What is happening is that the idea of individual choice
is slowly being applied to ethical values in the same way it
has been successfully applied to economic values. People
choose the things they prefer, and the science, whether
economic or ethical, explains the cause-and-effect
consequences of the choices people make. The science
helps people to make choices by showing them some of the
unintended or hidden consequences to choices or acts they
were considering. Of course, an ethical absolutist will cite
the examples of the violent criminal, murderer, or torturer,
as reasons why ethical values cannot be left to individual
choice. However, natural-law theory is no greater a
deterrent to criminal behavior than is analytical social
science. There will apparently always be some limited
number of people whose time horizon is short, or who
believe their options are few, and who will act destructively
even if their own death is the result. No man-made law and
no theory of libertarian ethics can prevent an ultimate
decision to destroy. Natural-law philosophy does not
prevent crime or murder.
I haven’t read the rest of the book, but this is essentially my view on why ‘natural law’ and other moralistic foundations of ‘libertarianism’ are not only false but pointless and wasteful.
Because some people violate the rights of others, natural law and other moralistic foundations of libertarianism are false? What sort of blatant non sequitur is that?
Natural law and ‘rights’ are nonsensical in their own right. The point was that, aside from being false, such arguments are pointless.
Libertarianism is not ‘false’ because natural rights are false. Libertarianism in practice has many merits. The problem is, rather, with people ascribing more or less nonsensical, even magical, notions as to why libertarianism is preferable. Natural rights is one of those magical notions.
Apparently the type that renders NR “nonsense”. I wonder when people will actually become serious and study the topic, before posting the same old “critiques” of NR over and over and over… could it be that Adam Knott is gasp attacking a strawman?
The reason all normative theories are literally false I have given in my other reply. The absurdity of moralizing in general have been explored by plenty of authors. Whether moral ‘absolutes’ are attempted by the methods of natural rights, democratism etc, they can not succeed because their objective is incoherent.
I think what amoralists are trying to say is if ethics has nothing whatsoever to do with the real world other than it influences the actions of individuals like any idea, then it can hardly be called objective.
Indeed. The moralist has no recourse to the immoralist but social opprobrium and violence. You know, the same thing that applies to anyone. Also the concept of extrapersonal value is meaningless. Value only exists as someone’s values.
This assertion does not seem meaningful without assuming some normative theory.
Why do you say “magical”? If a society can consistently operate under rules other than ‘might makes right’ or legal positivism doesn’t that suggest at least the possibility of their being real and objective in some sense?
But “Having nothing to do with the real world other than it influences the actions of individuals” means it has a lot to do with the real world. I’d say our world has everything to do with the actions of individuals.
Are you honestly going to complain about the use of the word “objective”? I do not recall an implication of ethics being that values exist independently of agents to hold them… perhaps what is meant is something like what Rand called “intrinsic” value.
This assertion does not seem meaningful without assuming some normative theory.
Not at all, any more than classical virtu does. One does not need a normative theory to think that a car has merits for the purposes of traveling. I have certain preferences, demonstrably shared in part by at least a considerable swath of people, which a ‘practically’ libertarian society would indeed enhance. If one does not agree with this preferences, so be it.
Why do you say “magical”?
Understand by this I do not mean ‘magical’ in the way some logical positivists would dismiss metaphysics. I happen to think metaphysics is a perfectly profitable area for examination. What I mean by ‘magical’ is that it has attributes which are logically incompatible, IE ‘extra-personal values’ or ‘non-practical reasons’. These latter two are impossible, just as the ‘supernatural’ is impossible if one is a descriptive metaphysician.
If a society can consistently operate under rules other than ‘might makes right’ or legal positivism doesn’t that suggest at least the possibility of their being real and objective in some sense?
With the qualification ‘in some sense’, perhaps I agree. Don’t misunderstand what I am trying to assert here, I am not saying that a coherent and satisfactory system of jurisprudence is impossible, I am simply saying that there is nothing logically ‘moral’ about it. You might think of me as an Austrian game-theorist in this regard, or even a Humean. I certainly don’t doubt the existence or viability of roughly objective torts, sanctions and liberties. I simply say that any attempt to enmesh this with morality is fundamentally mistaken because ‘morality’ can not offer logical support to anything. It is ultimately nothing more than a feeling, however complex the origin of that feeling may be.
I do not recall an implication of ethics being that values exist independently of agents to hold them
While intrinsic value is also nonsense, that is not precisely the charge I’m leveling at moralistic arguments. Rather, moral arguments make assertions which are literally not the case. There is no reason other than practical reasons, and if someone disagrees with regards to normative standards (or considers other values personally more important) here is no meaning to condemning their action except to demonstrate one’s personal disapproval. Just because moral arguments sway people does not mean they are cognitively sound. There is also nothing ‘wrong’ with using moral arguments, they are simply false in a literal sense.
And yet you bring nothing to back that. Arbitrary assertions are junk, and since you actually believe that moral arguments are arbitrary, you can clearly not complain when I dismiss your arbitrary assertion as junk, lest you be a hypocrite
I have tried to demonstrate this repeatedly, perhaps this explanation will work: there is no such thing as value except as an idea about ends-means relationships. Ends are beyond rational examination. Any assertion which claims that a value ought to be other than it is, without referring to the values of the actor, is literally false because it makes no logical sense. It makes no more sense to say that I ought not to use murder though it will satisfy me than it does to say Fortran ‘ought’ to utilize a different function than the one it in fact does. Teleology is meaningless outside of a specific individual with personal aims. It simply can not be applied. Yet every attempt to contradict actually existing values can refer to nothing but some sort of third-person teleology. Moreover, even if such a teleology existed it would not be my teleology and therefor irrelevant to the question of my values strictly speaking. This is not to say, of course, that the goals of other peoples will not affect my own values but rather that there is no reason they ‘ought’ to. Ought is a teleological concept and, like value, can not be either criticized nor imposed.
Strawman. No one is claiming that the VALUE OUGHT to be different. Rather they are claiming that THEIR VALUES are such that if you do something to violate their self-ownership and corallary rights, there will be certain consequences.
Self-ownership is nonsensical, a ‘natural right’ has no meaning without an external reference to ‘objective’ value and (historically) what ‘ownership’ and ‘rights’ are amounts to amoral conventions which, whatever their objectivity in practice, exist as nothing more than conventions and habits of settled civil people.
The notion that one can logically demonstrate certain ‘consequences’ to the utilization of means is absurd. This is an empirical and not a logical question. Satisfaction is the only ‘real’ end, and one can not logically prove that satisfaction will not be reached by some manner nor that satisfaction ought to be concerned at all with your so-called ‘rights’.
An ethical norm that makes no reference to ‘oughts’ is irrelevant.
Also, none of you libertarian moralists even agree with eachother, yet you seem so intent on defending your incompatible ‘rights’ theories. If you can not see the absurdity of questioning the propriety of my acts or the fact that no one has any logical reason to care about them, I frankly don’t care. And herein we arrive at the ultimate problem of ‘morality’ - not only is it literally false, it also only matters if you already have a conception of morality as imperative. It is circular reasoning.