Are anarchists overgrown teenagers?

[sjw]

A "crime," like a "right," is a human invention. It is not metaphysical save respecting a violation of human nature. Again, human nature (metaphysical) is not a human right (epistemological). All philosophy is epistemological.

--Brant

When a cat eats a mouse, the cat interferes with the biological processes of the mouse, not the other way around. It is not a "human invention" to say that the cat interfered with the mouse, it's an observation and statement of the metaphysical fact.

This same reasoning applies to the right vs. crime distinction for humans, the only difference is the moral element, where we add to this observation that it is *wrong* for man to interfere with man. This addition is not a mere human invention either, it is a further observation of what is appropriate or best for humans (e.g. see Rand's meta ethics). From this we go beyond simple observation of interference into the realm of right vs. crime.

Shayne

[sjw]

No, I didn't bother to read your book. Why should I?

If you have arguments to make, then make them on this thread. You can always post excerpts from your book, if you think they are relevant.

Ghs

The book is the most concise way I know of to make the a complete case for my view, and even that is probably too concise in some areas. So, if your problem with this thread is that I didn't make a complete case, then I need to post the whole of chapters 1-3 in order to answer you.

Of course, the real issue here is that you are being absurd. You always try to find some way to derail productive discussion, and this is just another ruse of yours to get me to do more work. Clever George, but it won't work. Address the prior points or not, your choice.

Shayne

[George H. Smith]

No, I didn't bother to read your book. Why should I?

If you have arguments to make, then make them on this thread. You can always post excerpts from your book, if you think they are relevant.

Ghs

The book is the most concise way I know of to make the a complete case for my view, and even that is probably too concise in some areas. So, if your problem with this thread is that I didn't make a complete case, then I need to post the whole of chapters 1-3 in order to answer you.

Of course, the real issue here is that you are being absurd. You always try to find some way to derail productive discussion, and this is just another ruse of yours to get me to do more work. Clever George, but it won't work. Address the prior points or not, your choice.

Shayne

So your ideas are so sophisticated that they cannot possibly be summarized in a post or two, as particular issues are raised? My, my. Is there no end to your lame excuses?

I have been addressing your points for several days now, and I will continue to do so. Too bad you haven't been able to come up with a better reply than to say, "Read my book."

Ghs

[Brant Gaede]

A "crime," like a "right," is a human invention. It is not metaphysical save respecting a violation of human nature. Again, human nature (metaphysical) is not a human right (epistemological). All philosophy is epistemological.

--Brant

When a cat eats a mouse, the cat interferes with the biological processes of the mouse, not the other way around. It is not a "human invention" to say that the cat interfered with the mouse, it's an observation and statement of the metaphysical fact.

This same reasoning applies to the right vs. crime distinction for humans, the only difference is the moral element, where we add to this observation that it is *wrong* for man to interfere with man. This addition is not a mere human invention either, it is a further observation of what is appropriate or best for humans (e.g. see Rand's meta ethics). From this we go beyond simple observation of interference into the realm of right vs. crime.

Shayne

So mice have rights? No, because of your "moral element." The moral element is epistemological. That something is thought up respecting human nature doesn't make the thought up thing human nature. The human nature we are referring to is immutable, not what we in our wisdom pile on on top of that.

--Brant

[sjw]

I have been addressing your points for several days now, and I will continue to do so. Too bad you haven't been able to come up with a better reply than to say, "Read my book."

Ghs

You're too dishonest to interact with. I'm surprised Brant lets you get away with this kind of crap.

Shayne

[Brant Gaede]

I have been addressing your points for several days now, and I will continue to do so. Too bad you haven't been able to come up with a better reply than to say, "Read my book."

Ghs

You're too dishonest to interact with. I'm surprised Brant lets you get away with this kind of crap.

Shayne

I took issue with the inalienable/alienable right thingy by George. He let it go by in the confusion of this discussion. Everybody needs to get back to Filmer, someone you've yet to address.

--Brant

[sjw]

So mice have rights? No, because of your "moral element." The moral element is epistemological. That something is thought up respecting human nature doesn't make the thought up thing human nature. The human nature we are referring to is immutable, not what we in our wisdom pile on on top of that.

--Brant

Given our nature, it is better for us to not interfere with each other than to do so. So yes, rights are appropriate to man's nature.

Shayne

[George H. Smith]

I have been addressing your points for several days now, and I will continue to do so. Too bad you haven't been able to come up with a better reply than to say, "Read my book."

Ghs

You're too dishonest to interact with. I'm surprised Brant lets you get away with this kind of crap.

Shayne

Your problem is that I am too smart for you to interact with. I haven't checked, but there may be a "children's corner" on OL where you can try out some of your ideas. There you can whine to your heart's content and feel right at home.

Ghs

[sjw]

I have been addressing your points for several days now, and I will continue to do so. Too bad you haven't been able to come up with a better reply than to say, "Read my book."

Ghs

You're too dishonest to interact with. I'm surprised Brant lets you get away with this kind of crap.

Shayne

I took issue with the inalienable/alienable right thingy by George. He let it go by in the confusion of this discussion. Everybody needs to get back to Filmer, someone you've yet to address.

--Brant

Yeah you're right, thanks.

His only purpose is to confuse the discussion. He's a tar baby.

Shayne

[George H. Smith]

I took issue with the inalienable/alienable right thingy by George. He let it go by in the confusion of this discussion. Everybody needs to get back to Filmer, someone you've yet to address.

--Brant

I must have missed your post. Can you give me a link, or at least a post number?

Ghs

[Brant Gaede]

I have been addressing your points for several days now, and I will continue to do so. Too bad you haven't been able to come up with a better reply than to say, "Read my book."

Ghs

You're too dishonest to interact with. I'm surprised Brant lets you get away with this kind of crap.

Shayne

I took issue with the inalienable/alienable right thingy by George. He let it go by in the confusion of this discussion. Everybody needs to get back to Filmer, someone you've yet to address.

--Brant

Yeah you're right, thanks.

His only purpose is to confuse the discussion. He's a tar baby.

Shayne

Then the Lockean tradition is a tar baby. To blow him out of that context, or me, requires more air than you or anyone else is likely to muster. Do you have any allies or are you truly standing alone?

--Brant

a new kind of political philosophy?

[Brant Gaede]

I took issue with the inalienable/alienable right thingy by George. He let it go by in the confusion of this discussion. Everybody needs to get back to Filmer, someone you've yet to address.

--Brant

I must have missed your post. Can you give me a link, or at least a post number?

Ghs

375

[sjw]

Then the Lockean tradition is a tar baby.

If you don't see through George's dishonesty here then there's no helping you.

Shayne

[Brant Gaede]

Then the Lockean tradition is a tar baby.

If you don't see through George's dishonesty here then there's no helping you.

Shayne

I'll address George's alleged dishonesty after you justify a non-Lockean approach to human rights. This whole thread lacks this proper foundation. I do not because of that bother with all this ad hominem. I am neither judge nor jury and this is not a trial.

--Brant

[sjw]

I'll address George's alleged dishonesty after you justify a non-Lockean approach to human rights. This whole thread lacks this proper foundation. I do not because of that bother with all this ad hominem. I am neither judge nor jury and this is not a trial.

--Brant

Well, since Locke's foundation is the Bible, I'm not sure why you like it.

Not sure where you're having problems with my view of rights at this point. Presumably you agree that to interfere is to violate rights, and that to violate rights is to interfere. So I'm not seeing where there's much of a gap between your view and mine.

Shayne

[George H. Smith]

I have to go with Shayne so far with this unalienable-inalienable rights business. Regardless of what was in the minds of the Founding Fathers, we contemporaries have a right to what we think is a right understanding of rights. Anyway, I've always taken "unalienable rights" as a re-enforcing redundancy for the dupy dopes back in England or colony Crown royalists with marginal educations. So too with "negative rights," which are put up there to distinguish human rights (negative) from "chicken in every pot" rights. I've never heard or understood of an alienable (negative) right that wasn't underpinned by an inalienable one. To actually give up a right is submission, which is hardly anarchistic.

For George to hold onto this kind of formulation he needs to import it to the present and show how it improves on Rand's expositions and understanding. That property rights are transferable doesn't negatively impact the right to property in the least, but is right at the heart of that right.

--Brant

There are two issues here regarding inalienable rights, viz., the historical and the theoretical. The historical perspective is complicated, but it is essential to understanding why Jefferson did not include "property" in his list of inalienable rights in the Declaration. Once again, it is far easier for me to quote an excerpt from Themes in the History of Classical Liberalism than to write everything from scratch. Since historical artifacts like this are of no interest to Shayne, I again suggest that he not read the following.

In my line-by-line commentary on the "second paragraph" of the Declaration, I write:

that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness...

The controversy over this clause, which has been considerable, is owing not to what it says but to what it fails to say. Why did Jefferson omit “property” from his trinity of rights? Could it be, as some historians have argued, that Jefferson was a proto-socialist who did not hold property rights in the same esteem as many of his American contemporaries?

The first thing to note is that Jefferson did mention “property,” along with “life” and “liberty,” in his other writings, e.g.: “The End of Government would be defeated by the British Parliament exercising a Power over the Lives, the Property, and the Liberty of the American Subject; who are not, and, from the local Circumstances, cannot, be there represented.” And: “To obtain Redress of the Grievances, which threaten Destruction of the Lives, Liberty, and Property, of his Majesty’s Subjects….”

The second thing to note is that Jefferson refers specifically to inalienable rights, and he states that “among these” inalienable rights are the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness -- thereby indicating that his list is not exhaustive. Why he did not include property in his partial list is a matter of conjecture, but the reason probably had to do with the fact that the term “property” had two different meanings in Jefferson’s day. Property was an inalienable right, according to one meaning; whereas it was an alienable right, according to another meaning. Given this ambiguity, to refer to property as an inalienable right would have been confusing without further explanation.

Today when we speak of property, we usually mean a thing or object that is owned, something to which we have a moral or legal right to use and dispose of, such as a car or an acre of land. This car, we say, is my property; I own it; I have a right to use it, give it away, sell it, or destroy it.

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the word “property” was often used in a broader sense to mean rightful dominion, or moral jurisdiction, over something. As the Lockean William Wollaston put it during the early eighteenth century: “To have the property of any thing and to have the sole right of using and disposing of it are the same thing: the are equipollent expressions.” The broad conception permitted Wollaston to speak of a man’s “property in his own happiness.”

Thus whereas we would say “This land is my property,” earlier liberals were more likely to say, “I have a property in this land.” When John Locke argued that the proper function of government is to protect property, he explained that, by “property,” he meant a person’s “Life, Liberty, and Estate.” This usage is what Locke had in mind when he wrote that “every Man has a Property in his own Person.”

In Jefferson’s day both meanings of property were common; the older usage, according which I would be said to have property in this land, was giving way to the modern usage, according to which this land would be said to be my property. This dual usage was discussed by James Madison in 1792:

This term [property] in its particular application means “that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual.”

In its larger and juster meaning, it embraces everything to which a man may attach a value and have a right, and which leave to every one else the like advantage.

In the former sense, a man’s land, or merchandize, or money is called his property.

In the latter sense, a man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them.

He has a property of peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by them.

He has a property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person.

He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them.

In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.

Property in the broad sense -- i.e, the right to exercise moral jurisdiction over one’s person, labor, and the fruits of one’s labor -- was viewed as an inalienable right; to have moral jurisdiction over that which is essential to one’s survival is inextricably linked to moral agency and so can never be transferred or surrendered. But this is not true of property in the narrower sense of something that is owned; one can clearly transfer one’s title to land or other material goods. Indeed, the title to a certain amount of property, collected in the form of taxes, was said to have been implicitly surrendered in the Lockean version of the social contract, since this was needed for a government to function. It would thus have been confusing for Jefferson to have included “property” in his partial list of inalienable rights. He would have needed to draw the same distinction that Madison did between two meanings of “property,” and this would have transformed the Declaration from a brief manifesto into a philosophical treatise.

Given other statements by Jefferson, there is no reason to think he would have disagreed with this very Lockean conclusion by Madison:

Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own

With this explanation behind me, I will, in a subsequent post or two, explain the broader theoretical significance of the distinction between alienable and inalienable rights.

Ghs

[Brant Gaede]

Well, I sure got educated some more there, George.

--Brant

[sjw]

I'll address George's alleged dishonesty after you justify a non-Lockean approach to human rights. This whole thread lacks this proper foundation. I do not because of that bother with all this ad hominem. I am neither judge nor jury and this is not a trial.

--Brant

Well, since Locke's foundation is the Bible, I'm not sure why you like it.

Not sure where you're having problems with my view of rights at this point. Presumably you agree that to interfere is to violate rights, and that to violate rights is to interfere. So I'm not seeing where there's much of a gap between your view and mine.

Shayne

It might be better to contrast my theory with Rand's. On Rand's view, man has rights because he needs them. On my view, I don't begin by saying we have rights, I begin by defining what rights are: any human action that does not interfere with another's action. With this definition it is clear that we have rights, the question becomes: should they be respected or not? The answer lies in the field of morality, and I would not assume that we have a lot of differences in that realm.

It is a shift in perspective to go from declaring that we have this intrinsic property of "rights", without concretely specifying what it is, to a notion of rights as particular concrete actions that don't interfere (which by itself is not entirely good enough, but gets the concept off the ground, in order to go the whole distance we need teleology). My shift undercuts one of the primary attacks on rights, that they are vague and arbitrary human inventions.

Shayne

Edited February 10, 2011 by sjw

[Brant Gaede]

I'll address George's alleged dishonesty after you justify a non-Lockean approach to human rights. This whole thread lacks this proper foundation. I do not because of that bother with all this ad hominem. I am neither judge nor jury and this is not a trial.

--Brant

Well, since Locke's foundation is the Bible, I'm not sure why you like it.

Not sure where you're having problems with my view of rights at this point. Presumably you agree that to interfere is to violate rights, and that to violate rights is to interfere. So I'm not seeing where there's much of a gap between your view and mine.

Shayne

Suppose all's the same in the USA today except there had been no rights' tradition of any sort that got us here. What kind of book if any would you have written?

--Brant

[sjw]

I'll address George's alleged dishonesty after you justify a non-Lockean approach to human rights. This whole thread lacks this proper foundation. I do not because of that bother with all this ad hominem. I am neither judge nor jury and this is not a trial.

--Brant

Well, since Locke's foundation is the Bible, I'm not sure why you like it.

Not sure where you're having problems with my view of rights at this point. Presumably you agree that to interfere is to violate rights, and that to violate rights is to interfere. So I'm not seeing where there's much of a gap between your view and mine.

Shayne

Suppose all's the same in the USA today except there had been no rights' tradition of any sort that got us here. What kind of book if any would you have written?

--Brant

And this relevant to the discussion at hand in some way?

In Common Sense Paine appeals to Christians, even though as it turned out, he wasn't one of them. I don't object given the historic context. I would object if he did that nowadays.

Shayne

[Brant Gaede]

I'll address George's alleged dishonesty after you justify a non-Lockean approach to human rights. This whole thread lacks this proper foundation. I do not because of that bother with all this ad hominem. I am neither judge nor jury and this is not a trial.

--Brant

Well, since Locke's foundation is the Bible, I'm not sure why you like it.

Not sure where you're having problems with my view of rights at this point. Presumably you agree that to interfere is to violate rights, and that to violate rights is to interfere. So I'm not seeing where there's much of a gap between your view and mine.

Shayne

It might be better to contrast my theory with Rand's. On Rand's view, man has rights because he needs them. On my view, I don't begin by saying we have rights, I begin by defining what rights are: any human action that does not interfere with another's action. With this definition it is clear that we have rights, the question becomes: should they be respected or not? The answer lies in the field of morality, and I would not assume that we have a lot of differences in that realm.

It is a shift in perspective to go from declaring that we have this intrinsic property of "rights", without concretely specifying what it is, to a notion of rights as particular concrete actions that don't interfere (which by itself is not entirely good enough, but gets the concept off the ground, in order to go the whole distance we need teleology). My shift undercuts one of the primary attacks on rights, that they are vague and arbitrary human inventions.

Shayne

Human interferring actions go on all the time without rights' violations, as in sports. Now, your "intrinsic property of 'rights'" may have some commonality with George's disgression on property as understood in the 18th Century.

--Brant

[sjw]

Human interferring actions go on all the time without rights' violations, as in sports. Now, your "intrinsic property of 'rights'" may have some commonality with George's disgression on property as understood in the 18th Century.

--Brant

If I want you to play a game with me, and that game includes physical "interference", then there's no interference in the sense I mean. My goal and action is precisely to play a game with you, which includes "interference."

I.e., you're equivocating between two senses of "interference."

Shayne

[George H. Smith]

I'll address George's alleged dishonesty after you justify a non-Lockean approach to human rights. This whole thread lacks this proper foundation. I do not because of that bother with all this ad hominem. I am neither judge nor jury and this is not a trial.

--Brant

Well, since Locke's foundation is the Bible, I'm not sure why you like it.

Are you serious?

Despite my disagreements with you, Shayne, I thought you understood Locke better than this.

Ghs

[sjw]

Incidentally, I don't view my position on rights as contrary to Locke's. I do think that some people read in a very concrete-bound way, and, unable to grasp the abstractions, see a fundamental difference where there is really just a difference in details and perspective.

Shayne

[Brant Gaede]

I'll address George's alleged dishonesty after you justify a non-Lockean approach to human rights. This whole thread lacks this proper foundation. I do not because of that bother with all this ad hominem. I am neither judge nor jury and this is not a trial.

--Brant

Well, since Locke's foundation is the Bible, I'm not sure why you like it.

Not sure where you're having problems with my view of rights at this point. Presumably you agree that to interfere is to violate rights, and that to violate rights is to interfere. So I'm not seeing where there's much of a gap between your view and mine.

Shayne

Suppose all's the same in the USA today except there had been no rights' tradition of any sort that got us here. What kind of book if any would you have written?

--Brant

And this relevant to the discussion at hand in some way?

In Common Sense Paine appeals to Christians, even though as it turned out, he wasn't one of them. I don't object given the historic context. I would object if he did that nowadays.

Shayne

So far I think you are both using and abusing the Lockean tradition respecting rights. Take that away and where would you be coming from?

--Brant