In Defense of Extreme Apriorism
Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution
Praxeology: The Methodology of Austrian Economics
Statistics: Achilles’ Heel of Government
The New Banner Interview with Murray N. Rothbard
The Political Thought of Etienne de La Boetie by Murray N. Rothbard (Audio)
Anatomy of the State
How and How not to Desocialize
Intimidation by Rhetoric
Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty
Man, Economy, and State (chapters 1-11)
“Defense Services on the Free Market” Power and Market (chapter 1)
Nations by Consent: Decomposing the Nation-State
Rothbard’s Confidential Memorandom to the Volker Fund, “What is to be Done?” (Audio)
The Ethics of Liberty
The Spooner-Tucker Doctrine: an Economists View
Why be Libertarians?
Hutus vs. Tutsis
Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature
The Bringing Down of Liz Holtzman
Within a Month! The Bringing Down of Bobby Ray Inman
Saint Hillary and the Religious Left
On Resisting Evil
The Conspiracy Theory of History Revisited
The JFK Flap
Americas Most Persecuted Minority
The Menace of the Religious Left
National Self-Determination
The Death Wish of the Anarcho-Communists
‘Doing God’s Work’ in Somalia
‘Date Rape’ on Campus
Rape or ‘Rape’?
Exhume, Exhume, Or, Who Put the Arsenic in Rough and Ready’s Cherries?
Sports, Politics, and the Constitution
Guilt Sanctified
Max Lerner: Again?!
I Hate Max Lerner
Hoppephobia
The Great Women’s Liberation Issue: Setting It Straight
A Strategy for the Right
Frank Meyer and Sydney Hook
The Religious Right: Toward a Coalition
A New Strategy For Liberty
Right-Wing Populism
Pat Buchanan and the Menace Anti-Anti-Semitism
Education: Rethinking “Choice”
New York Politics’ 93
The Apotheosis of Tricky Dick
The New York Political Circus
Big-Government Libertarians
1996! The Morning Line
Notes on the Nintendo War
Why the War? The Kuwait Connection
Korean War Redux?
Invade the World
The Nationalities Question
Yugoslavian Breakup
Welcome, Slovenia!
“Tolerance,” or Manners?
Behind Waco
Kulturdampf!
From the Bench-Down With the De-e-e-fense
The Right to Kill, With Dignity?
Wichita Justice? On Denationalizing the Courts
Bobby Fisher: The Lynching of the Returning Hero
Fluoridation Revisited
Never Say “JAP”!
Some Reflections on the Olympics
The Evil Empire Strikes Back
Liberal Hysteria: The Mystery Explained
King Kristol
The Women/Ladies/Girls/Spoiled Brats of Mills
Marshall, Civil Rights, and the Court
Their Malcolm…And Mine
“Debauchery! Debauchery!” At Tailhook
Race! That Murray Book
The Clintonians: “Looking Like America”
Coping With the Inaugural
Is Clinton a Bastard?
Clintonian Ugly
PC Cinema: Psychobabble Gets Nasty
“Kid Lib” Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays
“Conservation in the Free Market” Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays
Perfect! You are officially in a position to stop asking me questions like I know everything, and instead to start providing the answers.
I’m looking forward to your Rothbardian wisdom, sensei.
[edit: At least one was redundant, and you missed an important one: The Mantle of Science, so I’ll give you an A flat. You are still certified to start answering more and stop expecting me to know all the answers. I think I am allowed to debate without knowing everything, especially given that I am at least still reading and learning.]
Natural law or the law of nature (Latin: lex naturalis) is a theory that posits the existence of a law whose content is set by nature and that therefore has validity everywhere.[1] The phrase natural law is sometimes opposed to the positive law of a given political community, society, or nation-state, and thus can function as a standard by which to criticize that law. In natural law jurisprudence, on the other hand, the content of positive law cannot be known without some reference to the natural law (or something like it). Used in this way, natural law can be invoked to criticize decisions about the statutes, but less so to criticize the law itself. Some use natural law synonymously with natural justice or natural right (Latin ius naturale), although most contemporary political and legal theorists separate the two.
Kristine
fast slim
Excellent post! That’s why natural law of human nature is transparent, unlike the arbitrary laws of positivism. They are transparent cause they are logical and open to each person by use of intellect. The logical path to natural law conclusions is why they are unbiased. There’s definitely more to this, but I thought your post was very good and wanted to give honor to it.[Y]
Rothbardian ‘natural law’ theorists isolate the functions of the ‘mind’ into several dichotomies. Examples include the means/end dichotomy, the ‘reason’/‘emotion’ dichotomy, the ‘will’/‘instinct’ dichotomy, and the ‘natural’/‘unnatural’ dichotomy. Those Rothbardians also assert that reason can override ‘instincts’. Evolutionary psychology have countered this idea.
We will denote an ‘instinct’ as a hard-wired ‘emotion’ of the brain. Some examples of ‘instincts’ include thirst, pain, hunger, and sex drive. Without the feeling of thirst, humans have a decreased chance of survival because of possible dehydration. Therefore, humans have evolved a trait that make themselves feel thirsty when their body dehydrates.
Why do most humans avoid suicide? They avoid suicide because they have an ‘instinct’ to avoid death. Almost all humans cannot override this ‘instinct’. If they can override it, then they would not exist. Over human evolution, the death-avoidance gene has propagated to almost all living humans. The use of ‘reason’ or ‘intellect’ cannot override this instinct.
‘Emotions’, ‘instincts’, ‘passions’, and desires precede ‘intellect’, ‘reason’, and ‘logic’. ‘Reason’ cannot override the ultimate ‘emotions’ that precede it. Indeed, some humans can sacrifice short-term pain for long-term happiness. But that does not deny that pain and happiness are ‘instincts’.
Besides humans, every organism has some sort of ‘reason’ that can modulate ‘emotions’. They can trade-off short-term pain for long-term happiness, and predict the expected ‘emotions’ into the future, just like humans.
If dogs and cats do not ‘reason’ and only follow their ‘instincts’, then they cannot learn and memorize. Organisms strictly limited to their ‘instincts’ only respond to reflexes, and cannot memorize or apply past experiences. But we all know that most animals learn and memorize. Therefore, they do ‘reason’ to a certain extent.
The Rothbardian ‘natural law’ theorists seem to be ignorant on evolutionary biology.
you seem to be ignorant on just about everything you choose to speak about.
Instinct is inborn behaviour, not emotion. Pain is centripetal experience, not an instinct. Thirst is a craving for fluids, to fulfill biological needs. These feelings certainly result in instincts (i.e. avoidance of pain, drinking without being taught how, etc…) but aren’t instincts themselves.
How is that provable, couldn’t people simply be death-neutral, where reason leads them to avoid death (as its beneficial) while emotion make them less weary of it (crime of passion, people do stupid things for love, etc…)?
Lying is also bad according to natural law. Should it be illegal?
Did hashem not say murder is bad according to natural law? What is the difference between lying and murder?
Murder = humans end. Lying = humans don’t end.
Murder = humans end. Theft = humans don’t end.
Therefore, “theft is not bad.”
(I had defined ‘theft’ as seizing property from another without his consent.)
No, it isn’t. Not in the moral sense/rights violation sense.
If you cannot tell the difference between murder and lying then no wonder you are having trouble understanding natural law.
Lying is indeed morally bad. Doesn’t mean it should be made illegal though.
Lying is agent relative.
Is lying to save a life truly bad?
Actually, if you want to pursue that line of reasoning, you could argue that if everybody lied things wouldn’t work that well. You ask : Did you fill the tanks of the airliner ? Yes I lie. So your plane crashes in midair.
You can’t act successfully if you lack the proper information. If you rely on other people in order to get information, and they lie to you then you can’t act successfully.
Murder in its fullest expression, or taken to its final conclusion, means the end of humans. All humans murder each other, they cease to exist.
Theft, if taken to its logical conclusion, means each person steals each other person, which means nobody is allowed (or even able) to do anything, which means the end of humans.
That is how we know, or at least part of the grounds for, the fact of, and therefore the natural law of, and therefore the right of self-ownership. I.E. Humans cease to exist if they do not own themselves; or conversely, because we own ourselves (because each person does not steal each person), we are able to do things, i.e. perpetuate our existence.
Everything can be seen as agent-relative …
lying per se is bad but in that particular case the benefits far outweigh any possible harm.
Not language or natural rights.
hence the agent-relativism.