Philosophy, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary

Libertarian Morality

12 Comments

Some interesting new research. I found this particularly salient:

Libertarians scored lower than both liberals and (especially) conservatives on sensitivity to disgust. The authors suggest this tendency “could help explain why they disagree with conservatives on so many social issues, particularly those related to sexuality. Libertarians may not experience the flash of revulsion that drives moral condemnation in many cases of victimless offenses.”

I’m not sure what they mean by “sensitivity to disgust.” If they mean that we don’t get disgusted, it doesn’t apply to me. But if they mean that, unlike some people, we don’t use it as the basis for morality, and especially for lawmaking, I think that’s right. I am quite repulsed by male homosex, but that doesn’t mean that I think that makes it immoral or subject to criminal sanctions, because I recognize that my reaction is a natural one for a heterosexual, and that many people are disgusted by different things. The fact that some are disgusted by the thought of eating bugs doesn’t make it immoral, and shouldn’t be, even to them.

12 thoughts on “Libertarian Morality”

  1. No, libertarians get plenty disgusted. We get disgusted with bureaucracy (both government and corporate) and are especially disgusted with rent-seeking parasites. The people who ran this study asked the wrong questions.

  2. There seems to be an increasing trend in the psychological study of political preferences. This is disturbing because combined with government directed health care and the ongoing politicization of science it’s ultimately dangerous. Not to mention stinking of progressive eugenics.

  3. There seems to be an increasing trend in the psychological study of political preferences.

    It’s just standard pop-Marxism, K. Your generic intellectual Stalinist or wannabe would like to believe that everything you do is controlled by your class, education, early parenting, genes, et cetera — that nothing of importance and real value comes about because of individual adult choice and effort.

  4. The researchers also found that libertarians tend to be less flummoxed by various moral dilemmas, such as the famous “trolley problem.”

    The trolley problem presumes utilitarian ethics — other ethical viewpoints confound it: here the confound is misinterpreted as “lack of disgust”, or something.

  5. To expand on what Carl said, the Left presumes its ethics as normative and deviation from it as disease.

  6. I’m a libertarian precisely because I have a high sensitivity to disgust–a disgust with coercion.

  7. I think Libertarians just use more reason to influence their morality. They feel disgust just as much as mainstream people, but what disgusts them is different.

    Mainstream people don’t analyze their feelings of disgust, and have a primitive morality because of it. They project what is obviously a personal, subjective feeling of disgust onto their broader morality. Things like homosexuality, drug use, and prostitution disgust them, so they conclude these things must be immoral.

    Anyone who actually thinks about these issues will realize that any feelings of disgust are subjective. I think Libertarians recognize that to legislate against these things is to make a judgement about somebody else’s life, and this arbitrary judgement disgusts them.

  9. Libertarians are easily disgusted with rent-seeking parasitism. At the the end of the day, this is the only thing that is worth being disgusted about. Everything else is really quite irrelevant to those who have created their own objectives in life and work to pursue them.

  10. Is there another basis for morality besides disgust? The disgust of the vegetarian for meat becomes the phoniness of “animal rights,” the disgust of the luddite for technology becomes the phoniness of greens and the precautionary principle, the disgust of the lesbian for masculinity becomes feminism, the disgust of the socialist for economic freedom becomes communism, the disgust of the racist for other races becomes affirmative action, jim crow, nuremberg laws, and on and on.

  11. Is there another basis for morality besides disgust?

    I’ve read of some interesting studies (real studies, not web surveys) that demonstrate there are at least two different high-level operations in the brain that contribute to personal moral decisions: the intellectual and the visceral. The intellectual suite reasons through things like “fairness”, reciprocal altruism and the like. The visceral suite gauges disgust and violence. They act in concert, or often at odds.

    For example, in the “trolley problem” there is simply a utilitarian (intellectual) decision to make: do nothing and watch 5 die, or turn a switch and choose another person to die but save the 5. The “fat man” problem has exactly the same decision, but it involves physical violence (pushing the man onto the tracks). So while (likely) most people would not have difficulty intervening in the trolley problem, the addition of physical violence in the “fat man” problem makes it more difficult for some people to intervene due to disgust.

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