How do natural rights theories cross the is/ought divide?

[primer]

I will refute this argument:

1. Survival requires one to act in accordance to his ‘nature’.

2. One will die if one refuses to act in accordance to his ‘nature’.

3. It is logically contradictory for one to deny that one should act in accordance to his ‘nature’, because denying it will kill oneself.

4. I value logical consistency, not logical contradiction. Hence, I value the third proposition.

5. I, myself, should not deny that I should act in accordance to my ‘nature’.

6. I value the law of the excluded third.

7. According to the law of the excluded third, the statement “I should not deny …” implies “I should agree with …”

8. I, myself, should agree that I should act in accordance to my ‘nature’.

9. By definition, one who agrees to act in accordance to his ‘nature’ implies that one values ‘natural law’.

10. I, myself, should value ‘natural law’.

The first premise is unsound because you can still survive even if you refuse to follow most of the laws of ‘nature’. You do not necessarily have to follow all of the laws of ‘nature’ to survive. So the second statement is also unsound because you will not necessarily die if you violated most, but not not all, of the laws of ‘nature’.

The neo-Aristotelian ethicists have assumed that one has to obey ‘nature’ entirely when one can just obey the necessary laws for one to survive. They have stuffed a package-deal called ‘natural law’ down our throats from this argument.

[Brainpolice]

You’re making up an oversimplified argument, and then knocking it down. That isn’t reasonable, as it reduces to a red herring. That is what most of your arguments reduce to: either linguistic nitpicking or red herrings.

[primer]

I classify the statement “Chocolate tastes good” as an ‘opinion’.

However, the statement “Billy likes chocolate” is a ‘fact’. So the statement “Billy likes chocolate” is a ‘proposition’.

@Brainpolice

Normative statements do not inherently reduce to the level “Chocolate tastes good” or “Go yankees!”.

I agree, but I think you are strawmanning the ‘emotivists’. The ‘emotivists’ believe that ‘morality reduces to emotions’ in the sense that “people have ‘feelings’ about moral statements” or “it requires empathy to derive morality.” That says nothing whether or not one should prescribe one’s ‘normative’ ‘preferences’ to others. As I said above, I disagree with ‘emotivism’ if you define it as a theory that ‘morality’ only arises from the short-term ‘gut-feelings’ of individuals, not ‘reason’. However, ‘emotivists’ themselves do not define it that way.

[Wilmot_of_Rochester]

@Brainpolice

You’re making up an oversimplified argument, and then knocking it down. That isn’t reasonable, as it reduces to a red herring. That is what most of your arguments reduce to: either linguistic nitpicking or red herrings.

It really doesn’t seem that far off from the argument though.

It seems to be about what they’re saying. I don’t consider it a strawman fallacy just because the argument proposed by natural rights theorists is one that can be knocked down.

[Lilburne]

@Brainpolice

Normative statements do not inherently reduce to the level “Chocolate tastes good” or “Go yankees!”.

The emotions many normative statements express are more intensely felt and more general among humans than those expressed by your examples. But the are nonetheless subjective.

[Lilburne]

@Brainpolice

Normative statements do not inherently reduce to the level “Chocolate tastes good” or “Go yankees!”. That’s absurd on its face. When I make specific arguments for normative ethical premises, I am not merely communicating that I feel a certain way, I am giving reasons.

@Brainpolice

You’re making up an oversimplified argument, and then knocking it down. That isn’t reasonable, as it reduces to a red herring. That is what most of your arguments reduce to: either linguistic nitpicking or red herrings.

You make up a caricature of an opposing argument, and then you accuse AM of doing much the same.

If extreme-rationalist natural rights theories, which seem to me to be based on linguistic contrivances, are to be accepted by us as having any bearing on reality, they should at least be able to stand up to such linguistic “nitpicking”.

[Lilburne]

@Lilburne

If extreme-rationalist natural rights theories, which seem to me to be based on linguistic contrivances, are to be accepted by us as having any bearing on reality, they should at least be able to stand up to such linguistic “nitpicking”.

In other words, if you live by the syllogism, you die by the syllogism.

[Lilburne]

@Anarcho-Mercantilist

The neo-Aristotelian ethicists have assumed that one has to obey ‘nature’ entirely when one can just obey the necessary laws for one to survive. They have stuffed a package-deal called ‘natural law’ down our throats from this argument.

Great post, AM.

[primer]

@Wilmot of Rochester

@Brainpolice

You’re making up an oversimplified argument, and then knocking it down. That isn’t reasonable, as it reduces to a red herring. That is what most of your arguments reduce to: either linguistic nitpicking or red herrings.

It really doesn’t seem that far off from the argument though.

It seems to be about what they’re saying. I don’t consider it a strawman fallacy just because the argument proposed by natural rights theorists is one that can be knocked down.

I have edited my post and expanded my argument. My argument represents Rasmussen’s argument on A Groundwork of Rights, except that I explicated his implicit ‘ought-assumptions’. So he has not bridged the ‘is-ought gap’ in a sense.

[primer]

@Lilburne

@Anarcho-Mercantilist

The neo-Aristotelian ethicists have assumed that one has to obey ‘nature’ entirely when one can just obey the necessary laws for one to survive. They have stuffed a package-deal called ‘natural law’ down our throats from this argument.

Great post, AM.

Thank you. I hope you find my reprentation of Rasmussen’s argument and my criticism ‘natural law’ useful.

[Lilburne]

@Anarcho-Mercantilist

@Physiocrat

1. Theft is bad.

2. Taxes are theft.

3. Taxes are bad.

Taking an amorailst emotivist position are this demonstrates is personal preference. Indeed it does that but it also does more than that. If bad is purely emotive then it is equivalent to saying theft boooooooo and has no propositional content, thus nothing follows from it. Yet as shown above we can logically follow conclusions from it and thus emotivism is moribund.

It seems that too many individuals believe in every word that Roderick Long has said. I have written a post criticizing the ‘cognitivist’/‘non-cognitivist’ dichotomy. I will present another critique to your claim below:

You can simply define ‘good’ and ‘bad’ as ‘facts’ or ‘truths’; not as ‘preferences’, ‘opinions’, or ‘values’ of the ‘subject’ itself. For example, you can define ‘good’ as “Ludwig approves it” and ‘bad’ as “Ludwig disapproves it.” Those two statements express ‘factual’ content that ‘describes’ how another person ‘feels’, not the ‘preferences’ of the ‘subject’. Therefore, you can rephrase your statements like this:

1. Ludwig disapproves theft.

2. Ludwig classifies taxation as a form of theft.

3. Ludwig disapproves taxation.

The first statement expresses a ‘proposition’ because the statement “Ludwig disapproves theft” is ‘true’.

Excellent!

[Laughing_Man]

@Lilburne

If extreme-rationalist natural rights theories, which seem to me to be based on linguistic contrivances, are to be accepted by us as having any bearing on reality, they should at least be able to stand up to such linguistic “nitpicking”.

AM engages in sophist linguistical nitpicking.

https://forum.freecapitalists.org/t/proving-natural-law/6584

[Laughing_Man]

@Anarcho-Mercantilist

The neo-Aristotelian ethicists have assumed that one has to obey ‘nature’ entirely when one can just obey the necessary laws for one to survive. They have stuffed a package-deal called ‘natural law’ down our throats from this argument.

Pray tell, what are ‘necessary laws’ and how are they arrived at? How does one deduce that murder is bad?

[Wilmot_of_Rochester]

@Anarchist Cain

@Anarcho-Mercantilist

The neo-Aristotelian ethicists have assumed that one has to obey ‘nature’ entirely when one can just obey the necessary laws for one to survive. They have stuffed a package-deal called ‘natural law’ down our throats from this argument.

Pray tell, what are ‘necessary laws’ and how are they arrived at? How does one deduce that murder is bad?

I imagine the actual laws of physics - like as long as I am on Earth and not in an anti-gravity chamber, I can’t just fly off into space if I want.

[Lilburne]

There weren’t any of AM’s posts on that page you link to, AC.

I can perhaps see AM’s linguistic denial of the means/ends dichotomy as perhaps a bit much. But again, your theory lives by “word-fu”, so it must die by it as well.

[Physiocrat]

Lilburne,

Do you fancy commenting on my attempted defence of natural rigths based on the argument that nature is good I posted a page or so back?

I’ll reply to AM response to my criticism of emotivisim when I’ve got sufficient time.

[Laughing_Man]

@Lilburne

I can perhaps see AM’s linguistic denial of the means/ends dichotomy as perhaps a bit much. But again, your theory lives by “word-fu”, so it must die by it as well.

Just keep going, you will see what I mean.

[Laughing_Man]

@Wilmot of Rochester

I imagine the actual laws of physics - like as long as I am on Earth and not in an anti-gravity chamber, I can’t just fly off into space if I want.

From physics..you can deduce that murder is bad? Spin this one out for me.

I feel it will be akin to: From the experimentation of the famous string-theory, I can deduce specific Chinese Chi spots on your body.

[I_Ryan]

Lilburne,

It seems that you missed this response:

@I. Ryan

@Lilburne

A natural rights theory based on that conception is basically no different from the crude amoralism of Jacob Bloom, because it makes right-and-wrong into a matter of smart-and-stupid.

That does not refute my argument because my argument does indeed show that moral correctness is the same as any other correctness. The simple truth is that all “ought” statements imply a specific “want”. As an Austrian economist, if you wanted to make nonexistent the human race, then you would preach extreme statist and totalitarian ideology. However, if you wanted to be successful, then you would have to pretend that the instillation of such ideology will cause all to prosper because that is, generally, the “want” of humans.

Any disconnect between “ought” and “want” implies totalitarianism and collectivism.

[Stephen_Forde]

@zefreak

@Stephen Forde

The implications are that you want their present conduct to change from what it is now, to something else. You demonstrate, by arguing, that you believe they ought to do X and not Y. That they ought to hold some values, not others. That certain moral positions are preferable for both you and your opponent. And I don’t see how you can consistently deny this.

Right, I hold certain values and would like other to hold similar values. Certain values are preferable to me. I have never denied this; such an admission does not prove what you think it does. In my statement that you quoted, I said

“keeping in mind that I am not asserting the possibility of proving through deduction the value or preferability of such conduct, but simply appealing to a possible commonality in values”

and before that,

“Of course I cannot argue that you ought to hold similar values. However, I can critique the consistency, logic and truth value of a position assuming we share such similar values. In other words, while I cannot argue that you “should” be logical or consistent, I can argue that you aren’t.” (in the off chance that, sharing those values, you adopt similar conclusions)

There is no contradiction here. You are grasping at straws.

I’m not sure what you think an “ought” is. I’m pretty sure it’s just an expression of valuing one action over another, in which case, I’m right. Also, I think you are assuming that it is only the content of your arguments that is under dispute. It is actually what is implied by the fact that you are arguing that makes the difference.