The Problem of Universal Morality

Just as ideas of "moral relativism" have become more widespread among the public, there has been a reaction from intellectuals who have been starting to argue that morality is universal. The leaders of this movement are mostly members of the New Atheist movement which seeks to challenge religion in public life, transcending just a separation of church and state. The New Atheists want to prove that religion has no intrinsic value, that essentially science can replace whatever benefits religion has, or at least what motivations continue its existence. Fellow traveler Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine, described religion as shrinking over time as science has been able to give more satisfying explanations for just about everything. The scientific revolution in the 17th century under Bacon, Galileo, and Newton explained the workings of the universe purely by the natural laws of mechanics, contradicting the claims of medieval science. The 18th century enlightenment gave a basis for political authority by human reason. Darwinian evolution explained in the 19th century how all life including human nature itself was the result of blind natural forces, following geology's contradiction of biblical accounts of the age and formation of the Earth. Today the secularist hope is that morality and the purpose of life too can be explained without reference to God or the supernatural.

These thinkers wish to challenge the notion of non-overlapping magisteria, coined by Stephen Jay Gould. Religion and science are said to each be accurate in their own field of human knowledge. As was said in an episode of the Simpsons dealing with evolution, how would you like scientists giving sermons in church? More broadly, for those secular intellectuals suspicious of science, science cannot answer the only questions which really matter, the moral ones. Non-overlapping magisteria was developed by philosophers, and is greatly misunderstood. David Hume formulated an early version, the is-ought distinction. No amount of facts can prove something to be morally right and wrong. Just because it happens doesn't make it good. This itself is a restatement (sort of) of what mothers have told their children. "If everybody jumped of a cliff, would you do it too." Yes it is true that everybody else is doing it, but according to Hume's philosophy there is no certainty that the behavior associated with what you, child, see as good (others do it) necessarily follows. The "good" of their actions depends on something other than the instances of observed behavior. G.E. Moore would expand this idea as the naturalistic fallacy in his Principia Ethica. Reacting against the Utilitarians like John Stuart Mill, he added to is/ought the difference between something which is desired and something that is good. This is important because, going all the way back to Plato's dialogues, many philosophers and psychologists today believe that everybody aims for what they see and as good and do not intentionally do wrong. The Socratic approach is that just as lack of knowledge leads to folly in a given task, lack of knowledge of what is good for the soul is the source of wrong. Modern economics is based on the principle that every individual pursues their self-interest, according to what they desire and how they think they are able to attain it. The problem is that we can desire what is actually bad for us or others unintentionally. If everything desired is good, then there is no way to condemn the sadist because he or she finds what they do desirable.

After is-ought and the naturalistic fallacy where facts about the natural world and feelings of pleasure are not the criterion of moral judgements, what is left? Science appears to be at an impasse, both the natural sciences and psychological accounts of preference cannot account for morality. Neodarwinism can certainly account for how we developed the capacity to make moral judgements and why this ability has stuck around. So science can clarify the facts which are of course used in moral discourse. Much of our arguments about morality do revolve around facts. When I accuse you of stealing, there is the important matter of proving you did indeed steal something. If condemning Barack Obama for saddling our grandchildren with debt, I must prove that he has increased the debt through his actions and describe what those are. And the definitions which we use in moral argument are subject to being true or false. When we approve or disprove of an action, we must explain the basis from which we are criticizing it, whether from an egoistic point of view or an altruistic one. Psychology can explain why we hold certain moral dispositions above others. The methods to convince others of our position can be studied with some objectivity.

What is left is what is important. Why be moral, what makes it moral? My position is that the sciences can go pretty far in explaining reality, but stop short at the most important stuff of thought. Once we figure out what we ought to do, science can take over and do great good. It begins and ends there. We should at the very least acknowledge that ethical propositions are not right or wrong in the way facts are, be it of the natural world or facts about ourselves. This leaves two options. Either morality transcends facts and lies in something like religion or intuition. Or ethical statements are not right or wrong in any sense because they are not based in facts and are just expressions of feeling which add nothing to the truth of a statement. The latter view means the statement you shouldn't kill is just stating the fact you don't like it that some people kill. The ethical part is like adding an exclamation point to a sentence, it doesn't make the sentence any more truthful. This view of ethics, non-cognitivism, would make ethical statements expressions of assent or dissent or commands for others to act upon. I can assert that what is pleasurable is good, but someone else can assert pain is good and not be factually or logically in error. What we are asserting is our preference, even if that preference is say to not live over living. Because all we can talk about are facts, and moral claims are not facts, they are not true or false.

P.1 All we know are true and false are facts
P.2 A moral claim in itself is not a fact
C. Therefore moral claims are not true or false

This position depends on those two premises. If it can be shown that we know more than facts, then my conclusion doesn't follow. But we cannot speak about our knowledge of what cannot proved. What knowledge cannot be proved is private language, accessible to only one person. If you see a slightly different shade of red, and I cannot tell by your observable behavior or physical state, then I must conclude the "fact" that you see a slightly different shade of red nonsense. I cannot describe what it is like to experience color to someone who has been blind their whole life. This is the problem of qualia, purely subjective conscious experience. The way we feel is known to us and can't really be known by others than as an analogy to their own feelings. To say I'm in pain from burning my hand on the stove evokes in you feelings which if I felt them would probably be very similar to what I would feel in that situation. But there is no way of proving this. Quoting Wittgenstein "whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."

It is with this non-cognitivism, owed to the writings of A.J. Ayer and R. M. Hare which denies moral claims are right or wrong as facts are, that I believe ethics can survive. The non-cognitivist position doesn't necessarily mean ethics is useless and we should become amoral. Rather I believe it forces us to rethink what it means to be moral. Morality is about approval or disaproval of an act. As such most of moral discussion should be about facts. But the stuff of morality lies in our preferences, something which is certainly real, but is outside of being true or false. The preferences we have are just that, preferences. They denote the most important experience we have, perhaps the key to the meaning of life itself. If I do not sound clear on what I mean by preferences or approval being moral, that is my point. Morality is still a problem, because it is only as universal as it is universally agreed upon. Protagoras' quote "man is the measure of all things" is followed by "of what is, that it is; of what is not, that it is not." There are as many moral positions as there are people. If all humans agreed, morality would not be a problem. Thomas Hobbes described the problem thus:

It is true, that certain living creatures, as Bees, and Ants, live sociably with one another and therefore some man may perhaps desire to know, why Man-kind cannot do the same. To which I answer, 

First, that men are continually in competition for Honour and Dignity, which these creatures are not 

Secondly, that amongst these creatures, the Common good differeth not from the Private; But man, whose Joy consisteth in comparing himselfe with other men, can relish nothing but what is eminent. 

Thirdly, that these creatures, having not (as man) the use of reason, do not see, nor think that they see any fault, in the administration of their common business; whereas amongst men, there are very many, that thinke themselves wiser, and able to govern the Publique, better than the rest; and thereby bring it into Distraction and Civill warre.

Lastly, the agreement of these creatures is Naturall; that of men, is by Covenant only, which is Artificiall

Because we are not hive minds, because there is disagreement, there is the need for ethics not as finding what we ought to do through ratiocination, but by convincing others to adopt our like and dislikes. All for the purpose of facilitating social life. Universal morality is always going to a problem so long as people are people.

(Update 2/11/17 I still hold a preference view of moral ends, but because I am a scientific realist there are objectively best means to fulfill our preferences. The fact-value/is-ought gap is transcended if facts relate to objectively reality. I´m a moral realist, at least at this point, about means but not towards an ultimate end or preference for our actions.)

Leibniz's Law

In philosophy there are three generally accepted laws of thought: identity, noncontradiction, and the excluded middle. The law of identity asserts that a thing is itself and not something else; A is A. The law of noncontradiction asserts that something is not itself and something else, A is not B if A is A. The excluded middle asserts that A cannot be both A and non A (B), it is either A or non A (B). These laws are generally accepted in western philosophy, although there is great disagreement over where and what they apply to, and if such distinctions exist in the natural world. Other laws have been proposed to also be laws of thought, one of them is the principle of sufficient reason PSR which says that there is a reason or cause for everything. This one is quite controversial because of its metaphysical implications. 

The Identity of Indiscernibles is another one of the candidates for being a law of thought, but one which appears to follow the traditional laws of thought more than the PSR because it deals with identity and not relation. The Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles, also called Leibniz's Law, states that if two things share the same properties, then they are the same things. If everything that can be said about one thing can be said about the other, then they share the same identity. 

Leibniz puts it in his essay On the Principle of Indiscernibles: "there are no purely extrinsic denominations, because of the interconnexion of things, and that it is not possible for two things to differ from one another in respect to place and time alone, but that it is always necessary that there shall be some other internal difference."

Sounds reasonable enough, but why is it called the identity of Indiscernibles? Because the things in question are supposed to be able to differ extrinsically, in time space or number, and still be able to be the same thing. Just because the Earth exists in different spaces and at different times during the year does not mean it isn't the same thing the whole year. Position in space, motion, time, number etc. are different modes of the physical world, what could be called physical substance. Though physical things may differ in certain respects, that doesn't mean they do not share the same quality of being physical, all existing in space and time. To be truly different from something else, the subject must also differ in other predicates like color, taste, or smell. 

When I first tried to understand Leibniz's Law this way, by reading a straight definition, I didn't quite grasp it or its importance. The best way to understand the principle is understanding what could have motivated Leibniz to formulate the principle. He goes on to say in his essay "this overthrows the whole of purely corpuscularian philosophy. First, there cannot be any atoms, otherwise there could be two things which differ only extrinsically. Then, if place by itself does not make a change, it follows that there cannot be any change which is merely local."

Corpuscularian philosophy refers to a type of atomism put forth by 17th century thinkers like John Locke and Robert Boyle active in the scientific revolution which differs from atomism in that the tiny units which make up everything can in principle be infinitely divided, but also while existing in a void (which Descartes denied). They can be infinitely divided because the qualities that objects have are not just the configuration of atoms, but are also the products of the powers of interacting corpuscles. These additional powers come from the quality of solidity, where the void between corpuscles is filled. In that way everything sensual can be more than just the motion of atoms as they can join together. This meant that objects have two kinds of qualities, primary qualities which are due to atomic arrangement and secondary qualities which were the result of interaction with the senses. Primary qualities were said to reflect the corpuscles as they really are; having the qualities of extension, motion, figure, solidity, and number which are common to all objects of sense. Secondary qualities do exist to the corpuscles but are caused by their interaction. Color, taste, smell, and sound the way we experience them do not exist in the objects themselves but are produced by the acting on our senses, they are purely subjective. This distinction was problematic from the beginning, but is crucial to the corpuscularian philosophy. If everything is physical in nature, subjective things like pain can explained as an emergent property, much as in chemistry where elements behave differently together than individually. 

Leibniz's Law suggests that this distinction is untenable. Secondary qualities are in a sense real attributes which demarcate different kinds of things, and are not just products of the action of physical things. "Just as shape is to extension, and derived force is to an entelechy, so are phenomena to light; light is in a way the matter of images. This cannot be located in the mere power of acting, since action is again something relative to a state which varies." Light is not just the power of photon particles to produce electrical signals through the eyes to the brain. If that was true then there would be no means of differentiating light from any other corpuscles, which differ only extrinsically. 

The implications of this law or principle are profound. Materialism or physicalism would be downright false, as they claim everything is physical which would mean differing only extrinsically. Non-physical things like the ideas of love or freedom which are quite different than physical things cannot be reduced to physical sensations, brought on by physical objects. They are something in themselves, perhaps. Leibniz's Law has been used to support dualism, that mind and body are different. The qualities of consciousness are that it is subjective and not reducible to a time and place, the mind is continuous for as long as it exists, and has intention behind its actions. Since physical objects are known to a third party, are reducible to time and place, and do not have intentionality it follows that mind and body are somehow different or separate because of their different properties. 

Critics of the implications of Leibniz's Law invoke the masked man fallacy. If my father is accused of being a masked thief, I can say he does not appear to have the character of being a thief and isn't wearing a mask so he is not the masked thief. Or, Clark Kent cannot be Superman because Superman has been observed flying and Clark Kent has not. The qualities shared must be intrinsic to the nature of what we're talking about, the true properties of these objects, and not just appearances. Critics of dualism would assert that it seems as though mind has different properties than matter, but that is just because we don't fully understand how it works given the difficulty of studying consciousness from a third person point of view. Much like it was thought that the sun circles the Earth, "the sun can't be the center of the solar system because it moves in the sky while we stand still." 

Still Leibniz's Law is something to think about as artificial intelligence advances. Does behaving intelligently demonstrate consciousness, if consciousness is defined by its subjective nature? 

Thoughts on Jean Paul Sartre

I read Sartre after becoming acquainted with Descartes' philosophy, that "I" am identified with my thoughts (the famous I think therefore I am). Sartre offers not just a guide to live ones own life but I think a totally new way of viewing philosophy, which goes beyond the cogito. I am not my thoughts, thoughts being for Descartes all that can be certain to exist. Thoughts exist for sure, but they in no way prove that I exist as existence in Sartre's phrase precedes essence. Consciousness is always consciousness of something, something which exists. Descartes described the self as that which doubts, affirms, denies, and chooses. There was a missing step in the cogito, that having thoughts is something that belongs to consciousness. The act of doubting presupposed there is something to doubt. In that sense consciousness is only the act of willing which lies behind doubt, affirmation, and denial. The "I" is not defined by existence but by the choices made in regard to existence. Therefore we are free to choose the meaning of our own existence. This of course means that existence is independent of our consciousness and is meaningless. 

Sartre's transcendence of Descartes' ego came first through through the concept of intentionality, formulated by Franz Brentano and Edmund Husserl, that thought is always about something. The knowledge of the phenomenal or empirical world is in terms of subjective awareness and not from a passive standpoint. Using this framework, Sartre argues that there isn't such a thing as human nature. The essence of what is human is chosen by us, but always in regard to existence. Because of this the act of defining our own existence also defines the existence of others. The self is mediated through the other. Through our actions we have a responsibility not only for our own meaning but for those of everybody else. This point I did not realize before reading Existentialism is a Humanism and answers the Marxist charge Sartre alludes to that existentialism cuts ourselves off from our fellow humans and engages us in egocentric contemplation, the same trap Descartes got us into with the cogito. This central point is what I think makes Sartre's lecture a success. Existentialism is a humanism.

Where I don't think Sartre is successful is proving of libertarian free will, the subject of Being and Nothingness, which is central to his ethical claims. Basically, Sartre argues that consciousness or "being-for-itself" is essentially nothing. Nothing is the absence of the being-in-itself which consciousness is aware of. It's absence only makes sense (as how can there "be" nothing) if consciousness imagines there is something there when there is not. Consciousness is purely negative, it's power is to negate being, which I guess is where the concept of identity come from. So we create the meaning in our lives out of pre-existing consciousness by some kind of selective awareness, which I guess we choose. Okay. Where I fall off the wagon is how the negatory power of consciousness to selectively choose being can actually affect anything in the world of being-in-itself. This in other words is similar to the interaction problem which plagues dualism. If mind is not physical or just being-in-itself, then how on earth does mind have causal relationships with the physical world in which it inhabits? Even if mind is free to cogitate as it wills, I don't see a necessary connection between this and having the ability to change the world. I see it this way: I don't control my body all of the time, I don't consciously control the beating of my heart or my digesting of food. Yet the sensations from this activity impinge on my thoughts, and I have no control of the fact that I have these sensations. In what way am I free if I don't control much of anything, assuming that being-for-itself has causal relations with being-in-itself? I can control pretty little during the time I am awake. 

An even greater challenge is the possibility of epiphenomenalism, that consciousness is not physical but itself does not cause anything in the physical world. Even if consciousness isn't physical or part of being-in-itself, everything about my physical body which I think I have causal power over can be explained in terms of physical causes. That I am writing this review can be explained by the observable behavior of my hands inputting what the neurons in my brain are firing off from memories of reading Existentialism is a Humanism. No consciousness, no being-for-itself needed to explain the behavior of writing this review. This sounds absurd, but is a possible explanation for how a dualist ontology could work, which is what I think Sartre leads us to. This would put his ethical position in a weird place. I can determine the meaning of life mentally, but I don't know if I can act on it, unless I do and hopefully it'll align with my desires. Sartre does say that we must live without hope if we choose the meaning of our lives.

"As for “despair,” the meaning of this expression is extremely simple. It merely means that we limit ourselves to a reliance upon that which is within our wills...For there is no God and no prevenient design, which can adapt the world and all its possibilities to my will. When Descartes said, 'Conquer yourself rather than the world,' what he meant was, at bottom, the same – that we should act without hope."
-Jean Paul Sartre
This sounds very stoic to me. That we ought to live unconcerned with things out of our control, body and reputation, and limit desire to what is in our control.

This however could make life even more absurd when paired with Sartre's radical freedom. At least the stoics had natural law and were determinists. If I choose the meaning of my life regardless of external circumstances, I'll have to have a very strong will. This undermines existentialism as a social philosophy and does make it more an egocentric endeavor and less a political humanism since it is possible that I cannot act out the meaning I will for my life as an example to others.

The Cogito-Nick Anderson On Philosophy

I'm tired of American politics, the subject of my other blog Nick Anderson On Liberty. After four years of getting my bachelor's degree in political science and working in various political jobs, it's becoming more of a chore. Or to put it nicely, a duty. It's not something I want to devote a recreational blog to. This blog is going to be about philosophy in the most general sense. I'm going to analyze whatever I mentally get stuck on, or whatever interests me. The more tradition philosophical issues like free will and morality but maybe thoughts about movies, books, or music that I want to extrapolate. I hope this will get the juices going, make it easier to write down what's going on in my head.

On Nature

Life is the struggle to become an individual. The continual failure of nature to preserve itself in an organized, complex, individuated form is responsible for change, manifested in time, which characterizes existence.

All things are in flux even while everything is interconnected into a single existence. Change consists of opposites, going from hot to cold, dead and alive. The contradiction subsists in nature's taking of individual forms.

Any single thing is always consistent with itself. Nature can be understood either in the abstract, as a whole subtracted from its instances, or by individual examples separated from others. Yet the activity of life is change not stasis. It is a process. It is a process from individual instance to another individual instance. This is understood from experience; all things appear in motion and opposed to one another. The intellect can through its own prejudices discover the underlying nature of existence. Heres how.

Every individual either owes its existence to itself or another individual. It is clear that individuals do not always exist, coming in and out of existence. Individuals change; they are affected by other things and have effects on other things. Individuals in nature depend on another individual for their own existence. Yet if every individual depends on another, this leads to an infinite regress. We have to explain each explanation. If everything needs an explanation, there cannot be any arbitrary stopping points. The truth of sufficient reason is true for posited things, individuals. From nothing nothing comes.

Nothing is not the absence of being, but of a particular conception of being. It is the absence of intentional being, of being known to consciousness. Consciousness is aware of being both spatially and temporally, in separate bits and pieces.

Posited being requires another posited being for explanation because its unique existence is made in reference to nothing, the absence of said posited being.

As nature continually changes according to our knowledge of it, it escapes meaning and taken together reason too. Individual things can be given meaning and reason, but not existence as such which avoids individuality.

This means that from our standpoint, life is tragic. The good is the fulfillment of the will, the bad which opposes it. The achievement of the good requires knowledge, which is only possible with particular contingent things. The achievement of any good is fleeting, it will perish in time. Whatever we will, whether it is satisfied in nature is beyond the will. There is no necessary connection between our will and changes in existence, as our consciousness depends totally on existence and is only independent because it is selective nature.

Life is the continual failure to seek identity between existence and consciousness.

The Proper Role of Government

My political philosophy begins with the idea that every human being owns themselves and has a right to do what they please with their own body so long as they do not interfere with someone else's equal right to their own person. Whether that person be born or unborn, young or old, of any race, religion, or gender. It is the natural liberty of the individual that I hold as the basis for all rights. Conscious life is not something given, but chosen. As humans beings with the gift of reason, we become conscious of ourselves, control our actions and have the ultimate decision of whether to live our lives to the fullest, given our personal nature, or to live according to the dictates of nature and of others. The latter has been the unfortunate condition of mankind for much of its history. But in the United States in America this has been enshrined for over two centuries in the Declaration of Independence as ¨we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.¨

From this self-ownership comes the right to keep what we make with our person. A society based on private property and mutual exchange ensures the most peaceful social arrangement, and the only one compatible with natural liberty. Protection of what is ours in our person and property allows for self-improvement to our higher faculties. A free society is essential for virtue, as the reach towards the highest good differs from person to person. But the overriding principle is that of happiness. The system of private property and voluntary exchange guarantees that whatever an individual’s definition of happiness may be, my course of pursuing it will not stifle them.

The purpose of government is to protect this liberty fundamental to the development of the angels of our nature. In a state of unlimited liberty, there is the constant threat of voluntary action which takes away our life, liberty, and property depriving us of the essence of our existence. Government’s primary role is prevent harm to others, consisting in the initiation of physical force against others. This includes murder, theft, bodily hard among other things. From this right derives the right of individuals to enter into contract with each other, cementing voluntary agreement into law to facilitate cooperation. As we make these contracts, there is the constant threat of one party not holding up their side or agreeing to the contract on false pretenses. To this government must prosecute fraud, of deliberately misleading a party to a contract.

In our time, government has grown far beyond the principle of protecting our natural, inalienable liberty described by the Declaration of Independence as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. My principles of government allow for a far smaller government which provides national defense, courts, police, and the provision of public goods individuals are not able to provide by contract like infrastructure or education. I add to these basic provisions the principle of subsidiarity, government should be done at the most local level possible. Government is always the use of force from one person over another and should be as close to the individual it is using force against.

Preface to Political Philosophy

No one has ever observed a tribal society emerge into a ¨civilized¨ society. Much of early anthropology was formed observing the remaining hunter-gatherer and tribal societies of American Indians, continued today in the remaining early societies in places like New Guinea. Or through archeology we can look at what is left from our own civilizations in centuries past, and conjecture. And that is what mostly goes on, conjecture.

The questions of whether humans are naturally social or whether men and women are inherently unequal are today still philosophical as history can only give so much. Even if history suggests men and women are unequal, it doesn't have to follow it must be this way then or now.

More recently darwinian evolution combined with our knowledge of genetics has given hope that we can uncover what human nature is by looking directly at ourselves. Books like Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene and E.O. Wilson's Sociobiology argue for a new understanding of human nature that isn't for the individual or the group, but for the reproduction of the genes. Kinship selection is the basis of society, we care for others and want them to survive so our genes will live on. Those genes, of which children have half their parents, are what are truly immortal and connect us with other people. It is in our self-interest to save others because they are us in the deepest sense. Altruism, indeed morality itself comes from this interest in self-preservation. But the self of interest is our family's genes.

This is becoming a more popular view, which I subscribe to, but it doesn't fully answer the question of why. Why is for the rational animal, humans, who don't just follow their biology, their genes. We do things not only because they allow us to survive, but we want to know what is the best way of survival, which politically is living together. As Dawkins put near the end of The Selfish Gene:

     ¨We have the power to defy the selfish genes of our birth and, if necessary, the selfish memes of our indoctrination...we are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on Earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.¨

So the beginning of the discussion of civil or political society is of reason,of those who can ask why, for why would a rational person live in a political order? This requires a definition of what politics is. Politics of course comes from Greek, the polis or what we call today a city-state. This definition confused me when I first heard it in grade school. For how is this definition relevant to a country with many cities, towns, suburbs etc? Government is found in all kinds of living arrangements. As I grew up, I found that there can be an underlying concept behind the use of a word which is merely expressed by that word. The city state really expresses people living together under rules, different people living together in a single place under these rules. Aristotle begins his The Politics (the first real study of political science) saying;

    ¨Every community is established with a view to some good; for mankind always acts in order to obtain what they think good. But, if all communities aim at some good, the state or political community...aims, and in a higher degree than any other, at the highest good¨

Politics itself is based on a larger underlying concept, that of common human purpose. We all have different goals, but by virtue of reason there are things that we all can agree that are good through speech and language, by communication. By mutual agreement, we can convince others to act for our benefit and guarantee us to act for theirs. This is how trade works in its simplest form of barter, I agree to give you something in return for a promise you will reciprocate, in agreement with what I communicate I want in return. Politics is an agreement between all people who live together, the stipulations communicated to all and enforced by a body to which all answer to.

And there we have it, political society emerges when all rational beings agree to rules specifying who can do what. Politics touches everything from marriage, war, trade, and even life and death. However there is an insight from a more modern figure which I add, which best describes what the state does. Sociologist Max Weber described the state as the monopoly of the legitimate use of force over a defined area. Politics bluntly is the use of force. It is coercive. It must be for how can all people in the community be bound by it? If I steal something, how can that person get justice if somebody else protects me?

The state monopolizes coercion so that nobody may take the law in their hands. Coercion makes sure the law is obeyed, and is placed in one body which we all abide by. But government is something more than just a monopoly of violence, it is supposed to be ¨legitimate¨. St. Augustine told the story of a conversation Alexander the Great had with a captured pirate. Alexander asks the pirate how dare he molest the whole world. The pirate replies that because he molests the world with a small ship he is a pirate, while because Alexander does it with a great Navy he is called emperor. This shows that government without justice is no better than a gang of pirates, or thieves writ large. For the rational being, force takes away the capacity to exercise his capacity. So it had better be for the good of the rational part in our nature.