Can You Define Natural Rights as a Meaningful Concept?

Economics Political Theory
121

In that case, we can skip directly to “W implies E” and go on with the second numbered argument.

There are two different matters in question here:

  1. “Objectively wrong” is a meaningful concept.
  2. There are actions that are objectively wrong.

The first does not imply the second. I can understand the concept of a dragon without having to acknowledge that they exist. Likewise, just because “objectively wrong” has a meaning, that doesn’t mean that we have to admit that the concept actually applies to any real actions. If we believed that the goodness/badness of chocolate were subjective, we would say that the statement “Chocolate is objectively bad” is not meaningless, but simply false.

(And I should emphasize that the statement “Chocolate is not objectively bad” is not the same as “Chocolate is objectively not bad.” The latter presumes that the goodness/badness of chocolate is an objective issue, while the former does not.)

That said, I will attempt to provide a definition of “objectively wrong.” To say that an action is “objectively wrong” is to say that a person should refrain from that action, no matter what the person’s own ultimate ends are. If it’s impossible for the person to change their own preferences such that the statement “You should not do X” no longer applies to them, then we say that it is “objectively wrong” for the person to do X.

It’s fine to be skeptical of how any statement “X is objectively wrong” can be justified, because that is not my aim. My aim is to show that certain actions are such that the statement “X is objectively wrong” is certainly false regardless of whether or not we grant that X’s ethics is an objective issue.

With regard to the alien example:

This doesn’t follow, because the alien’s adversary does not necessarily reject the statement “X is not pan-galactically wrong.” It’s perfectly consistent to say “The ethicality of X is not a pan-galactic issue, and X is not pan-galactically wrong,” just as most people believe that chocolate is not an objective ethical issue and that chocolate is not “objectively bad.” All that this type of reasoning demonstrates is that if “pan-galactically wrong” means something, then one cannot reject “X is not pan-galactically wrong” without affirming that “X is a pan-galactic issue.” While “pan-galactically wrong” and “wqxfzogyt” might not mean anything at all, “objectively wrong” does mean something, at least enough so that statements containing it cannot simply be dismissed without asserting them to be false.

As far as I know, there are no self-referential statements in what I have given, and the system is far too weak to allow for any Gödel-type indirect self-reference, so I don’t think paradoxes like this are a major concern.

122

Agreed. 1 is a necessary but not sufficient condition for 2.

I would say it is meaningless or ill-defined without further clarification. With further clarification on the intended definition, it could in fact be true. For instance, if “objective = agreed on by everyone in our group” and everyone in the group happens to dislike chocolate, the statement would be true.

If I interpret you correctly here:

“Chocolate is not objectively bad” means precisely “The statement ‘Chocolate is objectively bad’ has a non-true truth-value.”

By “should refrain from that action,” do you mean to imply the person should refrain from that action in order to avoid some consequence they will not like? Or a different sense of should? In other words, for what purpose should they refrain?

Here you seem to imply that the should I asked about above is based on the person’s preferences. By “impossible for the person to change their own preferences,” do you mean a person who for some reason is very rigid in his preferences, or do you mean no matter what preferences he chooses the statement “You should not do X” will still apply?

Exactly.

You did give a definition above, which may make the meaning clear..

Fair enough. Although strictly speaking, if a term’s meaning is unknown and we posit that all utterances have meanings even if we can’t know them, it could - for all I know - contain a self-referential statement within it. Beside the point anyway now. I think the crux of the argument is now in what you mean by your definition above.

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Just to be clear: I’m using “objective” to mean “independent of preferences.”

Yes. And as long as “objectively bad” means something, nontrue = false.

No purpose is specified by the definition; all that is required is that the should-statement not be voidable by a change of preferences. So a statement like “You should refrain from X if you want to avoid consequence Y” is not a statement that X is objectively wrong, because the statement can be rendered moot by saying “I don’t want to avoid Y.” On the other hand, a statement like “You should refrain from X if you want to have preferences” is an objective should-statement because it cannot be nullified by a change of preferences. (Although I’m not saying that all statements of objective wrongness must take this specific form.)

This is what I mean.

124

I am new to this so maybe I am missing something but I don’t understand how Natural Law can be so complex.

Two of the over twenty definitions of the word “nature” seem particularly appropriate, starting with ‘existing in or formed by nature, as opposed to Artificial’

Natural Law is a set of rules based upon not who or what society or other artificial forces make of us, but upon the raw stuff of humankind. While all human beings have widely varying abilities, likes and dislikes; certain attributes can be observed as consistent throughout humanity since records were first kept.

Obviously we are living creatures and secondly, we strive to continue in living. The default position of humanity is survival, and the method of that survival is the transformation of available resources into products that can sustain or improve that survival.

The second pertinent definition would be ‘of, pertaining to, or proper to the essential constitution’. Natural Law consists of those rules which necessarily arise from the essential constitution of mankind. Hence as living creatures whose essential constitution is to survive, which survival depends upon our ability to transform available resources to our sustenance we arrive at the basic Natural Laws: Right to life, Right to property (necessary to safeguard the first Right, and Right to liberty (necessary to pursue the second Right.)

When the question arises why I cannot declare a right to murder someone as my Natural Right to be free from the interference with such a Liberty, you have gone beyond Natural Rights. It is for you to justify where such a right arises for me to interfere with their Natural Rights to Life, Property and Liberty.

125

as an epistemological particularist, I would deny that natural rights need a strict definition in order to be appealed to in a debate.

Now, that being said, I dont think one needs to appeal to rights of people in order to be a libertarian. I think you could just invoke skepticism and say that force is immoral if it is not justified.

126

What is the difference between moral and justified?

127

practically speaking, there’s no difference. But the term “justified” could be much broader than “moral”.

128

I don’t know if this helps, maybe not.. I am new to philosophy, and most of what I have discovered as been by using my own mind, I haven’t done much reading. But this is how I currently believe, until proven otherwise:

What kind of philosophy do I live by?
I don’t believe in absolute morals/ethics because I feel that implies that they’re objective. That’s where everything breaks down. Morals and ethics are simply preferences that really don’t have too much bearing objectively and don’t hold too much bearing.

I do have principles that I push, but I don’t believe that they’re objective, I just believe they’re the best principles for individuals to use.

How can one not believe in absolutes?
Well because we can’t know anything with absolute certainty. And whether you believe you can or not, that doesn’t change the fact that you can’t.

For instance, I can’t know for certain that I exist. I could be a computer simulation or something like that. All I have to go on is the external stimuli that reach my brain. These very well could be code interacting with a program. I don’t know, but there is practical value in assuming my senses are at least somewhat accurate, so I know with practical certainty that I exist.

Morals are the same way. I view them as subjective choices. This is why morals change over time, why slavery was in the Bible, etc. People assign their own subjective value to various things, but they are not absolute. Killing is wrong in most people’s minds, and yet there are situations where a person may kill another person and feel morally justified. There are no one-size-fits-all morals that are always true, absolutely.

Personally, I take a pragmatic approach to my values. The things that I believe are right or wrong are things that are most beneficial to me. For instance, I value my life so I also value the life of other people, because I would not want another person to take mine from me, and if I did take another person’s life, there would be negative consequences resulting from that. Not only that, but other people’s interactions with me are often beneficial, so there are multiple reasons to value other people. But since my values are based on pragmatism, they aren’t concrete and there might be a case where killing someone is the most pragmatic decision (hopefully I’m never in such a situation).

It might sound cold to determine values this way, but it’s actually taking into account the lives, feelings, and interactions of others, and coming to a logical conclusion, instead of just randomly assigning value to some specific act because someone else told you to.

Or maybe this doesn’t pertain to the argument at all.. =/

129

On the other hand, a statement like “You should refrain from X if you want to have preferences” is an objective should-statement because it cannot be nullified by a change of preferences.

I feel that you are ignoring the temporal nature of preferences and action. In your view, an individual who postulates that

“If Person A wants to have preferences he ought not commit suicide” is proving that suicide is objectively wrong because Agent A cannot nullify the IF statement without lapsing into contradiction, IE to prefer a lack of preference is itself a preference, ergo the conclusion must always hold.

This analysis breaks down when the temporal element of preference is taken into account. If, in the previous example, Agent A prefers to, in the future, end his life and therefore the existence of preference, no contradiction is being performed. He is expressing preference, granted, but it is for a given state of affairs in the future.

Do you have any examples of the type you consider “objective”? I am interested in seeing if, even under the conditions you specify, any objective ought’s actually hold.

130

Hi Zavoi,

I’ll be away for a few days, but will continue when I get back. Anything you can do to further disambiguate the definition in the meantime would be helpful. I’m seeing what kind of thing you mean the definition to encompass categorically, but not exactly what that thing is. More later…

-AJ

131

The problem I see with this approach is that it fails to make any actual statements about whether people should do certain things. Any action at all that somebody does, the actor thinks that it will be beneficial for them. And they may well be right, even in cases where the action is universally condemned as wrong. For example, it is in Kim Jong-il’s interest to run North Korea as a dictatorship, so who’s to say that’s wrong? And it is in the interest of the citizens to get rid of him, so is that also not wrong? So while your approach is useful in explaining why people act in certain ways, it ultimately falls short of being an ethical system (a method of identifying actions as right or wrong).

132

I suppose you could say “You should not do X now if you want to have preferences now.”

The point is not to demonstrate that any statement of the form “X is objectively wrong” is actually true; only to provide a definition for “objectively wrong.” The most basic kind of objective-wrong statement is something like “You should not do X, no matter what.” And you might wonder how such a statement could be proven, but as long as you understand what the statement means, then you accept that the statement is either true or false.

In response to AJ: If you ask for a definition of “should,” I would have to say that if you understand statements like “You should do X if you want Y,” then you understand statements like “You should do X, period” even if you do not accept them as true.

133

Thank you for this. Honestly, though, I cannot see how this makes sense.

“You should do X if you want Y” means to me “The way to get Y is to do X.” Keeping to the same interpretation we get,

“You should do X, period” means “…is to do X, period.” I don’t see what is meant or intended by the underlined.

Alternatively, I could interpret “You should do X if you want Y” as “Do X [command] if you want Y.” Maintaining that interpretation we get,

“You should do X, period” means “Do X, period.” I do see what is meant by this: it’s simply a command. However, commands do not have truth value, since they are not propositional statements.

So at least, the meaning of should that you intend is not obvious, because I have here used two seemingly obvious and common-sense interpretations, and both have resulted in something that couldn’t serve as a basis for any objective ethics.

[Still away from comp - will reply to previous posts later.]

134

I know what you’re saying. Maybe this makes me a nihilist, I don’t know.. but I feel as if morals/ethics/values/virtues are all subject, that they can’t be objective or absolute. It’s all preferences. Do you know what I mean?

135

The ethical system will assert a relationship between conduct considered immoral or wrong and some consequence to be suffered by the immoral or wrong actor (he contradicts himself logically or performatively, he diminishes his own flourishing or eudaimonia, etc…) The system thus ultimately reduces to a system R. Long would refer to as a system of ‘utilitarian egoism’ (a system that instructs on how various modes of conduct impact the individual’s own welfare).

The ethical system tells people in effect: you can avoid contradicting yourself by arguing only for the private property ethic; you can avoid a diminishment in your flourishing or eudaimonia by adhering to Aristotelian virtue ethics.

If you continue to argue against the libertarian private property ethic, the price to pay is self contradiction. If you do not adhere to Aristotelian virtue ethics, the price to pay is a diminshment in your flourishing or eudaimonia.

Arguing only for the private property ethic and/or adhering to Aristotelian virtue ethics are means for the individual to avoid these harmful things…

136

Can you elaborate?

137

How would you define “objective ethics”?

138

The thing about ethics is that even the best argument cannot make anyone have certain values or behave in a certain way. So in that sense, values are subjective. Still, I believe that it’s possible to prove that certain ethical statements are definitely false, and that’s all that’s necessary to establish natural rights.

139

I might have put objective ethics in quotes, but I trust you’ve noticed that I do not know of any coherent or unambiguous definition, so I await one. I don’t know what objective ethics is intended to mean, but I do know two things it isn’t intended to mean: (1) an incoherent notion, and (2) universal prescriptivism (i.e., “should” = command), hence what I wrote above.

140

You need to find an objective value if you expect to find an objective ought. Or you might be able to get an objective ought from some undeniable fact about man, man acts and man chooses. Or maybe muddy the water a little more and say something like the nature of reality prefers/proliferates individuals who hold a certain value.