens who are not included in the will that was established when the state was set up. Further, to go back to the specifics of the question concerning immigration controls, there needs something specific to be shown concerning what it is that requires non-citizens to be limited and regulated in terms of their entry to the state, something that specifically relates to them as non-citizens concerning why they should be limited in this way.


A lot of separate issues are involved here. Firstly, Tim is quite right to bring out the problem of provisionality with regard to states prior to establishment of a cosmopolitan contract. This is the subject of the monograph of Elizabeth Ellis to which I have given some response elsewhere. It does importantly complicate questions of state of nature theory if the relationship between states is thought of as such a state of nature although it has to be added that this view of the existent state of play between nations is not held by, for example, Habermas who instead insists that the present relations involve a form of law that shows the state of nature has, to at least some extent, been superseded. From a strict Kantian point of view, however, Tim is right to draw attention to this point.


The second point is that the connection drawn between the right of the state, international right and cosmopolitan right at the beginning of the discussion of public right does not collapse the distinctions between them. Kant indicates an important relationship between them but he does not conflate them with each other. So there is some sense to right within the state, regardless of international right and cosmopolitan right although this sense is, as Ellis and Tim both correctly argue, provisional. The scope of such provisionality hence has to be worked through which I attempted in the article I wrote in response to Ellis.


However these points are not the core of the issue. The core is rather Tim's conclusion that we cannot abjure the provision of justification of coercive measures with regard to the non-citizens who wish to enter the domain of the state. Now, within the argument of the Doctrine of Right, Kant does not address this question. Kant only looks at the reasons why colonial settlement is problematic arguing for a need for specific contracts and against force. There is no specific discussion concerning what is required for those who would wish to settle within the domain of an existent state.


However surely the Kantian response is that the existent state has, by means of the constitutional measures it has set in place, defined the scope of agreed settlement within its borders? This would not merely include the need for new settlers to adhere to the laws already given but could well incorporate considerations the citizens of the state have made to the effect that they wish to decide whether to admit new citizens. This does not have to be based, as it so often is for existent states today, on grounds of ethnicity or on implied reference to considerations of "welfare". But part of the point of an established constitution is surely one of decision that the sovereign power can determine the basis of citizenship. After all, it is normal to be able to strip citizenship from someone if they perform certain acts deemed treasonous so, similarly, there could be grounds for determining whether or not anyone is allowed to begin life as a citizen. It is true that all this is, in the strict sense, provisional but no more so than any other ground of right. This doesn't prevent it from being the case that the non-citizen needs to be given justifications for why application for citizenship is turned down but the fact that there needs to be a process of such application would itself be a settled law of the land, like any law and as such the process would be in no more need of special justification than any other and in this sense I would continue to reject the view I took to be underlying the debate that took place in Political Theory.

Coercion and the Social Contract

In a recent posting Tim Waligore has replied to an earlier posting of mine. In that earlier posting I was myself responding to a debate in the journal Political Theory that had specifically focused on questions of whether immigration controls were coercive but my posting prescinded from the specific debate over immigration controls to raise what I took to be a prior question about the nature of political justification and in that posting I suggested a contrast between "liberal" views and "republican" ones. In some respects, although this is not the point of Tim's reply, I now think the contrast wasn't entirely correctly described in that posting. As I pointed out in that earlier posting there was a model of political authority derived from Robert Nozick at work in the debate in Political Theory so it would make more sense to describe it as a contrast between "libertarian" and "republican" views rather than "liberal" and "republican". As I will explore on some other occasion there are good reasons for thinking that libertarian views are very far from being "liberal" in inspiration.


In any event, the contrast I was intending in this earlier posting was between a view of political authority that regards coercion as requiring specific additional justification over and above the basic rights of states and one that instead sees coercion as built in to the very nature of the right of states and this was the basis for my claim that the views in the Political Theory debate shared an underlying commitment to the same kind of political notions despite disagreeing over the question of whether immigration controls constituted a "coercive" act or not.


Tim's posting responds to this earlier one of mine in effectively two different ways. The first is to suggest that I moved rather too easily from the view of the "Introduction" to the Doctrine of Right to the account of the social contract (which is part of "Public Right") whilst the second response concerned instead the specific question of whether I had not, in my earlier posting, left aside the justification by which states relate to each other, left aside, that is, an important question of cosmopolitanism in my desire to prescind from the debate concerning immigration controls. I will tackle this question concerning cosmopolitanism and immigration controls in the next posting, concentrating in this one merely on the relationship between coercion and the state contract.


Tim is right that I was drawing on the "Introduction" to the Doctrine of Right when I discussed coercion in the earlier posting. In the "Introduction" Kant makes clear that right is connected to authorization to use coercion arguing: "if a certain use of freedom is itself a hindrance to freedom in accordance with universal laws (i.e., wrong), coercion that is opposed to this (as a hindering of a hindrance to freedom) is consistent with freedom in accordance with universal laws, that is, it is right" (Ak. 6: 231). So the central message that coercion is understood as a basis of right provided it meets the conditions given here is allowed.  Subsequently Kant goes on to talk about this "reciprocal coercion" in terms of strict right, so much so that he writes: "Right and authorization to use coercion...mean one and the same thing" (Ak. 6: 232).


Tim's point, however, is that it is a long way from this argument to construction of Kant's view of the social contract since the opening of the Doctrine of Right proper is with private right and that there is only one reference to the notion of a "social contract" in the province of private right. The context of the discussion of the contract in private right is the penultimate paragraph of Kant's account of acquisition in which it is made clear that any acquisition that occurs in the state of nature is only provisional. Here Kant does also add: "even if it is solved through the original contract, such acquisition will always remain only provisional unless this contract extends to the entire human race" (Ak. 6: 266).


This point connects to the question of cosmopolitanism to which I will return in the next posting. However it is worth pointing out, as a general matter of political theory, that the basis of the notion of the state was already given in the argument of the "Introduction" to the Doctrine of Right on which I was drawing in my earlier posting. This is made specifically clear in paragraph 45 of the Doctrine of Right where Kant writes that "insofar as" the laws of the state "are a priori necessary as laws, that is, insofar as they follow of themselves from concepts of external right as such" then its form is "the form of a state as such", the state in idea, the state "as it ought to be in accordance with pure principles of right". Hence the concepts of external right as such are sufficient to give us the norm by which we can test the behaviour of actual states. This being so I don't take it to be the case that the move I made from the argument of the "Introduction" to the Doctrine of Right to the notion of the social contract was, in itself, one that involved a conflation of levels. It is, however, a different matter whether some legitimate cosmopolitan replies to the argument I made in the earlier posting are not, all the same, available.

Coercion, Prevention and the Nature of Autonomy

Recently there has been an interesting debate concerning the status of immigration controls between David Miller and Arash Abizadeh in the pages of the journal Political Theory. The debate involves a number of interlocking questions that are too involved to adequately summarize here but at the heart of it there is a dispute concerning whether it is correct to view immigration controls as being "coercive" with Abizadeh presenting them as not only being coercive but, as such, in violation of "autonomy" whilst Miller, by contrast, denies that they are intrinsically "coercive" and, hence, that they are in principle "coercive" (something Miller defends by distinguishing "coercion" from "prevention").


Rather than try to in any sense arbitrate between the positions in this dispute I would prefer instead to raise a question concerning the degree of agreement there is between the parties to it concerning the understanding of "coercion". Abizadeh explicitly follows a view of coercion that was first set out in the form he adopts by Robert Nozick and that understands coercion primarily as an imposition on the one who is coerced, viewing coercion primarily as an attack on autonomy that requires special justifications. On the basis of this view Abizadeh has motivated a view of the state that sees it as having to answer to a general demos beyond its own declared borders. In response Miller has presented a parallel view of coercion that sees it as imposing a negative on others whilst "prevention", by contrast, is something that simply blocks one's following a certain kind of path to one's end (but not the end itself or as such). So, for Miller, the analogue is that if someone refuses to marry you then they have not "coerced" you but merely prevented you as you can still marry but not the person in question. On these grounds Miller hopes to provide a basis for states not being answerable to an extensive demos for acts of prevention whilst still apparently accepting that "coercion", as such, does primarily have to be understood as a violation of autonomy that requires special justification.


I'm going to here leave aside the example over which the argument between Abizadeh and Miller is taking place, namely, the example of immigration controls. It is not that debate over the status and limit of them is not interesting but only that the question concerning the understanding of coercion and its relationship to autonomy is a conceptually prior question and that on this prior question the disputants seem to have a great deal of common ground.


The common ground is that the Nozickian paradigm of understanding "coercion" receives a lot of assent from both (despite Miller's central point being that the notion of it in Nozick is too broad). This is in the respect that both tend to see coercion as problematic in itself and in need of very special justification due to their joint commitment to a kind of liberal political philosophy that begins from the standpoint of the individual and relates to state intervention as something that is imposed on that individual and hence as always needing to be viewed in such a way that it requires specific justification.


A more republican understanding of the state does not begin by viewing it with suspicion due to a kind of pre-political commitment to "autonomy". This can be seen clearly in the case of Kant's view of coercion. Rather than start from a position that sees coercion as something entirely extrinsic to the status of the person and thus as compromising of "autonomy" Kant begins with a view of "external freedom" that sees it as a product of reciprocal interaction and mutuality.  Kant begins from a notion of universal law that is the basis of discussion of political freedom. So, Kant speaks about a "reciprocal relation of choice", and this leads him to a general account of right as "the sum of the conditions under which the choice of one can be united with the choice of another in accordance with a universal law of freedom" (Ak. 6: 230).


The formulation of this "universal law" defines the conditions of what I have elsewhere termed "effective choice", choice that can be exercised in such a way that there can be mutual interaction between individuals such that autonomy can be given content. So, rather than viewing autonomy as a "primitive" that is accepted as a pre-political value and then requiring special justification for any violation of it, Kant rather interprets "autonomy" in such a way that its effective existence is comprehended through the reciprocal operation of coercion. This is why the universal principle of right is formulated in the following manner:


"Any action is right if it can coexist with everyone's freedom in accordance with a universal law, or if on its maxim the freedom of choice of each can coexist with everyone's freedom in accordance with a universal law". (Ak. 6: 230)


So, any action that is capable of coexistence with the freedom of others would be an action that is right, and any attempt to restrict this action would be wrong but, similarly, if action is formulated in this way then the reference to coexistence is written into the social contract from the beginning, not added to it later in such a way as to always require additional justification. On this conception, then, right is intrinsically connected, as Kant explicitly states, with an authorization to use coercion so coercion is at the heart of right itself. In this respect whatever position one takes on the right of states to restrict immigration it cannot be correct to view this "coercive" act (if it is that) as one that requires some new element of justification to be added in to our understanding of the state as, rather, the state needs to be seen as the coercive enterprise that it is due to its being the basis of right.

Patterned Regressiveness and Global Justice

Robert Nozick, in Anarchy, State and Utopia discusses the notion of patterned principles in his very critical account of distributive justice. He initially defines a patterned principle as one which "specifies that a distribution is to vary along with some natural dimension, weighted sum of natural dimensions, or lexicographic ordering of natural dimensions" (156). However, as Miriam Ronzoni has recently pointed out, Nozick's general usage of the term is broader referring to principles that "aim at maintaining a certain distribution or a certain system of social relationship within society". [Citation from article in vol. 37: No. 3 of Philosophy and Public Affairs]

When viewed in the broader way, however, there can emerge a conception that patterned principles may operate without anyone explicitly adopting them as such and without operating in a way that produces redistributive effects. Ronzoni, in fact, gives two examples that can be interpreted in this way, both of which, importantly, are connected not to the presence of international institutions enforcing certain norms but rather to the absence of global regulation. The first example is that of tax competition. Assuming that large corporations and capital generally favour environments in which tax is low, not high, then it follows that in a global market that does not regulate tax rates that there will be competitive pressure to reduce them. This does not require anyone (including any government) having adopted as a desiderata the simple emergence of low tax environments. The effect of a general global pressure towards lower taxation will evidently be to produce globally a reduction in state entitlements and state spending which has regressive effects.

Another example that Ronzoni gives concerns tariffs. Tariffs are not generally implemented on raw materials but on materials that have undergone secondary improvements. The greater the improvement, the greater tariff a product is susceptible to in a competition with similar products. This reproduces a tendency of ensuring that poorer nations will work to cultivate a set primary product (or set number of them) on the basis that this will ensure their products are less likely to be subject to tariffs. However since the development of secondary production is also tied to the ability of the economy to develop it follows that this pressure upon them will produce an underdevelopment of their economy. I am more sceptical of this second point since there can be other pressures within and on the economy in question that may lead it to produce secondary products and become developed. (This line of argument reproduces dependency theory, a notion I argued against in an earlier posting.)

Whilst the scenarios may not be entirely convincing the effect of them, one not directly drawn out in this fashion by Ronzoni, is nonetheless evident. It is fivefold: a) patterned behaviour can be produced and reinforced without any principle being explicitly invoked or championed by any agent and this is most likely at the global level; b) such patterned behaviour can be formulated in terms of principles but these principles would effectively be ones that would devolve into those of lesser regulation and greater market mobility, hence not "patterned" in the way Nozick intended; c) hence patterning can be an effect of libertarianism as much as egalitarianism; d) when it is an effect of libertarianism it will have socially regressive results; e) hence questions of justice at the global level are as likely to arise due to the lack of regulation and the need for regulation to be established as due to the operation of regulation.

The overall effect of the argument would be to suggest that there is a state of nature at the global level in terms of an absence of regulation of transactions between societies. This is a separate question from the arguments Kant gives concerning the state of nature that can be said to be operative between societies in terms of there being no basis of rightful agreement existent between states as Kant's main concern was how to establish a basis for peace between states (so that disputes between them are not made into an occasion for war). However there is a link since one of the tensions between states concerns different relative prosperities of them. One of the bases for such difference (though not, I would add, the only one) would, on this argument, be grounded on the insufficient character of regulation of transactions between them. This would hence be a prime basis for thinking about global justice.