See, I don’t get that. I think it makes you a bad, hypocritical, and self-righteous prick if you punish someone for doing something you yourself would do. It’s just ridiculous. Your head has apparently clamped down so tightly on this NAP idea that you’ve squeezed your brain out your ears. It doesn’t make sense, it borders on madness. Do as I say, not as I do, or I’ll send you to prison. What a load of crap!
Agreed. Moreover, we’re constantly judging how to apply general moral principles to particular circumstances every day. Moral principles, including rights, are not some exhaustive rationalist list of rules that can be applied the same way in every situation by anyone regardless of context.
I think he’s saying he would expect to be penalized too, if he did it, and would accept the penalty.
Another fallacy. As always when morale and rights intermix. The NAP states that it is a crime to start aggression against another party. Now a crime is not a moral entity (what is good and what is bad), but it is a violation of anothers right and voilation of rights means the aggressed has the right to get compensation. So taking the position that NAP is an absolute right - which it is as it gives the aggressed the absolute right to have him replaced into the state he was before the aggression took place - does not a bit force me to say it is right or worng in a moral sense to save the guys life. It only means, that if i agress against the owner of your cool device,I am commiting a crime. Yet, remember, a crime in the libertarian sense does not have a moral dimension.
So yes, if i choose to act in that way, i have commited a crime against the guy with the gadget and he has a right to be compensated for my crime. Isn’t that easy?
So NAP is an abslute right, but rights are not moral categories in any way. Something is not right or wrong, because I believe it to be ethical to act in a certain way.
Bottomline, if I have to commit a crime to survive, the buck stops here, and I might cmmit that crime, but it has consequences.
Again the fallacy is to intermix property rights with morality and ethics.
Does that make sense and refute the claim? [:)]
That’s exactly my point. We don’t think about the morality of everyday occurrences every time they occur. It’s only when we are faced with some kind of extreme situation that our ordinary rules and principles may not be enough to guide us.
I think that’s debatable. If (real) crimes are not immoral and (just) laws don’t have a moral basis, then what is the basis of law? Why should laws protect libertarian rights? Why should people respect rights? Is it not wrong/immoral to violate rights intentionally? Typically the stark separation of ethics and law that you propose is a mark of legal positivism, which is not conducive to libertarianism.
Well, if he thinks he did something wrong for which he would accept punishment, why would he do it in the first place? Clearly, because he did it, he thought it was the right thing to do. Since when should you be punished for doing the right thing?
While I disagree that we don’t make contextual moral judgments everyday, there is something true here. Moral principles and even more so legal principles are not properly derived from extremely bizarre hypothetical emergency situations.
People who take this route probably think it is the right thing to do in a certain sense while recognizing that it is also wrong. It’s something of a balancing act or utilitarian calculus: 1) aggressing against others is wrong, 2) letting X die would be more wrong, 3) there is no other option but (1) and (2), 4) therefore (1) is the lesser of two evils and is “the right thing to do” in this qualified sense. They don’t believe it is the right thing to do in any unqualified sense.
That seems like a pretty contorted way of saying “It was the right thing to do in that circumstance”, which still contains the phrase “It was the right thing to do”, and, having done the right thing, he ought not be punished for it.
Okay. Building on this, here is something I don’t think has been said yet: Even if the non-aggression principle is not absolutely absolute, this does not necessarily open the door for forcible government (i.e., the state). Why? Because even if the hypos put forth here can show that the non-aggression principle can be trumped by other moral principles in such extreme, rare emergency situations, it is not proper to generalize moral principles and laws from such situations. They are marginal cases. Rare exceptions to general rules, at best. And they can be dealt with in private courts.
Again, though, you are trying to establish a rule. I think it should be clear by now that morality does not operate by absolutes in terms of “x behavior is always wrong”. Now, we can say “cruelty for sadistic pleasure” is always wrong, but again, this is not an actual action, but the characterization of one. I think, to be able to create a coherent and consistent morality, we need to be willing to approach actions a little less… empirically?
I fail to see why you think it’s appropriate to insult me. If you disagree with me fine, but there is no excuse for insults.
As for your argument I would expect to be punished just like anyone else. I would know the risk of violating that persons rights and would expect punishment for doing it. Of course I’d throw myself on the mercy of man whose rights I just violated and asked for forgiveness and try to use reason to convince him that it was the just course to take. I don’t see any hypocrisy in that. Everyone makes a choice to either violate or not violate another’s rights. I would expect to be punished for my actions just as I would punish another in that same situation. Would it be excusable if I’m sitting on a jury and the case before me is just what we are talking about except that when one man tried to take the transporter he killed its owner? I would have taken the transporter but should I excuse this murder? According to you and your theory that the NAP is not absolute I should. I disagree.
Also, please provide me with proof that you are not a hypocrit? Because everyone is at some point in their life and on some occasion. Hypocrisy doesn’t negate the fact that the NAP is absolute.
So your belief would mean that what the Nazi’s did in WWII was right. If the NAP is not absolute, and the majority are the ones that decide what is right and wrong, then the murder of millions of Jews, homosexuals, political rivals, etc. by the Nazi’s in WWII is just fine and dandy because the “majority” agreed with it. It’s an extreme example but if your agrument can’t survive extreme examples then it is not valid.
Well, some might lament the fact that life is more complicated than rationalist, deontological theories of ethics but that would be a waste of time and investment. The fact of the matter is, we are sometimes faced with moral dillemmas not under our control and not our fault. In fact, the state makes such events more common and pervasive. But I’m not saying I agree with choosing the lesser of two evils. I was just explaining the reasoning. The lesser of two evils for them is not an unqualified right. I think there is some confusion in the position. It compares an immoral action (aggression) with a tragic event/situation (someone dying due to another’s inhuman inaction (but not rights-violation). Does the latter justify the former? I don’t think so. You are not yourself killing the person. And it may seem a fine distinction but letting die and killing are two different things. Even the inhumane transporter/boat owner is not killing the person. He is not responsible for the person’s situation which resulted in her dying. He is letting the person die, however, when he could do something to try to prevent it. In most circumstances this is probably morally reprehensible but it is not a rights violation. While I sympathize, I have a hard time finding it to justify committing injustice to rectify a tragic situation.
I have a question for those who think the non-aggression principle is overridden in these cases. Do you also think the non-aggression principle is overridden, say, if you have a daught who needs a heart transplant and you can’t afford it and you can’t find anyone to help pay for it or doctors who will do the transplant for free? Is it all right to stealt he money, steal a heart, and/or force some doctors to perform the operation?
Not a rule. A principle. There is a difference. Also, I’m not trying to establish a principle. I’m taking it for granted, as does the OP in his hypo. All he tried to do was show that the non-aggression principle is not absolute. That it didn’t hold in every situation, i.e., that it had exceptions. At best, he’s established that it can be overriden in some extreme circumstances. Quite a bit more would be required to show that these exceptions are many, much less so common that they aren’t really exceptions and so the principle is not valid. He also claimed that if the non-aggression principle is not absolute, the case for anarcho-capitalism is sunk. My claim is that a few exceptions in rare emergency situations is not enough to justify forcible government, so anarcho-capitalism is not undermined.
I think you mean a little less rationalistically. I agree, although I don’t necessarily agree that we can never say “x behavior is always wrong.” It depends on what x is and how the claim is formed.
Similarly, “aggression is always wrong” describes the characteristic of certain actions just as cruelty does. The trick is determining what counts as aggression.
Folsom, I’m glad you’re seeing first-hand just how controversial the example is. I agree that it is perhaps more controversial than perhaps it should be; and we haven’t even gotten to the really interesting variant, where we don’t know how to drive the boat and are debating whether to point a gun at the boat-owner’s head to make him rescue the child (let’s not talk about that for now).
Gigaplex, glad to see I’m starting to make a dent! I’d contend further that the only really effective moral argument that weighs specifically in favor of anarcho-capitalism is one which addresses a position that very few people actually hold: that of minarchism. There’s so much that needs to be established before that debate is even coherent that anarcho-capitalism is almost an irrelevant position outside of the world of academic political philosophy, where comprehensive paradigms can actually be discussed and understood.
To Geoffery, I agree that it’s worse to act unjustly than to be the victim of injustice, but the question being debated is whether there’s actually an injustice. Note that Socrates doesn’t say that it’s worse to use aggressive force than to be aggressed against.
Monkey, an important distinction needs to be made between punishment and restitution. A strict liability standard, which many libertarians accept as being more legitimate than the currently prevalent duty of care standard, would hold that a person is responsible for compensating another person for any damage done to them by the agent’s actions, whether or not those actions were morally objectionable. So the idea, then, would be that we have the right not to have costs imposed on us by other people, such that imposing them upon us without restitution would be unjust (though I have discussed the possibility that there might be situations in which this standard might not apply). If we accept this doctrine, then a court would surely force me to compensate the boat owner for any damages he suffered as a result of my actions. But that would have nothing to do with whether or not I acted wrongly.
Courts only begin to play a role in dealing with morality and punishment under an alternative standard: the duty of care standard. According to this doctrine, people are only responsible for compensating victims if they acted wrongly in bringing about the damage in question. So under this standard, I would have to be acting wrongly if I was going to be expected to compensate the boat owner. But notice that according to this standard, what is cited as explaining my obligation to compensate the boat owner is the possibility that I had a moral duty not to do what I did. And according to this standard, it seems reasonable to think that the boat owner might be said to also have been violating a moral duty by not saving the child in the first place. It would seem somewhat odd to think that this person would think himself justified in objecting to my treating him as somehow less than human, given that his treatment of the child seems to belie that he held the same sort of attitude.
So my point would be that it’s difficult to think of any standard which would command me to respect the boat owner which wouldn’t also command the boat owner to save the child. And if the boat owner was in clear violation of his duties, it seems odd to think that I should not have some leeway to behave differently towards him than would be acceptable under normal circumstances in order to prevent the outcome that he had the duty to prevent.
Also, I’m really glad that Godwin’s law has been validated yet again…
Well, if there’s not, then Socrates’ principle doesn’t apply. But then, we don’t have a problem because the OP’s argument is sunk.
If there is an injustice, then Socrates’ principle applies.
Perhaps what you’re saying is that there are injustices that trump the injustice of aggression. Legally speaking, I don’t agree.
I assume you aren’t saying that attacking the transporter/boat owner in this case and “borrowing” his property does not count as aggression but rather as self-defense (defense of others) because his inaction itself is aggression.
Whoa. Maybe I was wrong. Seems like you’re abandoning libertarian rights here. Or are you putting this forth as a reason to reject the idea that the boat owner has a legally enforceable obligation to save the child?
Your argument is flawed in three ways. First, the majority of Germans did not know that people were going to be systematically killed, and unlike our boat example, moral considerations were far from the only disincentive to protest; you could easily end up on the train as well. Secondly, given what you quoted from me, actions which can be characterized as vicious, bigoted and murderous are wrong, even if sometimes killing can be justified. Finally, I did not say the majority’s opinion is supreme. What I said, or what I thought I’d implied is, the VAST majority of people, across the VAST majority of time, would take the boat, and that includes you. What the Nazis did was done by a relative few people over a relatively short amount of time.
I assume you aren’t saying that attacking the transporter/boat owner in this case and “borrowing” his property does not count as aggression but rather as self-defense (defense of others) because his inaction itself is aggression.
No, I’m saying that the right to self-determination is presumptive, and legitimately overrideable in certain situations. I think that self-defense is one kind of example in which it is permissible to infringe upon someone’s right to self-determination, but I don’t think it’s the only kind of example (shoving an aimless drunk out of the way of an oncoming bus, for an uncontroversial example). It seems to me that the child’s life provides us with a morally significant reason for infringing upon the boat owner’s right to self-determination, and so it would not be unjust to do so.
I’m not saying that the boat owner has an enforceable obligation to save the child (I’m not sure that I completely accept the view that no such obligation exists, but that’s not important for the example we’re talking about). An enforceable obligation to save the child would mean that I would be justified in forcing the boat owner to save the child himself. That’s not what I’m saying here. I’m saying that the boat owner would seem to need to call upon a standard of justice in order to complain about my infringing upon his rights which would almost certainly condemn his own actions. That’s not to say that it follows that both parties aren’t acting unjustly; maybe they are (two wrongs don’t make a right). It’s just an observation. It just seems to me that if you have a duty to do X, and wrongfully fail to do X, then I may be able to justify doing things which involve harm being done to you in order to bring about X.