Altruism

[sjw]

This is like pulling teeth. I told Shayne what ethics was based on and he never addressed it. Shayne, if you aren't going to read me I can do the same with you.

I stopped reading when you said Rand and I based rights on rights when in fact we said all rights flow from right to life. Why should I read what you wrote when you didn't read what I wrote? Plus it looked like you were writing gobbledygook.

Shayne

[Brant Gaede]

This is like pulling teeth. I told Shayne what ethics was based on and he never addressed it. Shayne, if you aren't going to read me I can do the same with you.

I stopped reading when you said Rand and I based rights on rights when in fact we said all rights flow from right to life. Why should I read what you wrote when you didn't read what I wrote? Plus it looked like you were writing gobbledygook.

Shayne

"Reason as an absolute." What a joke.

--Brant

[sjw]

"Reason as an absolute." What a joke.

--Brant

"My last post on this thread." What a joke.

Shayne

[Wolf DeVoon]

Laure spoke about "the right to be left alone."

Brant said "Rights are based on ethics."

Shayne grumped "No, rights are based on right to life."

Here are some examples of the rightless:

The not born.

The hopelessly malformed, unviable.

Dead people.

Rocks and plants.

Some awkward questions:

Why do humans have a right to life, not higher mammals like dolphins?

Who on earth today has a legal right to be left alone by the state?

Why don't kids have the right to be left alone by their parents?

If kids have an intrinsic right to life, how do they cash in that right?

Do all kids globally have an intrinsic right to life?

My position:

No one has a right to life. What you have (what all animals have) is a set of inalienable liberties/powers. Men write constitutions, elect politicians, fund public libraries and schools and weapons of mass destruction. That's something else your various theories of 'rights' ought to address: war, nationhood, citizenship from birth. I don't have to, because I don't need a rubbery 'right to life' to define an extrinsic, synthetic legal system. But the rest of you are stuck, I think, rationalizing the whole apparatus of state from terms that Locke and Hobbes and Kant employed.

No insult intended, honest. It just seems ancient and moldy, a Biblical right to life, liberty and property -- because why? Because we were here first? Because our 'enemies' are heathen? Because children are chattal?

[sjw]

Some awkward questions:

Why do humans have a right to life, not higher mammals like dolphins?

For one thing, in order to have the right, you have to be able to respect and adhere to it yourself. Dolphins inherently can't. So they don't have them.

Who on earth today has a legal right to be left alone by the state?

What relevance is this question? We are talking about what ought to be, not what happens to be.

Why don't kids have the right to be left alone by their parents?

If kids have an intrinsic right to life, how do they cash in that right?

Do all kids globally have an intrinsic right to life?

I don't see the relevance of this either. Whatever conception of yours would demand that kids have a right to run out in front of a car is obviously screwy.

My position:

No one has a right to life. What you have (what all animals have) is a set of inalienable liberties/powers.

You are talking about pure pragmatism, might makes right--a total rejection of ethics, of right and wrong. Correct?

Shayne

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Wolf,

Latching onto the meaning of what a right is (in the manner it is used) sometimes is like trying to catch a fish with your bare hands. The moment you think you have it, off it swims.

I keep trying to imagine what a right would be without society and the concept keeps coming up meaningless. You need two to tango.

So I am beginning to imagine (I have not settle on this, just musing so far) that the foundation of rights is not force, but agreement between human beings. This agreement may deal with force, but the essence is agreement.

But it is not the kind of agreement you withdraw after you agree. It is like agreeing to the rules of a game. You don't change them in the middle of a game. You agreed to them, even if only implicitly, when you started to play.

Certainly everyone except a person stuck on semantics understands what the phrase "a person has no rights under a dictatorship" means. It means there is no agreement, there is only bullying and obeying or getting shot, tortured, confined or whatever.

Without agreement, I don't think there are any rights—at least not in any way I can find a concrete for. There is only human nature, for better or worse, and people loving or snarling at each other.

In this sense, maybe rights do spring from the fundamental aspect of adult human nature: volition. We choose them. We can argue over standards for defining them, but at the bottom, we choose them. If we don't, we get a brutal tribe as an automatic social form reflecting one part of human nature (i.e., too much animal-genus and not enough rational-differentia).

Back to musing...

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

"Reason as an absolute." What a joke.

--Brant

"My last post on this thread." What a joke.

Shayne

I'm blocking you, Shayne. When I talk like you it's an exception I don't want to repeat.

--Brant

edt: blocked

Edited April 16, 2008 by Brant Gaede

[Wolf DeVoon]

My position:

No one has a right to life. What you have (what all animals have) is a set of inalienable liberties/powers.

You are talking about pure pragmatism, might makes right--a total rejection of ethics, of right and wrong. Correct?

Shayne

You missed the very next, connected premise, so big it could have jumped off the page and bit you: Men write constitutions.

[sjw]

My position:

No one has a right to life. What you have (what all animals have) is a set of inalienable liberties/powers.

You are talking about pure pragmatism, might makes right--a total rejection of ethics, of right and wrong. Correct?

Shayne

You missed the very next, connected premise, so big it could have jumped off the page and bit you: Men write constitutions.

No Wolf, as you're one of the most interesting writers here, I read all your stuff. I just don't see what that means.

The American constitution says that we have inalienable rights. Which is what you are denying. You say we have no rights, just inalienable liberties/powers. You say animals have these too and then you give no definition of what you mean. So I don't know what you are talking about. Since you reference animals and in the wild, might does in fact make right, then it seems like that is what you mean. I don't know what you mean, and I think it's possible that you might not either.

Shayne

[Ellen Stuttle]

MSK wrote to Laure:

[....]

I do agree with you that if you leave children alone, they will be left alone. But in survival terms, this means they have the right to die, not to live. I have yet to understand why this fact should be eliminated from consideration.

The fact that (sufficiently young) children, if they're left alone, will die neither "should be" nor is "eliminated from consideration" in the Objectivist meaning of "right to life" -- which meaning Laure basically stated.

In Objectivism, "right to life" just means the right (consistent with granting the same right to others) to the freedom to act on the basis of one's own judgment in the pursuit of one's own goals. There's nothing eliminative of the survival requirements of children -- or even problematic (or inconsistent or circular, some other charges which have been made) -- about this meaning. (The "right to life," as the term is used in Objectivism, derivately extends to that of use and disposal of property owned by legitimate contract; what constitutes legitimate contract does present problems of interpretation and adjudication, but these problems aren't ones of the meaning of "right to life" in Objectivism.)

The Objectivist meaning of "right to life" is no different in the case of those -- including incapacitated adults as well as infants and young children -- whose survival requires the provision of caretaking assistance. Objectivism covers these cases by saying that caretaking assistance is to be provided -- if it's to be provided -- by persons contractually obligated and/or willing to provide this assistance. If such persons aren't available -- or haven't adequate resources and/or skills for the circumstances -- the person in need of caretaking assistance is out of luck. Non-contractually obligated and/or unwilling providers can't be compelled to offer help.

A dislike of this conclusion doesn't mean that the fact that infants and young children require caretaking assistance in order to survive is "eliminated from consideration" in the Objectivist meaning of "right to life." If you want a different conclusion, you'll need a different meaning -- resting on a different philosophic basis of support -- than Objectivism affords.

Ellen

___

Edited April 16, 2008 by Ellen Stuttle

[Ellen Stuttle]

[....]

My position:

No one has a right to life. What you have (what all animals have) is a set of inalienable liberties/powers. [....]

"Inalienable," or "unalienable," the alternate spelling, as used in the Declaration of Independence, means "incapable of being repudiated or transferred to another" (See)." Another way of saying this is not able to be signed away by legitimate contract. "Contracts" aren't entered into by non-human animals. In the above statement, you've removed the term "inalienable" from the context in which it makes any sense.

I had previously understood you to mean, when you've said that no one has a right to life, that no one has a right to be kept alive by non-contractually-obligated and/or unwilling providers. With this I agree, which is why I think the usage "right to life" is a most unfortunate usage; it tends to be interpreted to mean "right to have one's survival needs provided -- by someone, whomsoever, irrespective of that someone's relationship to the person in need."

(E.g., see my post #260; I think that Michael's perplexities over "right to life" result from his thus interpreting the meaning.)

Ellen

___

Edited April 16, 2008 by Ellen Stuttle

[sjw]

Ellen makes a good point. A perhaps more clear way to think about "right to life" is: Each individual man is an end in himself. And because "all men are created equal", each individual man is logically responsible for not violating the idea that each individual is an end in himself. Animals also act as ends in themselves ("life is self-sustaining and self-generated action"), but do not have the capacity to recognize similarity, while Man has the capacity to recognize that men are all created equal, that they can all conceptualize and grasp the idea that each should be regarded by the others as ends in themselves. Man can grasp that to violate another man, is to invite a violation upon himself by all other men.

Shayne

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Ellen,

There you go again, ignoring the problem and doing master of the obvious repeats.

You wrote: "There's nothing eliminative of the survival requirements of children..."

Sure there is. Saying it ain't so ain't gonna make it ain't so. It is what it is. Like the lady said, A is A.

The moment Objectivism defines children as not being able to survive on their own, derives rights from the fundamental survivial characteristic of human nature (eliminating any other standard), then says children have rights but not the fundamental survivial characteristic, you have a big honking elimination and a big honking contradiction.

I think it would be more precise to say that, in Objectivism, adults have rights and nobody else does. They are all charity cases since their source of survival is productive adults. (I don't hold this view. I am merely paraphrasing the Objectivist view I have read so far.) I think, to be logically consistent, we should formally call adult rights "rights" and all other survival parts of human nature "charity cases." We can use a euphemism, say "entitlements" or "contractual obligations" or whatever to make it sound better. That's what people do in practice anyway when the yelling starts.

btw - I thought you said I had the Objectivist "rights derived from human nature" part wrong. I missed your comment on my Rand quote when she said precisely that, meaning you got it wrong.

If you want a different conclusion, you'll need a different meaning -- resting on a different philosophic basis of support -- than Objectivism affords.

In light of your fundamental misunderstanding of Objectivism on the point of rights deriving from human nature, I find the above quote cute...

It shows spunk.

Michael

[sjw]

I think it would be more precise to say that, in Objectivism, adults have rights and nobody else does.

No, it's precise to say that all human beings have rights, parents are responsible for their own children, and unfortunates (orphans or invalids) are dependent on charity. There is nothing in Objectivism that says children and invalids don't have rights. I don't know where you think you got that.

Shayne

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I don't know where you think you got that.

Shayne,

Looking at the concepts, not just the words. Seeking poorly integrated parts of the concept or incorrect overgeneralizations.

I have no problem if we use another standard than volitional reason for rights (like NIOF or biology). I find Wolf's idea of not basing rights on human nature intriguing because it resolves the contradiction (but creates other problems).

I do have a problem saying rights are a must in human intercourse because man's survival depends on it, since volitional reason is man's means of survival, then saying children have rights as if that means something. Basing rights on volitional reason creates the restriction. It means the derivation of rights comes from adults (one part of human nature), not from human nature in general as can be easily observed.

Michael

[Wolf DeVoon]

[....]

My position:

No one has a right to life. What you have (what all animals have) is a set of inalienable liberties/powers. [....]

"Inalienable," or "unalienable," the alternate spelling, as used in the Declaration of Independence, means "incapable of being repudiated or transferred to another" (See)." Another way of saying this is not able to be signed away by legitimate contract. "Contracts" aren't entered into by non-human animals.

Maybe I'm misinformed. Let's say instead that higher mammals like apes and dolphins have settled agreements, personalities, language skills, if not legally recognizable contracts. Are human kid contracts legally significant? No. Most jurisdictions don't recognize kid competence to contract beyond the simplest cash purchases, and even these can be voided if the vendor deceived the kid. Ooops, wait a minute, Hank Rearden was morally excused from his marriage contract. Durn it. What does contract prove? That we make mistakes, that there must be fair consideration, that no person can be obligated to perform services beyond a period of seven years (in California). That bankruptcy absolves companies and directors from liability.

[sjw]

I don't know where you think you got that.

Shayne,

Looking at the concepts, not just the words. Seeking poorly integrated parts of the concept or incorrect overgeneralizations.

Michael

You presume they're incorrect, but really you just didn't read it very well.

Shayne

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

You presume they're incorrect, but really you just didn't read it very well.

No.

Really I mean it's incorrect.

I edited my previous post on precisely this point.

If you have a comment on the identification and not on your opinion of my reading capacity, I'm interested. Otherwise, I am quite confident of my reading ability. I even write.

(Thank you for your concern, though. )

Michael

[sjw]

You presume they're incorrect, but really you just didn't read it very well.

No.

Really I mean it's incorrect.

I edited my previous post on precisely this point.

If you have a comment on the identification and not on your opinion of my reading capacity, I'm interested. Otherwise, I am quite confident of my reading ability. I even write.

(Thank you for your concern, though. )

Michael

Let me take a step back. I don't really care to defend Objectivism on this point or in fact most points. I don't see the point of quoting or criticizing Rand or saying there's some kind of problem in Objectivism. Objectivism is, as I see it, Rand's elaboration on the idea of each man being an end in himself. That is the idea worth defending. If she offered a defense that was weak in some area or other, I don't really care, what I care to do is defend the idea that man is an end in himself--this is an idea that has absolutely no exceptions. If you think it does then you are wrong.

So if you come up with an idea that a man is not an end in himself in some situation, like maybe you think I should be enslaved to orphans even though I did nothing to choose such an obligation, well I'll take issue with that on those terms. But I don't care about whether Rand said something that made you think something. It's just not important.

Shayne

[Wolf DeVoon]

Somewhere along the line of discussion, I think it was Shayne who remarked that if no one chooses to help an orphan or victim of circumstance, then they're 'out of luck.' Three or four billion are so situated. They have bad luck (!) to be born in poverty, ignorance, war zones, primitive cultures that practice female infanticide, mysticism, faith-healing Christian Science, junk food obesity, mandatory public education. Just plain bad luck.

Something else needs to be discussed about Ayn Rand. Roark's trial for blowing up Cortlandt was totally implausible. His argument hung on the notion of contract. In reality, no defendant gets to testify without cross-examination. He confessed the crime. The judge should have declared a mistrial or directed the jury to return a verdict of guilt. Nor does a secret agreement between A and B give A the right to blow up C's property. Nothing in Roark's agreement with Keating covered blowing up Cortlandt. It was romantic fiction, not law, not even Randian 'rights' theory. Roark chose to blow up Cortlandt, period. He exercised the inalienable liberty I've been talking about. No one could stop him.

Nor can we stop female infanticide in India or gang war in the Niger Delta, except by positive collective action. Voluntary charities are nice. I like 'em. But the heavy lifting is done by corporations, banks, governments, treaties, and military forces. Control of large scale, impersonal institutions is not built up from contract, but rather organic law - i.e., a constitutional notion, an idea of legal right much wider than an infinity of quirky private contracts, two-thirds of which will prove to be unenforceable, void on their face, conditional, expired, contested, litigated, you name it.

Elsewhere, Ed Hudgins says taxes are theft and tantamount to an ongoing Civil War. Ahem. Enough with the metaphors, please. The thing at issue, at bottom, is always a constitution. The U.S. Constitution as amended does not view progressive income tax as theft. It gave Congress and the states power to enact law. Basic stuff. Majority rule. Frequent and fair elections. A powerful Executive. If you read the history of U.S. politics, especially the Founding Fathers effort to negotiate among themselves and persuade the public to ratify a national constitution in 1787-90, there's not much doubt that we have precisely the institutions and electoral processes that were intended and hoped for. Long may she wave, so to speak.

There is no chance whatever that you can make a sensible, lasting constitution out of 'every man is an end in himself.'

[sjw]

Wolf, I think I'm starting to understand you. You think if you use a lot of words, you can magically make ideas fly that otherwise wouldn't. Sorry, but vaguely covering up rehashed statism doesn't fly. All you're saying here is that might makes right--blah blah blah. Or rather, blah blah blah (might makes right) blah blah blah.

Do you actually see yourself as being sneaky in some way? Why do you do this?

Shayne

[Wolf DeVoon]

Wolf, I think I'm starting to understand you. You think if you use a lot of words, you can magically make ideas fly that otherwise wouldn't. Sorry, but vaguely covering up rehashed statism doesn't fly. All you're saying here is that might makes right--blah blah blah. Or rather, blah blah blah (might makes right) blah blah blah.

Do you actually see yourself as being sneaky in some way? Why do you do this?

Shayne

No, dude. I'm bound by previous writing, specifically The Freeman's Constitution and a bunch of essays supporting it. I'll quote something and then quit, since no one seems to get it.

The rule of law has nothing to do with a sovereign state, except in

the narrow sense that such states exist and when they comply with the

rule of law they are viewed as 'legal persons' (litigants) possessed

of competent legal standing to sue or be sued with the presumption of

innocence, no greater or lesser in legal character than a single

infant child. States are checked by asserting your personal right to

freedom and justice -- i.e., constitutional legal rights that no state

may lawfully abridge. The Rule of Law

Over and out.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Objectivism is, as I see it, Rand's elaboration on the idea of each man being an end in himself. That is the idea worth defending.

Shayne,

In normative terms, I agree with this.

In a funny way, this is exactly what I am trying to defend by probing the premises of rights, human nature, etc., to make them strong (i.e., logically sound).

I also agree that defending or attacking Objectivism qua Objectivism is a waste of time. The concepts are the meat. But defending/attacking Objectivism is constantly used as a point of personal attack or subtext in a kind of weird tirbal end-in-itself manner, so it keeps coming up. (I have seen this approach used mostly as a banner for rallying people or a club to bash others with.) Unfortunately, if you want to discuss important ideas with some people, you have to cut through that intellectual subterfuge.

Back to human beings and ideas, when we get a bunch of ends-in-themselves running up against each other, we have to make rules of engagement, what to do with commonly shared spaces, etc. Rand's idea that there are no fundamental disagreements among rational men is sorely tested by simple observation. Time after time, it just doesn't work out that way. And saying that men are not rational when they disagree is a useless premise. You can't build anything on it. As the saying goes, it is circular—more synonym than concept.

That's why I am beginning to think the whole concept of rights starts with agreement among individuals to set rules for behavior in group and not in some universal principle. Men can agree to use the identifications (or speculations) embedded in principles as standards for rights, but they have to agree first that they want rules based on standards to make rights work, i.e., make them connected to reality. Otherwise, there are no concretes.

Michael

[sjw]

No, dude. I'm bound by previous writing, specifically The Freeman's Constitution and a bunch of essays supporting it. I'll quote something and then quit, since no one seems to get it.

I definitely don't get what your position is. But then you refuse to recognize anything I say or try to reconcile what you are saying with my position. I suppose you could just say "Well read my damn book, I already elaborated on it there." That'd be a fair response--except you're participating in this forum. I think you should either not participate and let your book speak for you, or participate rationally.

Shayne

[sjw]

Michael I think you're trying to pick a middle road between "man is an end in himself" and mob rule. There is no middle road. And I think you think I'm simplistic because I put it that way, when in fact you're muddying the waters to make them appear deep. I think Wolf is up to the same thing.

The funny thing is, if this is what you're up to, then there will never be a meeting of the minds. I'm striving for clarity, you're striving to muddle things. I'm not claiming either of you are doing this on purpose, by the way, I honestly don't know why you are doing it. I guess you honestly think that principles don't work in practice, because you haven't been able to work out in your minds that they can. You lack vision, and it would take a genius to instill you with it. A genius partially instilled it in me, and I partially filled in the gaps that were there, but evidently it is not possible for me to fill in the gaps for you.

Shayne