Let us say for the moment that the rights to property and self-ownership exist as natural rights. Why, however, must we suggest following these rights? Why is it morally correct to follow these rights? There seems to be a lack of connection between when people affirm that natural rights exist, and then say we should follow them, without explaining why.
Another question:
Would you natural rights Libertarians support a system of natural rights even if it resulted in complete destruction? Do you support natural rights because they are natural, or because they are effective?
Bah, how many more times is this topic going to come up over again? Geoffrey Plauche has linked articles on the matter. Read them, digest them, then pose any questions you may have. Honestly, I see a lot of intellectual laziness here…
Hehe what Anthony meant to say is that “natural rights” theories of rights are usually rooted in some notion of what makes something a natural right. Generally, the source or basis for natural rights is pretty much the same thing as the reason that they should be respected. For example, Nozick claims that rights reflect the dignity of individuals as ends in themselves. Accordingly, the reason that we should respect rights is that to do otherwise would improperly take account of others’ dignity. Does that make sense? Perhaps you have in mind a particular account of natural rights which doesn’t offer any explanation of how we come to recognize the existence of these rights? I agree that such an account would be extremely worrisome.
As for your second question, I don’t think that there’s any single answer to that inherent in the natural rights tradition. Some people argue that individuals are inviolable to the extent that no matter what happens, we are never justified in coercing people (he’s not around much anymore, but I seem to recall Len Budney as being a person who thought this way). Others argue that it does not disrespect a person’s individuality or dignity to infringe their rights for some extremely important end (for example, if I could save 1,000,000 lives by stealing something from you which you didn’t really care about, but which only you had, some people would say that I do nothing wrong by stealing from you). And there are plenty of people in between, all of whom can coherently call themselves libertarians. Personally, I fall closer to the latter variety, but that’s not to say that the former types are wrong. At least, not yet
I thought Nozick offers an intuitionist, deontological account of rights, not so much a natural rights account, from an explanatory point of view. From what I’ve come to understand it’s more stringent than the Aristotelian natural law tradition. I can understand why one would find appeals to natural rights “mystical” if they came to libertarianism through Nozick, because he doesn’t really do much to justify his position (I find Kant a lot more plausible on this.) Rothbard is the only major modern libertarian I know of who explicitly makes appeals to natural law, based primarily on his readings of various philosophers who’ve written on the topic. In reply to the second question, given that I’m not a deontologist, I would say I’d find it difficult to adhere to a system of ethics that resulted in absolute devastation.
BTW, all I meant by the above is that the materials necessary to understand various positions are available both online and in print, and all it takes is some time and effort to read the arguments and then raise any questions afterwards - mainly because a lot of these positions are supported by highly elaborate argumentation, and for that reason it is better to refer to the source materials to avoid missteps. After all it’s a bit odd that independent-minded libertarians should want to be spoonfed knowledge on these things… Perhaps I was a bit abrupt, but this topic seems to be reappearing with amazing frequency.
The syllogism is as follows (note: I use the term ‘law’ in the sense of ‘natural law’, which has legitimacy whereas state law does not):
All laws ought to be followed.
All rights are laws.
Therefore all rights ought to be followed.
A law by definition ought to be followed. So the major premise is true. A right always has the form “no one may do this and that to me,” and therefore is a law applying to everyone else (it only prohibits certain actions rather than inactions, so in itself cannot lead to ‘complete destruction’). So the minor premise is true. Q.E.D.
I think the problem you’re approaching is whether laws have any real existence or at least salience in one’s life.
Rights are derived negatively as necessary functions of the application of the non-aggression principle. It’s a simple process of reason, really - it just tends to get obfuscated with moral and utilitarian arguments. But although I (and most other libertarians) believe that the non-aggression principle is both moral and effective from a utilitarian standpoint, it helps to strip it back to straight, unhindered reason.
If a person considers such things as right and wrong to exist, one must examine their existence rationally. I do not refer to right and wrong only as morals, but rather the general concept of objective truth and falsehood.
An ethic is a statement of how a person ought to act in order to be acting “rightly”.
In order for an ethic to be rationally considered “true”, it must not contradict itself.
Libertarians hold that the only such ethic that does not contradict itself is the non-aggression principle, from which natural rights derive.
Rights, even natural rights, are concepts; nobody has to follow them. However, grounded in human nature as they are, not following natural rights causes various problems and unintended consequences to society. In short, one ought to follow natural rights IF you want a progressive, productive, and happy society. But not if you want to cause poverty and misery.
They are natural rights because they are effective. Trying to make such a distinction makes no sense.
Macsnafu, I’m not sure that your last point is as obviously true as you seem to think it is. We might say that you naturally have the right to not be punched in the nose, but that we do not act wrongly if punching you in the nose is necessary to save a million lives (obviously a silly example). The point is, we wouldn’t want to say that you don’t have the right not to be punched in the nose, but rather that in some situations we can infringe on your rights without doing anything wrong. Does that make sense?
In subjects of morality it is not about self-interest so much as it is about doing what is right.
You should do what is just because it is just. That doesn’t mean that there are specific restraints making it impossible for your to do injustice, however.
Punching someone in the nose, even if it saves millions of lives, is still wrong. Of course, by saving lives it could be suggested that you are doing something right - or at least stopping something wrong, but you are still violating the rights of one individual who, like it or not, is only focused on his own pain and rightly so.
Apart from the natural horror I sense from that perspective and on top of what Niccolò just said, I would like to add that such a frame of reference is ridiculously impractical too.
There never really is a situation where one punch in the nose saves a million lives. In real life, as subjects of The State, we find ourselves somewhere along a continuum towards a million punches in the nose saves one life. Along that same continuum, there is no consensus and when you find yourself facing 500,000 thousands punches in the nose to save 500,000 other lives, you are certainly prescribing warfare. So, in a realistic sense, that perspective is nonsense.
Enough of the utilitarianism. It makes more sense to simply accept that non-consensual punches in the nose are wrong.
If a drop of one person’s blood contained the key for curing HIV, then I would feel perfectly justified in taking the drop of blood, even if they didn’t want me to. To claim that libertarianism requires otherwise is, I think, to commit to holding a position which almost no one finds reasonable.
If a drop of one person’s blood contained the key for curing HIV, it’s very unlikely that force would be neccesary to obtain it. That person could easily become the richest person in the world by auctioning that drop of blood off to the highest bidder.
And even if that weren’t the case, I’d like for you to attempt to explain how that person has an obligation to anyone but himself that would justify the taking of his blood.
Let me just predict how this is going to work. In every case I can come up with where extreme utility considerations would justify infringing someone’s rights, you’re going to say that the example is ridiculous, because we wouldn’t need to infringe their rights; there would be a way to make the desirable outcome happen with only voluntary means. So what you’re saying is that natural rights are effective in all cases because in any case where they might not be effective, people would voluntarily negotiate around any violation of their rights. Is that what I’m getting from you? Because if so, then it should be clear what you need to tell us: why is it necessarily the case that transaction costs or unreasonable people would never make it the case that we’d have to choose between catastrophic social losses and infringing someone’s rights in a minor way?
I explained why libertarians believe in natural rights without invoking either morality or utility earlier in the thread. Apparently you missed it. Need a link?
Haha feisty! But why wouldn’t a situation in which an extreme utility loss could only be prevented by an action which you would label aggression be a reductio for the non-aggression principle (stated the way you seem to think it should be)? Is there any reason why we would need to prefer a strong non-aggression principle like the one you offer over a weaker one which allowed for the initiation of force in extreme situations?
It would not be a reductio at all, because the goal is not “maximize social utility” or anything of the sort (at least I don’t think my fellow libertarians hold that as their end). Such goals lead inevitably to tyranny. After all, once you start violating rights for the purpose of making someone else happier, where does it end? Sure, we start at one drop of blood to one million lives, but what happens when we are faced with a less extreme case? One arm for ten lives? Let’s get out our indifference curves and add up the utils of the ten people saved verses the guy who loses an arm. It’s a perscription for a complete lack of rights.
In this world of uncertainty, as well, we have no idea whether violating someone’s rights will even have the effects we want it to. A case of where we “must” violate natural rights I’ve heard before is the following: aliens come down and demand us to kill a certain person, or else they will destroy Earth. Now, you might be jumping out of your seat trying to find this guy, but how do you know that the aliens will even uphold their side of the bargain? Sure you might think “well this is our only chance!” But isn’t it just as likely that they will destroy the planet anyway? How do we know that the aliens even have the ability to destroy the Earth? Or that they really plan to? As far as you know, this might be a test, and we fail by actually killing the guy (so the aliens destroy the planet because we are hopelessly immoral and evil), while we pass by refusing (standing by our morality even in the face of destruction).
In your example, I ask the same questions: how do we know this drop of blood will work? What if the risk isn’t actually there in the first place or is much less serious than we thought? What if this only makes things worse for us (perhaps we think the blood will help, but it ends up magnifying whatever the problem is)?
Really, once we start down this path of yours, we’ll be sacrificing a hundred a day to make sure the sun comes up tomorrow.
Who says you have the “right to not be punched in the nose”? It’s more like, you have the right to not be punched in the nose if you are not initiating force or engaged in a boxing match. Circumstances and context matter. If you’re attacking someone else, then punching you in the nose is hardly a violation of rights, but a defensive action.
Rights aren’t well-considered as a laundry list of items. I think of rights more as a continuous “sphere of action” that one has the right to do, and interference with that is a rights-violation.
As for your example, if punching someone in the nose would truly save a million lives, I see no problem in being pragmatic about it and paying the consequences for it afterwards. It would still be a rights-violation, but compensation for a punch in the nose is a BARGAIN for saving a million lives. Why, other people might even be willing to help pay for that compensation. But how often or likely is it that that kind of situation will occur in real life? Unlikely scenarios don’t justify rights-violations for common or normal situations.
Yes. In order for an ethic to be considered valid, it cannot be contradictory. A “weak” non-aggression principle contradicts itself at the premise, and hence cannot be valid. A reductio of a contradictory ethic necessarily ends up resembling the non-ethic of “might makes right”, and that’s exactly what libertarianism opposes.
