I am not sure what is the point of presenting such scenarios. Lets say I provide an answer which is incorrect and does not correspond with reality. Or lets say that I feel inadequate to provide an answer. What does that prove? Laws of physics do not hinge on there existing a person knowledgeable enough to be able to solve any puzzle regarding physics. Likewise natural law does not hinge on there existing a person possessing infinite wisdom and therefore able to answer any question regarding applied ethics without a danger of being wrong.
You are not very generous with the information you offer, so a fully satisfactory answer seems impossible, but what can be said is that Jim was wrong in shooting Bill. If the chair was his (probably but can not say with confidence with so little info), then he was justified in using the minimum violence needed to get it back, but he clearly went beyond that and merely used the theft of the chair as a pretext for aggression of his own.
I know idealouges prefer to see the world in black or white, but there was no “right” or “wrong” answer to the exercise. One difference between the laws* of physics and the “laws” of morality is that physics can be deduced utilizing testing and empirical observation. I (personally, not insulting your sensibilities) can’t figure out a way to construct an experiment that would prove or disprove a theory concerning “right” or “wrong”.
How would you determine whether or not the chair was Jim’s utilizing natural rights theory? He was utilizing (homesteading) the resource, my understanding of Hoppe was that was enough to endow him with the “right” to that chair. I’m really not trying to trap you, I just wanted some clarification. Is that a misreading?
How would Jim determine the “minimum amount of violence” he is “justified” in utilizing against Bill? Why is Jim still considered the owner of the chair if he stops utilizing it, even for a moment? Couldn’t Bill have an equal claim of homesteading?
Disclaimer: I am not trying to disprove anything. I am just trying to gain a better grasp the theory of natural rights.
OK, so it’s agreed. You do measure morality based on a fixed idea external the individual (in this case, the commonly held morality) of which you probably have your finger right on the pulse, since your just a common guy. And yes, everyone has intuition, of course, you’ve made it quite clear that they don’t mean much to you if they don’t agree with your opinions.
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First of all, I never said I was a common guy nor have I even presented my views of morality, so please withhold your claims until you can actually substantiate them. What I did do was present a source of morality to TLAR, to which you even agreed. If you have a problem with “measuring” morality in the same way humour and all other cognitive experiences are “measured” fine by me. I understand that it is ultimately a matter of personal taste (and have already express this idea), it just so happens there is a commonly held personal taste among people. Blame evolution or god. I could care less.
Thanks for agreeing. You’re right, if some stranger just walked over to me and punched me in the face his (warped) view of morality really wouldn’t mean much to me.
Too much coffee. You should calm down with the accusations and assumptions, they aren’t helpful.
I might contend the most part, depending on the application of the scenario. We are the way we are due to social conditioning, which might (depending on circumstances) skew that assumption.
The two statements would seem to contradict each other.
Yes that is one difference. I am not sure it is meaningful though unless you are saying only empirical knowledge is valid. In any case there is no such difference if we instead use mathematics for the comparison. I do not know of an experiment that could prove a math theory.
As I said it is hard to determine the truth of the matter with any certainty because if this was supposed to be an example from the real world then we have so little info to go on. You would need to expand on the scenario and answer things like, who built the chair, who owns the room, do Jim and Bill have a home and so on.
Instead you have created a world where nothing exists except for one unowned room, a fountain, a magically conjured chair and two characters interested only in staying in this room. So do not be surprised that in this totally surreal world you have created application of homesteading is no less surreal than the rest of it.
A chair is not a natural resource. It is “homesteaded” by whomever builds it. It does not get homesteaded by sitting on it. In the real world. However by the premise of your scenario the chair actually is unowned (having come into existence via magic, or having been abandoned). Such an object would be homesteaded in the real world by the virtue of taking it onto your person and carrying it home. Not by the virtue of using it for a little while. However since in your scenario the room is apparently unowned and the two characters homeless and only interested in staying in this room then yes you actually do homestead an abandoned chair by the virtue of sitting on it. It is ridiculous yes, but it is only to be expected when we are talking about a scenario which is already ridiculous in itself. So Jim had homesteaded the chair as per the natural rights rules of his mini-world. The chair stayed his because he had only ceased to use it for the time being, but did not abandon it, which he even went as far as to clearly show with the note he left on the chair.
The amount of violence he is justified in using is the minimum amount of violence required to make himself whole again. In his case the violence he is justified to is the minimum violence needed to get his chair back. The minimum violence it would take Bill to relinquish his hold on the chair is what he is entitled to. No more.
This still leaves Jim with a problem of determining what is the minimum violence it would take to make Bill return the chair which can be very tricky indeed. But Jim never attempted to discover the answer. He did not try pushing Bill from the chair or discharging a shot into the air. In any case this practical side can not be answered by ethics. You would need to ask people who knew Bill and what sort of a person he was.
“Social conditioning is nurture, as opposed to sociobiology - nature.”
Yes, I understand the textbook distinction, but I’m saying that on an introspective level, the causation for your action would be much harder to distinguish.
Doesn’t this create a disputed claim of ownership between Jim and Bill, since both seem to have legitimate claims on said chair. I also don’t understand how the chair not being a “natural resource” is really relevant, because it is still a scarce resource.
Sure, but the difficulty to distinguish doesn’t alter the fact, it just means we need to look harder. And there is a bit scientific research on the subject.
Sure, that or Compatibilism. While I’m no determinist, its pretty obvious that not everything people do is of their own free choice (blinking, heart beat) emotions may fit in such category as well.
Rights exist subjectively. It just so happens that most people on Earth adhere to the NAP instinctively. But there is no objective way to go about protecting and enforcing these so-called rights. Also, breaking objective laws, like those of physics and economics, have consequences. If I drop a rock, gravity will force it to the ground, and if I inflate the currency, it will destroy savings over time. But if I kill somebody, I can get away with it, and there are no consequences. There is nothing objectively telling me that I broke any laws.
Would you rob a house if you were starving? Would you initiate violence in order to protect your children? How can these morals be objective when they are violated with such impunity?
The bottom line is that most things in life are subjective and arbitrary, beneficial when facilitated by voluntary interaction, and detrimental when forced by the state.