What if my friend is temporarily non-sentient, just like a fetus? E.g., my friend is really drunk, in a coma (from which he will wake up in 4.5 months), sleeping, under general anesthesia, has Alzheimer’s, or had brain damage as a result of the drinking last night that made him demented? What if my friend came with a newborn (or recently born) baby – is it ok to throw it out? It seems strange to me to say that all the abovementioned examples don’t have natural rights. For instance, the moment a patient becomes heavily sedated (or goes in a coma), it’s ok to kill him or harvest his organs.
you do not get the “sentience” part. There is no analogy to a fetus. Fetus is simply not human.
Marko,
I’m not really modifying my stance, but rather clarifying it, and perhaps modifying the analogy. As for my dragging the drunk onto my porch in the first place, I would think that would be an act of aggession. In any event, I never claimed he did anything to me, simply that I have the right to remove him.
Say as I’m walking to my door some late summer night, say 4am, I notice an obviously drunk man litterally falling over himself while walking down the sidewalk, sometimes stumbling into the street. I live in a city, three doors from a corner bar, so this really isn’t that far-fetched. As he passes by, I invite him to sit down for a while and clear his head before he hurts himself. He sits down, chats with me for less that a minute, and passes out. I think to myself, “Ahh well, no worries. He’ll be on his way when he sobers up.”
When I get inside, my girlfriend informs me her mother will be visting us early the next morning. I don’t want her mother to see a drunk sleeping on our porch, lest she fear her baby girl is living in a dangerous neighborhood with a scoundrel who can’t take care of her. I have to get him to leave to preserve any semblance of domestic harmony. When I try to wake him, though, he won’t budge. He’s out cold.
I maintain that I have a right to move him, as even though he was invited on to the porch, his right to stay there is dependent on my continued consent. Once I change my mind, he no longer has the right to be on my porch, and since he cannot comply with my wishes for him to leave, I have the right to physically move him. Do you agree?
As I said, this is not a change in my stance, but rather a clarification. I would say that once I change my mind, he is an intruder. You don’t seem to like that word, and that’s fine. Pick any word you like to describe one who has no right to be where he is.
I certainly would not accuse you of gross incompetence. I would, however, point out that in Ethics of Liberty, Rothbard states that rights are acquired at birth.
I don’t think a fetus is capable of being evil, nor can it be accused of moral turpitude. I also don’t think that either is necessary to be a coersive parasite. A tape worm is certainly a coersive parasite, and is equally incapable of moral turpitude or evil.
What exactly don’t I get? When an adult human being is in a coma, asleep, under general anesthesia, or has mental impairment, he is not sentient. He is less sentient than many animals. Does he stop being a human being?
Before you declare someone “simply not human”, you have to justify it. The same phrase has been historically said about slaves in the US.
It is anyone’s right not be aggressed upon. In fact, you even have to justify calling something your “property”. The justification is its scarcity and the resulting conflict between you and someone else using it. In this conflict, either of the sides will have aggression acted upon it; therefore, it makes sense to allow aggression on the side that has smaller claim.
But in the case of aggression against someone’s body vs. aggression against someone’s material property, the first natural right tramps the second.
So, Siamese twins are not humans? Not only can one of them kill the other, but an outsider can also kill one of them (or both), right?
What does “fully formed” mean? A human being is not fully formed until 21 years of age, when all of his brain lobes are fully myelinated. I already gave example of non-separate beings (Siamese twins). Not to mention people on respirators or dialysis machines (not fully independent) or people who were born with abnormalities (for example, without a limb or with mental retardation). Are all these non-humans?
Patent nonsense.
Run out of original comebacks?
I have the right to be free from aggression, in all times and in all places…
You don’t have a right to be free from aggression when you have first initiated the aggression (read: crime) against someone else, no matter what the level of aggression is. How NAP-sters can continue to cling to such a ridiculously problematic tenet is beyond me.
A non-proprtional response to aggression is itself aggression.
Who gave you the right to a proportionate response?
It is anyone’s right not be aggressed upon.
Says who? Do you think people in the Middle East are feeling just wonderful about this new found right of theirs while their homes are being blown to bits and soldiers are shooting them in their own streets?
But in the case of aggression against someone’s body vs. aggression against someone’s material property, the first natural right trumps the second.
If a material property owner has an explicit statement of contract on his property for how violation of their property will be dealt with, and you are aware of that contract and choose to violate his property anyway, then contract law goes out the window because it’s not fair to his property as body? That’s laughable.
So, Siamese twins are not humans? Not only can one of them kill the other, but an outsider can also kill one of them (or both), right?
So extremely extraordinary circumstances justifies the nullification of a completely valid definition? You’re really stretching with that one.
What does “fully formed” mean?
What does “evading” mean? There are only two possible entities within a discussion of abortion, the unborn and the mother. There is no slippery slope.
As attractive as repeating the same thesis over and over is, perhaps you might include some argumentation to support it?
My argumentation is that any time one committs aggression against someone else, he is doing something bad. But, when he is doing it in self-defense, he is choosing the lesser of two evils, since if he doesn’t defend himself, aggressively, he will suffer aggression against himself. (And of the two evils, choosing aggressing against someone else is the lesser one, since he initiated the aggression.)
But for this to be the case, the two evils must be proportionate. In a situation when a drunk passed out on your porch, shooting him in the head is not the lesser evil comparing to allowing him to trespass. An equivalent response would be to push him off your property (i.e., committ trespass against his body in order to stop a trespass against your porch).
If you disagree with the above, I’d be interested in hearing your arguments.
I am not sure what this was apropos of.
Don’t confuse contractual rights and natural rights. That’s the mistake modern Liberals make. If you made a contract that if you steal from your employer, he can cut off your hand, then perhaps you could argue that he is not violating your rights to your hand, since you contracted out your natural right. (This also depends on whether ownership of body parts is alienable. Because one can willingly give away — or sell — his kidney or liver lobe, it seems so.) But in the case of a drunk stumbling on your porch, no such contract was made.
It is not a valid definition if you can find a whole class of situations (several classes really) in which creatures defy this definition but are considered to be humans. Fine: humans are independent, sentient, and fully formed creatures, except the cases of Siamese twins, people attached to dialysis machines, people under general anesthesia, people with dementia, combinations of the above, newborn babies while they are still attached by umbilical cord, and fetuses.
Slippery slope to what? There is certainly a slippery slope to expanding the definition of a non-human to include newly born babies in it. http://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2012/03/01/medethics-2011-100411.full.pdf+html
No one, but my property has as much right to be free from your interference as yours does from mine. In this case we are discussing two distinct bits of matter, your land and my body, owned by two individuals. Your claim is that your property right to your land is stronger than my propery right to my self, and that because you own the land upon which I am standing, you have the right to do as you please with my property. This is just laughable.
Say you and I are on a street, owned by neither of us, and you slap me in the face, in your words, “initiate the aggression.” By your argument, I then have the right to blow up your house, burn your garden, salt your land and push your car off a cliff. Oh, and kill you.
A fetus simply is human. It also has the ability to feel sensations. I’m not getting this particular argument about how its “not” a human. I don’t see any substantiation either(I’m going to go out and guess because any attempt at trying to prove that a fetus isn’t human is going to fall flat).
Except that its not an intruder in any sort of sense at all- The fetus is created because of the woman- her body’s own decision and use of hormones to help it grow. If you don’t want to call it a “crime” for a woman to kill her baby that’s your call. But these arguments to justify it on a property-rights basis just don’t hold because a fetus is not comparable to any of the analogies I see on this thread.