The necessity of Nussbaum
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However, what’s the upper bound on demands made for flourishing if that aspect is codified as a right? I think a more tractable and practical approach in policymaking for determining a set of rights is to codify a set of “disablers” as opposed to a set of enablers.
The universality of such rights notwithstanding, I find it highly inappropriate that the government should be involved in enabling human flourishing outside of ensuring basic human rights. I find this inappropriate because I think actualization of the self is a highly private and individualized matter, whereas the domain of the government is to implement broad and pan-applicable policies. The caveat is that as society gets more complex, so do the basic human rights which need to be ensured to enable productive participation in that society. Everyone needs internet access to participate in a digital economy, for instance.
While I appreciate the thoughtfulness towards an approach to emotional moral philosophy, I think that an emphasis on using emotions as a guide for navigating morals and ethics precludes the judgment needed for seeking a moral truth which may counter an emotional truth. I guess I am unconvinced that there is any necessity at all in imposing emotional guides on morals and ethics, but I do like the list of the ten points that are mentioned—it’s easy enough to imagine how each of those can be stretched to some absurd scenario where governments say-so in those scenarios becomes Orwellian.
Which rights are "basic human rights?" Can you enumerate them? You typed a lot of words but you left this open for interpretation. Is it because there is no "universality" of rights?
For example, clean water? Clean food? Access to clean medicine of verifiable quality and efficacy? Americans with disabilities act sort of rights? Privacy? Religion? Speech? Self defense? Against the government? Ability to bequeath property? Sexual congress? Suicide? To be left alone?
Universal rights have the quality of preventing personal molestation from another. The way I think it’s best to think of someone(s) molesting another is direct interference in their life. But for animals with higher-level cognition, not getting killed or molested is a bit more complex, which is why these types of animals (who resolve their differences through speech) need group-level effects to safeguard their personal safety, like freedom to religion, freedom to speech, and freedom to bear arms, freedom to privacy, and so on.
It’s a tough question, what right is universal and why, and it’s easy enough to draw justifications for why lack of sexual congress may be mentally molesting, and therefore an individual should be guaranteed means to procreation. But the problem with guaranteeing sexual congress for everyone is that it puts undue burden on the provider of such rights. There’s so inherent social or personal benefit in giving someone the right to procreate. But someone trying to procreate should not be actively prevented because doing so would impinge upon their freedom to privacy, at least that’s how I think about it.
> Indeed, Butler’s naively empty politics is especially dangerous for the very causes she holds dear. For every friend of Butler, eager to engage in subversive performances that proclaim the repressiveness of heterosexual gender norms, there are dozens who would like to engage in subversive performances that flout the norms of tax compliance, of non-discrimination, of decent treatment of one’s fellow students. To such people we should say, you cannot simply resist as you please, for there are norms of fairness, decency, and dignity that entail that this is bad behavior.
seems like the framework might be on the verge of being amenable to a compiler/program-behavior-style analysis
(non-sequitur) did you see https://protocolized.summerofprotocols.com/p/strange-new-rul... ?
Lacking the training/experience/talent for things like this I can now only proceed by vague analogy (work on this one and off if I don't get it quite right? Thanks!):
(Fixed points are analogous to steady states?)
(Even nonequilibrium,societal ones would be kind of mediocre imho, (sorry nis0s!))
it would be analogous to a diagram of (estimated likelihood(s) of progress on your favourite heuristic ) vs (memory allocated currently, or more generally, tuples of those 10 historical CA-related variables together with their estimated relevance towards progress) on every subheuristic?
(I'm trying to introduce probabilities to (sigma algebraize?) the program representation)
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~aldrich/courses/15-819O-13sp/resourc...
A concise few pages worth drowning in! (For me))
(p-s: 2 "repulsive fixed-points" of 2 messianics of interest:
PG: the anti-prig
Thiel: the protocolizer as chief optimist/protocolization creditor/secretary of the politburo )
(p-p-s, from the comments: Henry VIII as designer of new kinds of windmills, would have been awesome snack if that checks out, roughly on par with Lawrence of A coming up with a new jet engine)
I'm curious if anyone has explored applying Nussbaum's theory directly to AI development frameworks. What would her capabilities list look like for artificial intelligence? Could this be a more productive framework than current alignment approaches?
> Nussbaum wants to establish the capabilities as rights to which citizens, in all nations, are entitled
This is such a blatantly big-L Liberal political position, that I have to laugh, even as a liberal myself. Pretending this is philosophy rather than policy seems a bit silly.
Personally, I think it makes more sense to frame these "capabilities" as benefits rather than rights. For example, do all people have a right to health care? No, because, in the extreme, it leads to logical contradictions with other rights. (E.g. Doctors being forced to provide care at gunpoint.) However, it makes perfect sense as a benefit that a wealthy government decides to provide for its citizens.
But furthermore, the framing of rights seems pretty flimsy. Some people like to assert that rights are god given, but people can neither agree whether god exists nor what rights any particular god would "give" if so, and so for a political body that wishes to confine itself to that which is collectively plausible, the only justification for rights left is that they promote the common good. But if that is the case, then we ought to be open to any sort of thing which promotes the common good and the discussion of negative or positive rights seems at best a useful shorthand for certain perspectives.
In practice rights are just whatever the masses can demand from the powerful and while it might be the case that imagining that they are god given or obvious in their nature is helpful from a like propagandist point of view, as a person who prefers to think clearly, I can't countenance the self delusion.
In the same vein, people do not have a right to a fair trial--in the extreme, this would lead to a contradiction with other rights (e.g. judges being forced to practice law at gunpoint).
> I have to laugh, even as a liberal myself.
Probably not as much of one as you think.
Could be avoided by restating it as "a right to be tried fairly or otherwise not tried". The right of the citizen to have crimes against him investigated and brought to justice, that's another matter.
A better example might be that your right to a jury trial conflicts with my right to freedom of movement, but the government explicitly resolves that contradiction by making it a crime to avoid jury duty.
That happens, you believe?
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/canada-jorda...
What about the victims' right to justice and to be secure against violations of their rights (bodily integrity and health, property, freedom of movement and flourishing)? If there are no judges and all the criminals are left to roam the streets, they are free to continue victimizing anyone they choose. Seems to me that these rights have a lot of mutually incompatible features. You can't provide for one person's rights without compelling action from another.
Healthcare, on the other hand, is not necessarily the government’s domain because people have the freedom to live unhealthily if they want. There is no law which says you must keep yourself healthy. How do you even measure that for different people? For what it’s worth, I think people should get universal healthcare because populations getting sick impacts productivity.
In 25 states, if you are pregnant, it is against the law to be unhealthy, specifically but not limited to substance abuse.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
So, what?
edit: here, HN, the literal stat:
> From 2000 to 2015, the number of states with these punitive policies increased more than 2-fold from 12 to 25, and the number of states requiring health care professionals to report suspected prenatal drug abuse to child protective services or health officials increased from 12 to 23
and i know a policy isn't a law but the word punitive is right there, so
I think a better counter example to my “there’s no law which requires health” statement are anti-smoking stipulations against people born after a certain year. So essentially, anti-smoking laws do make an assumption that you’ll get unhealthy if you smoke, and therefore you shouldn’t. However, policymakers can say that you’re not obligated to healthcare as a right because there are different laws which are already protecting your health, and they would be right in their own place.
The reason I think universal healthcare makes policy sense is that health outcomes are dependent on randomness. Someone can have bad genetics, or be born into environmental conditions which impact their health, both things which are random and not under personal control. I don’t think it’s a good idea to leave national productivity up to randomness, especially when environmental factors like pollution can have deterministic effects, like worsening population-level health outcomes. For a country as big as the US, healthcare should be left to the states to decide, but most states will find that providing healthcare will result in better productivity (I think).
this is just twisting definitions. The law can't remove the fetus if the person carrying it is abusing drugs (or whatever), so the law applies to the person carrying the fetus. That is a "law that says you can't be unhealthy" and the reason is "because it hurts the fetus".
we also put people that have pica disorder into mental hospitals, because they eat things that are not healthy.
We have that (compulsory jury duty).
only if you assume that all rights are simple and absolute. But why think that? Rights as legal constructs come with various limitations and interactions, as specificed in laws and regulations. For example the notion of property rights is legally compatible with taxation in every democracy on earth. Nussbaum's project is concerned with the philosophical arguments for what underlying principles should guide the construction and specification of such legal rights.
Opinions about the proper structure and role of government have been part of philosophy since at least Plato's "Republic."
To address your ordered list, steps A and B are completely wrong, these things aren't "good" nor do we "want" them. They are innate qualities of humans and thus governments must respect and uphold them.
No, she is making it sound that way, not me.
One of Nussbaum’s tenets is “It is the task of governments to provide citizens with capabilities to flourish.” She also wants to “establish the capabilities as rights to which citizens, in all nations, are entitled.” One of these capabilities/rights is “Bodily health (being able to have good health, including reproductive health, and adequate nourishment and shelter).” Some of the others are even more unrealistic, such as the right to a “normal human lifespan”.
I don’t know how to interpret that other than as the right to get stuff from the government.
You are entirely correct.
Nussbaum is a reactionary hack whose main goal is to pick and prod away at anyone with a moral stance because she has none. She is like Ayn Rand insofar as her philosophy is just a thin veneer to justify her misanthropic contempt for others that is always translated directly into political vitriol.
That her work is approachable for the layperson seems to be the biggest compliment I see toward her in here, and I remind people that simplicity is not always superior, sometimes it actually is just the product of a simple mind.
Perhaps. It would be nice to see some explanation for that statement (as someone unfamiliar with her). It's not very effective right now, in a thread and article full with praise for her.
Someone already posted a link to her excellent 1999 New Republic essay (https://newrepublic.com/article/150687/professor-parody) where she criticizes Judith Butler – today this criticism seems more valid than ever and extremely prescient:
> Indeed, Butler’s naively empty politics is especially dangerous for the very causes she holds dear. For every friend of Butler, eager to engage in subversive performances that proclaim the repressiveness of heterosexual gender norms, there are dozens who would like to engage in subversive performances that flout the norms of tax compliance, of non-discrimination, of decent treatment of one’s fellow students. To such people we should say, you cannot simply resist as you please, for there are norms of fairness, decency, and dignity that entail that this is bad behavior. But then we have to articulate those norms--and this Butler refuses to do.
Your whole comment here is extremely uncharitable and it exhibits the very simple-mindedness that you criticize.
The real work of governance and legislation requires carefully negotiating trade-offs between competing priorities in an ever-changing world.
Beyond that though, it is reasonable in our world for citizens of a state to view affordable access to a minimal standard of medical care as a bedrock right afforded to all citizens, and to build their state around this assumption. The same can be said of access to education, or legal representation or access to clean water and energy. It is then incumbant upon the legislating body to provide for those rights, which enter conflict the second there's a budget to consider.
The fact that positive rights are "leftist" in some parts of the world reflects a degree of deep ideological incoherence and immaturity in those parts, more than anything, I think.
Also I can't for the life of me understand why we'd craft policy in some kind of timeless vaccuum. We don't live in a timeless vaccuum. Some of us are fortunate enough to be born into states with stable, well-established educational, judicial, transportational, financial, medical (etc. etc.) infrastructure that is substantially owned and operated by the state or state-regulated monopolies. It's pretty natural to view fair and equitable access to these as baseline rights.
You don't have a right to "freedom from harm" if that means not hearing any speech you don't like.
You do have a right not to be shot, but "gun ownership" by itself does not conflict with that right. Being shot by someone who owns a gun does, but then the rights violation is the shooting, not the gun ownership.
> If you don't think there's a right to freedom from harm that competes with those other rights, I don't know what to tell you.
Your position, that all rights are inherently in conflict with each other, means nobody really has rights; what you call "rights" are really just at the mercy of the legislature:
> The real work of governance and legislation requires carefully negotiating trade-offs between competing priorities in an ever-changing world.
No, the real work of governance and legislation requires protecting the basic rights that everyone has to have to have a free, civil society, and stopping there. A government that has more power than that has too much power.
Your position reminds me of the old saying: no one's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.
> The fact that positive rights are "leftist" in some parts of the world reflects a degree of deep ideological incoherence and immaturity in those parts, more than anything, I think.
It reflects a degree of deep ideological incoherence and immaturity on the part of leftists who advocate for such "positive rights", yes. That's a recipe for eternal conflict. Which is indeed what leftism of that variety leads to.
Refusing to think critically and insisting "muh absolute rights must be real" isn't an argument, it's a (peculiarly male, American, sad) fantasy. Yeehaw, cowboy fantasy land.
I made no such claim. Of course any right can be violated, since rights aren't laws of physics, they're agreements that citizens of a civil society make with each other in order to be able to build wealth through cooperation, specialization, and trade. And people always have the ability to violate agreements. That doesn't mean they should, it just means they can. And of course there are always people who do. But that doesn't mean there has to be conflict between the rights themselves. It just means there are always at least some people who refuse to respect other people's rights, and we have to have some kind of plan for dealing with them.
> Your inability to articulate them cogently
I don't know where you're getting that from, since the old saying I mentioned already contains the basic answer: life, liberty, property. (I might also add the pursuit of happiness, from the Declaration of Independence.) But it's true that it's easy to misunderstand what those rights mean, particularly "liberty", and to think that they must be in conflict because, for example, my "liberty" has to include the right to take your life if I feel like it. But that's nonsense, and there is plenty of literature in philosophy, ethics, and political science expounding a proper concept of "liberty" that includes the obvious point that your right to liberty does not include violating the rights of others.
> Refusing to think critically
Is exactly the problem with people who can't understand how there can be a set of basic rights that aren't in conflict, because they can't, for example, imagine any concept of "liberty" that isn't "I can do whatever I feel like".
Do you have a reply to the arguments in these linked texts that property is inherently coercive? https://mattbruenig.com/2015/10/01/capitalism-is-coercive-an... https://mattbruenig.com/2014/05/07/property-and-conflict/
What's your empirical evidence for thinking that such a setup is better and that going further than that brings "eternal conflict"? Since all prosperous democratic countries in e.g. north america and europe combine private property with taxation for public provision that goes beyond what you desire. Furthermore in empirical studies of life satisfaction and happiness the top of the list is consistently held by countries with extensive welfare states funded by taxes[0]. How does that square with your claim?
[0] https://happiness-report.s3.amazonaws.com/2024/WHR+24.pdf#pa...
What if you gave the same happiness survey to people in Saga period Iceland, which had no government at all?
Or to people in some of the American colonies in the late 1600s and early 1700s, such as Pennsylvania, which had governments, but those governments did virtually nothing?
The fact that all first world countries today have governments with vastly more power is no evidence at all that such a system is the best. All it means is that that's the only kind of system that's being evaluated for first world countries. It's easy to place first if you're the only one in the race.
> The fact that all first world countries today have governments with vastly more power is no evidence at all that such a system is the best.
It is some evidence. Since if a system with a less extensive state that offers less of public services like schooling, infrastructure and health care is what is really better for people, why haven't people made it happen already? See here also my previous point that gradual steps towards such system should, if they are really an improvement for people, show up as higher scores in happiness surveys. Absence of that trend is some evidence against your claim.
Yes. Which means it's impossible to use such reports to make general claims about what kind of government is better.
> if a system with a less extensive state that offers less of public services like schooling, infrastructure and health care is what is really better for people, why haven't people made it happen already?
Because "people" can't make it happen in societies where the government controls all those things. Governments have huge advantages over private providers in terms of protecting themselves from competition, without having to actually provide better service.
And even with all those advantages, people still do try to opt out. If government-run schools in the US, for example, were really so great, there wouldn't be so many people trying to get their kids into private schools, or home schooling. But because such people still have to pay taxes to support public schools, those options are only open to the affluent. And schemes like school vouchers to try to level the playing field somewhat never gain any real traction because politicians don't have to answer to the people as a whole, only to special interests--and teachers at government-run schools are a huge special interest.
> gradual steps towards such system should, if they are really an improvement for people, show up as higher scores in happiness surveys.
Only if they exist to be surveyed.
Across 1000 years of history, yes. But as already noted in those cases objective health/longevity differences can settle the issue. The report can then be used as a one source of evidence in comparison between the setup in countries today.
> Because "people" can't make it happen in societies where the government controls all those things.
People can vote for parties and candidates with an agenda to abolish public funding of education and infrastructure, but people choose not to. Very few vote for the libertarian party in the US for example.
> And even with all those advantages, people still do try to opt out.
In the countries that score best in terms of happiness and life satisfaction there is wide and strong popular support for an extensive welfare state with tax funding of schools, infrastructure and health care. Is your view that large majorities of people in those countries over decades are consistently mistaken about both their reported happiness and their support for their welfare state?
> If government-run schools in the US, for example, were really so great, there wouldn't be so many people trying to get their kids into private schools, or home schooling.
The US is not in the top of the report I cited and has many problems in the schooling system. One underpinning factor is segregation (ethnic and socioeconomic).
> school vouchers
... are tax funded, so is a variant of an extensive welfare state on the funding side. A drawback with such a mixed setup (public funding of private provision) for schooling is that it often requires even more regulation, oversight and middle men activities due to for profit and competition dynamics. The US health care system is a prime example of how cost-ineffective such systems can become compared to more straightforward public provision of health care in other countries.
> Only if they exist to be surveyed.
Are you saying you don't think there's any gradual differences in how extensive the welfare state is among the countries listed in the report?
Are subjective. People's responses will be relative to what they're used to and what possibilities they see for their lives. These studies give no evidence at all that you could not have people whose subjective satisfaction and happiness was just as high, or higher, in a country with a minimal government along the lines I've described. They also give no evidence that such a country could not do as well or better in objective terms.
People report how well they experience their lives as going. Not perfect, people can be mistaken and you might now better than them how happy they really/objectively are I suppose. But then again, do you have any better empirical evidence in support of what you proposed? If not how confident can you really be about it?
> These studies give no evidence at all that you could not have people whose subjective satisfaction and happiness was just as high, or higher, in a country with a minimal government along the lines I've described.
They don't prove that it is impossible, true, but if your proposed setup really was so much better wouldn't gradual steps towards it also be somewhat better in ways that made people report greater life satisfaction and happiness? And wouldn't then that show up in the ranking so that the top scoring countries would be those that come closest to (or least far from) your ideal? But that's not what we're seeing, the top scorers have the most extensive welfare states. That's some evidence against your claim.
> They also give no evidence that such a country could not do as well or better in objective terms.
What's "objective terms"? Do you mean longevity? Health outcomes? The top scoring countries in terms of happiness score very high there too.
Note also that you claimed that all systems going further than what you suggested would have "eternal conflict", which sounds really serious and awful and thus would realistically affect how people report how well their lives are going. Isn't the report evidence against that claim of yours?