The ultimate reason to endorse liberal principles is that adherence to them produces conditions under which human beings are most likely to thrive (according to the broadest variety of different conceptions of thriving).

Ideally it would be nice to give this an explicit logical structure, with quantifications, etc. But if I read your response correctly, there may be no such translation of your statement. The best I could do would be something like:

There is a broad swath (95+ %) of the population that agrees that a broad swath of things are to be valued. My valuing function (let’s say ordinal rather than cardinal) is incommensurable with yours. It is not analytically true that liberalism is Pareto-optimal– in fact, it’s probably just not true at all, since some people don’t like liberalism. However, if you restrict attention to the overlapping values of the agreeing 95+%, you end up with a multidimensional space: there are a bunch of axes, one for each value, and there is a mapping from world-states to points in the multidimensional value space. Since the different axes/values are incommensurable, Pareto is the only acceptable ordering of points in the multi-dim space. Now, you are saying that within this space, liberalism is pretty much Pareto optimal.

Well, already I have a question. If Pareto is our only guide here, how can you make a unique claim about liberalism? Aren’t there many, many incommensurable Pareto-optimal points? Presumably not all of these are liberalism?

I’m certainly inferring things here you haven’t precisely said. If I’ve said something you wouldn’t say, please let me know.

The ultimate reason to endorse liberal principles is that adherence to them produces conditions under which human beings are most likely to thrive (according to the broadest variety of different conceptions of thriving).

Ideally it would be nice to give this an explicit logical structure, with quantifications, etc. But if I read your response correctly, there may be no such translation of your statement. The best I could do would be something like:

There is a broad swath (95+ %) of the population that agrees that a broad swath of things are to be valued. My valuing function (let’s say ordinal rather than cardinal) is incommensurable with yours. It is not analytically true that liberalism is Pareto-optimal– in fact, it’s probably just not true at all, since some people don’t like liberalism. However, if you restrict attention to the overlapping values of the agreeing 95+%, you end up with a multidimensional space: there are a bunch of axes, one for each value, and there is a mapping from world-states to points in the multidimensional value space. Since the different axes/values are incommensurable, Pareto is the only acceptable ordering of points in the multi-dim space. Now, you are saying that within this space, liberalism is pretty much Pareto optimal.

Well, already I have a question. If Pareto is our only guide here, how can you make a unique claim about liberalism? Aren’t there many, many incommensurable Pareto-optimal points? Presumably not all of these are liberalism?

I’m certainly inferring things here you haven’t precisely said. If I’ve said something you wouldn’t say, please let me know.

I can’t speak for Reihan, but in my case I objected to it as strongly as I did because it seemed to give the impression of that kind of accusation. Even though I accept now that it wasn’t such an accusation, at least not directly, I objected to it because I thought it was false and because it seemed to be designed to shut down argument rather than illuminate anything. However, if you believe that “certain kinds” of national identity considerations should be regarded as being more like racism, that suggests that you think those who have these considerations are rather more like racists than most people would take them to be, which would seem to make the harping on about Ross’ nationalism to be less of a description and more of an anathema. It seems to me that it can’t be terribly good for the “theme” of liberty to tie it to transnationalism and enrichment of corporations, but that’s just me.

I can’t speak for Reihan, but in my case I objected to it as strongly as I did because it seemed to give the impression of that kind of accusation. Even though I accept now that it wasn’t such an accusation, at least not directly, I objected to it because I thought it was false and because it seemed to be designed to shut down argument rather than illuminate anything. However, if you believe that “certain kinds” of national identity considerations should be regarded as being more like racism, that suggests that you think those who have these considerations are rather more like racists than most people would take them to be, which would seem to make the harping on about Ross’ nationalism to be less of a description and more of an anathema. It seems to me that it can’t be terribly good for the “theme” of liberty to tie it to transnationalism and enrichment of corporations, but that’s just me.

Also…

Yes, there is a lot to unpack. Short answer: I’m a pluralist about consequences, so there’s no aggregation. I think there is a pretty broad overlap in various American conceptions of well-being, and I’m aiming for the overlap. Disagreements are obviously most salient, but data on health, the development of capacities, life-satisfaction, and other quality of life metrics are deeply persuasive to huge swathes of the population. There are, of course, elements of every conception that get left out of the overlap. For instance, I have very strong views about autonomy that are not widely shared in other conceptions of well-being. Some conservatives have strong views about the centrality to well-being of cultural stasis and “thick” identities, which are by their nature threatened by the sense of contingency bred by markets and cultural diversity. This is also outside the overlap. I think a lot of public argument is argument over what we’re going to count as good or bad public reasons. We’ve stopped counting certain kinds of racist, sexist, and homophobic arguments as providing public reasons in quite a short period of time. That’s probably partly why Reihan, Larison, etc., got so testy from what they wrongly took to be an intimation of racism: if you’re guilty of racism, you’re outside the pale. I would in fact like certain kinds of “national identity” considerations to be considered more like racism than they currently are. I think they know or sense that some of their main political themes are screwed if they are. So we fight elliptically about what does count as a good reason in a public argument, since there is no definitive objective metric by which to gain agreement on policy. A bit of tangent there….

Also…

Yes, there is a lot to unpack. Short answer: I’m a pluralist about consequences, so there’s no aggregation. I think there is a pretty broad overlap in various American conceptions of well-being, and I’m aiming for the overlap. Disagreements are obviously most salient, but data on health, the development of capacities, life-satisfaction, and other quality of life metrics are deeply persuasive to huge swathes of the population. There are, of course, elements of every conception that get left out of the overlap. For instance, I have very strong views about autonomy that are not widely shared in other conceptions of well-being. Some conservatives have strong views about the centrality to well-being of cultural stasis and “thick” identities, which are by their nature threatened by the sense of contingency bred by markets and cultural diversity. This is also outside the overlap. I think a lot of public argument is argument over what we’re going to count as good or bad public reasons. We’ve stopped counting certain kinds of racist, sexist, and homophobic arguments as providing public reasons in quite a short period of time. That’s probably partly why Reihan, Larison, etc., got so testy from what they wrongly took to be an intimation of racism: if you’re guilty of racism, you’re outside the pale. I would in fact like certain kinds of “national identity” considerations to be considered more like racism than they currently are. I think they know or sense that some of their main political themes are screwed if they are. So we fight elliptically about what does count as a good reason in a public argument, since there is no definitive objective metric by which to gain agreement on policy. A bit of tangent there….