LiberaLaw

Less than a year ago, Seth Adam Smith's great blog post, " Marriage Isn't For You ," went viral. In the post, Smith explains how, not long before his wedding, his dad dealt bluntly with his cold feet by urging him to think about giving to, rather than getting from, his bride-to-be. It is, as I say, a great piece. But it raises an interesting question for me, a question somewhere at the border of normative and applied ethics. The crucial moment in Smith's story comes when his dad says: Seth, you’re being totally selfish. So I’m going to make this really simple: marriage isn’t for you. You don’t marry to make yourself happy, you marry to make someone else happy. More than that, your marriage isn’t for yourself, you’re marrying for a family. . . . Marriage isn’t for you. It’s not about you. Marriage is about the person you married. It seems clear that the elder Smith isn't offering a report on what he thinks his son is doing, much less on what people...

Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince contains a simple explanation of what seems like an important aspect of love: history. The Little Prince seeks to explain why his rose, in particular, matters to him. (It seems likely that Saint-Exupéry was trying to understand and justify his tumultuous relationship with his wife.) The Little Prince is deeply troubled by the discovery of many, many roses that seem phenomenally indistinguishable from his rose. He says to them: You are beautiful, but you are empty. One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you—the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars; because it is she that I have listened to, when she grum...

There are no guns in my home, and there never have been. But I believe there are several mutually reinforcing reasons for skepticism about proposals for gun control. Gun control measures reduce the popular capacity for armed resistance to tyranny and invasion. These measures limit opportunities for self-defense against thuggery. They deny people the benefits of the deterrent effect exerted by the widespread belief that most members of a given population are armed. They increase people's dependence on state authorities who would otherwise be seen as irrelevant and unnecessary. They leave state authorities more willing to violate people's rights with impunity. The implementation of these measures increases the power of the state and provides excuses for state authorities to intrusively surveil people's nonviolent activities, thus compromising privacy and autonomy. The implementation of these measures involves forcible interference with nonviolent conduct—at minimum t...

I suggest, in brief, two sets of reasons not to embrace belief in reincarnation: 1. Even if one affirms some sort of numerical duality between brain and mind—a duality that need not involve any commitment to substance dualism—it still seems simplest to suppose that the brain gives rise to mental life. At least at first blush, this is what our experience and observation suggest. But, for reincarnation to make sense, one would need to imagine that not only a mind or soul numerically other than the brain but also a personal self with memories, personality, etc., exists in distinction from the brain. It will then be necessary to explain both (a) how this personal self comes into existence in the first place, if not as an initial product of brain activity and (b) how it comes to be intimately associated with a particular brain. 2. In tandem with these metaphysical or scientific objections to belief reincarnation, there are also existential objections. Most important is the devaluation o...

I have, as some readers might know, been reading a good deal about death and life beyond death in recent months. In light of what I've read, I've found myself thinking about a philosophical puzzle related to beliefs regarding suicide. I don't believe anyone I know well has ever committed, or attempted, suicide. But the topic remains of considerable interest (and the subject of vocal debate ). Suicide and New Age Beliefs about Life after Death A number of New Age thinkers and experients report that someone who has committed suicide can be expected to run into special problems in the afterlife as they conceive it. Sometimes, this is said to be because of the various moral problems putatively attendant on suicide. I am inclined to think that suicide (at least often)  is morally problematic, and I have no particular beef, therefore, with those who reason in this way. But I find interesting and puzzling another account of why suicides might create distinctive afterlife ...

My response to Jason Brennan's review of Anarchy and Legal Order  is up at BHL . The title is a reference, of course, to an increasingly familiar meme (see here and here ).

The Foundation for Economic Education has an enviable history. For over half a century, it has sought to share the conviction that society can and should be organized on the basis of peaceful, voluntary cooperation. It has treated the key terms in its name, economic and education , with appropriate breadth—focusing not only on the contribution of unfettered exchange to human well being but also on the philosophy underlying a commitment to voluntary cooperation in the economic realm and the historical, social, and political context of the quest for freedom, while seeking to enhance understanding of the idea of freedom in a broad range of ways. FEE founder Leonard Read famously summed up the Foundation’s vision in a simple, straightforward, powerful phrase: “Anything that’s peaceful.” Peaceful conduct may be foolish or immoral, of course. But people have no business interfering with it by force —protests, boycotts, and educational efforts are perfectly OK, of cou...