Comment by foldr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by foldr | Hacker News Reader

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> There is no law against murder, only a law that requires the punishment of murderers.

That's news to me. Is this actually your interpretation of the present state of affairs in the US, or is it just how you think things ought to be?

>The validity of moral imperatives and rights does not depend on the existence of any law.

That's not a point of disagreement here. The question is whether, in addition to the other moral imperatives, there is a (defeasible) moral imperative to obey the law.

>In my opinion, criminal law is just a device to facilitate obedience to moral imperatives.

Again, this is a fantasy view of the law, not one that can possibly be applied in practice. Consider theft. How are you going to determine, in every case, whether it is morally justified that someone owns something? You can always go back and find an injustice in the chain of events which leads to ownership. Or take a clear case, say, Bernie Madoff. Would it have been ok to steal from him because he didn't justly acquire his possessions?

I think we're getting way off topic, but anyway:

1. It's my understanding of the present state of affairs in most countries. Apart from religious law, it is rare for criminal statutes to include a clause like "No person shall murder another." People do tend to interpret "Murderers shall be put in prison" as "Thou shalt not murder", but IMO the latter is an assumption behind the law, not its content. All the lawmakers already assume that murder is wrong. The law's job is to decide how to discourage murders, what to do when murder happens, etc.

2. The set of objective moral imperatives that exist at all times and places, and their application in particular circumstances, should exhaust the set of all the moral imperatives that we are ever obliged to obey. By "all times and place" I mean "even in times and places where the state does not exist", because that's the condition in which humans lived for the majority of their existence on Earth. So I don't think it even makes sense for there to be a moral imperative that only exists in certain circumstances (e.g. the state) unless it is an application of an all-times-and-places moral imperative. But I cannot seem to find an all-times-and-places moral imperative that could be applied in such a way as to justify obedience to the laws of a state just because they are the laws of a state.

3. Bad example. What makes you think it is morally permissible to steal something just because the owner had obtained it immorally? (Two wrongs don't make a right, etc.)

>It's my understanding of the present state of affairs in most countries.

My understanding is that there are laws against murder in most countries. Do you have any evidence to the contrary? This is a rather surprising claim. I don't see anything to back it up in the Wikipedia article on Murder in English common law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_in_English_law

>So I don't think it even makes sense for there to be a moral imperative that only exists in certain circumstances

Why not? Ethical situationism certainly makes sense, even if you don't agree with it.

In any case, you can just assume that there is a conditional moral imperative to obey the laws if there are any, in which case this imperative could perfectly well have been valid throughout human history. Most moral imperatives presuppose the existence of things which don't necessarily exist. E.g., "don't steal" presupposes the existence of property.

>What makes you think it is morally permissible to steal something just because the owner had obtained it immorally?

If he obtained it immorally then in what sense does he "own" it? At most in a legal sense. But that shouldn't matter to you.

> Wiki link to Murder_in_English_law

All I see is an RFC that (a) defines what counts as "murder" and (b) specifies what protocols the government should follow when murder occurs. AFAIK it doesn't contain any sentence to the effect of "persons MUST NOT commit murder", not even anything that amounts to "persons SHALL NOT commit murder". So I stand by my claim that such a prohibition is an assumption behind the law, not the content of the law.

The Ten Commandments, on the other hand, definitely includes the clause "persons MUST NOT commit murder". So do a lot of other religious texts. The idea that criminal law is comprised of a set of prohibitions, IMO, is a sticky residue from the days of theocracy when people thought there was a big guy in the sky who went around issuing explicit prohibitions.

> a conditional moral imperative to obey the laws if there are any

I accept that ethics may differ in different situations, but only to the extent that general imperatives allow. Every conditional moral imperative (hypothetical imperative according to Kant) is an application of a general moral imperative (categorical imperative according to Kant). Therefore the proxy analogy still holds, and I don't see any general moral imperative that can lead to the conclusion that I should obey whatever 51% of an arbitrarily delimited group of people say I should. The closest you can get is that the majority is likely to be right, but empirically, that's a rather questionable assumption.

In my view there is no general moral imperative not to steal. That presupposes the concept of ownership, which, as you said, is problematic. Rather, I think there is a moral imperative to refrain from depriving people of things they hold dear, which is itself an application of the general moral imperative to respect individual human beings.

> [murder]

Again, you are making a bizarre claim (that laws against murder do not constitute requirements that people should not commit murder) and provide nothing to back this up. You need to show that this is actually how laws are interpreted by the judiciary, not just give your own amateur legal opinion.

> Every conditional moral imperative...is an application of a general moral imperative (categorical imperative according to Kant).

That's not what I mean. I'm talking about a general moral imperative whose logical form is that of a conditional sentence. E.g. "If your society has laws, obey them." There is actually no such thing as a "conditional imperative" in Kant's system (were you thinking of hypothetical imperatives?) See the following (p. 293 first complete paragraph) for an explanation of why something with the form of a conditional sentence isn't necessarily a hypothetical imperative:

http://books.google.ca/books?id=GBzrg47sxBwC&lpg=PA291&ots=t...

The irony here is that Kant didn't think that people had a right to break the law or rebel against the government!

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2707741?uid=3739464&ui...

In any case, I'm not a Kantian, so I don't really care whether his ethical theory has this consequence or not.

I'm not giving a legal opinion, ameteur or otherwise, nor trying to second-guess what the judiciary thinks. The judiciary can think whatever it wants to, why does it matter? I'm only giving a philosophical opinion on the logical implications of the existence of various criminal statutes, and my opinion is that they have lots of rational-choice implications but zero moral implications. To put it another way, if everyone has a duty to refrain from X'ing, the importance of this duty is neither increased nor decreased by the existence (or lack thereof) of a law that punishes X'ers. I think I've offered plenty of philosophical arguments in this thread to try to back that up. But if you're looking for legal opinion, you're talking to the wrong guy.

I did mention "hypothetical imperatives" in my comment above. "Conditional imperative" was your terminology. You're right that a conditional sentence may turn out to be a categorical imperative. But since according to Kant there exists only one categorical imperative with 3 different formulations, and since "If your society has laws, obey them" ain't on the list, I'm going to assume that Kant doesn't think it's a categorical imperative.

If so, it's just another hypothetical imperative whose validity depends on whether it is consistent with the categorical imperative. Kant apparently thinks it is, for unrelated reasons. That's where I depart from Kant, because I don't think the imperative in question is consistent with the categorical imperative. At the very least, it would have to be revised to something like "If your society has laws that promote obedience to the categorical imperative and its logical consequences, follow them."

>I'm only giving a philosophical opinion on the logical implications of the existence of various criminal statutes

That's why I asked you before whether you were making a claim about the actual state of affairs in the US. If it's just your philosophical opinion and not a claim about how the law is actually interpreted, who cares? You're rather fond yourself of dismissing the opinions of the judiciary. Surely your opinions on the law are of even less account.

> But since according to Kant there exists only one categorical imperative

That's really a terminological issue. There are clearly lots of specific moral requirements which follow from "the" categorical imperative, which meet the general requirements for being a categorical imperative (i.e. they are desire independent) and which don't meet the definition of a hypothetical imperative. I believe Kant did think that some kind of requirement to obey the law followed from the categorical imperative.

Again, since Kant does not agree with you on this specific issue, and since there are lots of moral philosophers besides Kant, what exactly is your point here? That Kant might have agreed with you if it wasn't for the fact that he didn't?

"actual state of affairs" !== "how the law is actually interpreted".

"actual state of affairs" === "the true, objective metaethical status of law".

> You're rather fond yourself of dismissing the opinions of the judiciary. Surely your opinions on the law are of even less account.

I'm of the philosophical opinion that nobody's legal opinion really matters when it comes to metaethical truths. If we were comparing legal opinions, my opinions would probably be worthless. But I thought we were talking about philosophical opinions? If my philosophical opinions are wrong, they'll be wrong because of flaws in the structure of the theory, not simply because the judiciary or anybody else thinks otherwise. The distinction between legal validity and moral truth is one of the most important concepts in the philosophy of law.

> I believe Kant did think that some kind of requirement to obey the law followed from the categorical imperative

Yes, he did. I said so in my comment above. I suggest that you read other people's comments more carefully before trying to repeat what they already said.

> since Kant does not agree with you on this specific issue ... what exactly is your point here? That Kant might have agreed with you if it wasn't for the fact that he didn't?

If you'd read my comment above, you might have noticed that I specified exactly where I disagree with Kant. But it looks like you're just scanning for loose sentences to quibble about.

> since there are lots of moral philosophers besides Kant

Of course there are. Some of them agree with Kant, others don't. There are also a number of philosophers, such as R. P. Wolff and A. J. Simmons, who argue that there is no duty to obey the law just because it's the law. I'm inclined to agree with them.

>If my philosophical opinions are wrong, they'll be wrong because of flaws in the structure of the theory, not simply because the judiciary or anybody else thinks otherwise.

Yes of course, but you haven't offered any justification of your philosophical opinions. Also, you weren't just offering a philosophical opinion. You said "there is no law against murder", which is at least on the face of it a factual statement regarding the law. It's clear in point 1 of this comment, for example, that you were originally trying to make a legal point and not a purely philosophical one:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5961557

Regarding Kant, I still don't see your point. He doesn't agree with you, and you haven't shown how his metaethical theory supports your views. So why are you referring to him?

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