Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

In reply to mlyoung57. No–a hundred times, no. You’re rejecting the application of a principle, but accepting the principle itself. But the principle has no warrant for it at all. You’re also ignoring the fact that the “principl…

In reply to Irfan Khawaja. You make some good points. In response. Every great power and most small ones bullshit about their high moral standards while failing to meet them. But I would still far rather be bullied by the US than China or Russia. Our v…

In reply to Irfan Khawaja. True in those cases but Russia has considerable form. Tell the Estonians who got shipped off to Siberia when Russia invaded that this time they mean no harm. Or Czechoslovakia, where Prague was confronted with a line of tanks…

I encountered a passage in our Gaus reading tonight that’s highly relevant here. Gaus is talking about the trade-off between pursuing local optima and ideal justice. Take a case in which you forego pursuit of a local optimum for the sake or pursu…

In reply to Irfan Khawaja. I agree with most of those fill-ins and caveats for whatever principle of permission governs the self-appointed sheriff cases. That principle, whatever it is precisely, though it might justify the basic idea or motivation beh…

In reply to mlyoung57. I accepted the sheriff/bandit example without much argument because I was focusing on the gap between that case and the case of American foreign policy. But I think the example itself can be challenged. Partly this is a matter of…

That’s helpful. I agree that the sheriff case would need to be filled-in quite a bit. But it seems plausible enough that it can be filled-in such that that sheriff, because he is acting in everyone’s interests, is permitted to take on the b…

In reply to mlyoung57. Suppose that, if you fill in the relevant parameters properly, it is worth standing against grave injustice even at serious risk to one’s own life or well-being (call this principle Risk Death for Justice or RDJ). Suppose that R…