Dennis Hardin

You are right about goalies. It is firmly believed by coaches that there is a "goalie personality" . . . Jacques Plante incurred revulsion and contempt (except from me and my father, who admired him) by adopting the face mask back in the days when to have any teeth or fewer than 40 seams and scars on your face, was the mark of the girly-man in hockey. And Tim Thomas certainly defied the unwritten code recently.

To heck with skill, has he got a martyr complex?

Does he like to burn himself with matches, hang from the rafters by his fingernails, or, better yet, play toss with kitchen knives?

“Damn, son,” said the hockey coach. “I just saw you dive head first through that glass door and then walk back out again, just for the excitement. How are you on skates?”

Considering how stupid he is, he must have thought $100 was a bargain.

How about those eighth-seeded LA Kings--up 3-zip over the Canucks! Wow!

Time for me to become a hockey fan for a few days.

(I doubt the fantasy will last more than a few days. . .but who knows?)

Go for it Dennis - the few-day fantasy could become a lifelong dream.

Who would have thought at season start, that outside of the Canucks the one and only Canadian team in the playoffs would be the lowly Senators. I have never had eny enthusiasm for them.I spent four years in Ottawa and it is my least favourite city. But I have to root for them now, because just as most of the NHL revenue is generated by the Canadian teams and spent amongst the American ones, so is the fanblood.

I don't like the excessive physicality of the playoff openers. Stopp hitting each other on the head, guys.

It's interesting that although few OLers care, or even are aware of hockey, each of these few has a team in the playoffs except, well, me. I don't even have my 2nd or 3rd favourites. But I will cast off the sackcloth and ashes of the neverending Lent of Leafs Nation to salute you and the Kings, Dennis. ; Aristocrates and the Predators) he said they would make it and he was right; Ninth and his plastic rat catchers;PDS and the Wings ; Brant and the Arizona Whatstheirnames; and Adam, who gloated too soon-- but cheer up; Hillary C has bet our Foreign Minister on the series, and if worst comes to worst, you will get to see her decked out in Republican red

Thanks, Daunce. Actually, I think hockey can be very entertaining to watch. I love it when everybody gangs up in front of the net and the goalie has to twist himself six ways from Sunday to keep that little sucker from getting through. Being a goalie is probably about the most depressing job in all of sports. He can stop that elusive little puck 999 times out of a 1000 and everybody calls him a loser.

I often get the hockey bug around this time of year, if the Kings make it to the playoffs, which isn’t that often. Making it to the second round is unheard of in LA. If they ever won the Stanley Cup. OMG! We would have such an identity crisis, the ERs would overflow and the psych couches would be booked for a year!

If you like underdogs, adopt the Kings as your substitute favorite playoff team for 2012. They’ve got to be the all time hockey underdog, and deservedly so. Some warm wishes from Canada wouldn’t hurt. They need all the salutes they can get.

If some minarchist on OL would care to give me a definition of "objective law" -- a definition that does not beg the question by including "government" as part of the definition -- please do so.

I'll bite up to a point. At least to supply some fundamental syllogisms that I often find lacking in the all-or-nothing arguments that permeate this debate. Premise: In order to apply reason correctly, you must include context or axioms. Premise: Objective means being based on reason. Conclusion: Anything considered objective must include context or axioms. Or to state another syllogism: Premise: In order to apply reason correctly, you must include context or axioms. Premise: The principle of NIOF is based on reason. Conclusion: The application of NIOF must include context or axioms. If NIOF is taken as an axiom and not a principle, as David Kelley and Chris Sciabarra mentioned that several libertarians do, then context doesn't matter and the claim that reason is involved stands. But the basic condition of an axiom--that you must use it in the attempt to refute it--does not hold up for NIOF. In other words, for the axiom of existence, you must exist to refute existence, for consciousness, you must be conscious to refute consciousness, etc. That's how axioms are logically validated and context is not applicable to them. In other words, this is a correct way of using reason. This manner of thinking doesn't work with NIOF.....

I'm not aware of any libertarians that view NIOF as axiomatic. Even the usual exception, Walter Block, doesn't hold that the NIOF principle is self-evident.

I therefore don't know of whom you are speaking. Are these real libertarians? If not, then what is the point of discussing a position that no one defends?

Ghs

The libertarian creed rests upon one central axiom: that no man or group of men may aggress against the person or property of anyone else. This may be called the “nonaggression axiom,.” “Aggression”is defined as the initiation of the use or threat of physical violence against the person or property of anyone else.

from For A New Liberty, Murray Rothbard, p 27 (second edition-1978)

Chapter entitled “The Nonaggression Axiom”

No one has the right to initiate aggression against the person or property of anyone else. This is what libertarians call the nonaggression axiom, and it is a central principle of libertarianism.

from Libertarianism: A Primer, David Boaz, p. 74

From the wikipedia article on the Libertarian Party:

Since the Libertarian Party's inception, individuals have been able to join the party as voting members by signing their agreement with the organization's membership pledge, which states, based on the nonaggression principle, that the signer does not advocate the initiation of force to achieve political or social goals.

From a libertarian blog (technoeudaimonia):

:

The Problem with Axiomatic Libertarianism

Many libertarians, following in the tradition of Murray Rothbard, propose that liberty is an axiom; that is, liberty is a self-evident fact. They include such thinkers as Hans-Hermann Hoppe with his libertarian version of argumentation ethics, Stephan Kinsella with his conception of estoppel, and Stefan Molyneux with his "universably preferable behavior". Non-aggression is thus singled out and separated from the rest of ethics, which leads to a separation of what is "right" and what is "good"; this is evident, for example, in many of the writings of Walter Block.

From a wikipedia entry on Hans-Hermann Hoppe:

In what some have described as Hoppe's most important contribution, argumentation ethics is an apriori, value-neutral justification for libertarian ethics. Argumentation ethics builds on the concept of Discourse ethics developed by Jurgen Habermas (Hoppe's PhD advisor) and Karl-Otto Apel, further on misesian praxeology and the deontological ethics of economist Murray Rothbard. Argumentation ethics argues the non-aggression principle is a presupposition of argumentation and so cannot be rationally denied in discourse. Many modern libertarian scholars have accepted Hoppe's argument, among them Murray Rothbard, Walter Block, David Gordon and Stephen Kinsella.

from LewRockwell.com

In Defense of Libertarian Purity, Anthony Gregory

I consider myself a principled libertarian. Or a radical libertarian. I suppose there are many ways of saying it. Murray Rothbard called it "plumb-line libertarianism," and Walter Block has seen fit to embrace that terminology. I see it simply as the belief that initiating force is wrong.

Evicting Libertarian Party Principles: The Portland Purge, by L.K. Samuels

[Objecting to the “LP Reform Caucus” in 2006:]

So what are some of the principles that they believe must go? First and foremost is the non-aggression principle, which is considered the main threat to an election-oriented populism. If Libertarians would simply throw away this ideal, explaining LP policies on taxation, the drug war, foreign policy and military intervention would no longer be a campaign embarrassment.

So I'm being "dishonest" to point out that people frequently use metaphors in communication? I doubt Peikoff in his worst moments of mindless, vitriolic dogmatism would accuse someone of beng dishonest because he observed that people often use metaphors, and that this says nothing about any implied endorsement of a given theory.

Despite your expressed contempt for his "embarrassing" viewpoints, you remind me and more of Peikoff all the time.

Yes, you are being dishonest, because there is absolutely no basis in Rand's writings to support your claim that she rejected the notion of self-ownership. On the contrary, she expressly used the idea in a passage I quoted from "What is Capitalism?" And in an embarrassing display of self-refutation, you quoted another statement by her of the same sort, viz.:

Does one man have the right to dispose of the life of another? Once you have established that a man is the owner of his own life—that his life is his to dispose of and does not belong to anyone else—you then have the base from which all other rights are derived.

http://www.objectivi...ndpost&p=161055

All this is perfectly consistent with Rand's own definition of "ownership" -- "the right of use and disposal" -- that I quoted earlier. And in the passage that you unwittingly quoted, Rand places great stress on self-ownership, calling it the "base from which all other rights are derived."

There should be no problem here whatsoever; everything is clear and consistent. But you got a bug up your butt and declared:

Objectivism rejects the entire notion of "self-ownership" as the basis of the right to life. The acceptance of this idea is one more example of the failure to appreciate the underlying philosophical basis of rights.

So what evidence did you provide for this claim? Some brief verbal statement by Peikoff, made decades after Rand's death, that contradicted what Rand herself said about "ownership." You then trumped up the "metaphor" excuse, even though you yourself quoted a passage from Rand that supported my position.

We are now supposed to believe that when Rand said (in your quoted excerpt) that "man is the owner of his own life," that she was again speaking metaphorically, though she goes on to explain what she meant, i.e., that "his life is his to dispose of and does not belong to anyone else" -- a usage that fits perfectly with her own definition of ownership as the "right of use and disposal."

Rand goes on to stress the importance of self-ownership by noting that it is "the base from which all other rights are derived." Thus according to you, Rand formulated a metaphorical right in explaining the most fundamental of all rights.

In sum, you manufactured an explanation for something that required no explanation, since there was no doubt about what Rand meant. And then you dragged in that lame statement by Peikoff that flatly contradicts what Rand said.

So what's going on here? Why did you fabricate this artificial and pointless controversy? Why did you waste my time with it? I cannot say for certain, but I have a good idea. In the modern libertarian movement, the term "self-ownership" is associated with Rothbard and Rothbardian anarchists. And in your blind hatred of this group, which you know virtually nothing about, you decided to go after the notion of "self-ownership." But you stuck your foot in your mouth, because you didn't realize that Rand herself employed the concept. So, after I posted the relevant passage, instead of admitting that you may have been wrong, you concocted the "metaphor" excuse out of thin air. And you continue to stick with that dimwitted explanation.

Yes, Dennis, this is dishonest. It is one of the most dishonest intellectual games I have ever had the misfortune to witness. If there had been a problem with Rand's usage, then you might have had a point. But her usage of "ownership" was not the same as Peikoff's, and her statements were absolutely intelligible and consistent.

In short, there was no problem to begin with, no puzzle that required a solution. You pulled this entire controversy out of your ass. As I said before, "self-ownership"is simply a different way of saying "right to life." They mean the same thing.

[i later deleted the last paragraph of this post. It was a bit over the top, even for me.]

Ghs

Classical liberal thinkers needed the concept of self-ownership to defend the idea of individual rights. People who do not understand Objectivism, such as George H. Smith, like to claim that Rand’s theory of individual rights is not fundamentally different from the classical view. Sadly, George thinks he understands Objectivism. He does not.

Like his devotion to the frivolous cause of anarcho-capitalism, George is heavily invested in the notion that his bombastic expertise in classical liberalism enables him to speak condescendingly to all those who would suggest that Ayn Rand’s philosophy is radically different from all those historical thinkers he loves to quote. He wants us all to be impressed with his superior historical perspective, and does not appreciate it when anyone questions his authoritative brilliance. One would obviously have to be “dishonest” to take issue with the infinite wisdom of George H. Smith.

George H. Smith says: "there is absolutely no basis in Rand's writings to support your claim that she rejected the notion of self-ownership." So George thinks it’s perfectly okay to attribute to Ayn Rand any theory she did not explicitly deny. And if we can find one phrase which we can interpret as meaning “self-ownership,” then we can assume she believed in the theory of self-ownership.

Now he says that her reference to “owning one’s life” is the equivalent of “self-ownership.” Of course, George. What possible difference could there be between owning one’s “self” and owning one’s life?

He also thinks he can reasonably attribute the statements of those who disagree with him to “dishonesty,” “blind hatred” and “ignorance.”

By the way, he would also like you to believe his methods are “scholarly.”

Like NIOF, the concept of “self-ownership” is an another axiomatic approach to the defense of individual rights—an approach which conveniently bypasses all that troublesome philosophical stuff about metaphysics, epistemology and ethics.

Incidentally, the nonsense of self-ownership is another example of the mind-body dichotomy. Since it is nonsensical to speak of the self owning the self, the only sensible explanation for such a bizarre view is that there is a split between mind and body, so that one’s body becomes a separate piece of property controlled by the mind. That perspective was understandable in antiquity, before the advances of science provided mankind with a rational understanding of the world. When people exhibit that same disintegrated pattern in the modern era, one can only conclude that we may well have evidence of underlying pathology. (But I cannot say that for certain.)

How about those eighth-seeded LA Kings--up 3-zip over the Canucks! Wow!

Time for me to become a hockey fan for a few days.

(I doubt the fantasy will last more than a few days. . .but who knows?)

If you are going to use viability (i.e., at around six months) as a bright line for when a fetus acquires individual rights, then you should attribute the same rights to a viable fetus that we attribute to babies. Thus, since a mother should not be permitted to force alcohol, drugs, or other harmful substances into the body of her baby, so a pregnant woman should be legally prohibited from ingesting substances that might harm the fetus. And just as a mother does not have the right to endanger the life of her baby, so a pregnant woman (after six months, in your scheme) should be legally prohibited from engaging in risky behavior.

Of course, the woman had these rights before becoming pregnant, so somewhere along the line she lost some of her natural rights. How, exactly, can a woman lose some of her rights by becoming pregnant?

Also, according to your scheme, if a woman and her doctor perform an abortion after six months, then they should be prosecuted for first-degree murder, just as if they had conspired to murder a baby. If you happen to believe in capital punishment, then both murderers should face the death penality, or, at the very least, life imprisonment.

Moreover, after six months a pregnant woman would not even have the right to kill herself, if this act would also result in the death of the fetus. This action would qualify not as mere suicide, but as a murder/suicide.

So will you defend all this? Or will you attempt to weasel out of the logical implications of your own position?

[Ghs

The developing embryo and the mother have a unique biological relationship-the embryo is dependent on the mother for its sustenance. The fact that the mother does not have the right to destroy the embryo in the third trimester does not endow the embryo with all the rights of an independent human being. I see no reason why the mother should suddenly become the slave of the embryo after six months. Individual rights, once acquired, are inalienable. As an independent human being, her rights are paramount. She retains all the rights she would normally have, including the right to end her life if she so chooses. If the embryo’s existence should threaten her life at some point, she has every right to act in her own self-interest and destroy it. Her only responsibility is to allow the embryo to live so long as this is consonant with her own health and well-being.

Your identification of the connection between the reductionist interpretation of NIOF and the mind-body dichotomy is superb. I agree completely. I want to do some more thinking on that topic before commenting further.

Thanks for your insight on this.

Dennis,

Thanks for your kind words.

I can't help but notice the similarity between NIOF and dogma in general (when NIOF is believed in as an axiom). When you remove the mind, but insist on the rule, that's the definition of dogma to me.

When someone believes in dogma all the way down, they say it trumps reason, they say you have to take it whole hog or nothing while saying they are not actually saying that, and they get really pissed and personal when you when challenge it at the root.

I wonder what the influence of cognitive bias is on dogma...

Something to think about...

"while saying they are not actually saying that. . ."

Exactly, Michael. They may it look like they are earnestly seeking the truth, when, in fact, there is clearly only one conclusion they will find acceptable. Their personal intellectual agenda is setting the terms of the discussion, not a quest for understanding. Otherwise, why get so bent out of shape when others disagree?

Alas, reality does not accomodate personal agendas, nor does it yield to verbal intimidation. And when people begin to sense they're witnessing a con game, the jig is up. So you get lots of fireworks and no resolution.

My sense is that the dogmatic defense of NIOF may well stem from the mind-body dichotomy,to some extent. I can see at least two aspects where that pattern is evident.

One is theory vs. practice: So what if the anarchist model breaks down in practice? What counts is that it's a beautiful theory. We'll find a way to make it work in practice, somehow.

A second is mind vs body: The physical realm--the realm of physical force--is somehow innately superior to the mental realm, so protection cannot be extended to products of the mind, only to physical actions.

Proponents of NIOF take both sides of the equation--theory over practice in the first case, body over mind in the second--thus widening the gap and making cognitive integration impossible.

There it is in a nutshell. This is going to be a lot of work, especially since I want to do it right (I already have a good start, although it's still private), but I believe I will be well rewarded. And I expect it to fertilize some other projects I have on the back burner. Hell, I expect it to have good spin-off for OL, even though I am keeping those two projects separate.

Michael

Sounds like a fascinating project. You've obviously invested a tremendous amount of time, energy and knowledge into it. I know you'll keep us posted as you get closer to going live.

Q: Is there a difference between saying that someone is the owner of his own life and saying that someone has a right to his own life?

Peikoff: Ownership is a concept which implies a relationship between you and an external object. There's the owner and the external object you possess. How can you own yourself? Who is the owner that is doing the owning of the owner? This is nonsensical. There is someone over and above me who is me that's owning my body and soul. Ownership is a concept that only applies to external property. You own physical objects that you can use and dispose of. You don't own your own freedom.

The important issue is the part of Peikoff's quote which you ommitted:

This whole idea came into being many generations ago from very bad, frightened conservatives who thought that the safest way to defend individualism was to make it all a matter of property rights. Therefore, individual rights are just a form of property rights. You just own yourself. This was in the day when property rights were considered sacrosanct but life and liberty were thought of as vague abstractions. This is a completely wrong inversion because it makes property the primary instead of the derivative.

This is a crucial distinction with respect to a proper derivation of individual rights.

Peikoff's comments are exceedingly ignorant. They are downright embarrassing.

Ghs

If anyone doubts what I said here, just read this article, "Property," that was written by James Madison in 1792.

Property

This term 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 every thing to which a man may attach a value and have a right; and which leaves to every one else the like advantage.

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

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

[snip]

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.

That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest. A magistrate issuing warrants to a press gang, would be in his proper functions in Turkey or Indostan, under appellations proverbial of the most compleat despotism.

That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where arbitrary restrictions, exemptions, and monopolies deny to part of its citizens that free use of their faculties, and free choice of their occupations, which not only constitute their property in the general sense of the word; but are the means of acquiring property strictly so called. What must be the spirit of legislation where a manufacturer of linen cloth is forbidden to bury his own child in a linen shroud, in order to favour his neighbour who manufactures woolen cloth; where the manufacturer and wearer of woolen cloth are again forbidden the economical use of buttons of that material, in favor of the manufacturer of buttons of other materials!

[snip]

If the United States mean to obtain or deserve the full praise due to wise and just governments, they will equally respect the rights of property, and the property in rights: they will rival the government that most sacredly guards the former; and by repelling its example in violating the latter, will make themselves a pattern to that and all other governments.

From The National Gazette, March 29, 1792.

Does this sound like it was written "in the day when property rights were considered sacrosanct but life and liberty were thought of as vague abstractions." Does Madison sound like a "frightened conservative"?

Peikoff should know better. He dumb remarks probably result from sustained inbreeding. Having insulated himself for so many years from outside criticism, and having grown accustomed to what I call "guru questions" ("Dr. Peikoff, what is your opinion of X?"), he has become intellectually lazy. He figures he can get away with saying almost anything, no matter how moronic.

It doesn't surprise me that many ARIans hang on Peikoff's every word, but I am frankly surprised that Dennis would fall for this kind of crap.

Ghs

Peikoff can certainly be strongly criticized for his bizarre use of pejoratives, but his main point is that (IMO very admirable) thinkers such as Madison did not know how to derive the right to life from the facts of human nature, and that they mistakenly treated property rights as a primary. That was the point I thought was important. This quotation seems to verify that.

Peikoff is dropping the historical context. I sincerely doubt that Ayn Rand would ever have spoken of post-Enlightenment thinkers in this way. She recognized that her development of the Objectivist ethics and politics required the retrospective context of the industrial revolution.

There is a sense in which Peikoff's reference to "bad, frightened conservatives" might apply to those who continue to resort to property rights to defend individual rights today, but there has already been a surfeit of negativity on this thread, and I have no wish to add to it.

Once again, you seem to want to deny that you are using NIOF as a primary, while you continue to use NIOF as a primary.

I never claimed that NIOF is a moral primary. I have said this repeatedly. How many more times must I say this before you get the point?

You can repeat it a billion times, but until your expressed viewpoints are consistent with the premise that NIOF is not a primary, you are still using it as a primary.

The first overt act of physical force may, in some cases, be initiated by the victim. There is simply no way to just look at the situation existentially and say whether or not the force was justified or who actually initiated the force. The issue of rights must be defined first.

Of course rights must be defined first, because this is how we distinguish between the initiatory and retaliatory uses of force. After we define the relevant rights and make our determination, we then prohibit those activities that qualify as the initiation of force.

I made this point as early as 1978, in the Appendix to "Justice Entrepreneurship in a Free Market." See: http://mises.org/jou...s/3_4/3_4_4.pdf. My discussion of the initiation of force begins on p. 424.

My views have changed a bit since I wrote this discussion, but I still agree with the basic perspective.

Ghs

The various rights you discuss in this article all revolve around the issue of force (e.g., self-defense, fair trial, restitution). Other than property rights, I did not see any reference to what Rand calls "the conditions of existence required by man's nature for his proper survival"--e.g., the right to take all those actions that are necessary, by his nature as a rational being, to sustain and protect man's life. The most basic right is the right to life, which mandates the freedom to take all those actions required by a rational being for the fulfillment and enjoyment of his life. A concomitant of that right is that the use of force is brought under objective control, and the only practical way to do that is through a government with procedural safeguards that strictly regulate the use of force.

As I have been arguing consistently throughout this thread, we can therefore legitimately characterize any threat to such objective control of force as the initiation of force, and any action taken by the government to stop that threat as retaliatory force. Private defense agencies represent such a threat.

You say: "After we define the relevant rights and make our determination, we then prohibit those activities that qualify as the initiation of force."

Precisely. A clear definition and clarification of the right to life logically justifies the prohibition of private defense agencies because their activities qualify as the initiation of force.

Glad we got that cleared up.

According to this approach, to have "property in" something (or "propriety in" something) is to have legitimate moral jurisdiction over something. It is to have a moral claim of ownership -- hence the term "self-ownership" that became popular among 19th century libertarians. Property rights are the conceptual method by which we distinguish mine from thine.

Objectivism rejects the entire notion of "self-ownership" as the basis of the right to life. The acceptance of this idea is one more example of the failure to appreciate the underlying philosophical basis of rights.

Q: Is there a difference between saying that someone is the owner of his own life and saying that someone has a right to his own life?

Peikoff: Ownership is a concept which implies a relationship between you and an external object. There's the owner and the external object you possess. How can you own yourself? Who is the owner that is doing the owning of the owner? This is nonsensical. There is someone over and above me who is me that's owning my body and soul. Ownership is a concept that only applies to external property. You own physical objects that you can use and dispose of. You don't own your own freedom.

Oh, really? So why did Rand write the following (in "What is Capitalism?"):

Is man a sovereign individual who owns his person, his mind, his life, his work and its products—or is he the property of the tribe (the state, the society, the collective) that may dispose of him in any way it pleases, that may dictate his convictions, prescribe the course of his life, control his work and expropriate his products?

Since according to you and Peikoff, "ownership is a concept which implies a relationship between you and an external object," Rand could not possibly have defended the absurd position that "man is a sovereign individual who owns his own person, his mind, his life," etc. Since this is not even possible, I guess Rand wanted to defend the only alternative, i.e., that man is "the property of the tribe (the state, the society, the collective) that may dispose of him in any way it pleases...."

Rand was speaking metaphorically, not theoretically.

Yeah, right. Whenever Rand said something that doesn't fit into your preconceived notion of what you think she should have said, simply chalk it up to to her speaking metaphorically. This is a very dishonest method of interpretation.

There is no evidence whatsoever that Rand was speaking metaphorically. On the contrary, her statement is entirely consistent with her definition of "ownership," which I also quoted.

Ghs

And when she says things that don't fit your "preconceived notion of what you think she should have said," just chalk it up to "something we already knew, namely, that Rand sometimes did not apply her own principles consistently." (Ghs)

So I'm being "dishonest" to point out that people frequently use metaphors in communication? I doubt Peikoff in his worst moments of mindless, vitriolic dogmatism would accuse someone of beng dishonest because he observed that people often use metaphors, and that this says nothing about any implied endorsement of a given theory.

Despite your expressed contempt for his "embarrassing" viewpoints, you remind me and more of Peikoff all the time.

Of course truly orthodox Objectivists now agree with Dennis Hardin about the morality of abortion ONLY up to a certain instance of fetal maturity as does The Atlas Society and ARI. Yet, in ortho discussions many have not gotten “the word” that Objectivism and Rand evolved. If using Ayn as the final authority look at the unexplained evolution of her “Abortion” definition in the Lexicon. Check out the official stance on The Atlas Society web site. George H. Smith’s view is passé.

Peter Taylor

Peter,

I don't believe you are correct with respect to the position of "orthodox" Objectivists on abortion. I'm sure George will be delighted to discover that his position is shared by ARI and Leonard Peikoff. I regard their positon as equally insane. It's exactly the sort of dogmatic nonsense that helps to marginalize Objectivism as a lunatic fringe. Here is a link to a podcast by Peikoff on this issue dated 10-20-08.

Q: At what moment does the mass of cells, the fetus, go from having no rights to human rights?

Peikoff: When it’s developmentally self-sufficient. When does this point come? It comes when it is born, and born means it’s out of the womb, the umbilical cord has been cut, it is now a separate entity. Until that point, it has no rights.

The fact that Peikoff and ARI completely ignore Ayn Rand's reservations about abortion in the latter stages of pregnancy is more evidence that their alleged faithfulness to the "official" viewpoints and writings of Ayn Rand is a sham. (The last time I checked, the commentaries on ARI related to abortion concurred with Peikoff.)

Thanks for bringing the position of The Atlas Society to my attention. I was not aware that they had adopted a viewpoint similar to mine. I have many disagreements with The Atlas Society on other topics, but the position taken by William R. Thomas here is a welcome breath of fresh air.

The proper legal status of healthy, second and third trimester fetuses is less clear. In the third trimester a fetus is likely to be viable outside the womb. Concerning the second trimester, one can note that the cognitive processes of a human being are under way, although the fetus still lacks the clear-cut existence as an independent organism that is the key to the rights of infants. Although this is a gray area, this author is of the mind that a woman's right to control the use of her own body can be secured by her choice during the first trimester, and that in such a context, abortion in the second and third trimesters is inappropriate in the case of a healthy pregnancy. In this view the right to abortion not only falls, but may be fairly said to stand, on the issue of a woman's right to abort in the first trimester.

As I said in my response to George, I think abortion should be legal until the point of fetal viability (i.e., the third trimester). But Thomas' position is drastically more reasonable than that of ARI or Peikoff.

According to this approach, to have "property in" something (or "propriety in" something) is to have legitimate moral jurisdiction over something. It is to have a moral claim of ownership -- hence the term "self-ownership" that became popular among 19th century libertarians. Property rights are the conceptual method by which we distinguish mine from thine.

Objectivism rejects the entire notion of "self-ownership" as the basis of the right to life. The acceptance of this idea is one more example of the failure to appreciate the underlying philosophical basis of rights.

Q: Is there a difference between saying that someone is the owner of his own life and saying that someone has a right to his own life?

Peikoff: Ownership is a concept which implies a relationship between you and an external object. There's the owner and the external object you possess. How can you own yourself? Who is the owner that is doing the owning of the owner? This is nonsensical. There is someone over and above me who is me that's owning my body and soul. Ownership is a concept that only applies to external property. You own physical objects that you can use and dispose of. You don't own your own freedom.

Oh, really? So why did Rand write the following (in "What is Capitalism?"):

Is man a sovereign individual who owns his person, his mind, his life, his work and its products—or is he the property of the tribe (the state, the society, the collective) that may dispose of him in any way it pleases, that may dictate his convictions, prescribe the course of his life, control his work and expropriate his products?

Since according to you and Peikoff, "ownership is a concept which implies a relationship between you and an external object," Rand could not possibly have defended the absurd position that "man is a sovereign individual who owns his own person, his mind, his life," etc. Since this is not even possible, I guess Rand wanted to defend the only alternative, i.e., that man is "the property of the tribe (the state, the society, the collective) that may dispose of him in any way it pleases...."

Rand was speaking metaphorically, not theoretically.

The important issue is the part of Peikoff's quote which you ommitted:

This whole idea came into being many generations ago from very bad, frightened conservatives who thought that the safest way to defend individualism was to make it all a matter of property rights. Therefore, individual rights are just a form of property rights. You just own yourself. This was in the day when property rights were considered sacrosanct but life and liberty were thought of as vague abstractions. This is a completely wrong inversion because it makes property the primary instead of the derivative.

This is a crucial distinction with respect to a proper derivation of individual rights.

In my judgment, the following passage from "What is Capitalism?" is the most significant single paragraph that Rand ever wrote on the relationship between values and force.

If one knows that the good is objective—i.e., determined by the nature of reality, but to be discovered by man's mind—one knows that an attempt to achieve the good by physical force is a monstrous contradiction which negates morality at its root by destroying man's capacity to recognize the good, i.e.., his capacity to value. Force invalidates and paralyzes a man's judgment, demanding that he act against it, thus rendering him morally impotent. A value which one is forced to accept at the price of surrendering one's mind, is not a value to anyone; the forcibly mindless can neither judge nor choose nor value. An attempt to achieve the good by force is like an attempt to provide a man with a picture gallery at the price of cutting out his eyes. Values cannot exist (cannot be valued) outside the full context of a man's life, needs, goals, and knowledge.

As with the passages I quoted previously, this shows the fundamental role that freedom and physical force play in Rand's ethics, and not merely in her political theory. The pursuit of objective values, according to Rand, presupposes freedom of choice and action. And rights (as I explained earlier) then become the conceptual method by which we define and sanction this freedom of action.

On at least two occasions that I can recall, Dennis said that rights make a "moral existence" possible for man. (I believe this is the term he used.) I checked my "Objectivism Research CD-ROM." Rand only used "moral existence" twice in her published writings -- and in neither case did she use this expression in the same context that Dennis did.

Nevertheless, I don't especially object to Dennis's use of "moral existence," provided we understand this term properly. "Moral," in this context, should be understood in contrast to "nonmoral," not to "immoral." As indicated in the passage quoted above, objective values themselves cannot even exist outside the context of uncoerced choices, so freedom (as defined by rights) is an essential precondition of a moral, as opposed to a nonmoral, existence.

But we cannot slide from this reasonable assertion, as Dennis is prone to do (e.g., in his comments about abortion), into the false assertion that rights do not apply to actions that are manifestly immoral. One has the perfect right to commit immoral actions, so long as one's actions do not violate the rights of other people.

Yes, rights have a moral foundation, but this doesn't preclude us from distinguishing between immoral actions that violate the rights of other people and immoral actions that do not violate rights. When I distinguish between morality and justice, I mean by "morality" what every philosopher has meant by this distinction, i.e., personal moral judgments that do not violate the rights of other people.

I am almost embarrassed to call attention to this elementary distinction, but, again and unfortunately, it is necessary when discussing these matters with Dennis.

Ghs

In certain primitive cultures, the "shaming code" is very effective as a tool for shaping unwanted behaviors. In modern Western society, however, we tend to just laugh that crap off, and that's what I'm doing here. Your embarassment is your problem, whatever the real source happens to be.

The passage quoted above is similar to the one in your prior post:

A rational mind does not work under compulsion; it does not subordinate its grasp of reality to anyone's orders, directives, or controls; it does not sacrifice its knowledge, its view of the truth, to anyone's opinions, threats, wishes, plans, or "welfare." Such a mind may be hampered by others, it may be silenced, proscribed, imprisoned, or destroyed; it cannot be forced; a gun is not an argument. (An example and symbol of this attitude is Galileo.)

These two quotes essentially make the point that force and mind are opposites, but they do not, obviously, provide anything resembling a theory of what constitutes a right. Here are two passages which do provide the essence of such a theory.

First, here is Rand's definition of "the right to life" (from "Man's Rights"): the right to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action—which means, the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life.

And here is her expanded explanation (which I quoted previously):

The function of the government should be only to protect individual rights…A right is a moral concept that defines and sanctions a man’s freedom of action in a social context. The basic issue is: Does one man have the right to dispose of the life of another? Once you have established that a man is the owner of his own life—that his life is his to dispose of and does not belong to anyone else—you then have the base from which all other rights are derived. If a man has the right to his own life, then he has the right to take all those actions that are necessary, by his nature as a rational being, to sustain and protect it. In order to prove that a certain action is in fact a right, you have to prove that it is required by man’s nature

Objectively Speaking, p. 47

Look at those two quotes and tell me where there is a reference to the initiation of physical force. Rand does not define rights in terms of force at all. She defines rights in terms of what man requires for a human (or moral) existence. It is only after she has clarified what man requires that we are in a position to say what constitutes the initiation of force.

I just thought perhaps we should clear that up, in case those other quotes from Rand were your idea of a "theory of rights."

Now, you refer to the distinction between morality and justice, and you say we must differentiate between "immoral actions that violate the rights of other people and immoral actions that do not violate rights." Evidently this is supposed to support your claim that it's perfectly consistent with the rights of everyone involved to exterminate a baby just seconds before it sees the light of day for the first time.

You truly do not see that the mother or doctor who did such a thing would be guilty of the crime of murder. Until it's outside of her, it's just immoral.

Now there I would say you do have something to be embarassed about, and you have my sympathy.

The rights that individuals have are the rights to live the life proper to a rational being, including all of that which is entailed—e.g., the right to the products of one’s mental effort, the right to be free from the threat of force, the right to the value of the reputation one has earned, the right to the free, mutually agreed contractual exchange of goods and services, the right to not be deliberately and (from the victim’s standpoint) unknowingly placed in harm’s way in one’s daily activities. All of these may, in certain circumstances, entail the existential initiation of physical force—e.g., to stop copyright infringement, to enact a restraining order against stalking or intimidation, to exact compensation for damage to one’s reputation, to obtain civil damages for contractual violations or injuries related to endangerment.

This is it.

--Brant

Okay. I continue to be impressed by my perspicacity. Where am I going wrong here?

The following passage is from "What is Capitalism?" (My boldface.) It succintly expresses the views I have attributed to Rand thus far:

The recognition of individual rights entails the banishment of physical force from human relationships: basically, rights can be violated only by means of force. In a capitalist society, no man or group may initiate the use of physical force against others. The only function of the government, in such a society, is the task of protecting man's rights, i.e.., the task of protecting him from physical force; the government acts as the agent of man's right of self-defense, and may use force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use; thus the government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of force under objective control.

The need to quote passages like this is depressing in a way, since Rand said the same thing many times, without equivocation. But Dennis's bizarre reading of Rand, according to which she defended the initation of force by government, has made this necessary.

As I said earlier, Dennis, having drilled holes in the Randian boat with many supposed exceptions to the NIOF principle, is now attempting to patch up his own holes by distinguishing between cases of the "existential" initiation of force that Rand supposedly approved of, but did not regard as "technical" cases of the initiation of force.

The problem here is that Dennis does not understand Rand, or he does not take what she said seriously. Rand meant exactly what she said, over and over again, viz., that a proper government "may use force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use."

Ghs

Have you had your glasses' prescription checked lately, George? I corrected myself in post #336.

Evidently the subtlety of my observations taxed your beleaguered brain beyond its limits, so I'll repeat the essence of what I said here:

In thinking about this issue further, it occurs to me that Rand did not consider such issues as defamation of character, reckless endangerment or intellectual property to be exceptions to the noninitiation of force principle. Rather, her position was that, once these issues were objectively established as consistent with rights—i.e., as conditions of existence required for proper human survival—violations of them would constitute the initiation of force.

I have been approaching the issue of the initiation of physical force from the existential perspective of who first engages in a literal act of physically compelling one individual to do something—because that is the approach used by the anarchist. The anarchist says: you cannot physically stop me from starting an agency whose purpose if to use force strictly in retaliation. On a purely existential level, the monopoly government is engaging in the first act of the initiation of physical force by stopping that agency from doing what it purports to do.

When Rand used the term “initiation of physical force,” however, she was not speaking in strictly existential terms. This is why she did not regard the initiation of physical force as a fundamental, as you claim. In her view, it is necessary to define what is or is not a right before you can correctly ascertain who is initiating the force.

Once it has been determined that a person is entitled to certain actions by right, interfering with that right is an act of aggression, and government action to stop such interference is retaliatory.

My method of arguing on this thread is how philosophers have discussed such matters for many centuries. Philosophy, in whatever field, addresses highly abstract problems in an effort to fomulate fundamental principles. For Rand, the NIOF is a fundamental principle in the social/political realm, and she was absolutely right to stress the importance of this principle as a limitation on governments. As Rand warned in "The Nature of Government" (my boldface):

Now consider the extent of the moral and political inversion in today's prevalent view of government. Instead of being a protector of man's rights, the government is becoming their most dangerous violator; instead of guarding freedom, the government is establishing slavery; instead of protecting men from the initiators of physical force, the government is initiating physical force and coercion in any manner and issue it pleases....

One also begins to see more clearly the nature of the political principles that have to be accepted and advocated, as part of the battle for man's intellectual Renaissance.

Here as elsewhere, Rand stresses the NIOF principle as an essential limitation on government. If we concede, as Dennis has, that a government may legitimately initiate force, then we have conceded the principle of statism, and the rest is just a matter of time. (I devote nearly an entire chapter to this issue in Themes in the History of Classical Liberalism, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press later this year, or perhaps early next year.)

Ghs

I corrected myself on that and acknowledged my error. As I now understand the issue, as long as the government is acting to protect individual rights, it is not initiating force. That is why it is crucial that rights be clearly defined. Once we have objectively established, theoretically, what man has the right to do in the service of his own life, his rights can only be violated by the initiation of force, and the government's role is restricted to the use of retaliatory force.

I have cited several examples already, but one more might be illustrative here: intellectual property rights. It may appear that the government is initiating force when it takes action against a publisher for copyright infringement, but once the right to intellectual property has been established, this is not the case at all. Once it has been established by objective law that a person has the right to the products of his own mind, interference with that right constitutes aggression, and the government's action to stop such aggression is retaliatory.

Once again, this is why a theory of rights is fundamental to political theory, and why the NIOF principle cannot be taken as a fundamental. Until rights are clearly defined, it is impossible to know what constitutes the initiation of force.

Dennis, you are making negative rights sound like positive rights. It's almost like they are being granted instead of residing in the person.

--Brant

Could you clarify that with an example, Brant? I'm sorry. I don't get your meaning.

You accused me defending a "license to kill" -- and as usual you quote Rand, as a Christian would quote the Bible, to buttress your point. Do you actually have an argument somewhere? Or, better yet, do you actually have a theory of rights that deals with the problem of when a fetus acquires a right to life and when the mother loses some of her rights, to that extent? Or would you like to throw another hissy fit?

hissy fit noun. A sudden outburst of temper, often used to describe female anger at something trivial.

I suspect we both know who is throwing the hissy fits around here.

My own theory is that fetal viability should serve as the brightline test that determines when the unborn can no longer be routinely exterminated. It is no longer dependent on the mother at that point, and can survive on its own outside the womb, so the mother no longer has the right to end its life.

I realize the matter is debatable. I don't happen to think it's reasonable to kill a viable fetus moments after the woman's water breaks, just because it still happens to be inside her. I call that unconscionable.

I remember when Tom Snyder interviewed you on his "Tomorrow" show years ago. I wonder how he would have reacted if you had said to him, on national television: "Sure. It's okay to kill the baby seconds before it's delivered. What's wrong with that?"

My guess is that they would have had to cut to a commercial break while he regained his composure. It's crazy, George. I'm sorry. It really is insane.

I'm not going to say anything more in the way of defending my position. It would be like defending my belief that the earth is round. Good fucking grief.

I assume you eat meat. What?! Do you defend a license to kill helpless and innocent animals? Would you say that animals don't have any rights? What?! So is it okay with you if people torture dogs and cats, subjecting them and other animals to prolonged and intense pain for no purpose other than to give pleasure to their sadistic tormenters? You savage! Pack up your license to kill and your license to torture and begone from civilized society! We all know that if something is highly immoral it should also be illegal. Rights are an extension of morality, after all, not a license to kill and torture.

Ghs

Animals do not have rights, so I don't see any relevance to this bit of silliness.

I don't have substantial disagreements with any of this (though you have oversimplified the problem). I have never claimed that the NIOF principle is a moral primary. But once the NIOF principle has been derived and justified by moral reasoning, it becomes, for Rand, the foundation of political theory and the necessary presupposition of a free society.

Just because the NIOF is not a moral primary does not mean that you can posit all kinds of exceptions, willy-nilly, on the social and political level. Rand was very clear about this. She also insisted that a proper government is strictly limited to those powers that have been delegated to it by individuals. All rights, she said (like Lockeans before her), are individual rights. A government cannot possess special rights over and above the rights of individuals.

Thus if you wish to argue that a government has the right to initiate force, you must first show that individuals have the right to initiate force against other individuals. I eagerly await your explanation of how Rand defended and approved of this right. Perhaps you will find what you need in another dimension.

Once again, you seem to want to deny that you are using NIOF as a primary, while you continue to use NIOF as a primary.

The rights that individuals have are the rights to live the life proper to a rational being, including all of that which is entailed—e.g., the right to the products of one’s mental effort, the right to be free from the threat of force, the right to the value of the reputation one has earned, the right to the free, mutually agreed contractual exchange of goods and services, the right to not be deliberately and (from the victim’s standpoint) unknowingly placed in harm’s way in one’s daily activities. All of these may, in certain circumstances, entail the existential initiation of physical force—e.g., to stop copyright infringement, to enact a restraining order against stalking or intimidation, to exact compensation for damage to one’s reputation, to obtain civil damages for contractual violations or injuries related to endangerment.

The first overt act of physical force may, in some cases, be initiated by the victim. There is simply no way to just look at the situation existentially and say whether or not the force was justified or who actually initiated the force. The issue of rights must be defined first.

In every one of these cases, a convincing argument can be made that the force was initiated by the guilty party—that the guilty party engaged in a form of force to deprive the victim of a value he had rightfully earned—and that the legal action is therefore retaliatory. The same is true of the anarchist, who has deprived everyone of the right to objective, institutional control of force.

Rand held that it is appropriate to undertake the existential act of the initiation of physical force against those who were engaged in the violation of rights. Technically, she did not consider this the initiation of force, however.

This is gobbledygook. All acts of force, whether initiatory or retaliatory, are "existential," i.e., they are acts that, once undertaken, actually exist. To say that a given act is existentially the initiation of force but "technically" not the initiation of force is a needless and self-contradictory distinction. Rand said nothing like this. You are merely venturing out farther on thin ice in an effort to defend an interpretation that had no basis to begin with.

You imply that the distinction is artificial and unnecessary, since all acts of force are equally overt and existential. If that were true, I’m inclined to think we might not need a theory of rights.

The point I'm making is that force is often used in ways that are not always obvious and self-evident. If we concretize these situations, it is clear that there are major differences, and that overt force may be necessary to stop covert force. It’s the difference between stalking and actual physical constraint of the perpetrator (via a restraining order).. It’s the difference between inducing the fear of potential assault and the members of the gang being arrested by the police and taken to jail. It’s the difference between indefinitely delaying payment that is due and physically extracting that payment from a freeloader’s wallet. It’s the difference between politely inviting someone to do something one knows to be hazardous and, later, using legal means to raid the perpetrator’s bank account to pay for your broken neck. It’s the difference between lying (as in the case of fraud) and being forced to pay for the consequences of a lie. In each case, the victim may be unaffected physically, but the physical impact on the perpetrator is overt.

I am simply extending this mode of analysis to apply to private agencies which want to enagage in the use of force: you do not have the right to create an institution which interferes with the principle of keeping force under objective control, because it poses a direct threat to everyone’s right to live a proper human existence.

Acts of force do not come with labels that enable us to differentiate between initiatory force and retaliatory force. We distinguish between the two by identifying the relevant rights involved -- and this is a primary philosophical function of a theory of rights.

A man enters a house, picks up a television, and leaves with it. Has this person initiated force against any one? Well, we don't know yet because we don't have sufficient information. Is this the guy's own house? Is it his television? If not, does he have the consent of the owner? Etc., etc.. Only after we have this information about the relevant rights can we determine whether force was involved in this act.

Hmmmm. That’s what I have been saying all along. So now you are acknowledging that NIOF cannot be your theoretical starting point politically. It can't serve as your "foundation." You need a theory of rights first. The issue of force alone is not enough.

It will be interesting to see where this leads us.

She put the libertarian anarchist in the exact same position as the con artist, the extortionist, the stalker, the street gang or the terrorist calling in bomb threats, because there is no such thing as a "right" to set yourself up as an independent agency imposing your view of “legitimate” force outside the exclusive province of government. The oversimplication I spoke of consisted of Rand’s use of the phrase noninitation of force without always making it absolutely clear that clarification of the nature of rights must precede any understanding of what that phrase means. She said, in some cases, “The basic political principle of the Objectivist ethics is: no man may initiate the use of physical force against others.” In other cases, she said, “Man's rights can be violated only by the use of physical force.” To avoid the anarchist’s confusion, she should always have put the issue of the initiation of the use of force in the context of objectively defined rights.

You can repeat this catechism as often as you like. But until you explain how a government acquires a legitimate monopoly on force that permits it to use force against other agencies that are doing the same thing that it does, you are pissing in the wind.

Ghs

Because placing the use of force under objective control is a “condition of existence required ny man's nature for his proper survival," and there is no other practical way to accomplish that.

And taking overt action to stop you is justified as retaliation against the covert threat of uncontrolled violence.

NOTE: I tried to post this several hours ago, and got a message back that seemed to say OL had shut down due to an overload of incoming data. As pissed off as I was, I took that as a compliment.

It is highly rewarding to gain the benefit of intellects being driven to max revolutions.

(Can't help picturing a naval scenario of battleships launching broadsides

with 20" guns.)

#341 from MSK is a thoughtfully original one, from my pov.

Full speed ahead, and damn the torpedoes!

Tony (Awaiting the salvo from USS George H Smith.)

Tony,

I like your comparison to naval battleships. However, I keep thinking of another kind of war. . .

"I want Balboa! I want Balboa!"

P.S. What round is this? I lost count.

Dennis,

It occurs to me that using NIOF as an axiom instead of one principle among others within a hierarchy of concepts is the ultimate in mind-body dichotomy.

In the axiom version, the mind is removed from social relations at the foundation and the body reigns supreme. In other words, you can only use force against a body--and it doesn't matter at that level (at the principle level) whether that body has a mind or not.

I understand NIOF more in terms of bullying human beings than just initiating force--which means I reject it as an axiom. (Sometimes you have to initiate force against a person to save his or her life so I exclude that from rights violations, but this stuff has been discussed and nit-picked ad nauseum). Bullying means exercising power over others to extract advantages and values from them that they would not freely give, in trade or otherwise. (Stupid extraction is when the bully doesn't even gain value from the value he takes away from the victim. He just takes and/or destroys.)

Michael

Michael,

Your identification of the connection between the reductionist interpretation of NIOF and the mind-body dichotomy is superb. I agree completely. I want to do some more thinking on that topic before commenting further.

Thanks for your insight on this. I'll look forward to your essay on Napoleon Hill. That little gem of a book has always been an inspiration to me.

I want to explain, if only summarily, why I think Rand's stress on the NIOF principle as the foundation of her political theory is so important.

What Rand did, better than any previous political philosopher, was to explicitly isolate the NIOF principle as the foundation of rights theory in general. She argued that the use of reason is essential to man's survival and happiness, and that the initiation of force, in its various manifestations, prevents us from using our reason. And she clearly understood that our rights to external property are the moral means by which we implement our choices, and that without such property rights, no other rights are possible.

The NIOF principle is not the fundation of her political theory. Her derivation and explication of rights provides that foundation. And it is only after rights have been clarified and defined that the NIOF principle can even be properly understood or applied.

Again, Rand was not the first philosopher to put forward such ideas. In the 19th century, the radical individualist Thomas Hodgskin maintained that external property should be viewed, morally speaking, as extensions of one's body. And Rand's approach was at least implicit in the common phrase "property in," which was used throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. Locke spoke of "property in one's person" (and he was not the first to do so), while many advocates of religious freedom, such as James Madison, spoke of "property in one's conscience." Madison even used the term "property in one's time" in his argument against Sabbatarian laws (i.e., laws that restricted activities on Sundays).

According to this approach, to have "property in" something (or "propriety in" something) is to have legitimate moral jurisdiction over something. It is to have a moral claim of ownership -- hence the term "self-ownership" that became popular among 19th century libertarians. Property rights are the conceptual method by which we distinguish mine from thine.

Objectivism rejects the entire notion of "self-ownership" as the basis of the right to life. The acceptance of this idea is one more example of the failure to appreciate the underlying philosophical basis of rights.

Q: Is there a difference between saying that someone is the owner of his own life and saying that someone has a right to his own life?

Peikoff: Ownership is a concept which implies a relationship between you and an external object. There's the owner and the external object you possess. How can you own yourself? Who is the owner that is doing the owning of the owner? This is nonsensical. There is someone over and above me who is me that's owning my body and soul. Ownership is a concept that only applies to external property. You own physical objects that you can use and dispose of. You don't own your own freedom.

This whole idea came into being many generations ago from very bad, frightened conservatives who thought that the safest way to defend individualism was to make it all a matter of property rights. Therefore, individual rights are just a form of property rights. You just own yourself. This was in the day when property rights were considered sacrosanct but life and liberty were thought of as vague abstractions. This is a completely wrong inversion because it makes property the primary instead of the derivative.

Podcast

In this case, I think Peikoff is totally accurate his analysis.

To this analysis, we need to add the meaning of "coercion," or "force," that was explored in considerable detail by Jeremy Bentham and other individualists. Coercion was commonly divided into "constraint" and "restraint." To constrain a person is to compel him to act in a manner that he would not otherwise have chosen. To restrain a person, in contrast, is to use force to prevent a person from acting as he would like.

Rand's comments about actions that qualify as the "indirect use of force" qualify (for the most part) as examples of restraint. To be free to act means to be free to dispose of one's own property (one's own body, labor, and the fruits of one's labor) as one sees fit. Thus if you are in physical possession of something that is my property, and if you take and/or keep this property in your possession without my consent, then you are exercising that form of coercion known as restraint. You are restraining me from exercising control over that which properly belongs to me.

There is absolutely nothing artificial or contrived about this method of analysis. In my experience, those who claim the contrary typically know very little about the history of individualist thought and, moreover, have given relatively little thought or serious consideration to relevant and complex philosophical problems.

I don't think Rand was especially familiar with the history of individualist thought, but she had a remarkable ability to understand the problems and arrive at reasonable solutions in a fairly systematic manner. I once attended a lecture by John Hospers in which he made the same observation. He said that Rand "reinvented a number of wheels," but that she did so in an admirable fashion that displayed a remarkable mind.

Ghs

This strikes me as a very strained analysis, to say the least.

To begin with, it’s a false dichotomy. When you compel someone to act in a way they would not have chosen (i.e., “constraint”), you are also restraining that person from doing those things they normally would have done (“restraint”).

To compel someone to act differently is also to stop someone from acting normally. For instance, fraud, breach of contract and extortion—Rand’s basic examples of “indirect force” in The Nature of Government--are all forms of stealing. Both constraint and restraint apply to acts of stealing. First, you compel someone to do something they would not otherwise have done by choice—you obtain a material good they would not have otherwise given you. At the same time, you prevent them from having that good and using it. The difference is, in the case of both fraud and breach of contract, deception and/or false pretenses are being used. In the case of extortion, a threat of force is being used.

The same is true of other examples of indirect force---e.g., stalking, gang intimidation and bomb threats. You compel the victims to act otherwise than they would have chosen and you prevent them from pursuing their values in the way they normally would have done.

You cannot have it both ways. You cannot argue that intellectual property rights are invalid, and then argue that stealing intellectual property—i.e., stealing something that is not physical—is an initiation of force. If you oppose intellectual property rights, then from your perspective, Rand is sanctioning the initiation of force. It is only from the perspective of someone who agrees with the notion of intellectual property that protecting such rights constitutes retaliatory force.

Rather, I would say that in making a good-faith effort to delineate the particulars of her NIOF principle, Rand made a mistake in regard to IP. The result of this error, if enforced, would result in the initiation of force, in my judgment, but this is an unintended consequence of Rand's position. In no way did she sanction (i.e., approve of, support, or encourage) the initiation of force per se.

Ghs

Rand clearly recognized that intellectual property would involve the initiation of physical force on an existential level. And that is simply one more piece of evidence to show that she did not regard the NIOF principle as representing any sort of guide to the definition of rights.

The delineation of rights must come first, philosophically, before we can assess what constitutes the initiation of force.

Abortion is a good example of how fuzzy your thinking is. A fetus is part of a woman's body, and a woman, as a self-owner, has a right to do with her body whatever she likes. An abortion is not "technically" initiating force. You can initiate force only against another independent moral agent. If you hit youself in the head, you are not initiating force against yourself, technically or in any other way.

This is one instance of why I said that your examples go all over the map and are poorly thought out.

Ghs

So, tell me, George. At what point does the fetus become an "independent moral agent"? Is it okay for the woman to bash the baby's head in moments before bringing it to full term? It's her body. She can do what she wants while it's still part of her body, right? She can use a coat hanger to pulverize the little parasite to her heart's content. Right? That's not "initiating force." As long as the baby is inside her--or even partly inside her--it doesn't have any rights.

Since your thinking is obviously so vastly superior to mine, please use your "basic political principle" to clarify when the fetus can no longer be slaughtered by the mother. You've dispensed with all of my nonobjective, muddled thinking about the conditions of a moral existence. NIOF is all you need. Right?

I would be happy to clarify your muddled thinking on this matter.

The fetus acquires independent rights at the moment when it becomes an independent being, i.e., at the moment of birth. Until that moment, it is part of the woman's body and falls within the jurisdiction of her self-ownership. A woman cannot lose her right to self-ownership merely in virtue of becoming pregant. Pregnancy is not an aggressive act.

You ask: "Is it okay for the woman to bash the baby's head in moments before bringing it to full term?" No, this is not "okay" in a moral sense. On the contrary, I would condemn this as a morally reprehensible act (in most situations). But the woman's action, though highly immoral, would not be unjust.

Ghs

So the baby, moments before delivery, is not yet an "independent moral agent," and can be rightfully killed by the mother. You think that would be "immoral," but "just."

I suppose that's the sort of brilliant, subtle reasoning one would expect from someone who takes the NIOF principle as his starting point in the definition of rights. Thanks for allowing us to bear witness to your genius. From my "muddled" perspective, this is insane.

FYI, not that I think you will give a rip, Ayn Rand questioned the legitimacy of abortion after the first trimester.

"Never mind the vicious nonsense of claiming that an embryo has a 'right to life.' A piece of protoplasm has no rights—and no life in the human sense of the term. One may argue about the later stages of a pregnancy, but the essential issue concerns only the first three months. To equate a potential with an actual, is vicious; to advocate the sacrifice of the latter to the former, is unspeakable.Ayn Rand, The Ayn Rand Letter, A Last Survey--Part I ,Vol. IV, No. 2 November-December 1975

But then, Rand held that rights were an extension of morality, not a license to kill.