Why we may speak for the speechless

This brief post will argue against Peter Cresswell's argument that we are not morally justified to speak outloud for others. We should speak for ourselves, and those who cannot braise their voice loud enough should be ignored, because they can be.

http://pc.blogspot.com/2005/08/advantage-of-speaking-for-speechless.html

Now, although I would like to rubbish Cresswell's argument outright, because it smacks of libertarian moral apathy, I really want to try and defend advocacy of the weak, the non-human and the rights of those in the future. Plus, ignoring the argument simply plays into it. If you can't be bothered sticking up for your own view, your view shouldn't be counted. Plus I can't quite be bothered going to sleep, and it's always good to think things over in the privacy of your own blog.

Another preliminary. Cresswell isn't really attacking the things defended specifcally, but the apparent moral superiority of the advocate. He is arguing that our society has allowed people to be in places of power, where their opinion is taken without opposition.

Cresswell's argument is as follows:

1. An advocate requires a mandate from whoever she wishes to advocate for.
2. Heritage sites, future generations, non-human animals, the environment, cultural /spiritual taonga, and the disadvantaged cannot or do not provide that mandate.
3. Therefore, the advocacy is unjustified.
4. Therefore, the recognition our legal system and soceity grants these advocates is unjustified.
   

Now, I think Cresswell's problem is that he seriously misrepresents the notion of a mandate. It seems pretty clear that the requirement he is suggesting means that an advocate is required to receive an actual request for assistance. Those that can't, tough.

Notice, if we were required to actually offer a mandate to all of our advocates, then representative democracy can't work in any real sense. Although that may not be a problem for Cresswell, this weakness allows us to recognise that Cresswell's position is at odds with a large majority of the population.

There are two categories of advocacy:

• We want to protect something because we value it.
• We want to protect something because it has value.
  

These two categories are similiar in their result, but are distinct morally. Now, I will grant that Cresswell doesn't place much importance in terms such as morality, but I will try to show what I mean by a moral distinction. When we value something, we want to protect it because it is important to us. On the other hand, if we protect something because it has value, it is because it is important in and of itself. Now, I know sounds very close to substatintive moral realisim, but that's not required. We can grant a certain type of value, such as the sanctity of the person or property rights to an individual and say that we should defend those rights because they are important in and of themselves. Value, how I'm currently using the term, means anything we find important. One way of looking at it is to say that everything we do is valuable, because if it wasn't, we wouldn't be doing it.

We do not require a delegated authority from trees in order to protect their "interests". We can say that our valuation of trees is part of the first type. It's really something about us that we are protecting, rather than the tree itself.

Future generations is a slightly more obtuse example. Cresswell seems to think that because we haven't been told what a person's interests will be, that we won't have a pretty good idea as to what they will value. That's false, we just infer from what we value! Of course there will be problems in the details, but that's okay. Cresswell lays the problem out as such, "Well, they weren't there when the decision is made, tough bikkies for them." But there is a more important point. We as a society have placed a value in those future generations. Because of this value, it is important for present policy decisions.

Consider the libertarian position, which allows us to grant value of others, even those who are weak and cannot speak for themselves. They have the right to do with their property as they see fit, as free, self-determining agents.

Libertarianism will even allow allow the state to exercise authoritarian power in defending these rights. It will defend the weak person's sanctity and also her property rights. But this begs the question, why is the state justified in defending this weak person? If she cannot defend herself, then the aggressor has the full moral authority to take action, because the aggressor is the one that matters. Presumably because the sanctity of person and property are certain type of value, they are rights of the citizen.

Therefore if the state is justified to defend the value of the weak person in the libertarian context, then so should other individuals be morally justified in defending the values of others in an authoritarian context.

What Cresswell has done is undermined the moral authority for the state to interevene when a breach of property or personal rights has occured, or will occur. Although other values may not be as powerful as property rights, they are still values. Therefore advocates have moral justification to defend those values.

Important books: Nozick, Anarchy, State, Utopia. Nagel, The Possibility of Alturism. Korsgaard, Sources of Normativity.