The University of Chicago's James Leitzel has posted a new paper, From Harm to Robustness: A Principled Approach to Vice Regulation. Here's the abstract:
John Stuart Mill's harm principle maintains that adult behavior cannot justifiably be subject to social coercion unless the behavior involves harm or a significant risk of harm to non-consenting others. The absence of harms to others, however, is one of the distinguishing features of many manifestations of vices such as the consumption of alcohol, nicotine, recreational drugs, prostitution, pornography, and gambling. It is therefore with respect to vice policy that the harm principle tends to be most constraining, and some current vice controls, including prohibitions on prostitution and drug possession, violate Mill's precept. In the vice arena, we seem to be willing to accept social interference with what Mill termed self-regarding behavior. Does consistency then imply that any popular social intervention into private affairs is justifiable, that the government has just as much right to outlaw skateboarding, or shag carpets, or spicy foods, as it does to outlaw drugs? In this paper I argue that advances in neuroscience and behavioral economics offer strong evidence that vices and other potentially addictive goods or activities frequently involve less-than-rational choices, and hence are exempt from the full force of the harm principle. As an alternative guide to vice policy, and following some direction from Mill, I propose the robustness principle: public policy towards addictive or vicious activities engaged in by adults should be robust with respect to departures from full rationality. That is, policies should work pretty well if everyone is completely rational, and policies should work pretty well even if many people are occasionally (or frequently) irrational in their vice-related choices. The harm and robustness principles cohere in many ways, but the robustness principle offers more scope for policies that try to direct people for their own good, without opening the door to tyrannical inroads upon self-regarding behavior.
I glanced at the paper, and he seems to focus on the use of addictive drugs. In this context, his "robustness" principle as a justification for regulating irrational behavior seems to comport nicely with Catholic legal theory by equipping the state to cultivate an environment where authentic human flourishing can occur, rather than simply looking to maximize individual autonomy. I would become a bit more cautious, however, if the principle is used to justify more broadly any state regulation of behavior deemed irrational by the prevailing political culture.
Rob
Friday, August 19, 2005
For readers who might be near the University of Minnesota on September 24, this conference looks really interesting.
Rob
Here is a report of a provocative (and dubious) new study suggesting that belief in God among the British is falling at an even faster rate than church attendance and will shortly be near extinction:
Organised religion is in near-terminal decline in Britain because parents have only a 50-50 chance of passing on belief to their offspring, a study claimed yesterday. By contrast, parents without faith are successful in producing a new generation of non-believers, it said.
The report identified institutional religion as having a "half-life" of one generation, as children are only half as likely as their parents to say that it is important in their lives.
If the same mode of analysis was utilized during New Testament times, of course, conventional wisdom would have had Christianity and its rag-tag band of followers dying out long ago. Has evangelism become such a relic that it need not even be considered as a factor in predicting the future course of faith?
(HT: Touchstone)
Rob
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
What riles me even more than a secularist hostility to the entry of Christian values, ideas, and language into the public square is the increasingly common lament among Christians that they are oppressed, victimized and completely shut out of the public square. I did not watch Justice Sunday II, and I do not think I could have done so without throwing many heavy objects at the television. When the socially conservative evangelical magazine Christianity Today thinks the proceedings amounted to general looniness, you know things have gotten out of hand. An example:
[The Catholic League's Bill] Donohue made clear that he sees this moment as a time for conservative Christians to seize more power. The Left, he said, invoking Rosa Parks, had told Christians to "sit in the back of the bus" as second-class citizens. Now, he said, "Catholics and other Christians together, we are going to move to the front of the bus and take command of the wheel!"
This he said immediately after saying, "They make it sound like we are theocrats. We are simply saying that religion is an important part of life. … It's a matter that we want to stand up and be counted."
Stand up, be counted, and "take command," apparently.
CT's entire account is well worth reading.
Rob
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
Orthodox priest John Garvey has a wonderful essay on the intelligent design debate in Commonweal:
The intelligent designer seen by both camps--rejected by one, accepted by the other--is essentially the God of the deists, a generally benign designer compelled to create the best of all possible worlds, a world in which profound flaws and seemingly mad design would be unthinkable. If intelligent design were science, if it could be supported by fact and not what amounts to aesthetic speculation, it might be a good argument for a Gnostic demiurge, a deranged creator-god. Yes, the intricacy of the eye and the elegance of flagella are amazing and the details beautiful. But a designer with his, her, or its hand in at this clockwork level could surely do something to prevent anencephalic babies or Alzheimer’s disease. What about all the apparently useless parts of the DNA strand? Couldn’t praying mantises have been designed with a way to mate that didn’t require the female to devour the head of the male during intercourse? I’ve seen a mother hamster devouring her young with blank eyes, preferable to grief, I guess, under the circumstances. The designer’s eye is upon the sparrow, the mantis, the mother hamster eating her young, the brainless baby.
. . . .
The God of the Bible is responsible for the world, but it is a world that has been wounded beyond comprehension by sin and evil. The whole of creation, Paul insists in the eighth chapter of Romans, groans as it waits for its true completion in God. When we study this creation we study something infinitely more mysterious--and torn and unfinished--than a well-designed machine; it is something at once wonderful and perishing and cannot be reduced to what science can see and tell us, either about randomness or design. The God of the Bible is not the prime mover of Greek philosophy or the benign provider of the deists. He appears in the burning bush and will not give his name. He wrestles with Jacob (who is Israel, the one who “contends with God”). This God has no handle--not designer, planner, nor architect, except as a fleeting metaphor. This God is unknowable, silent, suddenly appearing, interfering when unwanted and absent when wanted, always elusive--and this tricky one is responsible for the universe. In Jesus Christ we are invited to call this God our Father, a father whose son was crucified to begin the release of the universe from the bondage Paul tells us about, inviting us to await a goodness that is only dawning, and certainly can’t be seen clearly under a microscope.
Rob
Monday, August 15, 2005
It's easy to kick around "fundamentalists," and I agree with the posts below (here and here) to the extent they warn of the dangers accompanying an individualist, privatized approach to the interpretation of scripture. However, there is a more pressing danger among Catholics, I believe, in that very few individuals think scripture reading outside church is even necessary. I vividly recall talking with a Catholic who openly condemned the practice of individual bible study among Catholics, emphasizing that "The Church owns the Bible!" Indeed, as this 2001 poll reflects, only 23% of Catholics read the Bible outside of church within the past week. (That's more than 30 points below Protestants and only 14 points above atheists.) Certainly fundamentalists need to rediscover tradition and community in their approach to scripture; they could, however, teach Catholics a thing or two about the study and knowledge of scripture as a centerpiece of an individual's faith formation.
Rob
