You are flying loose with your language here. Murder doesn’t “prevent humans from existing” unless you are using a very particular meaning of “human”. At the very most, murder prevents a human from consciousness thus action. By what justification do you classify such a state as “unnatural” or “against human nature”? Is it not the natural tendency of a human to attain such a state when confronted with a knife to the heart or a brick to the head? The goodness or wrongness of such a state or action is not self-evident.
It seems the only way you can justify a claim such as yours is by introducing a supernatural element to the classification “human”, as well as asserting an ultimate end for humans. Of course, even that does not make such a system self-evident, as the asserted “natural end” of humanity may be construed as “bad”; it is certainly not self-evidently “good”.
In a free-will world, nothing is pre-determined [other then the fact that there is free-will]. Therefore the establishment that people can act out of non-determinist courses and actions does not suddenly mean nothing is objective. If I were to suddenly get up now for no reason other then my will, would gravity suddenly go inverted because I acted out of free-will?
This sounds very bizarre. A human naturally desires to be in a state with a brick to their head? lol…
Humans act of will. To counter this act of will of any one person is to counter a natural tendency of any human which this shunning is known as nolition. Going with ones own natural tendency acting of will is volition. Each person honoring this natural tendency in each other is freedom. Individually, even without the honoring of other people, each person acts in liberty.
No, natural law does not say what you should do. It shows rather what is good or bad for humans considering their nature. The idea of morals is separate from the law. As I have said over and over: ethics are DERIVED FROM the natural law! They are not the natural law, and the natural law is not ethics.
Yes, it does. If everyone decided that murder was good for humans, then they would all murder, and humans would cease to exist. Obviously not in a split second, but they would not exist after awhile.
My definition of human, certainly in the context of ethics for humans, is Rothbard’s. Something that does not think and act is not human.
My point has nothing to do with desire. A boulder falling and crushing a man is not self-evidently good or bad. Neither is a man driving a knife into another man’s heart. The reason these are not self-evidently bad is because the moral value of both the action or the end result do not exist within themselves and cannot be derived from what is knowable of the circumstances.
I understand this, but it really has nothing to do with the point of the above quote.
I am entering this thread very late and haven’t read previous pages, so is this thread, like the others, about proving natural law ethics as being self evident, or about clarifying natural law ethics after accepting the self-ownership (in the sense of property right) axiom? In the case of the latter, I have nothing to add.
A boulder falling is an act of nature that is not human. It is the nature of a boulder falling and it so happens a man was under such a boulder.
A human has choice in driving in the knife.
A boulder and a human are distinct in actions. Surely you jest.
yes it does… Will is an act and is a intellectual principle. Either way, will is an end in itself. To counter this will is to counter the natural tendency of a human which is nolition.
Material accidents are irrelevant to moral theories. Oh wait. Maybe you think that moral agents are no different from falling stones ?
Well, that’s just your opinion.
"The reason these are not self-evidently bad is because the moral value of both the action or the end result do not exist within themselves " - meaningless.
“cannot be derived from what is knowable of the circumstances.” false unfounded assertion.
yeah that’s why I glossed over that part… it really made no sense, but then again zefreak seems to be saying a rock is a human…lol
And meanwhile zefreak came up with the example in a seemingly knowable way. He even knew the circumstances, fictional, but abstractly apprehended none-the-less.
But it does prevent them from existing, which is (supposedly) the natural tendency. If the law “murder is bad” is correct simply because it “prevents humans from existing” (as was stated) then anything that prevents humans from existing should be also be bad. No?
That’s just the general scope of political philosophy.
Well, one can make distinctions based on praxeological criteria such as homesteader and non-homesteader or aggressor and non-aggressor. One can also make arbitrary distinctions such as discriminated against and discriminated in favour of or have and have-not. One is objective and the other is not.
One cannot beat their opponent into accepting the truth of a claim. Propositional exchange is a non-coercive affair.
Let’s say someone were completely paralyzed. Would they be able to argue? Obviously not. And if their opponent deprived them of the means of communicating, then they wouldn’t be able to argue. Communication requires some control over one’s body. And there’s no difference in principle between different parts of the body.
It means that argumentation presupposes that the proponent allow full control over a homesteaded good.
Just as economic truths don’t follow from the fact that humans are able to act.
Doesn’t that have to be settled in the course of an argument?
You didn’t. I did. I was pointing out the category, human nature, that is being inquired.
Yes, humans naturally die without outside influence. The natural tendency of humans is to act. When a human dies, they are no longer the human they once were, but as noted I am talking about human nature. A dead person is no longer being human in the natural sense of the term. The act of will is categorically about human nature, not about a human no longer human. That would be similar to trying to fit the category of human into fish. There is a distinct absolute difference.
But then, how do we establish that 2+2=4, or that murder is wrong, the fact that not all men deem it wrong illustrates that the attempt to deem murder as an immoral act via the fact “everyone” believes it to be so as fallacious.
Whence is “natural law” derived?
Do I sense a utilitarian case against murder? Or am I wrong…