If the quotes below are indeed yours, it seems to me that your ideas “as far as family stuff goes” are that very parenthood itself is abusive by its nature, and that parenthood itself may be the cause for an adult’s preference for statism later in life (?!)
Quotes below taken from Prying Them Loose:
IMHO, you need to seek some help. If you already do, ask for reinforcements.
Z.
I wouldn’t change the topic of the subject. I would suggest that autonomy, in the Kantian sense, is morally significant. And in order to become more autonomous, an individual ought to think critically for himself and reach his own decisions.
And I notice you have difficulty answering questions. Seems counterproductive to a meaningful discussion. I’ll ask again:Do you reject morality or do you posit some type of morality as a basis for law or coercive force?
I thought he answered it pretty well.
Don’t go and make the error of conflating political philosophy with personal ethics / morality, now…
There is no difficulty. I merely wanted to step a few yards ahead and cut any possible conference that morality is just basically aesthetic pleasantness in the world or that my aesthetic preference and my moral theory somehow conflict. Yes, I posit a moral theory concerning humanity, few don’t. I follow natural rights. Now one of two things is probably going to happen. Either you are going to somehow pass off that natural rights is somehow an aesthetic choice, which it isn’t or you are going to make some kind of nonsequitar and imply that I am a bad listener. I like to bet so I’m going with the first option.
Simpletons think that morality is somehow related to political philosophy. It isn’t, no matter what Rawls, Narveson, Lomasky or Nagel would have you believe.
And personal ethics are not the end-all, be-all of ethics. In a voluntary society, it is useful to discuss goals we have in common and how we ought to go about promoting those goals. One of those goals, in my opinion, is autonomy. A society free from government will not be realized in a society where autonomy is under-developed.
Natural stilts. No, sorry. Natural nonsense. Nope, Damn keyboard. Natural nonsense on stilts rights. Good luck with that, God and the tooth fairy.
Sorry, you missed a third option: I’ll refuse to debate anybody who believes in nonsense which cannot be proven, namely, natural rights.
Dondolee, I’m sure you raise some very valid points, I’m sure there is a great deal of sensationalism and miscommunication going on. But I’d also argue that there’s a clear disparity between the picture of the site most people seem to hold the and (at times inconsistent) picture of the site that Mr Molyneux tries to promote. Contrary to the impression one would get from listening to Mr Molyneux there is a considerable number of young adults who have “deFOOd” upon his suggestion and I daresay that amongst those who have not yet done see, there are many whose family life is now worse as a result of accusation of abuse from Stef. There are other issues to be considered, Stef’s acceptance of large sums of money from young adults who are struggling to make ends meet, the lack of intellectual openness (see the case of Donny with an A for a great example) and the vitriolic comments made about other libertarians.
Look, I’ll assume the best of Stef until I have good reason to believe otherwise. We all know that forums are very complex, even for a large team of moderators it can be difficult to control the type of discussion that goes on. Nobody can completely track the evolution of certain terms and behaviour within the FDR community. What we can do is to look at the evidence and look at whether or not Mr Molyneux has ever discouraged the large donations, deFOOing or the intellectual dogmatism, and acted towards that end. I say this because Stef clearly is an authority figure in the lives of these people, by his own doing, these people often spend a lot of money, time and effort gaining acceptance to his community and interact regularly with him. Most are also very impressed by his work and his stature, in other words, to many people there he is more of a hero than Rothbard is to most here, which is something quite significant. One would expect somebody with this power over young, impressionable minds to exercise greater responsibility, all the more so in the face of the incomplete and biased information that he gets from them.
Or reason and logic. I don’t believe that natural rights are divine edicts.
And why should I debate someone who thinks that government legislation creates rights and that morality follows from government legislation? Its a rather ridiculous Rousseauian fantasy.
John,
I know you don’t know what “natural” means in the natural law tradition, unless, of course you deny the very critical thinking you’ve been espousing, add to that, logic and intellect. Are logic and intellect the tooth fairy now? Then it would be difficult to discuss with you.
Reason and logic do not create natural rights.
Who thinks that government legislation creates rights? Not I. Who thinks that morality follows from gov’t legislation? The idea is absurd.
Then please explain on what authority you would derive the ability to coerce others? What man derived such a ‘privilege’?
So morality exists before government, but there isn’t a natural conference of it from the nature of man. Well gosh gee John, where do rights come from? Do we just make them up?
Odd, I could have sworn I studied natural rights in depth. And yet we have a magical mind reader here who claims I don’t know what natural rights are.Do I deny logic? Do I deny that logic is a schema constructed by mankind? No. Do I deny that our rational capacity has the ability to know truth? No.
it might be considered odd
I read your post. It doesn’t take mind reading to read a post.
You deny logic and intellect if you deny the concept of ‘natural’ in the natural law tradition. It’s semantics. The very definition of ‘natural’ in this tradition includes intellect.
please be more precise about this ‘autonomy’ that you advocate. is it purely political autonomy? if so I can understand your consequentialist promotion of this, given your belief in the positives that would follow. I believe in political autonomy myself. However, the implication of everything you have so far written , is that you believe in something like ‘mental autonomy’ which you would contrast against ‘mental dependence’, this is quite different (and maybe absurd?)…
We are all mentally autonomous, if we ceased to be we would cease to be individuals, people, human actors. The negation of mental autonomy is not mental dependence but a denial of the individuality of the body under examination. Educate me if I am wrong, if you do not fear cult-leading me…
In the so-called state of nature, if you please, there are no rights. Animals kill one another at will and logic doesn’t strike them dead. Rights are a human construct. If a state asserts the right to kill you, it can then kill you rightfully.
The problem is that it asserts a right based on the consent of the governed. Seems to me we could base rights on anything - after all, we created them. But consent is the basis I promote. That would result in an anarcho-capitalist society.
Morality is a function of psychology. It is merely a fancy name for “values.” We all have values, so why not coordinate our values voluntarily to promote a common good. That would be socialism, if morality served as a basis for law, but morality cannot serve as a basis for law.
Yes, that would seem to be self apparent. They did not exist. We asserted them, and got others to agree to them, and voila, rights.
No, that would be mixing of morality with law. I promote the Kantian concept of autonomy. Acting on reason, on intellect, liberation from stupidity and emotions and base desires.
great. now prove that the followers of jim jones, are stupider than you. what criteria will you use I wonder?
That has nothing to do with natural law in the tradition of Aristotle, Thomist, Menger, Rothbard, etc… Therefore you’ll end up talking past other people in a semantics game. Good luck.
I deny that “ought” can be derived from “is.”
I do not suppose that they are stupider. When somebody acts irrationally, I don’t suppose he is stupider than I. I merely think he isn’t using his autonomy.