I doubt you would actually be able to provide me a real world example of someone who acts arbitrarily for the good of it’s own sake. Give me a man who acts the good samaritin and you will likely find some form of reasoning behind it. The belief that people act on a whim as you assert is a fairy tale notion you subscribe to and is anti-praxeological.
And now we are back to praxeology.
Why are our arguments going in circles? You said this several posts above. By this criteria anything is an ethical decision. If I have a thorn in my finger I may decide the moral thing to do is remove that thorn, to relieve my discomfort. If I feel alone and empty I may subscribe to some religion to deal with that. Ultimately there is always a reason, whether it’s concrete, subjective, true, false, fictional or not fictional, big or large there is always a reason. Humans do not act arbitrarily.
I don’t know but it’s not open for analyzation as far as ethics go. People can choose to beleive that it works or does not work, it’s besides the point. Whether the end is arbitrary or not is besides the point. Why do people pull thorn’s from their finger to releive discomfort? Ultimately the end is irrelevent, the point is that they have some premise to follow from which builds their moral code. That moral code directs their actions.
Why do people remove the thorn from their finger to releive discomfort? Well clearly they do not like discomfort and beleive that is a way to releive it. Why do people woship Jesus to releive discomfort? Well clearly they do not like discomfort and beleive worshiping Jesus is a way to releive it.
If your issue is with Jesus and the problems with that specific reasoning that is one thing, but it’s an entirely other leap to abandon all ethics all together simply because you disagree with a religion. As I have shown not all beliefs are in error. Removing the thorn from your finger would be THE RIGHT thing to do to relieve discomfort.
So your saying that you disagree, that your comfort is not relieved by removing the thorn from your finger? Isn’t this just being stubborn?
Also, care to answer Esuric’s question back on one of the first pages? Esuric stated he would like to take your arm from you. Sounds like you have no dog in the fight? Can you relieve your comfort while allowing Esuric to take your arm?
How about this, you work 2 months to pay for a computer so that you can participate on these forums. Are you telling me you do not necessarily need to take care of your computer, protect your possession of it, keep it virus clean, and maintain it to ease your comfort of posting on these forums? What happens when it is stolen/virus infected/or crashed?
If having possession of the computer is not necessary to ease your comfort why did you buy the darn thing in the first place?!?!?!
I imagine you have an antivirus and a door lock to your house. Both of these exhibit signs of maintaining your property. Your own actions undermine your argument.
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Thats because you’ve entirely re-defined the word property and miss understood it’s point. People protect their assets not because they have an ideological belief of property rights. They do so because they toiled over it and know that in order to accumulate wealth they need to take care of the things in their possession and ensure that they remain in their possession. People do so because they desire to satisfy various ends and discomforts. People want a car to drive so they buy a car, a chair to sit, a dog to play with. Whatever the reason, people recognize the fact that objects are scarce and that they must work to aquire them. What good is toiling for 3 months to buy a computer that someone else will use?
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If ethics and morals are guidelines(Codes of conduct) to direct the action of attempting to achieve a specific end(Satisfy discomfort),
then
what kinds of guidelines are those which also aim to achieve certain ends but that are not-ethically oriented.
I’m not sure how best to write that heh. My sentence structure seemed fine to me, though I had several typo’s.
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Simple, the fact that he has a gun and you do not. The fact that he is protecting the asset in his possession and desires to retain possession of it. What makes your wages yours? Why should you care if we tax you or not?
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That IS the concept of property that your agreeing to.
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it is you who is assigning the baggage of “divine right to”. If the man who owned the chair though he had some kind of universal right he wouldn’t need to protect it with a gun now would he. [:)]
Also the ideological argument of property is just a tool, just like the gun, to protect property. People spread the ideology behind property as a more economic way of reducing the risk of lost assets. It is cheaper to have everyone around you agree to the concept of property rather then pay for a guard to tirelessly protect all of your assets. The ideology behind is is just another tool for people retain possession of their assets.
This is an example of you responding to each sentence in kind, while missing the punchline entirely.
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We don’,t the only one here who is making that claim that Property inherently has to do with what is divinely right and divinely wrong is you as we have repeatedly pointed out.
Does anyone else here on this forum right now think that you are born and endowed with a divine right to a specific property? even if they did their belief would be superficial. People know they must protect what t hey have, that process of protecting their assets IS THE PROPERTY RIGHTS.
The Austrian’s concept of property, correct me if I am wrong anyone, is that it is a natural phenomena that occurs consequentially out of various complex axioms and earthly conditions. We are not espousing to a religion, we are espousing to an economic method of thought there.
Property is the act of maintaining objects in your possession. Even Crusoe does this on his island alone. He protects the tools he’s made even though he doesn’t have to worry about theft. Does the rain violate his rights when it rains? No but he none the less will protect his tools from the rain, it is his property in this way. He has property(assets) and must protect his property(assets) from the elements just as the city goer protects his property(assets) from thieves. There is no difference, and both are doing so out of the concept of property.
I have shown you that people act under the premise of property rights due to various unchangeable aspects of our earthly world. People maintain and have “PROPERTY” because it is in their economic interest to do so.
Then stop conflating property with ethics.
On a side note,
When a communist is arguing with a capitalist over who should have control over a specific tangible object, is this an ethical argument? If yes then how do you deal with such situations?
You have done this social conditioning twice now. Keep your baseless assertions out of it. You have nothing to back up such a ridiculous claim as this. I don’t eat spicy foods because I was socially engineered not to, I don’t do it because I get indigestion.
people have different preferences and make conscious decisions on what to do based on those preferences. If we were all socially engineered we’d all be eating the same thing now wouldn’t we! As such I’ll continue to dismiss the crankish social engineered argument.
Good
Irrelevant.
Desire(Action),Goal(End)
Now explain to me this. Why is.
- I want to eat healthy because Jesus says I should and my goal is to please him.
An ethical statement where as
- I want to eat healthy my doc says I should and my goal is to live a long life.
A non-ethical statement.
Why
- I want to help people because I want to be a good person
Is different from
- I want to help people because it will improve my disposition in the community
Here are the only stances you can possibly take
A) You don’t believe any are concrete ethical statements, you believe ethics do not exist at all and none of them are ethical statements. They are simply statements of the desires of various ends. Regardless of how real or fake the ends are they are simply statements.
B) You believe all of them are ethical statements. But each of them ahve their own codes of conduct. You recognize that ethics may be subjective from one person to the next. More or less you agree with point A, just that you acknowledge that ethics are nothing more then a code of conduct for the attainment of specific ends.
You don’t say that following that code of conduct will get you to those ends, only that they were designed to help you get t here. You don’t say that praying to Alah helps you get to heaven, only that it was designed to attempt to get you there. The success of the code of conduct is not what is disputed, only that it is nothing more then a set of rules for the attainment of a certain end.
C) You believe they are ethical statements but some of them are wrong. You believe that the correct ethical statements are ones you decide, by whatever judgement you use.
D) You arbitrarily choose at a whim which statements are ethical, and which are not. Which ones make you uncomfortable and which do not. You are essentially the same as point C, only to another extreme. Even though all these statements are guides for Action and Ends, you simply go down the list and arbitrarily decide what is ethical and what is not. This seems to fit your category. As such you have no real argument as your assignment of what is or is not ethical is entirely arbitrary and holds no real weight.
I have asked this in nearly every post to you on this point. Either you believe the first sentence is an ethical statement and the second one is not, or they are all ethical statements, or none of them are ethical statements. You seem to cherry pick which doesn’t really give you any legitimate argument to use.
The end for why he choses his actions doesn’t matter. Whether he defends his property out of zealous ideology or does so because he just purchased it today makes no difference. His actions are not open for judgement, which you are doing Judging him for having an possible ethical system.
The point is that he does act in this manner, man does act to protect his assets, he exhibits property ownership naturally on his own.
And it’s an assumption on your part that he’s doing it out of zealous ethical reasoning.
So then if you are indifferent to it why do you spend so much time attacking property on this forum?
Let me ask you this.
If
- Goods were not scarce
- Time was not scarce
- and we did NOT have to occupy goods over time
Are you tellign me that people would still hold this radical ethical based concept of property?
Or is it more likely that property would seize to exist, not because it is built on an ethical framework but because it is built out of necessity due to the following reasons.
- Objects are scarce
- Time is scarce
- The occupation of objects over time is necessary to satisfy desires/needs
Then why did you say this?
Seems you have a very strong opinion to me. You admit as much that you at the least would prefer to keep the wages of your labor to yourself. Just as the man in the chair would prefer to keep the chair to himself, regardless for what reasons.