Illogical but Reasonable Limits to Freedom

Classical liberals, like me, always say that fundamentally one is free to do anything one wishes as long as one does not coerce others against their will. This very simple approach leads to everyone being better off through mutually beneficial trade (I sell you an apple for £1 because I value £1 more than the apple, and you buy the apple because you value the apple more than £1, hence both of us gain in value).

However this kind of freedom could result in situations which most people would regard as unreasonable. An example is production and sale of nuclear weapons. But banning production and sale of nuclear weapons results in breaking the classical liberal fundamental principle which undermines the coherence of classical liberalism.

Firstly let me outline different but related ideas: Sorites paradox and slippery slope fallacy. I will then use to show exactly how the classical liberal thinking may be faulty in terms of informal logic.

In Sorites paradox, one begins with a heap of sand and one continuously removes grains of sand until one is left with just one particle of sand. The paradox: at what time did the heap stop being a heap?

The slippery slope fallacy can be illustrated with the following scenario: a tree in a forest falls. The probability it makes another tree fall is 0.9. The probability that 3 trees end up falling is 0.9*0.9*0.9=0.729. The probability of more trees falling approaches 0 as one calculates the probability of more and more trees fall.

Now here is the puzzle:
In a liberal and open society law is such that one is free to do whatever one wishes as long as it does not impose on others. Clearly this means that one may make and sell firearms (single particle of sand). What about other weapons? Can one make and sell large nuclear weapons (the heap of sand)? Clearly any reasonable social order would curtail the freedom of individuals to produce and sell such weapons because the risk of use of such weapons is just too devastating. This reasonable step has just broken our liberal principle of freedom to allow anyone to do anything one wishes as long as it does not harm others. What about small nuclear weapons? These ought to be reasonably banned too. What about biological or chemical weapons? As we move down the scale of lethality at some point society must stop banning weapons in order to allow the freedom of the individual of having and trading a firearm, which reasonably ought to be allowed for self-defence. But this sudden break in what is considered too lethal and ok is arbitrary, just like when a heap of sand stops being a heap and becomes just a number of particles of sand. For me it is unreasonable for people own fully automatic assault rifles but pump action shotguns are ok, while for others it is very unreasonable for people to own pump action shotguns while very reasonable for people to own assault rifles. An open liberal society thus must either ban all weapons or not ban any weapons to stick to the coherence of the principle that law is not arbitrary.

Some problems arise from such a scenario. Firstly, if an open and liberal society wishes to avoid arbitrary power of the administrator, it must allow all weapons to be made and freely traded or none at all. Clearly both of these are undesirable to the classical liberal. What is the objective test the society use to define weapons which cannot be made and traded?

Secondly we assumed that there is a slippery slope which inevitably will lead to all forms of weapons being banned if society bans just nuclear weapons. However as we have seen with the trees in a forest example, this could be a fallacy in itself as the individual events in the chain are discrete and may break the chain that leads to the supposedly inevitable event of all weapons being banned. The slippery slope argument which is often used by classical liberals may be a fallacy if the events in the chain are not clearly illustrated and proved to be likely. Although history often demonstrates that slippery slope to an illiberal outcome often occurs, we cannot place our faith fully into the idea that it will occur again if a piece of legislation which is illiberal, is passed. By arguing that since other slippery slopes have occurred in the past, they will happen again we are also hitting upon the David Hume’s problem of induction (just because something often happened in the past does not guarantee it will occur again in the future). So by using the slippery slope argument the classical liberal runs the risk of two logical fallacies: the fallacy of slippery slope and the problem of induction.

Clearly there is some thinking to be done by classical liberals. Specifically there appears to be some very reasonable but nonetheless arbitrary limits to freedom and classical liberal argument against certain legislation may be unfounded in logic (but not in history).

Natural Law

Many would say that there is no natural law. I think this is the wrong way of thinking about the topic.

Man’s nature is constant: he has unlimited needs and wants. Man’s environment on the other hand presents him with limited resources to fulfil his needs and wants. This reality is the basis of principles of natural law. The constant reality of unlimited wants, limited resources necessarily leads to evolution of certain principles which govern behaviour of men and how they interact with others. The evolution of these principles is lead by emotion, logic, and trial and error. These principles are natural because they arise from the very nature of man and the reality of man’s environment.

What would these principles be? To answer this question we need to look at man’s nature. These natural principles facilitate fulfilling as many wants and needs in the environment of limited resources. But what are these wants and needs? Man has certain qualities which were shaped by biological evolution. These natural qualities are fundamentally: emotions, ways of thinking and physical abilities to change the environment. All of mankind shares these qualities. It is undeniable that a man would feel violated when these natural qualities are denied to him by others. This is the natural basis of protection of the individual from others.

The beginning of the individual is his body. But with his body he can labour and produce things for himself. He can interact with others. Through these actions the individual can end up violating other individuals. Only time can define where one individual ends and another begins. The definition of what an individual is cannot be done all at once. People learn, invent and change their environment. The rules governing man’s behaviour and interactions with others will thus necessarily change over time. However, the fundamental principle of protecting the individual from violation will not change because the fundamentals of man will not change.

Nature exists. From nature arises the need for protection of individual. The principles of this protection forms what is sometimes called natural law.

Why we should not torture

Many people abhor the idea that torture is in anyway a bad thing and would happily preach that we, as a society, have a right, indeed a duty, to torture any enemy of the state for information and punishment. I would like to spend some time attacking this conviction.

Support for torture can be attacked on three basic grounds, purely legal, practical and moral. We respect laws because they protect us against chaos or tyranny. If we break laws when it suits us we will end with no laws and we will be back to beginnings of humanity, living according to the will of the strongest bully. According to all international laws, from Geneva Conventions (Common Article 3), to UN Convention against Torture and International Convention on Civil and Political Rights, torture is banned under all circumstances. UK and all EU nations (both of which I am a citizen of) have interpreted these international conventions into their domestic laws as have most other countries. Indeed English common law has banned all forms of torture for half a millennium prior to this plethora of conventions and treaties. One of the Law Lords, Lord Hoffman, recently said "English common law has regarded torture and its fruits with abhorrence for 500 years". One must remember that "under any circumstances" provision of these treaties describes wars, big wars, wars such as the two World Wars. So to say that the current threat from Islamic extremists is in anyway greater than the threat from a World War and thus current times demand the use of torture is simply nonsense. We, as a society, have faced far greater threats and judge that even in those, much darker, situations, torture was still unjustified and unwanted.

There is a case to be made by the proponents of torture, under the practical argument. Torture does sometimes yield some important information. Guy Fawkes, for example, gave the names of his co-conspirators. However, most of the time torture does not provide any valuable information. Any rational person will say anything to end severe pain, be it truth or a lie. If the victim of torture has a choice between a lie and telling the truth to the torturer, why not lie?! This line of thought robustly disarms the 'ticking-bomb scenario'. If one is a terrorist who planted a bomb in some city, why tell the tortures where it is? Why not send them to the wrong part of the city looking for the bomb, save oneself the painful experience of torture and still accomplish one's deadly mission?!

Still one may argue that torture ought to be used in some rare cases, where there simply is no alternative. Such arguments were used to justify torture in French Algeria in the 1950s, and in Israel in the 1980s. This led to a slippery slope to systematic torture used on all prisoners and the escalation of the actual torture techniques. Torture became so rampant that the Israeli Supreme Court ruled in 1999 that all forms of torture are to be banned, under any circumstances, without exception. History makes it clear, without a clear ban on all torture, torture will simply be used more and more until it becomes a method of choice under all circumstances.

This leads onto the final pillar of my argument. Fundamentally, torture is a punishment of someone who usually has not been found guilty. It is also discriminatory because today's victims of torture (at least in Europe, if torture was allowed here, and in USA whose current administration currently seems to tacitly support torture) will predominantly be a male in his 20s, 2nd or third generation immigrant from an Arab country and Muslim. In UK in the recent past they have been Northern Irish.

Ultimately the 'war on terror' is the war on an idea that terror and violence can achieve a political goal or at least that such methods are justified. Thus this war begins and ends in the hearts and minds of people, all people, including people on 'our' side. If we use torture we are not only like 'them' but we become the actual enemy we are fighting. Torture at the end of the day does more harm than good. It encourages people to adopt terrorist tactics. For example, how many Palestinians were convinced that Israel was evil and must be destroyed after they heard the horrors of torture committed by Israeli security forces on captured Palestinian militants?! We must not hand another propaganda victory to the terrorists as we have done with Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. We must not harm our main weapon in the fight, our moral position. Torture is more damaging to us in the long term than to our enemies. The vast majority of people are against all torture, and for good reason.