I pretty much agree with zefreak’s responses.
Your opinion.
Your position is amoralism. And according to you, Lilburne’s views are no different than yours so he must be an amoralist as well.
A conscious entity that does not hold survivability as a desirable end will very soon cease to exist. A man’s life isn’t automatically self-sustaining… if he ceases to eat, drink, etc., he will die. Life is an end in itself, as it is, by definition, impossible to value something without first being alive.
Good point.
“It may well be asked why life should be an objective ultimate value, why man should opt for life (in duration and quality).(5) In reply, we may note that a proposition rises to the status of an axiom when he who denies it may be shown to be using it in the very course of the supposed refutation.(6) Now, any person participating in any sort of discussion, including one on values, is, by virtue of so participating, alive and affirming life. For if he were really opposed to life, he would have no business in such a discussion, indeed he would have no business continuing to be alive. Hence, the supposed opponent of life is really affirming it in the very process of his discussion, and hence the preservation and furtherance of one’s life takes on the stature of an incontestable axiom.” - Chpter 6, ETOL
(5)On the value of life not depending on whether it is perceived as one of happiness, see Philippa R. Foot, Virtues and Vices (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), p. 41.
(6)Elsewhere, I have written: “if a man cannot affirm a proposition without employing its negation, he is not only caught in an inextricable self-contradiction; he is conceding to the negation the status of an axiom.” Rothbard, Individualism, p. 8. Also see R.P. Phillips, Modern Thomistic Philosophy (Westminster, Md.: Newman Bookshop, 1934-35), vol. 2, pp. 36-37.
For others:
“[22] And there is a further point: the very existence of a difference of opinion seems to imply that there is something objective about which disagreement can take place; for otherwise, there would be no contradictions in the different “opinions” and no worry about these conflicts. For a similar argument in refutation of moral subjectivism see G.E. Moore, Ethics (Oxford, 1963 [1912)), pp. 63ff.”
Finally on a general note; I’ll be traveling and elsewhere (not that anyone particularly cares) for 2+ weeks in 12hrs time, so if I don’t respond before that’s why. I’m packing. lol. In the meantime: Norms of Liberty: A Perfectionist Basis for Non-Perfectionist Politics - David Gordon Review
This is just smoke and mirrors, and I have critiqued Rand on this very point in an old thread. First, I reject that life is an end in itself. Sure, life may very well be an instrumental means to many ends, but that does not make it an end in itself.
I also criticize your assertion on its not including the element of time into your formulation. It is perfectly conceivable that I could have a number of ends [maintaining personal integrity (however defined), spending my waking moments with a loved one] while not actively sustaining my life as an end. In fact, up until the point of expiration, I can continue holding ends without necessitating that life is anything other than a means.
"Life is an end in itself, as it is - non sequitur - impossible to value something without first being alive.
“Now, any person participating in any sort of discussion, including one on values, is, by virtue of so participating, alive and affirming life. For if he were really opposed to life, he would have no business in such a discussion, indeed he would have no business continuing to be alive. Hence, the supposed opponent of life is really affirming it in the very process of his discussion, and hence the preservation and furtherance of one’s life takes on the stature of an incontestable axiom.”
Rothbard is a slippery sophist when it comes to ethics.
He is presenting a false dichotomy, where one either affirms life or opposes it. This is not the stance I, or anyone rejecting the ‘life as objective end’ axiom, is taking.
Assume that I am an individual for whom life is not an end (I’m not). By rejecting the status of life as an end, I am not affirming its negation the way Rothbard implies!
The negation of ‘life is an end’ can be interpreted two ways. It is either (formally) ‘life is not an end’ or, as Rothbard interprets it (slippery bastard) ‘death is an end’. How do we know this is what he means? It is only via this interpretation that
“For if he were really opposed to life, he would have no business in such a discussion, indeed he would have no business continuing to be alive. Hence, the supposed opponent of life is really affirming it in the very process of his discussion”
makes any sense! If I am simply affirming that ‘life is not an end’ then that does not imply that I am ‘opposed to life’, or that I must ‘affirm death’, or even that I can’t use life as a means to ends that I actually do value.
Strictly speaking, at least in libertarian ethics, a more accurate moral statement would be “murder [not killing] is immoral,” where “murder” is defined as “a killing that is counter to the victim’s values.” So, it is not being claimed that we can disregard people’s subjective values when evaluating an action’s morality; indeed, whether or not a particular act of killing is moral is intimately connected to the victim’s values. However, the implication “If the killing is against the victim’s values, then it is immoral” is itself objectively true, according to the objective-ist libertarian theory.
What must something describe in order to be meaningful? Of course, if you try to define “moral” so that it describes something in the real world, then you will get no further than a simple description of people’s states-of-mind. However, a statement doesn’t have to describe the real world in order to be meaningful; it could (e.g., “1+2=3”) just explain a relationship between concepts.
Do they? My understanding was that they show that certain actions lead to self-contradiction, and then they simply refer to these actions as “immoral” as shorthand for “self-contradiction-implying.” It’s not that there’s an independent category “immoral” that happens to include self-contradiction - some people as a matter of fact don’t actually care about contradicting themselves.
Why does the fact that people have similar feelings about certain things imply that the things are of the same kind? If I react similarly to being told that 2+3=4 as to being told that Beethoven’s music is bad, does that mean that both statements have the same (objective/subjective) truth status?
Can we similarly prove that “being a witch in Salem in the 1600s” is immoral?
Whence, then, comes the reason for valuing the lives of others?
Obviously not, but that wasn’t my argument.
Your ability to hold ends and determine the purpose to which to direct your life implies that you view your life as valuable. “Maintaining personal integrity” and “spending waking moments with a loved one” are consequent ends. If I value either of the aforementioned, I value them because I perceive them to be beneficial to my continued existence. Life is not merely a means to obtain ends (such as benefit-to-myself), because the concept of ends supposes a living, conscious entity.
There is more to personally gain from cooperation than from coercion.
I’m sorry if you don’t see it, but this is a non sequitur.
Life is not a means to end, because end presupposes life.
I don’t see how this is logically valid.
A is not a means to B, because A is necessary for B?
Why?
You’re right, I phrased that sentence badly. No ends are valid without the context of a living being. If you wish to “maintain personal integrity” or “spend waking moments with a loved one,” it is because you stand to gain a psychic profit from it, but only a living being can psychically profit from the achievement of ends or psychically lose from the failure to achieve given ends. If your end is death, you still assert that this given end is worthwhile, and your psychic “profit” is the knowledge that you will no longer suffer psychic loss by continuing to live. In other words, even the end of death itself is judged by comparing it against the standard of life. No actor can desire his own psychic loss, and psychic gains are only realizable in the context of life (even if it’s the few moments before death).
Not necessarily, there is nothing to gain from cooperation when the others in question desire one dead.
True, but he was asking why one should ever value the life of another (or that’s how I read it, anyways). Two actors should value each other because they can obtain more in cooperation than they can from war. If one of them refuses to realize this, then naturally the situation is different.
Ok then, rephrasing your assertion as ‘No ends are valid without the context of a living being’ has the benefit of being true but only proves that life is a necessary means but does not show that acting in such a way as to endanger ones life, or to put it another way, not acting in such a way as to sustain it, is in anyways violating the ‘objective end’ of life or hypocritical.
I still do not see how your bringing up the necessity of life for ends to emerge leads to any sort of objective end or normativity.
Actors always have ends. Ends can only be attained within the context of life. Therefore, life is valuable in and of itself because sustained life allows one to accomplish more and more ends (and, as time passes, ends that they did not previously hold or were not as urgent as well).
What of individuals who are driven to suicide by constant psychological torment? Sure, they have to be alive in order to end their life, but in this circumstance they have a high-priority end (the elimination of suffering) towards which the act of sustaining life is counter-productive.
Or how about someone who will dispose of their life for some ‘higher’ end? Sure, the psychic benefit of any end must be attained while alive, and perhaps this person does achieve some benefit in the process of dying.
To qualify your assertion, perhaps we could say that life is valuable to the actor to the extent that he has ends that are valued, so far as his sustained life does not hamper or restrain his desired state of affairs. Of course, this still relegates life to that of a means (whose value is contingent on other ends).
zefreak, let’s please not call Murray N. Rothbard such a disparaging name as that. For all my disagreements with his writings on meta-ethics, he was a great man, is a guiding light to this Institute, and his memory deserves our respect.
Thank you for your otherwise SPLENDID contributions to this thread.
I apologize. I respect the man for his humor and insight, and I should let my disagreements be merely that, and not muddy his character. I’ll be more careful in the future.