I have been troubled of late by a question of ethics. It is the case where one might be acquitted of murder because they were under duress.
In a situation where survival needs are immediate and scarce, might violence be a rational option? If I am in a lifeboat on the ocean for an unknown period of time with one other person, who has water, and I don't, is not the rational action for me to try to take the water, by force if necessary? The non-aggression principle would seem to forbid my attack, but if such action is rational, is not then the non-aggression principle irrational?
Personally, I think the right of survival trumps the right to property, so long as the person stealing to survive was not a criminal before the situation arose.
Inquisitor:In what sense is the word 'rational' being used here? The economist's and the ethicist's definitions differ, and cannot simply be conflated.
I'm confused by your question, frankly. Methinks rationality must be the same across disciplines, or we can have no real rational basis for ethics at all. If rationality is defined differently by context, it has no real meaning.
JCFolsom: Inquisitor:In what sense is the word 'rational' being used here? The economist's and the ethicist's definitions differ, and cannot simply be conflated. I'm confused by your question, frankly. Methinks rationality must be the same across disciplines, or we can have no real rational basis for ethics at all. If rationality is defined differently by context, it has no real meaning.
Many words mean different things in different fields of study. For instance, the world "liberal" means different things in political philosophy, international relations, and economics. To answer your question in this case I think the first person to claim the water would be the rightful owner and if the non-agression principle is your highest ethical principle than you should not kill and steal the water. If, on the other hand, preservation of your life is your highest ethical principle it would be consistent for you to take the water by any means.
"I cannot prove, but am prepared to affirm, that if you take care of clarity in reasoning, most good causes will take care of themselves, while some bad ones are taken care of as a matter of course." -Anthony de Jasay
rational selfish action can often contradict rational moral action, because the selfish action is necessarily inward looking and doesnt consider other people, it is morally suspect.... to steal someone elses meal cause you dont want to feel momentary hunger and cant wait an hour to get to a fridge sounds like a crime to me, yet your example is different only by degree of extreme.
just because someone might choose to something due to their self interest does not make the action that they adopt right/moral.
e.g. if the water in your story ins mine, then i am merely acting in self defence taking it from the other person. If the water in fact belongs to that other person, i would be committing an immmoral and criminal act to use violence against him. a principled person may well decline to act in a criminal way even if this risks their saftey. e.g. in nazi occupied europe, if you knew where jews were hiding, or helped allied resistance you were at mortal risk from Nazi government and Nazi doctrined europeans, yet you would be in the moral right to risk your safety by being moral and protecting innoents by putting yourself at risk.. this scenario you describe is of a similar nature,.
Where there is no property there is no justice; a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid
Fools! not to see that what they madly desire would be a calamity to them as no hands but their own could bring
CaptainMurphy:Personally, I think the right of survival trumps the right to property, so long as the person stealing to survive was not a criminal before the situation arose.
I couldn't agree until first someone proved that survival is a "right." No living creature in the history of the universe has ever survived, in the end, so it seems rather dubious to postulate survival as a right. A right not to be murdered, now--that's defensible.
--Len.
Obligatory poke at Rand: you're right, it has no meaning. But then again, no word has absolute meaning in the Platonic sense. Words are fuzzy at best; ambiguous at worst. We could play the game of asking why a "large rat" is so much smaller than a "small elephant," etc., but lets not and say we did.
In this context, "rational" can mean "sensible," or it can mean "not crazy," or it can mean "mathematically rigorous." Randians use it as a meaningless affirmation of whatever they think at the time--i.e., "rational," for a Randian, really means, "plausibly rationalized." Consider Ayn's own "rational" argument why no woman should ever be president, for example.
In Economics, a man is "rational" when he chooses the strategy that maximizes his utility. In ethics, one is "rational" when one adheres to "the good" at all costs. In your original question, you're assuming the Randian ethic that preserving one's life is "the good," and therefore a man is irrational when he fails to place his own life above any other consideration. To a plumb-line libertarian, one's self-interest is important, but it is only the second-greatest commandment. The greatest commandment is, "Thou shalt not initiate aggression." This is causing you some cognitive dissonance, because your gut agrees with non-aggression and with self-interest, but in case of a tie your gut prefers self-interest. The best of us are liable to sin in a survival situation.
As others have already said, rational economic man is simply he who puts certain means in use for the attainment of certain ends, which will improve the situation for him from his point of view. Rationality in moral terms usually means moral consistency, following the good &c.
Len Budney: I couldn't agree until first someone proved that survival is a "right." No living creature in the history of the universe has ever survived, in the end, so it seems rather dubious to postulate survival as a right. A right not to be murdered, now--that's defensible.
No one has been able to take it with them, either, if you take my meaning. I fail to see why someone getting something first entitles them to survive while I die. Especially if I possess the force to take the means of life from them. The case where life and death hangs in the balance like this is extremely rare, especially in modernized countries. I guess what I'm going for here is a rational justification for the non-aggression principle. Why is it held that it is ALWAYS better not to aggress? What if one person has hoarded all the means of survival, and refused to give them up for any price. While an argument can be made that one shouldn't have allowed that, such is past. I would assert that a person cannot be held guilty for any act truly necessary for their own survival. Even in the case of survival versus survival, prior possession does not seem to me to determine absolute right. I am justified in trying to take what you have, and you are justified in trying to defend yourself.
Please do give me a reasoned argument for the non-aggression principle.
Len Budney:I couldn't agree until first someone proved that survival is a "right." No living creature in the history of the universe has ever survived, in the end, so it seems rather dubious to postulate survival as a right. A right not to be murdered, now--that's defensible.--Len.
Are any rights provable? I can't defend survival as a right, but in my opinion, people have the right to secure the bare minimum necessary to continue living, and if legitimate means fail to attain these ends, then they are justified in using illegitimate means.
If a fox kills a rabbit to feed his family, was he justified in doing so?
Here is one direct (deontological) proof of the NAP. Hoppe has further elaborated it. I no longer subscribe to this justification for libertarianism, but it is perfectly possible to prove rights and argumentatively prove the NAP. Moral nihilism is pointless nonsense, much like its analogues elsewhere in philosophy.
In other threads, Geoffrey Plauche has recommended den Uyl, Rasmussen, Veatch and his own dissertation papers as a good starting point for arguments for natural rights, so I would in like fashion recommend them.
Are any rights provable?
Not rigorously.
I can't defend survival as a right, but in my opinion, people have the right to secure the bare minimum necessary to continue living...
I'd point out that you're now the proud owner of a contradictory ethics: if people have the right to secure "the bare minimum necessary," and people also have the right to their own persons and property, then those two rights will flatly contradict each other.
Libertarian ethics apply to human-human relations only. Not anima-aminal, animal-human, human-deity or deity-deity relations. In short, "justification" is a meaningless concept with respect to foxes and rabbits.
Well it's rational if your goal is survival. Rationality means the action you take will likely allow you to achieve your goal. Depending on your goal, acting morally may or may not be rationnal. If your goal is to become a famous murdered then obviously acting morally is irrational. Now, ethics can also enlighten you on what goals you should have but that's a different story.
In the boat, I'd probably take the water, and that would be immoral. I shouldn't do it, and if the guy tried to kill me to prevent me from doing it, it'd be in his right, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't do it.
No one has been able to take it with them, either, if you take my meaning.
Yes, but I never proposed a "right to take it with you." I only proposed a "right not to be robbed." You're arguing that, if you need my stuff badly enough, you have a "right to rob." Your "right to rob" directly opposes my "right not to be robbed," and embroils you in all sorts of difficulties and contradictions. For starters, does my "right not to be robbed" empower me to resist your robbery with lethal force? I.e., am I justified in killing you for doing what you claim to be justified in doing? And what if you and another starving man find me simultaneously? Are you obligated to split the proceeds when you're done killing and robbing me? Or are you then justified in robbing each other, since both are starving?
And the thorniest question of all, of course, is: who decides? If you don't rob me, and you're starving, you'll die--eventually. You won't die instantly. There's still time to find someone else and rob him, or persuade someone to give you charity, etc. So who defines the point at which you're officially in a "life or death" situation? If you're allowed to decide, you'll err on the side of robbing me prematurely; for example, when you're actually days away from death. If I'm allowed to decide, I'll err the other way. Since there's no objective standard, we're stuck duking it out. If we pick a third-party arbiter to avoid conflict, we've reinvented government: as the official arbiter of life-and-death disputes, he is de facto empowered to declare which disputes are life-and-death. From this, as Hoppe argues, dictatorial power follows inevitably.
Nonaggression is an objective, unambiguous standard which is incapable of contradicting itself.
I am justified in trying to take what you have, and you are justified in trying to defend yourself.
Welcome to the Hobbesian war of all against all. By the progression I sketched above, the end result is that you're always justified in trying to take what I have, and I'm always justified in trying to stop you.
I prefer a simple minimalist argument: the aggressor bears the burden of proving himself justified in acting. No justification is possible, for the simple reason that any justification must ultimately boil down to a circular argument. Hence, initiation of aggression is impermissible. If I am not aggressing, I don't need to justify my actions: being nonaggressive, they by definition nobody is in a position to complain. QED.
The argument isn't rigorous, but it's solid. The key is forcing the burden of proof consistently on the shoulders of the aggressor. That's why culture is so packed with mechanisms to shield aggressors from the burden of proof. When I'm arrested for doing something secretly in my basement that hurts nobody, the state relies on the fact that symbols of authority confer an assumption of legitimacy. If I could ask the officers why they were doing this, and force them to answer, they'd be completely stumped. Which is precisely why they wouldn't attempt to answer at all. They'd simply reach for the tasers.
Other arguments are also available. Hoppe's argument that non-aggression minimizes conflict is a good one. Note that your suggestion tends to maximize conflict. Mises's argument, based on Ricardo, that non-aggression maximizes everyone's prosperity, is also good. Above I argued that non-aggression is self-consistent, while your suggestion is not. That, too, is a good argument.
The rational course of action depends entirely on what the consequences of attempting to steal the water will be. If the victim fights back and you are killed in the fighting, then clearly it was highly irrational for you to attempt to steal the water.
The same reasoning also applies to the person with the water. If refusing to give you water means that your only recourse is to attack him, then he endangers his life by having water, which is obviously the opposite purpose of having water in the first place. It is rational for him to share water with you.
The fallacies of intellectual communism, a compilation - On the nature of power
I prefer a simple minimalist argument: the aggressor bears the burden of proving himself justified in acting. No justification is possible, for the simple reason that any justification must ultimately boil down to a circular argument.
Aggression can be logically justified. For example, if I'm trapped on a raft and the other person with me is hoarding a large quantity of water, refusing all offers, I have two choices (1) die of thirst or (2) agression - overpower the other person and/or steal the water through stealth and drink the water I want. If I estimate that I'm strong enough or sneaky enough, then #2 has a good chance of success and would be considered a reasonable choice by most people. Aggression carries with it social stigma, innate shame (for those with a conscience) and a risk of retaliation and legal penalties, making it usually a poor choice; but in the situation proposed it's the superior choice. I think this example shows how the principle of non-agression is not a good choice in all cases.
darcgun: Conversely, the non-aggression principle is highly rational since human beings do not innately respond well to force. Moreover, force often begets force. It also is a civilised principle, since few people in their everyday lives get what they want via compulsion or coercion. Healthy people would acquire things via voluntary action, behaviour and interaction.
Conversely, the non-aggression principle is highly rational since human beings do not innately respond well to force. Moreover, force often begets force. It also is a civilised principle, since few people in their everyday lives get what they want via compulsion or coercion. Healthy people would acquire things via voluntary action, behaviour and interaction.
I think the point is, that in situations without the securities and traditions (trade, for instance) of civilization available, sometimes the correct way to act is in an uncivilized manner.
Aggression can be logically justified. For example, if I'm trapped on a raft and the other person with me is hoarding a large quantity of water, refusing all offers, I have two choices (1) die of thirst or (2) agression...
To which I reply, "And...?" You offer those two choices as if #2 is self-evidently justified. But that means you're simply saying, "Aggression is justified because it's obviously justified," which is a circular argument. And I can assure you, there's absolutely no way for you to escape circularity here. You'll keep finding novel ways, to say, "But I'll DIE!" and I'll keep replying calmly, "So what?"
If I estimate that I'm strong enough or sneaky enough, then #2 has a good chance of success and would be considered a reasonable choice by most people.
That's basically an appeal to evolution. None of us have one single ancestor who failed to survive, at least long enough to reproduce. We've got survivor genes, and most people will obey their survival instincts, morality be damned. On the other hand, cooperation has survival value as well. The net effect is that we're evolved to cooperate most of the time, and to cheat when we're desperate or confident we can get away with it.
I think this example shows how the principle of non-agression is not a good choice in all cases.
You keep not definining "good." Or rather, you're operationally defining "good" such that self-preservation is the highest good. So it's no surprise that you're concluding that non-aggression isn't always "good." I define "good" as non-aggression. I'd rather (in principle, anyway--I got selfish genes too) die than aggress. I'd certainly rather see you die than aggress. I'd rather see America fall. I'd rather see mankind become extinct. I'd rather see the universe itself perish. Literally, "Justice though the heavens fall."
Our disagreement is not resolvable. You've picked survival as the greatest good. For you that's an axiom, and it can't be proven or disproven. It's possible that you can be persuaded to change your views, but apart from your own conscious choice there's no way to decide between your view and mine.
Here's a stab at it anyway. In principle, you must believe that all mankind should perish before you: if you'll kill and eat one human in order to survive, then presumably you'd kill and eat two; by induction, you'd rather that billions died if necessary to secure your own survival. But I suspect right now you're bristling, and indeed hoping I'll drop the N word so you can invoke Godwin's law on me. If so, why? If your survival is more important than any other consideration, why be bashful about it? I suggest that perhaps you don't believe your survival trumps every other consideration, after all. And if that's the case, it ceases to be so astonishing that I might suggest that non-aggression is more important than any individual's survival.
Len Budney: You're arguing that, if you need my stuff badly enough, you have a "right to rob."
You're arguing that, if you need my stuff badly enough, you have a "right to rob."
Pretty much.
Len Budney: For starters, does my "right not to be robbed" empower me to resist your robbery with lethal force? I.e., am I justified in killing you for doing what you claim to be justified in doing? And what if you and another starving man find me simultaneously? Are you obligated to split the proceeds when you're done killing and robbing me? Or are you then justified in robbing each other, since both are starving?
For starters, does my "right not to be robbed" empower me to resist your robbery with lethal force? I.e., am I justified in killing you for doing what you claim to be justified in doing? And what if you and another starving man find me simultaneously? Are you obligated to split the proceeds when you're done killing and robbing me? Or are you then justified in robbing each other, since both are starving?
Yes, in a situation where there are three people, and there is only food enough for one, than the one who holds it is justified in using lethal force to defend it, and the other two are justified in using lethal force on one or both of the others in trying to acquire it. It is possible for people to be within their rights while having competing interests. Indeed, the incredibly grim situation is available for contemplation, that the "food" available IS the other person. We are made of meat, after all.
Len Budney: And the thorniest question of all, of course, is: who decides?
And the thorniest question of all, of course, is: who decides?
Alas, in such a brutal situation, brute force decides. If I'm better at killing you than you are at killing me, I win. That simple.
Len Budney: So who defines the point at which you're officially in a "life or death" situation? If you're allowed to decide, you'll err on the side of robbing me prematurely; for example, when you're actually days away from death.
So who defines the point at which you're officially in a "life or death" situation? If you're allowed to decide, you'll err on the side of robbing me prematurely; for example, when you're actually days away from death.
Indeed, I would need to do so, lest I lose the strength to in the future, and in any case, you're eating the food I need while I wait. If I have a reasonable level of belief that no further aid or opportunities will come, that is a decision I may have to make.
Len Budney: If we pick a third-party arbiter to avoid conflict, we've reinvented government: as the official arbiter of life-and-death disputes, he is de facto empowered to declare which disputes are life-and-death. From this, as Hoppe argues, dictatorial power follows inevitably.
If we pick a third-party arbiter to avoid conflict, we've reinvented government: as the official arbiter of life-and-death disputes, he is de facto empowered to declare which disputes are life-and-death. From this, as Hoppe argues, dictatorial power follows inevitably.
No third-party arbiter, that is, someone not involved in this struggle for life and death, has any right to interfere. It is the dire necessity of imminent death which gives one the right to use the tools of death, and the third party does not have this.
What I'm seeing here is an argument from a utilitarian (which is bad) and collectivist (which is worse) place, that the non-aggression principle is best because it leads to the most smooth-running society (and one where rich people don't have to fear being overrun by mobs of starving poor). It is overly simplistic and intellectually lazy. I think a better starting point is:
One may only act to harm another to the degree and in the way (physically, economically, etc.) that one would be harmed onself if one did not, and then only if no other means are available.
Just one sentence, albeit a long one. However, it covers both attack and defense.
This is not a proof. It would only succeed if you can prove the alleged right to survival supercedes the right to one's property. Does your right to survival entitle you to coerce me into providing you with medical aid if you can not do so personally? The two principles rise or fall together. I say they fall.
JCFolsom: I have been troubled of late by a question of ethics. It is the case where one might be acquitted of murder because they were under duress. In a situation where survival needs are immediate and scarce, might violence be a rational option? If I am in a lifeboat on the ocean for an unknown period of time with one other person, who has water, and I don't, is not the rational action for me to try to take the water, by force if necessary? The non-aggression principle would seem to forbid my attack, but if such action is rational, is not then the non-aggression principle irrational?
Sure. As it is today. Bush is better at killing Iraqis than they are at killing him. But the question that raises is, why are we bothering to talk about ethics at all, then? If you've decided to live by the law of the jungle, then discussing ethics with libertarians is pointless. You're no different than any other jungle creature: sometimes useful but potentially dangerous. If you try to aggress, you must be stopped by force. That simple.
Indeed, I would need to do so, lest I lose the strength to in the future, and in any case, you're eating the food I need while I wait.
So it's OK to rob me, not because you're starving, but because you MIGHT starve. Even if you have some food, there's a danger that, when you run out, I'll have eaten all mine. Etc. Welcome to the Hobbesian war.
One may only act to harm another to the degree and in the way (physically, economically, etc.) that one would be harmed onself if one did not, and then only if no other means are available. Just one sentence, albeit a long one. However, it covers both attack and defense.
Except that "harm" is impossible to meaure. Again, welcome to the Hobbesian war.
Len Budney:I'd point out that you're now the proud owner of a contradictory ethics: if people have the right to secure "the bare minimum necessary," and people also have the right to their own persons and property, then those two rights will flatly contradict each other.
I am aware, which is why I said in my first post that the right to survival trumps the right to property.
Ethics can be applied to any situation one chooses to apply them to. Just because the animals don't think about ethics, doesn't mean we can't think about ethics in relation to them, or to other people who don't consider the morality of the choices they make. To answer my own question, I think it is a situation where the fox is justified in killing the rabbit, and the rabbit is also justified in defending himself. Morality, I have recently come to believe, is subjective.
Which brings us back to Hobbesian war, since "survival" is hopelessly subjective. Victim disarmers honestly think their survival depends on confiscating my firearms.
Ethics can be applied to any situation one chooses to apply them to.
Well, if the foxes and bunny rabbits are willing to discuss it with you, more power to you. But there's no a priori reason that a human ethical system would be useful to bunny rabbits, and it's guaranteed that you won't be able to convince many bun-buns to adopt your suggestions. And I for one have no interest in making a hard problem harder by demanding an ethical system that embraces humans and bunnies both.
Morality, I have recently come to believe, is subjective.
It is utterly so. The best one out there is nonaggression. If you don't like it, that's OK with me--as long as you happen not to aggress against me. Otherwise, it's fair to point out that I'm armed and believe in self-defense.
CaptainMurphy:Morality, I have recently come to believe, is subjective.
I agree.
But justice, on the other hand is not. Justice is grounded entirely in reason and its validity cannot be disputed, as to dispute justice is to argumentatively justify, which is to logically commit to that which it is that one would be attempting to dispute.
So the worst one can do is claim he doesn't subscribe to justice, accepting that he has decided to live in a world of contradiction and confusion. But accept it or not, an initiator of violence can justifiably be treated as an aggressor, and dealt with accordingly.
pauled: CaptainMurphy:Morality, I have recently come to believe, is subjective. I agree. But justice, on the other hand is not.
But justice, on the other hand is not.
I don't see why. Justice is a subset of ethics/morality. What justice demands may be easier to determine than the rest of ethics, but what makes them so radically different?
Yours in liberty,Geoffrey Allan Plauché, Ph.D.Adjunct Instructor, Buena Vista UniversityWebmaster, LibertarianStandard.comFounder / Executive Editor, Prometheusreview.com
Len Budney:Sure. As it is today. Bush is better at killing Iraqis than they are at killing him. But the question that raises is, why are we bothering to talk about ethics at all, then? If you've decided to live by the law of the jungle, then discussing ethics with libertarians is pointless. You're no different than any other jungle creature: sometimes useful but potentially dangerous. If you try to aggress, you must be stopped by force. That simple.
The war in Iraq has nothing to do with us surviving, and you know it. Try again.
Len Budney:So it's OK to rob me, not because you're starving, but because you MIGHT starve. Even if you have some food, there's a danger that, when you run out, I'll have eaten all mine. Etc. Welcome to the Hobbesian war.
Judgement must, of course, be used, as it must in all things. If you want a rule where you don't have to think or be just, a set of three nice I, Robot rules, you will be disappointed. Besides which, are you then saying that, if you were starving, and there was a frail someone holding the last scrap of bread, someone you knew to be a total ***, you wouldn't knock him down and take it? Because words are just words. Ethics only have meaning in practice.
I believe that it has already been established, that most people follow an ethic closer to the one I propose anyway. Just becaue people are justified in doing something, doesn't mean they will. There is mercy and other intangibles to deal with, before you make that decision. Even starving, one might choose not to rob a child.
Property, ownership, basically says that you are holding something at the time. If you expect the vast majority of people, ever, to think that your right to keep holding it matters more than their survival or that of their families, particularly in situations where you actually have more than enough but still refuse to share or trade, you are naive indeed.
gplauche:I don't see why. Justice is a subset of ethics/morality. What justice demands may be easier to determine than the rest of ethics, but what makes them so radically different?
The answer to your question is actually implied and interwoven within the fact of your question. You are asking for a justification for the logical basis of justice. But your attempt to question the validity or logical grounding of justice – justification - implies you must already actually logically subscribe to justice. Your participating in truth seeking dialogue asking for justifications, presupposes truth, and justice. And this also applies to anyone else who participates in argumentation. There is no way to avoid it, other than to abstain from asking for justifications in the first place. But that too confirms that the validity of justice and all that is logically implied in it, is simply indisputable.
Morality, on the other hand, important as i hold it to be, does not hinge on the observation of dialectical contradictions. Between the statements "I should not swear", and "i should swear, damn it", there is no contradiction apparent in the making of either of them. But still, one might strongly hold to the one or the other, as a matter of one’s subjective opinion, values, or priorities.
All of what you said can and has been contested, Paul. But you didn't answer my question. Why is justice objective but the rest of morality isn't? Objectivity does not rest in performative contradictions.
"Survival" is not hopelessly subjective. If you survive, you're still alive. If you don't, you're dead. Pretty clear cut. As per the "Victim disarmers" comment, I don't think anyone here is going to say that it's ethical to aggress against someone because it is necessary for you to survive because you are planning on aggressing against them in a way that is not for your survival. If that is what you mean. The term is a bit odd.
Morality, I have recently come to believe, is subjective. It is utterly so. The best one out there is nonaggression. If you don't like it, that's OK with me--as long as you happen not to aggress against me. Otherwise, it's fair to point out that I'm armed and believe in self-defense.
Morality is objective, just really difficult to figure out. It can be logically derived from the nature and purpose of the universe. I know the majority (?) atheists around here are in love with their post-modernism, but really.
JCFolsom:Morality is objective, just really difficult to figure out. It can be logically derived from the nature and purpose of the universe. I know the majority (?) atheists around here are in love with their post-modernism, but really.
So in the scenario of a fox killing a rabbit to feed his pups, is the fox morally justified in doing so? Is the rabbit morally justified in defending itself?
CaptainMurphy: JCFolsom:Morality is objective, just really difficult to figure out. It can be logically derived from the nature and purpose of the universe. I know the majority (?) atheists around here are in love with their post-modernism, but really. So in the scenario of a fox killing a rabbit to feed his pups, is the fox morally justified in doing so? Is the rabbit morally justified in defending itself?
Morality doesn't enter into their relationship. Morality is for rational beings like humans.
CaptainMurphy:So in the scenario of a fox killing a rabbit to feed his pups, is the fox morally justified in doing so? Is the rabbit morally justified in defending itself?
Yes. The pups will die, otherwise. As will the rabbit, if it does not defend itself. Both are quite justified. We are lucky, in that our situation has become less horrific. Nature is an ugly thing, in many ways. There are horrors to easily match the nightmares most imaginations can provide.
gplauche: All of what you said can and has been contested, Paul. But you didn't answer my question. Why is justice objective but the rest of morality isn't? Objectivity does not rest in performative contradictions.
All that i have already said is all that i can say towards answering your question. From my perspective, i've answered it twice in two slightly different ways in the two previous consecutive posts. The problem is not that i haven't at least tried to answer your question. The problem is that my answer appears to have absolutely no meaning to you. Now it may be that this is because what i am saying is, in fact, meaningless and absurd. To this I can only answer that i at least sincerely believe that there is more to it than that, but one way or the other, it’s the best I can do, especially given the dismissive nature of the rebuttals to it, such as, it "can and has been contested", and "Objectivity does not rest in performative contradictions".
But for completeness of this post, I will answer the question one more time: justice is objective, in the sense that logic is objective - you can't attempt to argumentatively cast either of them into doubt, without implicitly demonstrating a logical commitment to both of them. They are therefore, both indisputable. It is an "I think therefore i am" sort of logic. You can't claim you can't make a claim without making a claim and proving the content of that claim wrong; you can't ask for a proof of logic without implicitly accepting logic in the asking; and you can't ask for a justification without acknowledging the value of a justification. In other words, all of these things are indisputably true. No more solid basis for knowledge can there be.
Similarly, it also follows that you cannot dispute anything that is implicitly implied in the act of disputing whatever you intend to dispute. And a commitment to life, peace and cooperation and ultimately justice, is certainly one of the many things implied in participating in argumentative justifications – especially of any property ethic.
Other kinds of moral questions, on the other hand, are simply not of this nature, unless you would care to show how they are. I’m open to this.
If you are wondering why i still refuse to answer your question, I must point out that the above was it, and i think you are looking for a radically different kind of answer which I can't provide.
Then does coercing someone into providing you with help make for a valid ethic? I still want to know the answer to this.
gplauche:Morality doesn't enter into their relationship. Morality is for rational beings like humans.
JCFolsom:Yes. The pups will die, otherwise. As will the rabbit, if it does not defend itself. Both are quite justified.
Yes. The pups will die, otherwise. As will the rabbit, if it does not defend itself. Both are quite justified.
But if morality is objective, then the action of the fox killing the rabbit is either moral or immoral; You can't have it both ways. If you believe, as I do, that both are morally justified in their actions, then you must admit that morality is subjective.
CaptainMurphy:But if morality is objective, then the action of the fox killing the rabbit is either moral or immoral; You can't have it both ways. If you believe, as I do, that both are morally justified in their actions, then you must admit that morality is subjective.
I need do no such thing. It is possible for both of us to act morally, even though our purposes are at odds. They are both acting as they ought in the situation, according to a single objective moral rule. It is not the outcome, but the actions themselves that bear the morality.