Do you have some sort of self-esteem issues with academics that leads you to engage in passive-aggressive behavior? Seriously, for a cultural conservative you act an awful lot like a resentful egalitarian. This isn’t the first time. I was not making any kind of argument from authority or anything like that, just pointing out in response to something Charles said that this subject is my professional area of expertise, of which I don’t have any reason to believe everyone on this forum is aware. It also served double duty for announcing that I successfully defended my dissertation last week, the final hurdle to getting my Ph.D. Quite an interesting reaction it got from you and GilesStation. It’s rather disappointing that Charles’ low level of discourse is apparently considered normal in this forum while having advanced academic degrees and actually wanting to debate at a more professional level is considered to be arrogant.
I think giving us the gift of LOLcats is payment enough.
Actually, while self-ownership is true, I don’t think it is the proper starting point for natural rights. It is not an axiom or first principle, but a conclusion. What do you mean by proof, by the way? I ask because it is a term that is often misused and has different meanings in different philosophical traditions and in different contexts. First principles cannot be proven in the strict sense of logically deducing them, particularly by syllogism. As Aristotle said, “Some indeed demand that even this [the Law of Non-Contradiction, a first principle] shall be demonstrated, but this they do through want of education, for not to know of what things one may demand demonstration, and of what one may not, argues simply want of education” (Metaphysics IV.4 1006a5-7). This does not mean they are arbitrary, i.e., neither true nor false.
Is your PhD in stereotyping or psychology? Let me start at the beginning, when I was kidnapped by a gang of academics during an evening at the circus…
Yeah, I mean your signature provides no clues whatsoever. [8-)]
Walter Block is also having a hard time finding a high falootin’ intellectual debate right now. Maybe you guys could network. Your people could call his people and arrange a power lunch.
Sorry, I just can’t take this very seriously. I’m sure you’re proud, and rightly so for the degree you have earned. Kudos to you. Most of us don’t have degrees. We’re just uneducated serfs interested in teaching ourselves economics and philosophy to better our lives as we plod away in the salt mines. We’re not on the intellectual or social level of men with titles like Dr. or Professor.
No hard feelings. I was trying to be funny. But you’re pretty serious, and I guess it didn’t go over well.
There you go again. You’re just confirming it. You were trying to be funny? Yes, in a way, you were, but it was still more of the same passive-aggressive behavior you’ve exhibited before. By the way, my signature only said I was a doctoral candidate in political science; I don’t think everyone identifies that with political philosophy, particularly natural rights. Three of the four fields in political science are empirical, largely scientistic fields modeled after economics: American politics, comparative politics and international relations.
Political Science, not Psychology. Or humour apparently. You must be a lot of fun at parties.
Cretins! Fools!
Well, you definitely need to add more information to your signature then!
Have a good night GAP. You’re funny without trying. I don’t have a fair chance in this battle of wits.
Well, it’s also quite disappointing that in a forum of intelligent people, civility is so difficult to come by.
For such an intelligent guy you can do better than that.
It is a fair question. I suppose I ought to answer it on its own merit, but to be honest I think it is too open ended, and whatever I say will just trigger other questions which I can’t really answer ATM due to time constraints. Sorry if it comes off as a silly excuse for not answering. In any case, it seems your question is phrased in a spirit à la Thomas Malthus, thus I would suggest you look up the arguments made against his claims.
Instead of an answer I’ll just point out a misunderstanding on your part which I suspect is the reason for your asking the question. When I mentioned the natural-right world I only mentioned claims of ownership of presently owned objects. Thus I left open the possibility to homestead presently unowned objects. Also, since the latter objects have no owners there is no objective reason to have any conflicts of ownership, i.e. courts would settle disputes as they would any other dispute; trace original claims of ownership. In the might-is-right world this wouldn’t be possible, because anyone could claim ownership of everything in existence (at least in proportion to his ability to enforce this claim).
I hope this answer is somewhat useful, if not satisfactory.
pretty much. I just see conflicts over arable land developing fairly quickly. especially in an age where it is much easier for property owners to patrol their holdings and kick out potential homesteaders.
You sound like a fundamentalist Christian whose faith has just been questioned by an atheist. You keep insisting that there are tons of educated people who believe God exists and there are tons of literature in favor, therefore, according to you, the faith is indesputable. That is how you sound.
I find it highly interesting that your first entry in this thread is a childish attack. I find it interesting that your second entry in this thread is a humorless and arrogant appeal to authority. I find it even more interesting that your third entry in this thread is a demand to defend a point which you say is off-topic and should be in a different thread. Heads you win, tails I lose. As a moderator in this forum, I think you should do better. As a person who studies this stuff, whose writing I genuinely admire and reference myself elsewhere on the internet, I would hope you would do better.
I think it is obvious that my insistence that natural rights are ultimately subjective has struck a nerve with you. [Am I questioning your faith? Are you struggling to replace God?] That is unfortunate. I believe fervently in natural rights and I want them to be universally objective. I sincerely do. However, the more I search – just like the atheist – the only thing I find from advocates such as yourself is emotional appeals and returned arrogance. That is really a shame because that limits us to being an echo chamber.
How about you give me one. However, you are correct, there is literature in favor of natural rights. I am not denying that copious amounts of literature and culture hold natural rights as sacred entitlements. I am in favor of natural rights too.
However, just like religion, there is a hell of a lot of literature in favor of statism too written by PhDs, by the way. In fact, as anarchists, we are pretty much in the minority among the human race in that regard, right? Where does that put your appeal to published arguments???
I beg your pardon. I want to give you the benefit of the doubt here but I do not see any references to published arguments in this thread. I just scanned through it all a third time and I still do not see them. Where are they???
Your dodge aside, I will answer your question. It is all very simple. The reason why natural law and natural rights are always and everywhere subjective lies in their very definition: rights are entitlements and law is simply the marketing of arbitration. None of those happen by themselves and they reside in the mind. Arguments in favor of natural law is no more intelligent than trying to explain why cats chase mice.
To the Opening Poster, Spairon,
You started your query with a grandiose assumption: “Most libertarians would agree that human beings have rights. These are derived from self-ownership.” The first sentence is accurate empirically but I suggest that you closely examine the second one. Ask yourself what convinces you of it to be true.
Well, I accept your worries. Mostly because I haven’t yet convinced myself about such worries being a non issue. I’ll try to convey how I am trying to approach this worry.
I suspect it will take me one or two years before I am deep within the philosophical understanding of natural rights theory. Thus I have to treat natural rights as a given and approach this issue in a more consequentialist manner (more on this shortly). You could say my views are like those of Charles Anthony without the claim that natural rights cannot be proven. Not to please Geoffrey or anything, lol, but quite simply because I have no knowledge to base such claims on. The same thing applies to the question of whether the Earth’s ressources are finite or infinite and thus whether a natural-right world would ultimately lead to violent conflict. I cannot know, I can only speculate. In a might-is-right world, like the one all people on Earth live in presently, the matter is settled, however; violent conflict is and will always be inevitable. So the question I mostly ask myself is similar to yours: Would a natural-right world (also) lead to violent conflict?
Obviously the easy answer is as Rothbard mentioned (not an exact quote!): “Why don’t we just try and see what happens? If it doesn’t work then we are just back to where we started,” i.e. might-is-right. The more extensive answer is to try the consequentialist approach, albeit in a hypothetic way. But embarking upon such an open-ended answer will only result in a never ending discussion which, incidentally, I was trying to avoid [:P]
That is, I could try my very best to persuade you into thinking that finite arable land wouldn’t entail conflicts in a natural-right world, and you could just respond with a “prove it” to every argument I made. So be it, but now that I have expressed my own worries, I hope you won’t do so [;)]
George Reisman’s "Capitalism" devotes quite a lot of pages to explain how only a fraction of the Earth’s ressources are used/“exploited” presently and how we cannot even begin to imagine the amount of substitution materials we have and will have if they ever will be in danger of depletion. He then speculates how we will get ressources extra planetarily in the future; a future that is closer to the present than the potential depletion of earthly ressources. I have never completed the book, nor do I remember the exact chapter in which these arguments are put forward, but I offer you to look closer into this on your own.
Then there is the contrary view, the Thomas Malthus objection, made popular by Dr. Albert A. Bartlett (here and here, I haven’t watched the latter myself). What he seems to be missing, however, is the insight of subjective marginal utility theory which would explain mankind’s ability to find substitution materials in a free market when market price of key materials increase as supply/stock diminishes. In my opinion, the troubles Bartlett envision can only come about in a world of suppressive governments where calculation of prices are increasingly becomming impossible. Alas, the world we are ever so bumpily moving towards now.
Lastly, just to give some kind of direct answer to your question: I would have thought that arable land were supposed to be accumulated into few hands, provided they are the most effective/productive hands. A natural-right world is not a world of patricians piling up property for eternity. If a person inherits arable land and mistreats it, it will simply become increasingly valueless. In such a case a poor farmer could use all his savings (some of it perhaps inherited from his own father, father’s father etc.) and buy the land. As Austrian Economics teach us; capital must be maintained to remain capital. Thus arable land, finite or infinite, would come to be accumulated into the right hands, poor or rich. Thus we see that the biggest threat to poor people is not inheritance of the rich, but the lack of inheritance of the poor through wealth destruction, be it expropriation buy rulers or inflation, in democracies even.
[Quick edit: Remember labour is a ressource that will “always” remain scarce, and it is a ressource noone can take away from you in a natural-right world.]
I really am time constrained ATM, so I’ll end it here.
First of all, I’d like to thank Wayne Harley, Jon Irenicus, GilesStratton and everyone else who has been helping me to find answers to my questions. Thanks y’all, I appreciate it.
Charles Anthony:
You sound like a fundamentalist Christian whose faith has just been questioned by an atheist.
That’s how my inquiry got started: on another board, we had a discussion on how free will as a theological concept creates an artificial boundary between man and animal, making man seem more like a self-owner than animals which, in turn, justifies animal slavery - or cattle ownership, as we call it today. If you really take the concept of self-ownership and derivation of rights from this concept seriously, every form of life, even the tiniest ant or the tallest oak tree, owns itself, and only they as self-owners may legitimately decide on their actions.
In the absence of free will (which I have heard no compelling non-theological argument for so far), all our decisions are basically the result of a complex, incomprehensible mental equation that consists of outside stimuli, experiences, genetic innformation and many other factors. Every living thing uses the same equation routine to form their decisions, but human brains are so potent that we arrogantly assume to be actually above the process, to be able to control ourselves completely. That is, I’m afraid, human hubris.
Or, as Schopenhauer put it: you can do what you want, but you cannot want what you want.
That leaves us with a dampening and disillusioned picture: man rules, not because he is God’s favorite creature, equipped with free will and reason, but because he can rule over other living things. He’s better able to adapt to a given situation, or, to put it simply, “stronger”. Because he is at the top of the food chain, all resources are available to him.
Thus, if we assume that we own ourselves and this is the reason for our legitimate ownership of property which is the foundation of rights, we can’t stop at randomly drawn lines in our evolutionary history and say “everything beyond can be owned”.
Of course, this digs even deeper than my original post which only questions the objective truth value of rights. I also realize that we cannot implement the philosophy laid out above because it would be our demise - we couldn’t do anything anymore. I’m just wary of the speciesm that permeates most theories of justice.
This biochemical automaton is not convinced. Ha!
No offence, but that is simply a silly objection. You can still choose not to do what you want. Also, one can rationally choose a single want from a set of different wants. If not how could we prioritize?
I would agree with you about the fact that we have to be sceptical about speciesm, but you cannot escape the fact that human beings are the only creature able to enquire about and discuss theories of justice. Now I would agree about the fact that some animals have “free” will, i.e. they can choose not to act on a want. For instance, you can train a dog to adhere to specific commands or “moral rules”. Thus animals prioritize amongst a set of different wants. Some animals even do this “naturally”, i.e. you rarely need to teach a dog not to bite children because nature/evolution/god has endowed them with social pack mentality where such actions are counterproductive. Nevertheless the commands must come from somewhere or someone, and if you ever see a dog choosing to balance a ball on the nose and on its hind legs you can be sure that a human being has tought it so because he/she can “exploit” the fact that the dog favour the satisfaction of social contact, treats or not getting beaten.
The trouble is, even if noone owns you, you still have the better claim. God doesn’t have to exist or be believed in to require you to have the better claim. Also, as I mentioned, we can choose not to act on a want. Thus we can follow rules. We also have the capacity to discuss and choose rules, hence we have the ability to enact laws. Thus we are back to your original post, i.e. if we establish natural rights based rules are they “self-contradictory”? And the answer is still no, you do not need a positive claim on everyone else to have your rights enforced. Having such a positive right would be like saying you own part of everyone else, but if the fact is, as you say, that noone owns anyone, you are the one contradicting yourself. In any case you still have the better claim to own yourself.
No offence, but that is simply a silly objection. You can still choose not to do what you want. Also, one can rationally choose a single want from a set of different wants. If not how could we prioritize?
Indeed, you are able to choose. The question is whether you really freely choose or whether your brain determines your decision for you, without any kind of free will involved.
Remember: thinking is a material, physical process. Free will relies on some non-material, transcendent element that is somehow supposed to be ingrained in the human mind. It doesn’t add up.
If you prioritize, your brain basically ranks several decisions according to general importance, present value as compared to future value, possible harm and so on. It may even be that, in order to disprove me, you will prioritize in a silly, irrational manner - however, in that case, being right, a reaction to my external stimulus, was of paramount importance to your body and every other factor lost gravity.
I would agree with you about the fact that we have to be sceptical about speciesm, but you cannot escape the fact that human beings are the only creature able to enquire about and discuss theories of justice.
Well, as I said, man’s brain is the most potent ever known. Nevertheless, our brains and our will work similarly to those of other living things. Where are we supposed to draw the line, then? Do we need written and elaborated theories of justice to permit entry to the “rights’ squad”, or is it enough to recognize social structures that resemble justice in one way or another? We’re being arbitrary here.
Nevertheless the commands must come from somewhere or someone, and if you ever see a dog choosing to balance a ball on the nose and on its hind legs you can be sure that a human being has tought it so because he/she can “exploit” the fact that the dog favour the satisfaction of social contact, treats or not getting beaten.
This is a good example of what I meant. A dog’s brain works pretty simple. You can manipulate him with several key satisfaction elements that will make him do stuff. Human brains are more complex. You need more interlocking factors to get people to do stuff.
However, even human brains can be played like a piano. All I need to say is advertising.
And the answer is still no*, you do not need a positive claim on everyone else to have your rights enforced. Having such a positive right would be like saying you own part of everyone else, but if the fact is, as you say, that noone owns anyone, you are the one contradicting yourself.*
Yes, I realized that. It was a silly claim I guess.
Actually, you sound like someone who is utterly incapable of addressing ANY questions thrown at you. You’re just ranting ignorantly about a topic you know little of. You’ve provided no criteria by which you seek to have your question answered, and instead draw pathetic analogies with faith in god, as if this is relevant. FYI, this is a popular tactic of theists, not atheists. To say belief in science is like faith in god, or belief in testimony is like faith in god, or belief in morals is like faith in god, so why not be a theist? Of course, they could say this to anyone who is not skeptical about just one thing. So it’s time to lose the attitude. Do you want a proof of NR? Then I suggest you make the effort of reading a book or two on the topic, instead of blurting out ignorant, weakly argued nonsense that is not even tangential to the issue at hand, and offer actual reasons as to why rights must be axiomatic. This reminds me of the people who equate Austrian econ to creationism then refuse to read anything, because there’s loads of creationist books out there too. Sorry, but no cigar…
The problem being, these questions are mostly insoluble, or beyond the grasp of the human mind at present. Materialists might like to think they know everything about everything, or at least can, but this is just scientistic arrogance, the kind of which Mises complained. Anyone who has done philosophy of the mind should know how humbled materialists ought to be in their system’s utter breakdown when it comes to handling the mind in a non-question-begging, satisfying way that does not involve assuming it out of the picture. Kant offers similar considerations on the matter of free will - and the problem remains to this day, and bringing science into the matter will do little to solve the issue, unless one believes science can resolve every and all questions, which is a positivist article of faith itself. All I shall say is that if we could discover that animals possessed free will, we’d have to recognize they too possessed certain rights &c. I really think you need to read up on NR theory a bit, because it varies immensely, and Aristotelian variants of it have very different arguments in places to Lockean NR theory, and a very different conception of rights. I don’t mean to be condescending, but there is really a huge wealth of literature on this topic, and it is by no means as simple as it is often made out to be, so absent educating oneself on the matter, one will be literally groping in the dark.
And?
So don’t?
My point is you could refuse to debate him without making yourself look all to arrogant.
Incompleteness of explanation is no refutation of fact. A full explanation of how, or how not, free will occurs is immaterial. The fact is you can choose not to act upon a specific want, just as most of the higher mammals with less potent brains can. In addition humans can enquire about and discuss theories of justice, liberty, philosophy, lingustics, science etc. Now, theories require us to use abstraction mechanism such as generalization, specialization, aggregation and separation, i.e. mechanisms to think in terms of classification and composition; all-in-all, to think about concepts and not just the immediate and intuitive. For instance, socially inclined monkeys (not even to mention the great apes) are capable of feeling and acting on injustice if, say, you teach them to win treats in a game with certain rules and you then cheat by changing or making up the rules as the game proceeds. But this is just something immediate, intuitive or innate, i.e. feeling. Humans on the other hand are capable of treating justice as a concept, free will or not. I mean, just ask any odd stranger about justice and you’ll likely get a somewhat sensible answer. Thus we find two things: 1. we can choose not to act on wants and 2. we can discuss concepts. Free will or not. Incidentally, that is “all” you need to understand the concept of negative rights and choose not to aggress against the negative rights of others even though you might find you want to do so. Other than that you can be every bit as irrational and beast-like all you want. You could even do drugs just to make sure to break down any possibility of free will happening and just live on whims and fancies.
Having said the above I would like to point out that very few actually ignore the determined behaviour. Common sense tells us that we must at some point, or to some extent at least, be able to explain the material causal factors of thoughts or of the brain. Just read Human Action or Theory and History by Mises. Also, if you haven’t already, look up John Searle. The fact is, however, we cannot completely explain free will, but that is no argument to ignore the fact that we have it nonetheless.
I don’t feel like discussing animal rights. My views differ from most and aren’t fully thought out yet, so I’ll pass on this one if that is where you are going. In any case, what would be needed is the capacity to understand negative rights. Positive rights any brute, alien, robot whatever can understand. After all might-is-right is as simple as it gets. Thus an AI-robot or aliens could be considered moral agents, depending of course on the AI and specific alien in question. Also, “permission to enter into the ‘rights squad’” is a misconception. The trouble is not one of permission but submission, i.e. you have to make yourself intelligible and show how you intend to act according to the concept of negative liberty.
I challenge you to make me buy a specific product via advertising. You can choose the product. Or alternatively to convince the residents in Sahara to buy sand. If you are successful I will concede the non existance of free will. Moreover I will congratulate you on becomming the richest man alive [;)]
this may be of some help to this thread. read the original post and the lengthy reply by chris at the bottom of the page: