To the former, I’d say you have the right not to be punched in the nose, but in a boxing match, you grant your opponent (and only your opponent) your consent to infringe that right. The issue of self-defense is decidedly more complicated; it’s up for debate exactly what we want to say about rights in such situations. That is, do you lose your right not to be punched when you attack? Do you have a right not to be punched, so long as you do not attack, such that your right simply doesn’t include situations in which you attack someone? Or do you have the right the whole time, but because you’re attacking, it would be justified for someone to infringe on that right? You might be interested in checking out Judith Thomson’s book, Rights, Restitution and Risk, particularly the chapter on “Self-Defense and Rights”, where this issue is discussed at length. I agree with Thomson that the latter way of saying it is the easiest to deal with, but I wouldn’t expect that to be obviously right without an argument which I’m not prepared to provide. The best I can say is that Thomson and I see rights in the Nozickian way - as boundaries - and so it makes sense to say that the boundaries stay in the same places, but in some situations people can cross them and be innocent of any wrongdoing.
To MacFall, I’m not quite sure what you mean when you say “A reductio of a contradictory ethic necessarily ends up resembling the non-ethic of ‘might makes right,’” but I think your bigger point is that a weaker non-aggression principle is, by necessity, internally inconsistent. The reason you offer is that such a principle would “contradict itself at the premise.” I’m not sure I understand why you think that. I’m not aware of any single argument which must be at the base of a non-aggression principle, and it seems like of the multitude of arguments that could justify such a principle, there would be at least one argument which doesn’t require a strong principle. Could you offer the argument you believe to ground the non-aggression principle, and show why a weaker principle would be incompatible with the argument?
Getting into deep waters, I think. Even if we can make a proper distinction, it’s not obvious how much difference it would make. Personally, I would prefer to say that when using defensive or appropriate retaliatory force, one is not violating the rights of the initiator, not that the initial attack makes it okay to violate the attacker’s rights. Thus, I’m not going to say that there is a specific right to not be punched in the nose, but rather, one has the right to not be attacked (i.e. have force initiated upon oneself). That’s why I refer to rights not as a list of particular actions one should be allowed to do or justified in doing, but rather, a sphere of action, and anything within that sphere one is allowed to do, or justified in doing.
Yes, one can go too far with defensive or retaliatory force, and cross the line into new initiations of force. Shooting someone for stealing a candy bar, for example, is going too far. Capital punishment for vandalism is going too far (an inappropriate retaliation).
The problem with that is it ceases to be a (nearly perfect) objective standard. Bush will tell you that slaughtering Iraqis is necessary to save 300,000,000 lives. He regularly looks right at the camera and says, “I’m doing it to protect you!” He’s full of beans, and dangerously mad, but I’m sure he believes what he says. He would say that his actions are moral by your standard.
You would counter that it’s not good enough to think aggression will save millions of lives; it actually must save millions of lives to be justified. That standard is objective, but completely useless: humans only ever think something is true, because we perceive reality through thought. It’s impossible to identify those cases where aggression is objectively justified. We could only do it if we could travel through time, observe the deaths, then go back and aggress, and count the dead again.
So you’re saying that, if you have a need for something from someone, you have the right to rule over that which you need, even if it isn’t yours?
Would that mean that you consider yourself the actual owner of the blood, and not the person?
Howcome you own something which someone else has created (or been born with)?
Assuming I’m alone in the world, howcome I all of the sudden have positive moral obligations if someone, on some island, is born with an illness I can cure? Why should that person’s needs rule my actions?
Danny, you are most certainly one of the best bloggers out there, and I really like reading what you write.
But if you are justifying positive rights, you are justifying slavery. ‘Rule of need’ is not libertarianism, since slavery is not libertarianism.
Sorry, Dan, but I don’t think you can make this type of argument as though it were a valid one. You’re attempting a reductio ad absurdum, and I’m perfectly fine with saying, yes, you indeed are acting in an injust manner.
Interpersonal utility comparisons are impossible. What if taking that one drop of blood that cures AIDS leaves your victim so emotionally scarred that she slipps into depression, alcoholism, and finally commits suicide? Thanks to that observation, your reductio always boils down to: when are you willing to kill to prevent an “extreme utility loss”?
Conversely, if this person’s blood was guaranteed to cure AIDS, you’ll have no problem getting it. “Extreme utility loss” means “you’ll pay almost anything to avoid it,” which means “she can have pretty much anything she asks for” which means “there’s something she wants more than one drop of blood.” Therefore you can buy the drop of blood, though it might cost $10,000,000.
Hmm…I don’t think this conversation is amenable to being had one paragraph at a time. I’ll do my best to get a full argument on my blog as soon as possible; I’ll let you know when I do. Thanks for the kind review, Eli.
If it is a given that private property rights are justified, then it makes no sense not to respect them. No reasoned argument can be given to dispute or ignore their validity. So the question amounts to why should we be reasonable? The answer is this: your asking the question implies you are already committed to reason and therefore to justice and therefore to private property rights. We are either capable of reason and therefore implicitly committed to private property, or we are irrational like the lower animals. Either way, you either do subscribe to private property rights, or you are on the same moral plane as the lower animals. As a human, it is up to each person’s own value system, which view he “should” adhere to.
I support libertarian natural rights because they can be argumentatively justified. It is consistent with justice and reason. It is cool that it happens to be that this peaceful approach to interpersonal relationships also results in optimal prosperity, but that now seems secondary to me.
But don’t you think this argument is entirely circular, or question begging? “All laws ought to be followed” is true by definition? This appears to push back the question to: why ought all laws be followed? Especially since these laws are natural laws, which are and must be founded in the institution of private property.
I think at some point, one has to admit that this question is much like the question “Why ought we be reasonable?” The only answer we can give back is that one cannot put the validity of reason into doubt without invoking and committing to it first. Reason, justice and property all appear to be the bedrock of our rational nature. We simply cannot deny them without contradiction. But one can never answer the question why should we be consistent or reasonable or justice seeking. One can merely know that these things are objective things that can be identified and justified through reason. Whether one will psychologically endorse them and feel that they should be observed, is a matter of personal preference and value.
I think you’re right to some degree, about standard libertarian theories of natural rights, but I think Aristotelian libertarianism does provide that connection. There’s a recommended reading’s list at the top of this forum, I believe, that includes some Aristotelian libertarian works. You could also check out my website and Roderick Long’s website.
Can you make a sticky with a list? I am sure there is plenty that would be listed that I have not read and it may be useful to both prevent posts like this and to address posts like this.
I’ve skipped a few posts, but there are a few useful things i can say in reply to some of the early posts. That is, that as all utilites are ordinal, and some people were hinting at this, there is no way of adding them up and making any sort of calculations to aim towards some sort of “maximum utility”. As ridiculous as this may sound, there is no genuine way of finding out whether it is greater for the 1,000,000 people (to them) to survive, or for the one person to not get punched in the nose.
Moreover, as in one case we are violating one individual’s person, and in all likeliness his property, we are breaking the NAA/NAP. This makes the act immoral, rather than neutral.
Furthermore, any acceptance of a “social utility” is bound to lead to statist opinion and state build up as it will see this as one situation where it can intervene (or appear to intervene) for the “public good”.
Why is it morally correct to follow these rights? A right is by definition a moral rule. I would define a right as something that is immoral to deprive one of. Since it is immoral for anyone to deprive another of his life, liberty, or property; that person has a right to them.
Also, morality is just treating others as you would have them treat you. How could that posibly result in complete destruction?
