No, you’re very much wrong on this. My actions don’t prove anything. Stealing is stealing and that is wrong, and I’m afraid to tell you, that’s pure and simple. My actions of violating the moral principle of “Do not steal” doesn’t mean I think that stealing the medicine is right. I never said it was right. In fact I said:
Therefore I recognize that my act of aggression (stealing the medicine) is wrong but I also acknowledge that I am willing to live with the consequence of performing that act of aggression which could be time in jail, a beating, being shot or whatever. I still believe it is wrong – my act of taking that medicine hasn’t changed my view that stealing is wrong – but I have made the conscious decision to act this way. And my act of theft does not change the moral principle that stealing, for any reason, is wrong. Taking something for whatever the reason or whatever the cause is wrong and always will be wrong – pure and simple – but as a free human I have the free will to decide if I’m going to abide by that moral principle or not. Every criminal knows what they are doing is wrong but have chosen to commit the crime anyway. All it proves is that I’ve decided to violate my moral principle concerning theft (which I maintain is wrong) because I believe I have a higher moral principle of saving the life of the child and if I should be punished for it I’m willing to accept that punishment.
I think, at this point, we are arguing semantics. I say your actions automatically match your true morals, even if you deceive yourself or just say that your morals are different. You say you can violate the rules you set for your own behavior. OK, well, there’s a semantic or other assumption where we don’t match, here, and I don’t know what to do to resolve it. It would not be a problem, except what I regard as the hypocritical injustice of imposing a punishment on someone for doing what you yourself, and anyone you know who isn’t insane, whould do in the same circumstance.
Morality doesnt belong to a person, its objective. Your actions are moral or immoral, but have no say in what is moral. Also accidentally hitting someone with your car and incapacitating them puts no moral obligation on you whatsoever. If the road you are currently on is basically a lawless jungle, then driver beware. I would never drive on a road like that though, I would only drive on roads that had some sort of agreement up front about what would happen if i was incapacitated while using that road.
You are preaching a very sinsiter form of moral relativism: Stealing is a crime, except when you do it in place of a bigger crime. Of course, not being able to prevent your child from dying is not a crime at all.
People are never limited to two options, and the options they have today are dictated by their past choices. The father of the sick child should have saved or bought insurance. But why would anyone bother to do that if they can simply say “I have no choice but to steal” should the need ever arise?
Lets say you steal the medicine and have returned home when the owner of the medicine enters your house to reclaim his property. Can you harm him to prevent him from claiming his justily owned property?
More preciously, you are willing to commit the crime and submit yourself to the mercy of your victim.
Law and Justice can only exist after a crime has been committed. So this question can not be framed as, “Should I steal it?” The correct question would be, “I’ve stolen it, now what?” And that answer is much more simple: you are criminally liable unless your victim has mercy on you.
There’s actually a discussion on this topic on the AnCap group at myspace.
I don’t really understand the “moral” dilemma here. There are no morals - ethics is a creation of mankind. Thus, unless the person stealing was acting against some kind of social or individual contract which that person agreed with and “signed,” I don’t see how that person’s action could have been moral or immoral.
And given that the nonaggression principle isn’t binding on anyone who hasn’t contractually agreed to it, on what basis are “private security, defense, juries, etc.,” justified?
It sounds like you advocate anarchy without nonaggression, which would seem impossible.
How are they not justified? There are no natural, universally binding morals which should dictate what you do, which is why I believe that the only rational ethical system can be one where two or more people agree to a set of morals or ethical rules (i.e. a social contract).
And a system that advocates complete nonaggression is ridiculous. Aggression and violence are a part of human nature. Anarcho-capitalism isn’t built on the assumption that everyone will be non-violent but on the assumption that your own self interest will lead you to defend your home and your property by buying your own weapons, making agreements with your local community, and contracting private security, defense, and legal forces.
I think the ancap claim can be best represented by this famous quote from Adam Smith:
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.”
Self interest will guide people to provide each other the goods and services they need. Imposing any fake ethical system on top of that is anti-anarchist, as far as I’m concerned.
In one sense - yes. But in another, if you agree to follow a set of rules and then break them, we can safely say that action was immoral purely based on the fact that you broke an agreement (unless you decided to annul it first). Of course, this isn’t to say that what I’m proposing is practical - it is highly impractical as an ethical system. Social contracts don’t apply to more than two generations at most while individual contracts aren’t so widespread.
Proof of no natural, universally applicable morals existing? Where is your proof of them existing?
It’s like trying to prove the nonexistence of God, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or the invisible elephant in my backyard. You can’t prove that something doesn’t exist. Instead, the person making the claim has to prove that it does exist. And so far all proofs of the existence of natural and universal morals have been quite weak, by my standards.
Utilitarians are utilitarian because they believe it will better serve humanity. Ethical egoists and virtue ethicists are what they are because they believe that that will better serve themselves. Followers of the divine command theory believe that all ethical laws are handed down by God or some other supreme, supernatural being. Kant’s followers believe in the categorical imperative because they believe it is more universally applicable than all the other ethical systems. Natural rightists believe in natural rights because of their previous ideological beliefs. There really is no moral system that tries to explain the existence of objective, universal, and natural morals. Most people who follow some kind of ethical system follow it just because that’s what they believe in. It’s kind of a disgusting blind faith similar to faith in the state.
AFAIK, morals arose because of our evolutionary tendencies to label some actions as taboo and others as “good.” There is no universality, rationality, or even “naturalness” in them. Amoralism, nihilism, existentialism, and contractarianism are all rational to me in that they all agree, to an extent, that ethics is a creation of our imagination.
That’s nice, but I asked for proof of your claim, not a diatribe trying to render morality analogous to theism, much like I’d ask an atheist for proof of any claim to the effect that a deity or higher force does not exist, which would require an ontological proof.
I’m not sure why people give evolutionary accounts of morality in a way that seems to be be exclusive of their having a rational basis. I can give evolutionary accounts of how economies arose- so what? Does that render economics null and void? Are you an epistemological nihilist as well?
I don’t see what objective basis you have for defending libertarianism and attacking the state. Nihilists and relativists always seem to think that nihilism or relativism entail toleration and those that are social contract theorists always seem to think that people will somehow be led by some invisible hand to contractually create a society that just so happens to look like the one they prefer. It doesn’t work that way. Nihilism and relativism provide you with no foundation for criticizing those who would aggress against you, either haphazardly or systematically.
My reason for attacking the state: it is a large fumbling, inefficient giant.
How is the above statement contradictory with nihilism? Only because I don’t believe any universal morals exist doesn’t mean that I don’t have a basis for criticizing the state. I believe the state is not beneficial to my own self interest or the self interests of billions of common people. That is a rational argument that appeals to people who want more choice and freedom.
I don’t believe in there being a universally applicable and natural ethical system. Where have ethical systems originated from? Partially from evolution, partially from our imagination. In other words, all ethical systems are invariably creations of mankind and nothing more.
Which leads me to the conclusion that a rational ethical system has to recognize the above. So this leaves the following: amoralism, nihilism, existentialism, moral subjectivism, and contractarianism. Now, let me point out that my views on the social contract are somewhat different than “traditional” views. I believe that a social contract ONLY applies to the people who agreed to it, not to following generations. I also believe that it is in the interest of people to sign such contracts just as they choose to use contracts for jobs over normal hourly wages. My definition also rejects the idea that you have the right to annul a social contract because of your natural rights. Since no natural, universal ethical system exists, you don’t derive your right to annul from “natural” rights, but from your own free will and choice.
So my definition greatly restricts the use of a social contract to that of any other contract. If a group of people can agree to a set of rules they can follow when dealing with each other, that’s great. They did so voluntarily, expecting to benefit themselves. That’s completely consistent with anarchism and individualist thought.
Why is that bad? Why prefer a more efficient organization?
What self interest? Why do you value what you value? What makes one thing preferable to another, especially for other people?
If you say so. Our imagination is nothing. All is evolution. You have no more freedom of thought than any other soulless chemical process. Heck, what’s the point of even talking about it?
Why do you have the right to sign a contract or hold anyone else to it. Because there are no universal ethics, there is nothing actually wrong with a person changing their minds unilaterally. Why sign the contract in the first place? There is no reason to prefer the society with such a contract over one without.
Nihilism is as empty as it states itself to be. There is no basis in it for anything, and no reason to even want there to be. Maybe you’re right. If so, who gives a bleep. Anyone who claims their philosophy is nihilism is a liar. Otherwise, they wouldn’t bother claiming it.
Two problems in connection to all this. In the first place, why should anyone besides the person themselves care whether the State acts contrary to the self-interest of its subjects, or whether it is inefficient? Granted, most people value their self-interest, but they figure the State to be acting in favour of it and would certainly not abandon it for anarchism. As long as, when screwed over, they have the expectation of being able to screw someone else over, the system works just fine.
In the second place, the contract is dissimilar to a normal contract in that these concern already-existing titles to property. This contract is unique in that it is trying to intersubjectively establish ownership over given resources. However, this does nothing to bind third parties, as JCFolsom mentioned. You’ve acknowledged this, but it does give rise to all sorts of interesting problems - for instance, why should one abstain from seizing your property? Because you might harm them? How do you justify harming them?
Regarding evolutionary biology, all it does is provide explanations and descriptions - something unique in science these days. No more, no less. It cannot in and of itself rule out ethical reasoning, as all it can show is how various things are interrelated. Analogously, free will debates cannot be settled by mere recourse to observations (for reasons Misesians should be familiar with.) The latter can be only settled by way of ontological arguments, the former requires praxeological analysis.