Hanania is not a conservative, he is a libertarian and thus his view reflects libertarianism perspective.
He is straight up saying that he views friends or enemies from their adherence to consent-based morality.
I really just want to nitpick Hanania's argument on this aspect:
"Every “commodification” argument has a similar problem. Legalizing prostitution might change the way people think about prostitution. But does it shift how individuals think about things like sex and marriage more generally? I see no evidence of this. Currently, 10 European countries, including Turkey, have legalized prostitution. The laws also vary across state in Australia. If the “commodification” argument was correct, and letting men pay for sex weakened marriages and families, we should see some indication of that somewhere."
Except those countries literally just write off fornicating people as "families" on their census and construct their entire massive welfare state (which he hates as a free market fanatic) specifically to take away any advantage coming from marriages.
Which fails anyway:
- [Only one out of three children born to cohabiting parents remains in a stable family through age 12, in contrast to nearly three out of four children born to married parents.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4768758/)
- [On average, children living with cohabiting biological parents fare worse on several social, psychological, and educational outcomes than children born to married parents, even after controlling for factors like race, household income, and parental education.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3091824/)
- [Adolescents of parents who cohabited were at higher risk for externalizing relationship dissolution and relationship instability symptoms 10 years later compared to children of married parents. In addition, cohabiting mothers who stayed with their partner over the 10 years showed significantly greater declines in relationship adjustment over the 10 years compared to married mothers.](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.746306/full)
- [IN FINLAND, where cohabitation is more common than marriages, Cohabiting parents had more depressive symptoms than married parents. They were also less satisfied with their relationships and expressed less satisfaction with the quality of support they got from their partner.](https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/11/4/181)
- [Nearly three decades of research evaluating the impact of family structure on the health and well-being of children demonstrates that children living with their married, biological parents consistently have better physical, emotional, and academic well-being.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4240051/)
And I really just want to nitpick you on this aspect:
"While social liberals point to the differences between progressive and Nazi bioethical policies as morally salient, I see them as primarily about keeping up appearances. The moral evil of the acts is disguised by the appearance of professionalism and legality."
I say it is the appearance of consent; "I want it therefore it is good and anyone who doesn't believe it is evil".
- Hanania made a point about commodification of sexuality doesn't really change the views on marriages and families - I refute him, yes it actually changes it
- Hanania made a point about free-er sexual culture doesn't really destroy families - I refute him, yes it actually does and it's a disaster
- You made a point that the difference between progressive euthanasia & Nazi's eugenics program is about appearances & legality. I refuted you, no it's about supposed "lack of coercion" & fulfilling someone's desires even though it's deranged
- I gave some other scientific evidences that yes, lifestyle choices, "what we and others ought to do", actually matters and what social conservatives advocate do have a point in scientific point of view
This is the first time I write on Substack and it turns out I can't edit comments.
You wrote that social conservatism is first and foremost, is a way of life; I just want to post scientific evidences that yes, in reality, way of life DOES matter and it isn't merely a matter of "preference":
- [(1) couples who have premarital children are more likely to divorce; (2) the higher the number of children, the more stable the marriage, but the marginal effect declines with the increase of the number of children; (3) younger children reduce the risk of divorce more than older ones; and (4) couples who have sons are less likely to divorce](https://journalofchinesesociology.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40711-015-0003-0)
- [Simple cross-tabulations from the 1988 National Survey of Family Growth indicate that women who were sexually active prior to marriage faced a considerably higher risk of marital disruption than women were were virgin brides.... These results suggest that the positive relationship between premarital sex and the risk of divorce can be attributed to prior unobserved differences (e.g., the willingness to break traditional norms) rather than to a direct causal effect.](https://doi.org/10.2307/352992)
- [We find the relationship between premarital sex and divorce is highly significant and robust even when accounting for early-life factors. Compared to people with no premarital partners other than eventual spouses, those with nine or more partners exhibit the highest divorce risk, followed by those with one to eight partners. There is no evidence of gender differences.](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0192513X231155673#bibr25-0192513X231155673)
- [Early initiators had an increased likelihood of having had multiple sex partners, been involved in a pregnancy, forced a partner to have sex, had frequent intercourse and had sex while drunk or high.](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11804436/)
- [Structural equation modeling indicated that casual sex was negatively associated with well-being and positively associated with psychological distress](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23742031/)
- [Depressive symptoms were associated with engaging in casual sex differently for males and females. Males who engaging in casual sex reported the fewest symptoms of depression and females who had a history of casual sex reported the most depressive symptoms](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17599248/)
- [The enormous losses of savings, property and lifestyle, the emotional tensions based on constant harassment from moneylenders, the threats of suicide by the gambler and the distancing of social networks place family members of problem gamblers in a vulnerable state.](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14459795.2012.731422)
- [Findings of the study suggest that gambling addicts suffer various harmful effects, including an increased susceptibility to financial and employment problems, such as debt and accumulated interest, bankruptcy, job loss, and decreased productivity. Participants in the study complained of physiological problems, including headaches, high blood pressure, arthritis, indigestion, a stomach disorder, and rapid weight loss. Common psychological problems reported included symptoms of high-level stress, depression, anxiety, insomnia, and suicidal ideation. For some interviewees who smoked and drank alcohol, consumption of these substances increased in response to their gambling. All participants reported disrupted relationships with their immediate family, relatives and friends.](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/BF03342123)
- [Replacing 10% of offline gambling with online gambling increases the likelihood of being a problematic gambler by 8.8-12.6%. This increase is equivalent to 139,322 problematic gamblers and 27.24 million Є per year of additional expenditures in the German health sector](https://www.jstor.org/stable/45156506)
- [The restrictions on gambling led to significant decreases in total gambling turnover, and several studies suggest that they led to fewer gambling and gambling problems.](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/add.13172)
- [Countries with legalized prostitution are associated with higher human trafficking inflows than countries where prostitution is prohibited. The scale effect of legalizing prostitution, outweighs the substitution effect, where legal sex workers are favored over illegal workers. Legalizing or tolerating it expands the market and creates a surplus of demand that requires even more trafficking in to meet it.](https://orgs.law.harvard.edu/lids/2014/06/12/does-legalized-prostitution-increase-human-trafficking/)
- [Gender, increased sexist attitudes toward women, frequency of pornography consumption, and self-control deficits significantly predicted prostitution myth adherence (myth that prostitution is empowering)](http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0361684318754790)
- [Research on prostitution in 9 countries, 71% were physically assaulted in prostitution; 63% were raped; 89% of these respondents wanted to escape prostitution, but did not have other options for survival. A total of 75% had been homeless at some point in their lives; 68% met criteria for PTSD](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254381847_Prostitution_and_Trafficking_in_Nine_Countries)
You generally can edit comments on Substack. Maybe not on the mobile app (or not always, for some reason).
I think your points here are valid. Most virtues will contribute to you being healthy and wealthy. Most sins will do the opposite. Sin betrays and disappoints. This is largely what the Book of Proverbs is about.
But there's a certain tension in that sometimes, virtuous behavior is highly likely to impoverish and kill you. Sometimes sinful behavior DOES bring earthly rewards ("Verily I say unto you, they have their reward.") This is partly what the Gospels are about.
So abortion is controversial in part because it's an evil act that generally makes life easier. You could say it helps keep people on the middle-class script. It's in some sense prudent, and people who approve of expanding it generally think of it as an option that they want people they care about to have.
By contrast, I think most people who approve of expanding the legalization of gambling or prostitution would agree that those things aren't prudent. They probably don't want people they care about to engage in them. Instead, they're thinking of a practical argument: "People are going to do it anyway, and this way we bring in tax revenue and let the justice system focus on real criminals."
Thanks, Amos! I’ve come to the conclusion that utilitarianism is a codification of prudential reasoning, what Kant called hypothetical imperatives. Morality consists of categorical imperatives.
I conclude that utilitarians/consequentialists *deny* the realm of morality. They may claim that they have reduced morality to prudence. But this is the same as just doing without morality altogether.
To maximize utility? I guess most of the forms of contemporary analytic ethics I’ve come across reduce to Humeanism, depending on pre-existing motivation, rather than compelling by duty.
But I’m intrigued. So you would argue that utilitarianism includes one categorical imperative?
Right. I think consequentialism—paired with moral realism, as it always should be—necessarily issues at least one categorical imperative to all agents (“maximise utility with every action”, “act according to the rule which—if internalised by the vast majority of people—would yield the best outcomes”, etc.)
“guess most of the forms of contemporary analytic ethics I’ve come across reduce to Humeanism, depending on pre-existing motivation, rather than compelling by duty.”
What do you make of the argument that something may be morally wrong, but that does not mean that it should be illegal? In this way one may be a libertarian in public policy, but a moral conservative in their own personal decisions and in what they try to persuade others to do.
I concur with the argument. Aquinas asks whether it belongs to human government to repress all vices? He says, No, only the more grievous ones, without which society couldn't function.
The policy may be more or less libertarian, however, the principle on which I accept it is not libertarian. It is more pragmatic. How probable is it that people would abide by the law? In a society that has been abandoning Christian sexual morality for a century, e.g., imposing tight moral standards is not going to be an effective strategy. With a different populace, it might be correct.
I know you follow Hanania. I am curious what exactly you see in him, as, even when you are wrong, you are usually interesting, while he is so wrong (nay, evil) that I see little point in interacting with him (its why I have him pre-emptively blocked). He is probably the famous public intellectual I most fervently despise.
Hey Matthew, good question. I actually had you and Bethel McGrew in mind when writing, "This is, in fact, where I find writers of the secular libertarian bent so helpful. Unclouded by moral presumption, they follow the data where it leads."
I wouldn't use the word "evil" for Richard Hanania. I believe I heard both you and Bethel be disgusted by his support for euthanasia and other anti-life policies. However, those are just par for the course for non-Christians on the right, like George Will, for example, and all secular libertarians, basically.
The main reason I like reading him is: While I don't trust writers like Hanania on moral issues, they really challenge me to break out of my ideological mold. Hanania, for example, wrote that the lock-downs were terrible, masks were ineffective, but that the vaccine was highly effective. That is a non-partisan perspective, fact-based, I wouldn't otherwise have heard. So, Hanania challenges my tendency to partisan Christian and conservative thinking.
As a philosopher, I am training to work and think with people who hold quite divergent views to mine. Hanania's views are significantly more aligned with mine than the vast majority of secular analytic philosophers. So that is another reason. I would definitely encourage an open mind on that rather than despising interesting and talented non-Christian thinkers!
I don't despise all non-Christian thinkers. I have a high opinion of plenty of them, even a few atheists. It's just Hanania raises my moral scruples in a way similar to Karl Schmitt or Martin Heidegger. And I am flattered to be included in the same thought as Bethel, who is a friend, and the best writer on here.
Ok, that makes more sense. I give him credit for repenting of his former far-right views, and I don't think he belongs in the Schmitt-Nazi camp. I think figures on the secular right are allies to Christians, and the people open to those ideas are often also open to hearing Christianity out much more sympathetically.
I also think some of Hanania's criticisms of Christians are valid. We're good at moral/ideological consistency but not very good at political prudence.
Would you consider him right-wing? He strikes me as more of a liberal than actually a right-winger, and I don't generally consider liberals to be right-wing. He might have been right-wing in the past, although I don't consider racism to be a right-wing phenomenon, but one which doesn't map onto the political spectrum.
No one on the left, even someone just the slightest touch left-of-center, would ever react that way to a hard-left professor being arrested at a leftist protest. Hanania is psychologically and temperamentally rightist. His instincts and intuitions are rightist. If he agrees with the left on one point or another, it's usually out of either intellectual consistency, or an elitist hatred of what he views as stupidity. He doesn't feel much tribal loyalty and will make common cause with left-of-center elites in mocking rightist stupidity. But a lot of people on the right are weary of rightist stupidity.
I'm with Joel, I like to read Hanania. He's someone who is prepared to change his opinion quickly based on new information and often has unique insights. On some topics, I just have to ignore him. I get why many Christians can't stand him, but it seems like they're missing out.
It takes innocent human life, plain and simple. No one’s life is improved by their life being cut short before they are born. Such killing follows the same principle of life unworthy of life. Much better to care for the weak and discover ways to care for them and support their families.
Social conservativism is anti-life and South Korea is a good example in your post. There's nothing pro-life about restricting freedom of action, for example, restricting sex by saying the woman has to "deal with the consequences" for fulfilling a very necessary human need, or place prison for terminating a pregnancy. That's where Richard may be coming from.
Leave Hanania alone. Your position stands or not on its merits not because it's contra Hanania or because Hanania may have got something you both care about wrong.
Weird. The best predictor of anti-abortion belief is preference for long term vs short term mating, not anything life valent. Anti-abortion belief is almost exclusively the domain of people who wish to strongly discourage short term mating and strongly encourage long term mating with cultural norms. Kurzban and Weeden showed this pretty definitively. Anti-abortion people aren't out killing abortion doctors so I kind of doubt they think it is exactly like killing children unless they are just moral cowards. Find me anti-abortion people who are otherwise cool with having a lot of sex partners over their lifetime. If "How many sex partners have you had" predicts abortion belief better than anything else, it kind of tells you what it is for. Would anti-abortion people support an intervention that cut abortions to zero in return for doubling everyone's lifetime sex partners? I'd bet not.
Response #1, hope to have more time for others: Even though consequentialist arguments should be secondary to moral arguments when we are reasoning about what is right and wrong, I don't think that we should concede too much ground on consequences, because I don't trust "social science" to illuminate all consequences.
For example, the public debate over euthanasia, followed by its passage into law in many countries, can have a negative consequence: Elderly people devaluing their lives as no longer "productive" with ensuing depression or despair. I think this outcome is deplorable on moral grounds, but it is also a consequentialist argument against euthanasia. Given the nature of global mass media, when euthanasia is approved in various countries and some subset of American and Australian states, the psychological consequences are not confined within the borders of those states or countries. So, what social science will prove or disprove what I believe to be the consequences?
The entire discussion gives far too much credit to social sciences as determiners of truth. More on that later.
Hanania is not a conservative, he is a libertarian and thus his view reflects libertarianism perspective.
He is straight up saying that he views friends or enemies from their adherence to consent-based morality.
I really just want to nitpick Hanania's argument on this aspect:
"Every “commodification” argument has a similar problem. Legalizing prostitution might change the way people think about prostitution. But does it shift how individuals think about things like sex and marriage more generally? I see no evidence of this. Currently, 10 European countries, including Turkey, have legalized prostitution. The laws also vary across state in Australia. If the “commodification” argument was correct, and letting men pay for sex weakened marriages and families, we should see some indication of that somewhere."
Except those countries literally just write off fornicating people as "families" on their census and construct their entire massive welfare state (which he hates as a free market fanatic) specifically to take away any advantage coming from marriages.
Which fails anyway:
- [Only one out of three children born to cohabiting parents remains in a stable family through age 12, in contrast to nearly three out of four children born to married parents.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4768758/)
- [On average, children living with cohabiting biological parents fare worse on several social, psychological, and educational outcomes than children born to married parents, even after controlling for factors like race, household income, and parental education.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3091824/)
- [Adolescents of parents who cohabited were at higher risk for externalizing relationship dissolution and relationship instability symptoms 10 years later compared to children of married parents. In addition, cohabiting mothers who stayed with their partner over the 10 years showed significantly greater declines in relationship adjustment over the 10 years compared to married mothers.](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.746306/full)
- [IN FINLAND, where cohabitation is more common than marriages, Cohabiting parents had more depressive symptoms than married parents. They were also less satisfied with their relationships and expressed less satisfaction with the quality of support they got from their partner.](https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/11/4/181)
- [Nearly three decades of research evaluating the impact of family structure on the health and well-being of children demonstrates that children living with their married, biological parents consistently have better physical, emotional, and academic well-being.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4240051/)
And I really just want to nitpick you on this aspect:
"While social liberals point to the differences between progressive and Nazi bioethical policies as morally salient, I see them as primarily about keeping up appearances. The moral evil of the acts is disguised by the appearance of professionalism and legality."
I say it is the appearance of consent; "I want it therefore it is good and anyone who doesn't believe it is evil".
Thanks for these points! It would help in the comments if you could make a brief summary of your point. I'm struggling to get the main drift.
My point is:
- Hanania made a point about commodification of sexuality doesn't really change the views on marriages and families - I refute him, yes it actually changes it
- Hanania made a point about free-er sexual culture doesn't really destroy families - I refute him, yes it actually does and it's a disaster
- You made a point that the difference between progressive euthanasia & Nazi's eugenics program is about appearances & legality. I refuted you, no it's about supposed "lack of coercion" & fulfilling someone's desires even though it's deranged
- I gave some other scientific evidences that yes, lifestyle choices, "what we and others ought to do", actually matters and what social conservatives advocate do have a point in scientific point of view
This is the first time I write on Substack and it turns out I can't edit comments.
You wrote that social conservatism is first and foremost, is a way of life; I just want to post scientific evidences that yes, in reality, way of life DOES matter and it isn't merely a matter of "preference":
Promiscuity:
- [Sexual and emotional infidelity are positively correlated, Sexual and emotional promiscuity are positively correlated](https://www.athensjournals.gr/social/2017-4-4-3-Pinto.pdf).
- [(1) couples who have premarital children are more likely to divorce; (2) the higher the number of children, the more stable the marriage, but the marginal effect declines with the increase of the number of children; (3) younger children reduce the risk of divorce more than older ones; and (4) couples who have sons are less likely to divorce](https://journalofchinesesociology.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40711-015-0003-0)
- [Simple cross-tabulations from the 1988 National Survey of Family Growth indicate that women who were sexually active prior to marriage faced a considerably higher risk of marital disruption than women were were virgin brides.... These results suggest that the positive relationship between premarital sex and the risk of divorce can be attributed to prior unobserved differences (e.g., the willingness to break traditional norms) rather than to a direct causal effect.](https://doi.org/10.2307/352992)
- [We find the relationship between premarital sex and divorce is highly significant and robust even when accounting for early-life factors. Compared to people with no premarital partners other than eventual spouses, those with nine or more partners exhibit the highest divorce risk, followed by those with one to eight partners. There is no evidence of gender differences.](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0192513X231155673#bibr25-0192513X231155673)
- [Women who have more premarital sex partners have significantly greater odds of serial cohabiting (indicating that cohabitation is addictive)](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2003.00444.x)
- [Adolescent premarital coitus has a strong negative effect on the self-reported academic grades and affects negatively the importance placed on going to college among white females](https://www.jstor.org/stable/2786919?seq=19#metadata_info_tab_contents)
- [Early initiators had an increased likelihood of having had multiple sex partners, been involved in a pregnancy, forced a partner to have sex, had frequent intercourse and had sex while drunk or high.](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11804436/)
- [Premarital cohabitation predicts a substantially higher rate of marital dissolution](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s43545-021-00146-1)
- [Structural equation modeling indicated that casual sex was negatively associated with well-being and positively associated with psychological distress](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23742031/)
- [Depressive symptoms were associated with engaging in casual sex differently for males and females. Males who engaging in casual sex reported the fewest symptoms of depression and females who had a history of casual sex reported the most depressive symptoms](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17599248/)
- [We found that suicidal ideation and depressive symptoms in adolescence were associated with entrance into casual sexual relationships in emerging adulthood. Furthermore, casual sexual relationships were associated with an increased likelihood of reporting suicidal ideation in emerging adulthood.](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258145972_Casual_Sexual_Relationships_and_Mental_Health_in_Adolescence_and_Emerging_Adulthood)
Gambling:
- [Problems with gambling can lead to bankruptcy, crime, domestic abuse, and even suicide. A single bankruptcy could potentially impact 17 people.](https://harbert.auburn.edu/binaries/documents/center-for-ethical-organizational-cultures/debate_issues/gambling.pdf)
- [Gambling is not only destructive for the individual involved but also others](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8987423/).
- [The enormous losses of savings, property and lifestyle, the emotional tensions based on constant harassment from moneylenders, the threats of suicide by the gambler and the distancing of social networks place family members of problem gamblers in a vulnerable state.](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14459795.2012.731422)
- [Yes, gambling is actually a public health issue](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0033350620302468)
- [Parents addicted to gambling makes the kids also more likely to be addicted to gambling](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0276146717720979)
- [Findings of the study suggest that gambling addicts suffer various harmful effects, including an increased susceptibility to financial and employment problems, such as debt and accumulated interest, bankruptcy, job loss, and decreased productivity. Participants in the study complained of physiological problems, including headaches, high blood pressure, arthritis, indigestion, a stomach disorder, and rapid weight loss. Common psychological problems reported included symptoms of high-level stress, depression, anxiety, insomnia, and suicidal ideation. For some interviewees who smoked and drank alcohol, consumption of these substances increased in response to their gambling. All participants reported disrupted relationships with their immediate family, relatives and friends.](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/BF03342123)
- [The societal costs of gambling were more than twice as high as the tax revenue from gambling in 2018 in Sweden.](https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-020-10008-9)
- [Replacing 10% of offline gambling with online gambling increases the likelihood of being a problematic gambler by 8.8-12.6%. This increase is equivalent to 139,322 problematic gamblers and 27.24 million Є per year of additional expenditures in the German health sector](https://www.jstor.org/stable/45156506)
- [The restrictions on gambling led to significant decreases in total gambling turnover, and several studies suggest that they led to fewer gambling and gambling problems.](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/add.13172)
Prostitution:
- [Legalization of prostitution increase sex trade.](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/appalling-truth-about-amsterdams-red-light-district/A4RMWQUM5RWIAY6RNDHKRWJAQ4/)
- [Countries with legalized prostitution are associated with higher human trafficking inflows than countries where prostitution is prohibited. The scale effect of legalizing prostitution, outweighs the substitution effect, where legal sex workers are favored over illegal workers. Legalizing or tolerating it expands the market and creates a surplus of demand that requires even more trafficking in to meet it.](https://orgs.law.harvard.edu/lids/2014/06/12/does-legalized-prostitution-increase-human-trafficking/)
- [Gender, increased sexist attitudes toward women, frequency of pornography consumption, and self-control deficits significantly predicted prostitution myth adherence (myth that prostitution is empowering)](http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0361684318754790)
- [Prostitution is not only a form of male violence against women, it is also a system and an industry that contribute to gender inequality](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2455632717744312)
- [Prostitution Harms Women Even if Legalized or Decriminalized](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/240698342_Bad_for_the_Body_Bad_for_the_Heart_Prostitution_Harms_Women_Even_if_Legalized_or_Decriminalized)
- [Countries where prostitution is legal experience larger reported human trafficking inflows](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X12001453)
- [Prostitution legalization = more human trafficking](https://openworks.wooster.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=8328&context=independentstudy)
- [Research on prostitution in 9 countries, 71% were physically assaulted in prostitution; 63% were raped; 89% of these respondents wanted to escape prostitution, but did not have other options for survival. A total of 75% had been homeless at some point in their lives; 68% met criteria for PTSD](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254381847_Prostitution_and_Trafficking_in_Nine_Countries)
- [In the Netherlands “trafficking still thrives behind the façade of a legalised prostitution sector.”](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260493897_The_challenges_of_fighting_sex_trafficking_in_the_legalized_prostitution_market_of_the_Netherlands)
You generally can edit comments on Substack. Maybe not on the mobile app (or not always, for some reason).
I think your points here are valid. Most virtues will contribute to you being healthy and wealthy. Most sins will do the opposite. Sin betrays and disappoints. This is largely what the Book of Proverbs is about.
But there's a certain tension in that sometimes, virtuous behavior is highly likely to impoverish and kill you. Sometimes sinful behavior DOES bring earthly rewards ("Verily I say unto you, they have their reward.") This is partly what the Gospels are about.
So abortion is controversial in part because it's an evil act that generally makes life easier. You could say it helps keep people on the middle-class script. It's in some sense prudent, and people who approve of expanding it generally think of it as an option that they want people they care about to have.
By contrast, I think most people who approve of expanding the legalization of gambling or prostitution would agree that those things aren't prudent. They probably don't want people they care about to engage in them. Instead, they're thinking of a practical argument: "People are going to do it anyway, and this way we bring in tax revenue and let the justice system focus on real criminals."
Moral, Not Consequentialist”
This distinction prejudices people’s intuitions against consequentialism in a way that bypasses their reason.
I’m a deontologist, but I would never say “X’s arguments are virtue ethical, not moral”.
(btw, love the video format, I might have to pinch it)
Thanks, Amos! I’ve come to the conclusion that utilitarianism is a codification of prudential reasoning, what Kant called hypothetical imperatives. Morality consists of categorical imperatives.
I conclude that utilitarians/consequentialists *deny* the realm of morality. They may claim that they have reduced morality to prudence. But this is the same as just doing without morality altogether.
Hey, just tried out the video format! V. cool idea https://open.substack.com/pub/wollenblog/p/nick-hadsells-parental-theory-of?r=2248ub&utm_medium=ios
Hmm. I disagree. Do you think this statement is false?:
“All forms of consequentialism affirm at least one categorical imperative”
To maximize utility? I guess most of the forms of contemporary analytic ethics I’ve come across reduce to Humeanism, depending on pre-existing motivation, rather than compelling by duty.
But I’m intrigued. So you would argue that utilitarianism includes one categorical imperative?
Right. I think consequentialism—paired with moral realism, as it always should be—necessarily issues at least one categorical imperative to all agents (“maximise utility with every action”, “act according to the rule which—if internalised by the vast majority of people—would yield the best outcomes”, etc.)
“guess most of the forms of contemporary analytic ethics I’ve come across reduce to Humeanism, depending on pre-existing motivation, rather than compelling by duty.”
Since Humeanism is a claim about metaethics, not normative ethics, it’s not tied down to any normative theory. You could be a deontologist and accept Humeanism, or be a consequentialist and reject Humeanism. (See my friend Matthew Adelstein—a robust moral realist/anti-Humean and rapid consequentialist https://benthams.substack.com/p/moral-realism-is-true https://benthams.substack.com/p/the-ultimate-argument-against-deontology).
What do you make of the argument that something may be morally wrong, but that does not mean that it should be illegal? In this way one may be a libertarian in public policy, but a moral conservative in their own personal decisions and in what they try to persuade others to do.
I concur with the argument. Aquinas asks whether it belongs to human government to repress all vices? He says, No, only the more grievous ones, without which society couldn't function.
The policy may be more or less libertarian, however, the principle on which I accept it is not libertarian. It is more pragmatic. How probable is it that people would abide by the law? In a society that has been abandoning Christian sexual morality for a century, e.g., imposing tight moral standards is not going to be an effective strategy. With a different populace, it might be correct.
Hope that is clear enough! Thanks for commenting.
I know you follow Hanania. I am curious what exactly you see in him, as, even when you are wrong, you are usually interesting, while he is so wrong (nay, evil) that I see little point in interacting with him (its why I have him pre-emptively blocked). He is probably the famous public intellectual I most fervently despise.
Hey Matthew, good question. I actually had you and Bethel McGrew in mind when writing, "This is, in fact, where I find writers of the secular libertarian bent so helpful. Unclouded by moral presumption, they follow the data where it leads."
I wouldn't use the word "evil" for Richard Hanania. I believe I heard both you and Bethel be disgusted by his support for euthanasia and other anti-life policies. However, those are just par for the course for non-Christians on the right, like George Will, for example, and all secular libertarians, basically.
The main reason I like reading him is: While I don't trust writers like Hanania on moral issues, they really challenge me to break out of my ideological mold. Hanania, for example, wrote that the lock-downs were terrible, masks were ineffective, but that the vaccine was highly effective. That is a non-partisan perspective, fact-based, I wouldn't otherwise have heard. So, Hanania challenges my tendency to partisan Christian and conservative thinking.
As a philosopher, I am training to work and think with people who hold quite divergent views to mine. Hanania's views are significantly more aligned with mine than the vast majority of secular analytic philosophers. So that is another reason. I would definitely encourage an open mind on that rather than despising interesting and talented non-Christian thinkers!
I don't despise all non-Christian thinkers. I have a high opinion of plenty of them, even a few atheists. It's just Hanania raises my moral scruples in a way similar to Karl Schmitt or Martin Heidegger. And I am flattered to be included in the same thought as Bethel, who is a friend, and the best writer on here.
Ok, that makes more sense. I give him credit for repenting of his former far-right views, and I don't think he belongs in the Schmitt-Nazi camp. I think figures on the secular right are allies to Christians, and the people open to those ideas are often also open to hearing Christianity out much more sympathetically.
I also think some of Hanania's criticisms of Christians are valid. We're good at moral/ideological consistency but not very good at political prudence.
Would you consider him right-wing? He strikes me as more of a liberal than actually a right-winger, and I don't generally consider liberals to be right-wing. He might have been right-wing in the past, although I don't consider racism to be a right-wing phenomenon, but one which doesn't map onto the political spectrum.
I mean, just look at this recent Hanania tweet, for example.
https://x.com/RichardHanania/status/1783585493143433288
No one on the left, even someone just the slightest touch left-of-center, would ever react that way to a hard-left professor being arrested at a leftist protest. Hanania is psychologically and temperamentally rightist. His instincts and intuitions are rightist. If he agrees with the left on one point or another, it's usually out of either intellectual consistency, or an elitist hatred of what he views as stupidity. He doesn't feel much tribal loyalty and will make common cause with left-of-center elites in mocking rightist stupidity. But a lot of people on the right are weary of rightist stupidity.
I'm with Joel, I like to read Hanania. He's someone who is prepared to change his opinion quickly based on new information and often has unique insights. On some topics, I just have to ignore him. I get why many Christians can't stand him, but it seems like they're missing out.
why is aborting a baby who will suffer from down syndrome a bad thing?
It takes innocent human life, plain and simple. No one’s life is improved by their life being cut short before they are born. Such killing follows the same principle of life unworthy of life. Much better to care for the weak and discover ways to care for them and support their families.
Social conservativism is anti-life and South Korea is a good example in your post. There's nothing pro-life about restricting freedom of action, for example, restricting sex by saying the woman has to "deal with the consequences" for fulfilling a very necessary human need, or place prison for terminating a pregnancy. That's where Richard may be coming from.
Leave Hanania alone. Your position stands or not on its merits not because it's contra Hanania or because Hanania may have got something you both care about wrong.
Move on.
Weird. The best predictor of anti-abortion belief is preference for long term vs short term mating, not anything life valent. Anti-abortion belief is almost exclusively the domain of people who wish to strongly discourage short term mating and strongly encourage long term mating with cultural norms. Kurzban and Weeden showed this pretty definitively. Anti-abortion people aren't out killing abortion doctors so I kind of doubt they think it is exactly like killing children unless they are just moral cowards. Find me anti-abortion people who are otherwise cool with having a lot of sex partners over their lifetime. If "How many sex partners have you had" predicts abortion belief better than anything else, it kind of tells you what it is for. Would anti-abortion people support an intervention that cut abortions to zero in return for doubling everyone's lifetime sex partners? I'd bet not.
Response #1, hope to have more time for others: Even though consequentialist arguments should be secondary to moral arguments when we are reasoning about what is right and wrong, I don't think that we should concede too much ground on consequences, because I don't trust "social science" to illuminate all consequences.
For example, the public debate over euthanasia, followed by its passage into law in many countries, can have a negative consequence: Elderly people devaluing their lives as no longer "productive" with ensuing depression or despair. I think this outcome is deplorable on moral grounds, but it is also a consequentialist argument against euthanasia. Given the nature of global mass media, when euthanasia is approved in various countries and some subset of American and Australian states, the psychological consequences are not confined within the borders of those states or countries. So, what social science will prove or disprove what I believe to be the consequences?
The entire discussion gives far too much credit to social sciences as determiners of truth. More on that later.