Because not all intuition is equal.
It is irrational to assume that all intuition is equal.
Some people’s intuition tells them to molest children. Or to beat their spouse.
Take the plunge Sage. Dare to look at the unseen, and not only the seen. Dare to be inquisitive of what you believe and what sounds good to your ears. Challenge your intuition and find out what lies behind it.
Yes, I’ve read some of your blog posts concerning the subject. What do you think would be a more accurate description or metaphor? Is individual autonomy an axiom in your ethic, and how do you describe that without resorting to property rights as metaphor?
edit: to be more clear, consider this quote in your blog
“On the other hand, if “self-ownership” truly is the first principle, it collapses as soon as you try to justify it via appeal to a property rights concept that presumably comes after it. This is a serious logical problem.”
If self-ownership is the first principle, you don’t need to justify it. It is an axiom, and if accepted, propery rights follow. Is this really the problem you have with the self-ownership metaphor? That it lacks proper justification? Can you give an example of a first principle that could be justified without resorting to circular reasoning?
My view is that property rights are preceded by, derived from and constrained by the principle of individual sovereignty (but no, I don’t say that individual sovereignty is an axoim, since it too is preceded by other things). So I oppose any conception of liberty that places property above individual sovereignty. I also think that individual sovereignty is both “positive” and “negative” in the sense that it is a constraint on others relative to one’s person and a justification for one’s own sphere of action (partially as a consequence of the constraint on others). This also means that any absolute dichotomy between “positive” and “negative” liberty begins to break down; the “freedom from” is “the freedom to”.
A glutton for punishment. lol
Such as? I don’t mean to be stubborn, but I am interested in how you have developed your ethics, not solely the conclusions you have drawn.
Also, I see what you mean with regards to liberty being both a constraint on others and a justification for action, but I think that concept is relatively uncontroversial among libertarians, although stated differently. It isn’t positive liberty in the sense of action that most people discourage, but the version of positive liberty resulting in entitlements, or claims on others.
Can you give an example of a positive liberty that you espouse, in the proper scope and context that you envision it, that cannot be conceptualized as a negative right, therefore eliminating any confusion?
After the discussion with Donny, this isn’t so bad [:P]
If your position is that there are “strong” and “weak” types of intuition, then that just raises the question:
Why is it that the intuitive force of opposing slavery is “strong,” whereas the intuitive force of the cabin example is “weak”? Why aren’t both intuitive forces “strong”? And why aren’t both intuitive forces “weak”?
I agree that an appeal to intuition should not be an unquestioned premise. We should try to find reasons why our intuition is correct (if it is). On the other hand, I don’t see anything wrong with appealing to intuition as a starting point in an analysis. Hoppe does this with private property; why can’t we do it with the cabin example?
Good job. Now you are using your noggin! These are the questions to ask. This is the second step where we go beyond intuition, and analyze what prompts those responses. If we just react intuitively, we’re not engaging our rational minds, we are only responding with animal instinct.
I mean, is that really the allure of left libertarianism? That we need an instinctive society, not a rational one?
You can do it with the cabin example. The problem is, the intution doesn’t hold up under scrutiny, and as we saw in this thread, your, Danny and the intuition of others wasn’t quite as common as the premise of the arguments seems to rely upon.
That is, more people had an intuitive response (here at least) that Tom was getting the shaft and Klemm was acting in an inappropriate manner.
It’s the danger of making appeals to popularity that when your appeal is unpopular, you are in hot water.
Individual sovereignty isn’t very valuable without property. You won’t feel very sovereign if I remove your property right to the food you grew. Just as property is meaningless without individual sovereignty.
What would be an example of a case where you would assert individual sovereignty should trump property? Or is there none?
What do you mean “rational society”. If what you mean is "is that really the allure of left libertarian? That we need an society of emotionally health individual as opposed to one filled with homo economicus?" I’d answer in the negative, just about any sane (read: not an objectivist) person thinks the same thing.
By the way, I’d just like to point out that your rejection of the cabin example suggested by Danny led nir to suggest that it would be the moral thing to do if a father let his three children die because he didn’t take a loaf of bread from them. Some rational society you’ve got there.
A society that can acknowledge that A = A.
I have no idea what you are talking about. I realize you are challenging, and I welcome it, but it would help if you made the direct argument.
Hold on a second here. You and Nir had a discussion, and that somehow brought my position into question? Don’t you think the argument should be presented to me first, rather than assuming that Nir’s response is my own?
In an ethical system based on “individual sovereignty”, only liberty and property, in the philosophic sense of the term, can be consistently derived. Introducing other principles or values, such as charity, brotherhood, what have you, into the system only leads to conflict with the primary principle of individual sovereignty.
Charity, kindness, any subject of value must be considered aesthetics in a libertarian ethical system. If these values are more fundamental than that of individual sovereignty, than it can hardly be considered a libertarian ethic.
Well, I figured that after you guys had felled Danny and were standing around high fiving one another and making such comments:
That perhaps its appropriate to attribute to you what nir has said, now if you wish to correct me, go ahead. You know the question you’re more than capable of answering it.
How very appropriate, my point was that your desire to have an entirely “rational” society looks very much like a number of homo economicus devoid of any actual life (while preaching the rational life), any human emotions (whilst claiming to be more human than everybody else) and any culture whatsoever. Such a society that you preach would be intolerably. Fortunately, it’s a utopian dream that we can crush any emotions on the half of men and turn them all into rational objectivists, reason will always be subservient to the emotions.
Sounds like an empty philosophy to me, if you can’t include charity and brotherhood. Moreover, it sounds like a ridiculous philosophy to me, when you start claiming that it’s moral for a father to let his children die, that is.
As for individual soreignty being essential to libertarian ethics (and having the implications you suggest, which I’m not sure it does), well, if that’s so I daresay we’d best scrap libertarian ethics.
Give me a break. I would guess a large portion of the population hold similar values when it comes to life, romance, charity, etc. It isn’t a problem of libertarian ethics until you enforce these values as obligations. Then it ceases to be a libertarian ethic and becomes a secular humanist or religious ethic, with a slight disposition towards liberty, if it doesn’t cause too many problems of course.
The horror of a religious ethics, all that “thou shalt not kill” and whatnot.
I don’t know what you conceive of libertarianism being, but I’m willing to guess you want the same Objectivist homo economicus society as most others of these forums do. I’ve really no interesting in carrying this on, Danny has tried as has Sage and they’re both far more capable than I am, I believe you have obligation to help those in need, yes, and I believe that if it comes to one of the situations described above various other rights come above that to a loaf of bread or a cabin. It seems to me as if stretching morality to untenable extremes in order to give “legitimacy” to libertarianism is what’s on the agenda here. For the record though I happen to agree with Charles Anthony and Len Budney, without a leap of faith, morality is just not possible.
I’ll stick around to hear LS’s answer, and perhaps give him my opinion, but I shall not be responding to you.
My view is that negative rights are primary and normative, while “positive obligations” are contractual (I.E. there must be prior explicit consent to enforce such obligations) in the context of negative rights being respected. So I reject unchosen positive obligations on a normative level. And precisely for this reason I think that all contracts have to be opt-outable in some sense, even if there are reprecussions for doing so or resulting restitutional issues.
I’m not trying to be difficult, but you’re British, so would it be too much to ask you to ask me the question in plain English? I am agreeing with Nir’s conclusion that collectivism is essentially ethical nihilism in the passage you quoted.
Whatever position you are trying to attribute can be solved one of two ways. A direct quote or with a direct query. If it helps you be any less nervous, I am anxious to answer the question when you present it to me.
I have highlighted all of the strawmen in this passage. You are welcome to source your assertions if you disagree that these are strawmen.
Now to the general tone of what you wrote. I strive to be a rational man, not an emotional one (not always successful). I believe you can find positive outcomes and aesthetics by employing reason, and that reason is not unnatural, nor is it solely responsible for poor or undesirable outcomes. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if one is being rational, then it follows that when their emotions are in conflict with reason (irrational), the onus is not to subvert reason to accommodate irrational feelings, but to control irrational feelings by harnessing them and reconciling them with reason.
I have no desire to convince anyone to become anything. I only ask people to think. And then if they still disagree, tell me why I am wrong so I can learn too. I am not at the end of knowledge, and have travelled thousands of miles since landing here. But I haven’t learned anything about feelings or emotion, guilt or worship that I didn’t already know before I arrived.
My view is that the right to life, liberty and property are interwined, but property rights are entailments of a more general right of personal sovereignty. Property rights is not the first principle that personal sovereignty is derived from. Property rights are inherently constrained by personal sovereignty in the sense that in order for a property claim to be just it cannot violate the personal sovereignty of others (for an obvious example, one cannot rob someone at gunpoint in order to aquire property). Without this context of rights-respecting behavior being there in the first place, “property” claims are invalid.
So in this sense it’s really the other way around - property is not ethically valuable without individual sovereignty. Outside of the context of individual sovereignty, there are the property claims of tyrants, thieves and slavemasters. Property is not absolutely normatively “good” in and of itself, regaurdless of any context. Property rights (as the “good” manifestation of property) are entailments or applications of more fundamental right of personal sovereignty. A reasonable theory of property rights inherently involves some kind of qualification for ownership based on respecting people’s sovereignty in the first place.
You know, I happen to take being called “British” as an offence, I despise this country. In any case, here’s the question in “plain English”: a father with three children becomes stranded on a Island, after a few days he manages to call somebody up who will send a boat there to rescue him and the children. However, they haven’t the food to last them until the boat arrives, that is, until they see a house on the Island with a few loaves inside one of the windows. Does the father have the right to steal from the house in order to keep his children alive, or is it moral for him to watch his children die?
Emotions have their place, as does reason. Your trying to suppress the former isn’t going to do you well, especially not when our emotions are the byproduct of our evolution, and as such tend to be somewhat relevant to our lives, more can be revealed to one by intuition and emotions that it can by reason. It’s not by reason that we know murder is wrong, rather, it is our feeling that allow us to know such things. To give you another example, many on here claim racism is collectivist and irrational, but I’ve not idea what irrational means in this sense. Clearly, they’re attempting to judge the values that people hold, meanwhile not offering any standard for doing so. Our emotions have evolved to give us this reaction, because quite a while ago if you ran from somebody who looked different, because they look difference, you would live. Otherwise, you’d be dragged off to their cave and clubbed to death. And today there’s no reason why we should trust our “reason” over our emotions in this regard.
As I said, the Objectivist (I am sorry if I have incorrectly attributed such a position to you) society seems to be one filled by Economic Man, it also seems very utopian, and unbearable. One need only read Rothbard’s piece on the objectivist movement to see why that would be so.
Personal sovereignty is really self-ownership [a property right]