True enough, since the context could be the push is an instance of defensive action.
However that isn’t defined by motives, but by the actions of the other party. I’m deeply suspicious of any attempt to enshrine motives, which are unproveable, as a standard of judgment for any action, and you should be too.
So, in the given example, the push is not a reaction to that of the woman walking in front of a bus. We assume she’s unknowingly walking into harm and act to save her.
Motives are why she may forgive us, but I’m not sure it has anything to do with whether a push is an aggressive act or not. It certainly is possible to commit aggression in the course of intending to save someone.
There’s the example of A holding B hostage pointing a gun at C, using B as a human shield. If C shoots at A and hits B, though his intent was to save B, he has now killed B and committed an act of aggression for which B’s heirs may choose to forgive him but don’t have to, and could have him brought up on charges and prosecuted, surely.
BS. Complete BS. Morality was in quotes in the OP. It was in parenthesis also. Why? Because nobody actually knows what they’re talking about when it comes to morals. Case in point: the NAP has nothing to do with morals. The NAP is a propertarian rule that must be posited (it is a positive rule) and accepted by more than one person—it isn’t absolute or true except to the extent that more than one person acknowledges it as such. It isn’t a de facto law about the nature of reality—it must be suggested, acknowledged, and accepted as a positive social rule regarding property. It says nothing about morals.
Morals are the refuge of people who know nothing about morals. Just ask anyone to define morally wrong and to support their definition with an absolute, objective truth about a particular behavior in a social setting being necessary and always objectively evil, and another behavior that is always and necessarily objectively righteous.
Nobody has a consistent, principled moral theory. Because nobody knows what they’re talking about regarding morals. That’s why examples like the OP exist, bringing the NAP into a discussion about—in quotes—so-called “morality”.
Pushing someone out of the way of a bus IS a violation of the NAP. That’s all you can say about it. You can’t bring morals into the discussion if the topic is in regards to the NAP. Whether you pushed them to save their live has nothing to do with whether it was a violation of the NAP.
I just feel like we can get a lot further on the topic of morality if we stop lying about it and deal with the brute facts head on. We don’t need to play with smoke and mirrors and throw in things like the NAP which have nothing to do with morality.
I think saving another person can involve aggression. With all due respect, I think talking about means and ends is beside the point. So yes, I think the person pushed could legitimately choose not to forgive and would then be entitled to damages. However, I think the damages would be very minor, as the direct retaliation would simply involve pushing the original pusher with approximately the same amount of force. I also think it’s extremely unlikely that the person pushed would not forgive.
I can’t think of anything off the top of my head that is absolute.
That said, the point is that the NAP is the best that has been offered, especially compared to “the virtue of selfishness” or even predominantly “analyzing” cost/benefit.
I’m sure even Rothbard would push an agent of the state out of the way if it prevented a murder. : )
No, bad question from the OP. Blatant and shameless conflation of morals with social norms. The NAP has nothing to do with morals. Don’t encourage ignorance and stagnation on such an important topic by congratulating misleading posts.
You could physically stop somebody from eating a muffin. They clearly desire to eat the muffin. But then you physically stop them. At first, they are very angry, the action was without their consent. Then they learn that it was a poisonous muffin. So was your action unjustified aggression? It entirely depends. If upon learning that the food is poisoned, the person had really wanted you to physically stop them, then it is not a violation of the NAP.
It is possible that they would still find your action non-consensual, but situations like this and preventing someone from getting hit by a bus are judgment calls that have to be made by individual people. As a follower of the NAP I am thinking “ok there is a chance I am violating the NAP but I probably am not. So I will save this persons life and take my chances that I am wrong.”
I’m not sure what definition of aggression you are using. The standard libertarian definition is “the initiation of violence or the threat thereof”. Some people choose to use the word coercion instead of violence, so that it reads “the initiation of coercion or the threat thereof”. Regardless, a shove is a physical act, and if you shove someone without their consent, then you have initiated violence against them. Your intent is irrelevant to the matter of whether the act was aggressive or not. Intending to save the person in front of the bus does not change the fact that you have initiated violence or force or coercion against him.
As Autolykos pointed out earlier, and I expanded a little on it, these people who are saved would most likely forgive their savior for that act of aggression. Forgiveness is a signal that the victim does not consider the action done to have been criminal (or that it ought to be punished less severely). It is not something that must necessarily be decided upon beforehand, and that’s one of the great things about forgiveness. It allows for people to demonstrate after the fact that an action should not be viewed as aggressive.
Besides, what if the person wanted to get hit by the bus? Well, that is an act of aggression against the owner/driver of the bus. It might even be considered aggressive by the person who owns the road. After all, does Burger King want people killing themselves or purposely injuring themselves in their restaurant? They want a nice (quite subjective) atmosphere for their patrons. It’s the same with malls and roads. Just as BK or malls or whatever would prohibit fighting on their property, they would probably prohibit suicide on their property too. So if the person who tried to kill himself by using the bus tries to sue for damages, then he is also liable for his aggression against the bus owner.
And also, what if he didn’t want to kill himself? What if he’s just a jerk who wants to sue someone for saving his life? Well, as I pointed out earlier, the costs of a lawsuit would probably exceed the restitution for the crime itself. That and he would have to actually catch the person and know who it was in order to know who to sue. It’s just so impractical. Who is going to step in to help restrain the person who saved the “victim”? Are people really going to help stop him? Most people would probably be disgusted at the jerk and refuse to help him catch the “criminal” who saved him.
Even if this action is considered aggressive, you have to consider that in a decentralized society, that doesn’t mean that people are going to be punished for it. It’s just so unlikely.
My whole point is that my definition is irrelevant. Your definition is irrelevant. The actual words he chose, “morality”, or (immoral), or (moral) are utterly irrelevant. What’s relevant is what the OP means by invoking the word “morality”. What matters is that the OP conveys in no uncertain terms what he is talking about under the label “morality” or (moral), or else, by definition, he’s not talking about anything particular and the resulting thread will be a circle jerk of ignorance—just like the free will threads.
He could call it the spaghetti monster and that wouldn’t change anything. Until he defines his terms, people have no clue what he means, so the thread is a hairball of projected ignorance and misunderstandings that will get us nowhere in regards to the highly important topic of morality.
There is no answer, because the question is asking nothing. Since “morality” is explicitly undefined, then it is asking, by definition, about nothing in particular. The question is no more comprehensible than, “Is it moral spaghetti monster to push someone out of the way of a bus, even though pushing someone against their will or without their express consent is a violation of the NAP?”
The problem is that people tend to THINK they know something about morality, and they assume that other people both know and believe the same theory. So the OP invokes “morality”, aka “the spaghetti monster” and the entire result is utterly meaningless, doing no justice to such an important topic as morality.
What??? How does removing the term morality get us anywhere? Now the OP is even less coherent…
As an aside, my response stands. That the NAP has nothing to do with morality. It is a positive social norm about rules for property. It is always, necessarily a violation of the NAP to aggress against the person or property of another person. This says NOTHING about whether such action is evil or righteous. It just says whether or not an action can be classified as a violation of property.
I agree that what’s relevant is what the OP means by invoking the word “morality”. But when in doubt about the intended meaning of a word, I assume the traditional meaning of it is the intended one.
I personally consider the non-aggression principle to be a moral principle - that is, a principle of morality. By “morality” I mean “a system of deciding whether to employ or support coercion against something”. I think that’s actually close to the traditional definition of “morality”, but it makes explicit what the traditional definition seems to keep as implicit.
It’s an endorsement of moral relativism; it relies on feelings as its standard.
The propertarian ethic of immorality is much stronger as it relies on objective facts, not feelings, for judgments of immorality. The standard of invasion is an objectively determinable standard.
Some people consider aggression to be immoral (libertarians). Others consider aggression to be moral under certain conditions - ends justify the means. Redefining morality to deal with the realm of violence seems odd, and not only that, but it completely limits people’s beliefs about actions that are nonviolent but can have a moral value. For example, some people consider lying to always be wrong, others might consider it to be wrong only under certain conditions. But if you just redefine moral/immoral to dealing with actions that deserve punishment, or define it like Anenome, you completely cut out entire thoughts from being rendered in English.
Instead of redefining moral/immoral, just talk about what actions ought to be considered right/wrong. But excluding some actions entirely from the discussion limits language, discussion, and understanding.
For the record, I support the NAP because I consider aggression to be immoral. I also consider other actions to be immoral too, but as Rothbard pointed out, libertarianism is not about defining a personal ethic but about defining a political ethic.
I assumed we were talking about a political ethic, about how to define malum in se. I don’t support the injection of any personal ethic, which is why a propertarian ethic provides a proper basis for a political ethic, because it’s based on facts and reality rather than any subjective ethical system derived from past religions.