Hello Everyone.
First post, so hello to all of you.
I was just wondering what people thought of the following argument in favour of a prescriptive claim to self-sovereignty (i.e. the notion that we should have control over our own bodies). If people can poke holes in it so that I can refine my thoughts then that would be great. Be nice though
Firstly I should probably define what I mean by ‘self-sovereignty’. Broadly speaking it means the same was what libertarians commonly refer to as self-ownership. I am however uncomfortable with the concept of self-ownership for the reasons outlined in this guys blog post.
Briefly, self-ownership implies to me a dualistic conception of the individual in which the subject (the self) is broken down into subject and object (the ‘owned’). This seems problematic to me. In some sense it is just semantics because the operational definition of ‘self-ownership’ is commonly used to mean ‘right to control ones own body’. This is essentially what I mean by self-sovereignty, and so the two are in effect interchangeable. Nevertheless, I think it is important to clear up any fuzzy distinctions that might arise between the two terms.
Anyway, on with the post.
I take my starting point as the assumption that we do have control over our own bodies (what you might call a descriptive claim to self-sovereignty). I use the proof that any counter-claim to this proposition would be an example of self-sovereignty in itself - in other words, any attempt to disprove self-sovereignty would just be proving that it exists.
Secondly, I make a descriptive definition of ‘morality’ – I.e what morality is defined as, rather than what acts should be considered moral. I define morality as a set of norms regarding behaviour that are socially negotiated and agreed upon by all people in a given group. These norms may change between groups and over time. They are not fixed.
A single individual on an island has almost unlimited freedom to do as he wishes. He is only limited by nature and the laws of physics. There is no social context here for him to engage in, and so no need to develop a morality.
If a second individual appears on this island, then there comes a point when the first persons freedom has to hit its limits. These limits are found at the point when person A’s actions impede person B’s ability to engage in their own preferred behaviour.
In other words, you have the right to swing a stick around as much as you like, but that right ends where my face begins. Your rights to stick swinging don’t trump my rights to a beautiful, scar-free face.
A proto-morality could emerge in the form of a list of behaviours that neither person would engage in. In other words, the very addition of another person restricts the range of actions that are considered moral.
Clearly, it can be seen that the more people that are added to this hypothetical community, the more restricted the list of behaviours has the potential to become. Ultimately, in a society numbering millions there will be so much heterogeneity that the list of agreed upon ‘morals’ becomes practically zero.
Far from heralding the end of a possible universal morality, this process has actually exposed what is the common denominator amongst all the individual moral consideration. For as the community increases one by one, and the list of agreed upon morals gets smaller, we are left with the sole remaining ethical concept that applies to all – that is self-sovereignty.
Ok. I know it needs a lot of work, for example I talk about the “right” to swing a stick when I want to be able to derive rights without assuming them in the first place. So I would really appreciate your input to make my conceptions a little less muddled.