Ciceronian Review

Lloyd's Hobbes XIII

Hobbes proposes to answer the argument of the "unjust fool" and thereby show that the reason requires accepting the sovereign and submission to civil law.  As Lloyd sees it, the fool's argument is this:

1.   If injustice is ever reasonable, justice cannot be a rule of reason.  

2.  If an action most conduces to one's ends, then it is reasonable to perform that action.

3.  Injustice sometimes (most) conduces to one's ends.

4.  Hence, injustice is sometimes reasonable.

5.  Therefore, justice cannot be a rule of reason.

The comes this:  "First, and fundamentally, the Foole's principle of inference as contained in premise (2) is false.  The Foole thinks that if an action turns out well, it cannot have been against reason to perform it."  (304)  This argument against the Foole fails because it is cast improperly.  The arguments for the Laws of Nature (and the derivation of the sovereign's authority) are all forward-looking.  Those arguments are about what may reasonably expect, are all about what a person in a certain situation should will come to be.  What the agent in the state of nature reasons about is the future.  Nowhere else is the reasoning about the past.  But here, the argument against the Foole is that it is a mistake to think that because things turned out to favor the personal ends (rather than justice) that it was reasonable to act so as to obtain the personal ends.  In short, the argument is that we cannot tell from the facts of how action turned out back to what it was best to do in the first instance.  But the latter point is not properly connected to the argument of the Foole, which, like the explanation of the Laws of Nature, should be forward looking entirely.  The decision about action has to be first, and the evaluation should be made as of the time of the decision for action.  So there is no problem with the second premise.  At least, there is no real argument on these pages which casts doubt on premise two.

Lloyd's examples concern a winning lottery ticket purchase -- arguing that one cannot infer from the position of having won the lottery ticket that it was reasonable to buy it.  Granting this point does nothing to undermine premise two.  For the same reasons that what makes it unreasonable to buy a losing lottery ticket is not really that it is a losing ticket.  That argument is based on the extraordinarily bad odds of winning when one is considering whether to purchase.  And moving to that time point seems rather to support premise two.  If an action is the one which is most likely to conduce to one's ends, it is reasonable to perform that action, for a Hobbesian.  I don't see what means are available not to accept the premise. 

The fortuitous outcome does not make the conduct rational, but in large because the outcome is not what goes to whether the conduct or action was rational or reasonable in the first place.  So pointing  to the fortuity is not pointing in the right direction. 

Perhaps it is that decisions are reasonable only if grounded in a reasonable process of thought (I don't see how this helps the Hobbesian, but assume anyway).  That assumption looks dubious.  There are certainly times when non-rational decision processes are sufficient for the job.  We do not reason to our mates, and it can be rational to preclude later rational consideration of one's options. 

Lloyd's Hobbes XII

Beginning around page 280 Lloyd gives an account of Hobbes' views the responsibility of the subjects for complying with the duty to obey the sovereign, and how this nevertheless preserves the freedom of the subject.  Maybe it is what Hobbes thought, but I find it hard to swallow.

At 282 we learn that subjects are not responsible (answerable for?) for their actions which are in conformity with the sovereign's directions.  Only the sovereign is responsible for its directions.  (Responsible in what sense?  Answerable only to God?)  The idea is that the subject has reasoned through to submission to the sovereign, and so doing has found a basis for perpetual deferral to the sovereign.  (Apparently the human way of being is eternal submission.)  The subject authorized the sovereign to decide disputes and to command all within the commonwealth.  The sovereign thus determines what is required by the laws of nature and all of the duties of the subjects.  Whatever the sovereign does is authorized by its subjects, because sovereign's role is derived by reason from the Laws of Nature.  There is no reasoned basis for the subject to limit the scope of the sovereign's authority (at least, no practical limit and no practical basis for limitation).  The sovereign's authority extends to all decisions. "Subjects, by their covenant of obedience to government, which they were duty-bound under the Law of Nature to undertake, do have an obligation to obey the government that does limit their natural liberty to act on their private wills; but each particular civil law, as an expression of their considered will, cannot limit their liberty, because it poses no impediment to their doing what they will do, their will now being expressed by those civil laws.”  (292)  This looks like sleight of word to me.  The subject may have adopted the sovereign's role as proper, but that is a different thing than accepting each of the civil laws consequent to any given sovereign.  This could be only if one was somehow committed to willing whatever was a consequent of or implied by whatever one wills.  One wills a sovereign to resolve disputes, but that is rather different than willing the particular outcomes which are later wrought by the sovereign.  At 291 there is this similar expression: “civil laws express the subject’s own will, because he has ‘owned and authorized’ the sovereign’s will as his will, and the laws express the sovereign’s will.”  Thus in obeying the sovereign there is no loss of liberty because nothing the sovereign does or commands will be inconsistent with the subject's own will.  I do not see how that is even plausible -- there is no meaning left to "willing" if one can will things one has no notion or awareness of, and the level of abstraction necessary to get that sort of outcome is so high and so remote from any actual event that is empty.  One might as well adopt the view "I will good" and therefore am done forever and everything I do thereafter is fine.

 

Lloyd's Hobbes XI

The sovereign is the arbitrator of all disputes.  (280)  That seems to make the sovereign outside any norms, and the discussion in the earlier accounts of the Natural Laws suggesting that the sovereign is subject to moral constraints as a bit misleading.  If the sovereign is supreme adjudicator of all disputes, then the sovereign is free to determine the limits of its legitimate power.  How could that not end in the Nixonian view that if the sovereign does it that means it is morally proper?  One might say that the sovereign is still bound by the directives of morality, but the sovereign alone is entitled to pass judgment on the moral demands which might apply to the sovereign.  That is indistinguishable from there being no moral constraints on the sovereign as it would be improper for anyone to disagree with the assessments of the sovereign.  So it is just the sovereign and God, which is the same as saying the sovereign and the sovereign.  (I talked it over with myself and we agreed....)

One implication is that there can be no basis for denying or disputing sovereign’s determination of civil laws or duty, etc.  From which it would follow there could never be legitimate opposition to a sovereign, and that there could be no area of life it which it would be wrong for the sovereign to regulate.  (Kim Jong Il.)  As the sovereign is the sole judge of the import of Natural Laws and limits of its power, there are no limits at all on the scope of legitimate action for the sovereign.  In fact, it appears that the only one who might legitimately criticize a sovereign is its successor. 

Lloyd's Hobbes X

The reciprocity theorem leads to an argument that would require us to "submit to impartial and equitable arbitration of disputes."  (279)  Thus, the essential function of the sovereign is is resolution of disputes, not legislator or enforcer.  Hobbes held that this supremacy in judging carries with it all of the other essential functions of government.  (280)  In order for this approach to succeed, we need to pay close attention to what is covered by the notion of 'dispute' here.  To cover the essential functions of government, we will need to see dispute resolution as encompassing enabling rules, e.g., rules about how things are to be done or according a person or entity the power to do or enact things (rules).  One might try arguing that the power to resolve all disputes gets one all the other functions because the sovereign then resolves all disputes about what the law is and how it should be enforced and who is empowered to create law, etc.  I t think for this to work, one has to be a bit creative in understanding disputes.  For example, law is created through the sovereign deciding a dispute about whether something or other is required by law.  This puts disputants in the odd position of arguing over whether the sovereign will or will not find in their favor, rather than over what the law requires of them.  There is no conduct guiding in law because it no more than a suggestion about what will be decided should the sovereign consider a dispute on the topic.  One can run a machine hat way, but it certainly looks odd, and seems to do some violence to understanding social interactions.  It places at the heart of all social orders resolution of dispute, not in an abstract sense of resolving a theoretical problem, but int he concrete sense.  It suggests that there is always about erupt disputes about what conduct is appropriate in the circumstances.  That does not seem right -- people do arrange their lives to conform to norms, not predictions of decisions.

There is something else here which may cause hesitation -- "impartial and equitable arbitration." The argument for the sovereign is an argument for an ultimate decision-maker, some final authority. Unlike, Lloyd, I do not see where the reciprocity theorem generates any claim of equitable arbitration, or really even impartial arbitration.  I can see the derivation to a final arbiter, but more than that is hard to see.  Even if there is some argument for the arbitrator to be impartial and equitable, it is a bit on the sleight of hand side of things -- the decision about what is equitable and what is neutral is made by the sovereign and no one else.  So there is no standard at all -- no  one will have a basis for complaining about deviation for neutral or equitable.  Those terms then fall out as mere dressing. 

Lloyd's Hobbes IX

 At 205, Lloyd begins the argument that Hobbes offers what she calls a "self-effacing natural law theory."

I shall argue that the core commitment of natural law – the reciprocity theorem – imposes upon subjects a genuine and virtually indefeasible duty to comply with the sovereign’s civil laws, even when the behaviors commanded violate the requirements of discrete particular Laws of Nature. ...  Because we would not think it reasonable of everyone else to exercise their own private judgment as to which, if any, civil laws to obey (for such license is likely to undermine the arrangements that make it possible for us effectively to pursue our ends), the reciprocity theorem requires us also to refrain from holding those laws hostage to our own private judgment of the their merits.  In short, a commitment to being reasonable, as is needed if we are to justify our actions to others, requires that we subordinate our private judgments to an agreed upon public judgment in all matters of common concern, and so defer to the laws even when we correctly believe them to command immoral actions.

Notice how very powerful the conclusion of the argument is expected to be -- there is a duty to defer to the sovereign on every matter of concern to the community ("common concern").  I am not sure if the conclusion would cover any civil pronouncement or law issued by the sovereign, because it is not entirely clear what all is a matter of "common concern."  If common concern encompasses decision processes for disputes, then the conclusion will reach every aspect of civil law.  Land ownership would surely be included, and, I think, all of the substantive rules of law.  Honestly, quite hard to find any limit on common concern.  The parade of horribles follows pretty quickly if there is no limit.  Common concern would have to be something determined by the sovereign, and so here (and some other places, as I think we will see), the Hobbesian sovereign is mighty far from any liberal political state.  What horribles?  Well, racial covenants, of course, and regulation of sex and reproduction.  As religious belief is within the scope of the sovereign's determination, more or less everything is a matter of common concern.  Freedom of conscience?  Out with that, not happening here.  (Bad Gandhi, bad.)

If the conclusion is successfully defended, I think one would have to reconsider the discussion of the right to self-defense, i.e., right to resist sovereign's imposition of capital punishment.  That discussion, as I recall it, is built around a Natural Law.  But this conclusion would set aside any recourse to particular Laws of Nature (or the implication of such, necessarily) and so there could never be a right to resist the instructions of the sovereign.  So when the Daimyo says exit this life, the subject has a duty to do so.

Lloyd's Hobbes VIII

Hobbes was a materialist.  (See 249, for example.)  What is the content, then, of 'rational agent' and 'acting for a reason' under his theory? Is the materialism a necessary, or even significant, part of his political theory?  Nothing special here for Hobbes, yet is it is a little bit of a puzzle.  In a fully materialist account of the world, why would there be any talk at all of reasons?  If a reason is not some odd object, it would not be in the explanations for conduct.  I suspect that the materialism is unnecessary.

 

Lloyd's Hobbes VII

At 247-48 Lloyd's offers a quick summary of the derivation from the state of nature of the duty to submit to government.  The Right of All to All should be unacceptable to any rational human being because that Right results in an inability of any person to maintain any of the things necessary for satisfaction of their needs or desires.  (I don't know why there is talk int he text of "rational agents" as there is nothing about rational agency that is compromised by a Right of All to All.  Agents do not have to be the sorts of things which have needs which could be thwarted by lack of assured possessions -- there is no reason to think rational agents have to be perishable or that they have sufficient material desires that there would not always be a superfluidity of goods or necessary material.  I suppose this is just a result of the way Hobbes thought about these things.  My point is that we are concerned with human beings, or something quite like human beings, which seems to me something of a special case of 'rational agents'.  Q, from Star Trek, is a rational agent.)  The way out of the Right of All to All is a covenant to quit the universe of private judgment.  (Private judgment is the state of nature -- each is judge of what is right and necessary, etc.)  So, those in the state of nature will agree to take some kinds of questions out of the realm subject to private judgment and leave them for decision by some designated entity (or person).  These questions are submitted to arbitration, i.e., to a sovereign or government.  Everyone is in the same position, and so would turn over the same (or at least a common) set of issues to the government to decide -- the public judgment -- which are those necessary to preserve sufficient peace for each to pursue his or her various ends.  Obviously, this must lead to an agreement that such covenants are binding -- it all collapses if anyone may reserve judgment whenever the public decision is unwelcome.  And that is how one gets the Third Law of Nature, i.e., that mean perform their covenants.

If those in the state of nature are rational, why can't they limit the degree of their covenants abjuring private judgment?  Why not a complex covenant that reserves a right to ignore the public judgment when certain conditions are met (that the defection can be maintained, won't generally destroy adherence to government, etc.)?  I assume the response is something like such a condition (or set of conditions) will be unstable and necessarily unravel the covenant generally returning all to a state of nature.  I don't see that as a viable argument, in the first instance because it is empirically false.  It is pretty clear that noticeable levels of departure from the covenant exist without unraveling the whole thing.  Or is the proper response to recur to the reciprocity theorem?  Why doesn't that, at this stage of things, lack bite?  Is reciprocity strong some form of universalization?  The exception conditions can be universalized, or included in a universalized rule, so I don't think it will do the necessary work.  (I also don't think the right kinds of agency are involved, but that horse is starting to rot.)

Which leads me to something else, going back to the 'rational agent' theme.  Isn't there a density requirement for Hobbesian arguments to work?  If the rational agents (human beings) are widely scattered, why would the Right of All to All even matter?  In small, socially cohesive groups, where would the drive for a sovereign or government come from?