For me, the answer to this question is no, and that is one of my chief problems with most natural rights theories, and which is why I’m trying to construct my own. Are people who are incapable of proper syllogisms incapable of knowing right from wrong?
Could a Rothbardian natural rights proponent please enlighten me on this?
Shouldn’t you prove Hume’s musings on the so called ‘ought is’ problem ?
As to your question, it’s true that there are people who have an intuitive understanding of right and wrong (aka moral sense) - that doesn’t mean that more rationalistic justifications can’t be advanced as well.
No they aren’t.
edit : at any rate, the overwhelming majority of people are capable of reason so I’m not sure if lack of understanding is the real problem.
It just seems like such artful “advancings” of justifications are (1) academic thought-games, (2) attempts at elegant solutions to social engineering problems, or some combination of both. To pin the name “morality” on such things doesn’t seem sound.
I’m not sure the burden of proof would be on Hume with this, but I am trying to address this issue in another thread I just started.
Why is not the burden of proof on Hume ? You are saying the so called is-ought line can’t be crossed. Prove it. If you are right, why not show it ?
You know, burden-of-proof is just a legal formalism.
(Okay, I’ll continue the conversation on the other thread).
yes. it makes sense,however its not necessary to do the deduction oneself though. if one is handed the correct conclusions by a good deducer then one is capable of knowing right from wrong.
Nice article. If I may summarize my understanding of your points, “natural law” is most correctly understood as a system of legal precepts based on those inborn moral urges of human beings that are preponderantly universal. It is useful to libertarians because of its preponderant universality, and is therefore likely to be adopted in an anarchic free market in law (or should be upheld by a minarchist government if it wants to retain legitimacy in the eyes of the governed). Natural law is of course adopted for consequentialist reasons, if it’s correctly adopted for any logical reasons at all. (Nothing necessarily wrong with a person adopting it individually for non-logical reasons, such as moral urges.)
Since the final end is happiness, which despite some universality is highly personal, ends cannot be determined logically or universally. Insofar as they are advocated to individuals, moral precepts that ignore consequences cannot be derived logically, and any attempt such as Rothbard’s must necessarily fail. The urge to derive non-consequentialist moral precepts logically is based on a misunderstanding of what such moral notions are: simply Hume’s “passions.” In other words, it’s silly to try to derive logically that X action is morally wrong, when such is tantamount to trying to derive logically something like, “X action makes YOU feel bad inside.”
Of course, we can argue that people are evolutionarily inclined to feel bad inside if they perform such an action, but that is a scientific and not a logical argument. In other words, science may be able to demonstrate a (preponderantly universal) natural inborn sense of moral aversion to an act, so in some sense non-consequentialist moral precepts can be derived if we define them in that scientific sense (and each person would only do that if they were moved by that argument - after all, someone could easily argue that just because it’s in our instinctive nature that is no LOGICAL reason to adhere to it; it is merely a persuasive argument).
Am I reading you correctly?
And yet to understand moral urges a person has to use their intellect. People reason - it is an “is”. People can’t stop reasoning. And thus people will reason and come to conclusions whether one admits it or not. So I’m all for a sound intellect to even know what moral urges are. The only way a person will know and use their reason correctly is to feed the intellect and provide reason with good knowledge, even if such knowledge is based on moral urges. Either way the intellect is to be cultivated cause it’s going to provide reason and free-choice with guidance and so it might as well be sound guidance. The only way around the intellect is to avoid the intellect cause it’s not going away - we are human. And the only way to even know moral urges is via intellect. Of course there is an appetitive knowing, but there is an intellect knowing too. And to ignore and abandon the intellect that will know is to not understand the role that intellect plays in each persons life. This ignoring of the reflexive act of intellect seems like an attempt to ignore what provides the light and thus knowing of the decisions of reason that provide judgement with a sound understanding that informs a person’s free-will that is demonstrated with the rest of the world. It is to think people are billiard balls based on some newtonian instinct, mechanical game, but that’s to ignore that human’s have free-will. I’d rather intellect be informed in unison with moral urges, than to ignore what informs a person’s good judgement, the intellect, and thus to let ones reasoning not know how to perform these moral urges rightly. If reason doesn’t understand these moral urges, then reason will decide upon them in erratic ways for reason will decide upon moral urges - that can’t be changed. So an informed reason is better than an ill-informed reason.
It is a matter of impositionism vs. reflectionism. You are to believe that logic imposeses itself on the reality around us and therefore logic is only in our mind and nature when not viewed through our logic can perhaps be chaotic [ A Kantian argument ]. However, as reflectionists, reality imposes itself on the minds of individuals. Thus logic is out there and we can deduce how it operates. Natural law is outside of the human consciousness. Reflecting upon it gives us truths of the world.
I agree AC. The intellect finds truths of the world - induction - and then informs reason pertaining to if any judgements are to be poor or sound as we thereby in turn demonstrate what we have learned and thus apply with the world each moment. Induction leads to deduction. Without induction there is no deduction. And without deduction there is no reasonable assertion of the world and our judgement will be poor on how we act with our moral urges and the world around us.
The act of intellect to apprehend is reflectionism and as a person naturally imposes him or her self upon the world simply by being present to find truths of this world to act in accord with what is (being) a unison in action with what is, is an open-ended journey and along the way certain truths are gathered to allow such an imposition to be either good or bad. To go with the grain and not against the grain of the truths of this world that is the quest, at least for me.
How can that be personal morality if one is merely following the pronouncements of another?
By consenting to follow it.
Hi AJ,
As I’ve been using it, “natural law” is descriptive, not prescriptive. It simply describes the moral behaviors people will tend to exhibit outside of lifeboat scenarios. I haven’t yet considered the matter of codifying those behaviors into precepts.
Yes, quite correct.
Again, my conception of natural law isn’t a set of precepts to be adopted.
I agree with the last part, but not the first, as I don’t subscribe to eudaimonism.
And I am pretty much in agreement with the rest of what you wrote.
I greatly appreciate your giving my article a careful reading!
That person doesn’t personally know right from wrong; he’s just assuming the other guy does.
How do you know that they don’t know what is right from wrong? Perhaps they joined this ideology because it is right. Case in point: How do you know that Hume is right about the passions instead of reason?
No, I don’t think it does. Negative demonstrations are about as far as it goes, i.e. epistemological arguments, IMO. I’d recommend you read Rasmussen’s and den Uyl’s work on natural rights if you want a nuanced perspective on them that clarifies a lot of misunderstandings on the topic. I’m still a bit ambivalent on it, but it’s the best attempt I’ve seen so far to structure a moral system, if one draws a bit from Anthony de Jasay in addition (still need to read more of him.)
But in the hypothetical presented by Nir, the person doesn’t even do the reasoning himself, so he can’t even be said to understand the ideology.
My sense of right and wrong comes from within; it doesn’t come from a “Humean ideology”. Where Hume’s theory comes in is in explaining, as an ethicist, and not as a moral agent, how morality works.
Could not someone who joined this ideology feel the same?
I’m confused these. Ethics is the study of morality.
Im sorry i answered the question you originally asked," Are people who are incapable of proper syllogisms incapable of knowing right from wrong?"
well, people who are incapable of providing mathematical proofs can accept and use math formulas provided for them. just as this is enough for them to solve those particular math probs, wouldnt accepting a true statement of rightness and wrongness empower the accepter to act consistent with it, whatever it was…
perhaps they dont know ‘everything about rightness and wrongess’ but if they know what is and what isnt wrong. thats something. if they just believed it that would be enough for the peace.
people who are incapable of describing evolutionary theory, and citing proper methodology of biology, and the history of categorisation in biologoy (zooology i guess.) can still know a cat from a dog…
One need not “understand” moral urges to be impelled by them; one need only have them.