Altruism

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

My sympathetic interpretation of what's driving you to try to re-invent a wheel which isn't broken (mixing metaphors) is that:

(1) you're deeply concerned for the well-being of children;

(2) you mistakenly believe that there could be some theory of rights which would safeguard the well-being of all children (at least within this country);

(3) you don't understand that fully consistent classic-Enlightenment (CCE)* rights theory would produce by far the best results for children as well as for adults. Yes, there could be children who "fell by the wayside," so to speak, and weren't taken care of, but this would be the case with any system and would happen with significantly less frequency if CCE were well and widely understood and implemented.

But, suppose, I've hypothesized, you truly don't understand the benefits to children of CCE; suppose that, instead, you think, because of the altercations over the legalities in regard to the abandoned-child-in-the-wilderness scene, that a lot of children would go hungry with a CCE approach. This could explain your desire to come up with a different approach.

If the above hypothesis doesn't explain what's driving you, I can only think of alternate non-flattering hypotheses.

(note, it was an hypothesis, singular, not plural)

Ellen,

You call it one hypothesis, but given the richness of detail with which you adorn the inner workings of my head, it certainly sounds like more than one.

Michael

[merjet]

For the record, the definitional problems I have written about do exist and are not false.

As I stated earlier, they are not being dealt with. The discussions I have read so far from those who are at odds with me (excepting Laure) jump over fundamental definitions and go straight into rights.

It all starts with human nature.

Otherwise, rocks and cockroaches have negative rights, too.

Michael

Show us a finished product. Until you do, you're only pitching vaporware and slamming the competition.

Edited April 3, 2008 by Merlin Jetton

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

'Natural rights' has a very deep history. It did not commence with Rand. Hugo Grotius, John Locke and Thomas Paine were the pioneers. "18th century juristic thought, down to Kant, holds four propositions: 1. There are natural rights demonstrable by reason. These rights are eternal and absolute. They are valid for all men in all times and in all places. 2. Natural law is a body of rules, ascertainable by reason, which perfectly secures all of these natural rights. 3. The state exists only to secure men in these natural rights. 4. Positive law is the means by which the state performs this function, and it is obligatory only so far as it conforms to natural law." (Pound, 27 Harv. L. Rev., 616)

Rousseau, Hobbes, and Kant trashed 'natural rights' in favor of social contract theory. Okay, enuf history.

Wolf,

I haven't discussed the classical idea of natural rights much, but I do have some things sketched for an essay I was working on a while back. I didn't hear about natural rights first on an Objectivist discussion forum. I first came across the terms natural law and natural rights (and explanation) years ago in a book by Robert Ringer called Restoring the American Dream. This is what primed my antenna, so to speak, over the years whenever I came across discussions of rights. And I started picking up bits and pieces from different sources (including Brazilian law, which I had translated a lot).

Later, when I started posting on the old SoloHQ, I got into a nasty scrap because I stated that rights were social conventions. At that time I was freshly arrived from Brazil and was sick of translating (I did about 35,000 pages in little over a decade.) One word that is constantly used in Portuguese for treaty or contract is "convenção" (convention), so that was the meaning I had in mind when I came up with the term, "social convention." There was a huge protest at the time.

I didn't understand how people could remove a social code of values from the idea of rights (deriving this terminology from the Objectivist description of ethics being a "code of values"), but I read many affirmations that rights existed without society. The word inalienable kept coming up in that discussion, as it has ever since.

This led me to start looking into the source. I started with John Locke. I just now looked and can't find my notes, so I have to wing it with Google for a bit. The following is merely surface compared to what I have already done. In the Second Treatise of Civil Government, Item No. 6, Locke stated:

The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions: for men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent, and infinitely wise maker; all the servants of one sovereign master, sent into the world by his order, and about his business; they are his property, whose workmanship they are, made to last during his, not one another's pleasure: and being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community of nature, there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us, that may authorize us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one another's uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures are for our's.

There are other passages where this kind of thing is stated or insinuated and it started becoming clear to me that natural rights did not come into being for Locke as an extension of human nature, but instead as a revolt against the divine right of kings.

Locke's argument, if compared to the divine right of kings, can be boiled down to the following: God could not have granted kings a divine right because He gave equal rights to all men through His creation of Nature as a yardstick for measuring them.

Thus, rights, to take Locke's classical position forth a bit, are inalienable, not because they derive from man's nature, but because God gave them to man. No one man has the power to take away from mankind what God gave to all men through Nature. Or better yet, whoever dares to attempt this is evil, not because he violate man's nature, but because he defies the will of God.

When I came to that understanding, I suddenly saw where the intrinsic view of rights came from and why some people argued that rights are integral components of human beings, sort of like arms and legs. I also understood why so many people were able to dismiss a social context. It is ironic that many of these people are atheists, yet the grounds for their concept of rights is about as religious as it gets.

I really need to resume this research. I was having a lot of fun with it.

Incidentally, here is my No. 1 all time favorite quote from the ancients on the nature of society and government, although the quote insinuates rights but does not mention them. The passage is a little later than Locke. It is by Thomas Paine from Common Sense.

Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices.

It just occurred to me on looking this over once again that Paine's formulation of positive and negative influence society has on man is the exact opposite use of the words with respect to what positive and negative rights normally mean.

Also, we may disagree with Paine's view of human nature, but he definitely based his concept of government squarely on the wickedness he felt was inherent in man's nature. The next paragraph yields two other gems from him that I always got a kick out of. First, the inherent nature of government:

Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil in its worst state an intolerable one...

Next, the moral basis of taxation:

For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform, and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him out of two evils to choose the least.

Anyway, back to the grind. This detour was a pleasurable time-out.

Michael

[merjet]

Locke's argument, if compared to the divine right of kings, can be boiled down to the following: God could not have granted kings a divine right because He gave equal rights to all men through His creation of Nature as a yardstick for measuring them.

Thus, rights, to take Locke's classical position forth a bit, are inalienable, not because they derive from man's nature, but because God gave them to man. No one man has the power to take away from mankind what God gave to all men through Nature. Or better yet, whoever dares to attempt this is evil, not because he violate man's nature, but because he defies the will of God.

Thus, rights, to take Locke's classical position forth a bit, are inalienable, not because they derive from man's nature, but because God gave them to man. No one man has the power to take away from mankind what God gave to all men through Nature. Or better yet, whoever dares to attempt this is evil, not because he violate man's nature, but because he defies the will of God.

What's up? Do you read a long sentence and completely forget about the first third of it by the time you get to end?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

What's up? Do you read a long sentence and completely forget about the first third of it by the time you get to end?

No.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Merlin,

Correct me if I am wrong, but I am starting to discern in your comments that you do not believe metaphysics to be the broadest conceptual integration for concept formation.

For instance, one can mention the existence of God (a HUGE metaphysical claim) as the creator of Nature, then later forget about it when discussing Nature and exclude it from the concept.

Is that correct? Or are you just in a snarky mood these days?

Michael

[Jonathan]

J, our houseguest left some hours ago. I signed on to try to answer your posts on this thread. I see that meanwhile Michael has started a thread pertaining to a particular recent news story:

SEE.

Judging from your saying that you hadn't been much following earlier discussions of the child-in-the-wilderness issue, I'm thinking that probably the way your and my communicating went off here is because of your seeing as upermost the person-in-an-emergency part of the scene whereas what Michael's opponents on all the threads so far have been most concerned about is his viewing the scene in terms of what he sees as the child's "right to life" -- by which he means, though he might not like this bald a statement, the child's "right" to be kept alive by someone, if not by the child's parents then by someone else. I request, before you and I debate further, that you read MSK's posts on this particular thread and the posts so far (through my post, #5) on the linked thread to see if you can understand from those why some of us find Michael's views on the subject confused.

Ellen

___

E,

Sorry for the delay in responding. I've been busy.

I didn't think that you and I were having trouble communicating. If I've been misunderstood, let me be clear in saying that I come from a negative rights perspective. I'm not particularly interested in joining the debate on the rights of babies or how much care they're entitled to and from whom. Not that I hate babies or anything, I'm just not interested at this point in joining that aspect of the conversation. My reason for entering this discussion was only to see if there might be any exceptions to the negative rights views held by others. I wanted to see where people draw the line.

In my last post I asked if people would oppose the idea that a person who refused to report an abandoned babe in the wilderness should be charged with being a de facto accessory to the crime. If there is nothing that government can rightfully mandate that I must do, and if government should be limited to enforcing what people must not do, then am I correct in assuming that, in a purely negative rights-based legal system, I would not be considered an accessory to, say, a bank heist if I was discovered to have silently observed my friends planning and practicing for the heist, and that I watched them carry out the crime and I knew where they were going to stash the loot, but I neither took part in the robbery, assisted my friends in any way, nor reported what I knew to the authorities?

In a society based purely on negative rights, should there be any circumstances in which a person who has not initiated force against others would be held legally accountable if he refused to take the positive action of becoming an informant or witness against those he knew to have violated the rights of others?

J

[Ellen Stuttle]

Ellen,

Where have I given motives, other than speculating on a blind spot?

Are you actually unaware of how often you attribute motives? There was an example just in the post to which I replied. When I get back from the conference, I'll compile a list -- which will be long though incomplete (complete would be very long) -- of examples from this thread alone.

Ellen

___

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Ellen,

I will be interested. I normally discuss behavior, not motives. I normally notice people do stuff. Why is another issue. (All right, I called Bob K lonely, also.)

Michael

[Wolf DeVoon]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - About one of every 43 U.S. infants is physically abused or neglected annually, and those babies are especially at risk in the first week of their lives, U.S. health officials said on Thursday. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in its first report on maltreatment of babies up to age 1 that 91,278 of them were physically abused or neglected in 2006. Other new government figures showed that 499 babies up to age 1 were killed in maltreatment cases in 2006.

About a third of the maltreated infants -- 29,881 -- were abused or neglected before they were 1 week old, mostly during their first four days, the CDC said. Many of those cases may be linked to maternal drug use, the CDC said. Physical abuse included beating, kicking, biting, burning and shaking, and neglect included abandonment, maternal drug use or failing to meet basic needs like housing, food, clothing and access to medical care, according to the report.

The findings were particularly troubling because children who suffer such abuse tend to go on to have numerous health and other problems, officials said. "The findings do demonstrate a clear pattern of early neglect and physical abuse that is largely preventable," Ileana Arias, who heads injury prevention efforts at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told reporters.

B)

[merjet]

Correct me if I am wrong, but I am starting to discern in your comments that you do not believe metaphysics to be the broadest conceptual integration for concept formation.

You are wrong.

For instance, one can mention the existence of God (a HUGE metaphysical claim) as the creator of Nature, then later forget about it when discussing Nature and exclude it from the concept.

Locke was pretty much a deist. Yes, one can describe the nature of something, learned by perception and reason, and disregard from where it ultimately came. Locke did not rely on innate ideas or revelation from God for his ideas about man's nature and society, and thus rights. Isaac Newton developed a physical theory in which God plays no part, even though he was very religious.

I believe one should also give some weight to what it was like living when Locke did.

Or are you just in a snarky mood these days?

You bring it out, such as in #302 by completely disregarding and even contradicting the first third of Locke's long sentence. There is also much about the state of nature preceding and after the quote you snipped from Locke which is not about God. There is nothing in your description about natural law accessible by reason; it's all about God. Would you do a similar job on Newton's physics?

If you want to make personality barbs, keep it up or say so. I can do it, too. But I won't play for long.

Edited April 4, 2008 by Merlin Jetton

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Merlin,

You are free to do whatever you wish. It's your life, not mine. Just as mine is mine, not yours and I will do as I please.

I agree that a concept can start one place and be modified as time goes on. That is not the issue I was discussing.

To go on a tangent, Locke obviously (to me) distanced God from man by going through Nature as His system of communication in order to clip the wings of God's messengers on earth, so to speak. If there ever was a vindication in classical literature of Rand's Attila, Witchdoctor, Producer and Intellectual idea of the major categories of world movers, this is one strong indication that the ancients saw the same thing Rand did, albeit within the context of the times. They knew that to clip the wings of dictators, they needed to clip the wings of his moral base, and if any man said he was a spokesman of God with a direct channel to the real reality, it was deuces wild (to use Rand' colorful metaphor). But that is another issue.

I was (and still am) discussing the concept of rights from the ground up according to Objectivist concept formation. Unless God is specifically excluded from a concept, He continues in it. That doesn't mean just saying, "He doesn't exist, so there," either. If you exclude a fundamental premise from a concept, for the concept to be logically correct within the ITOE concept formation system, all conclusions based on that premise also have to be discarded. Those parts need to be reintegrated according to the new premise. This is what I have been trying to examine.

This approach qua approach is what I consider to be part of Rand's genius. She threw out everything and did it all from the ground up again. She didn't ask which rights man should have at the beginning. She didn't even ask if rights exist. She went to the core and asked what values are and why man needs them. Her concept of rights does not include God in any of its integrations. She reintegrated everything from the new premise of axiomatic concepts.

Down there is where I am roaming about intellectually. I think excluding children from the concept of human nature value-wise is a mistake on a premise level. Children are human beings and this state applies to all human beings. The concept "adult" is not the equivalent of the concept "human being." Adult is one stage in human being's life, just as infant is. So if you discuss what values are and why man needs them, you also have to include what values are and why children need them. You cannot exclude that. Otherwise, you have to say, "what values are and why adults need them." And that only becomes a universal premise for adults, not for human beings in general.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

If you want to make personality barbs, keep it up or say so. I can do it, too. But I won't play for long.

What's up? Do you read a long sentence and completely forget about the first third of it by the time you get to end?

You are asking if I quoted a passage and forgot a part of it at the time I quoted it? Like an idiot who does not understand what he is saying on an elementary level, or better yet, a person with Alzheimer's disease?

Heh.

If that isn't a personality barb in drag, I don't know what is.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

If you want to make personality barbs, keep it up or say so. I can do it, too. But I won't play for long.

What's up? Do you read a long sentence and completely forget about the first third of it by the time you get to end?

You are asking if I quoted a passage and forgot a part of it at the time I quoted it? Like an idiot who does not understand what he is saying on an elementary level, or better yet, a person with Alzheimer's disease?

Heh.

If that isn't a personality barb in drag, I don't know what is.

Michael

"Idiot" or "Alzheimer's disease." So hard to choose. So hard ...

Perhaps the law of excluded middle applies here.

In any case, it's a conumdrum.

Michael 1, Merlin 0. (Only applies to the point in question. No time to review the other posts. When I get back from my orgy this weekend and the round-the-world cruise I'm going to take, I'll go back and check.)

Next!

--Brant

[merjet]

If that isn't a personality barb in drag, I don't know what is.

To me at the time it was a barb, but not a personality barb. It was an admittedly terse way of saying you took one sentence from Locke and then greatly misrepresented him in #302 (the part I quoted in #303), as I further explained in #310.

In #311 you say Rand "threw out everything and did it all from the ground up again." If you mean all she rebuilt was new, I disagree. She adopted much from the Founding Fathers, who adopted much from Locke. Also, it's quite easy to start with Locke's view of rights, cut out the parts about God, and leave most of the rest intact.

You might reply that Rand said much more about productivity than Locke did. But Locke lived before the Industrial Revolution. I can't recall where said it nor exactly what she said, but it was something like she could not have arrived at her ethical philosophy before the Industrial Revolution.

[Brant Gaede]

For those interested in the history of rights beyond the theorectical into the gritty practical, my grandfather, Irving Brant, wrote a very good book in the 1960s, "The Bill of Rights, It's Origins and Meaning." It's available occasionally on Amazon as a used book. It's also available on www.Questia.com, type "Bill of Rights" into the search function.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Merlin,

Here is my last try.

I am discussing the integration of a concept, not history.

Metaphysics is metaphysics in all times. Whether God exists or not is a metaphysical issue back throughout all of history, now, and forever into the future.

All concepts are based on metaphysical identifications and integrations at root, regardless of when they are or were made.

Michael

[merjet]

Here is my last try.

Last try at what? That was about as informative as 'A is A'.

Brant, you neglected to score -5 for Michael's misrepresentation.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Merlin,

Let's put it this way. Translating our communication:

Me: The metaphysical part of the concept is (yada, yada yada)...

You: I don't see a problem. The history is (yada, yada yada)...

You are right. That kind of communication is never informative. Especially if you insist on using that kind of response.

I will insist on keeping to what I proposed, at least for now: i.e., the metaphysical part of the concept. That's where the problem is. Not the history. History is only good to see where it came from, not what it is.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Concepts don't have metaphysical parts.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Brant,

I was talking about the component of concepts made up of abstractions on a metaphysical level.

Existence is one. Identity is another. And so on.

These abstractions are components of all concepts.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Michael,

Abstractions don't have metaphysical levels. They have metaphysical referents. Sometimes you have to go through other abstractions to reach them.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Brant,

Talk to Rand about it. She's the one who said one branch of philosophy rests on the other and that axiomatic concepts are the broadest of all abstractions. I can find plenty of quotes if you like. Measurement is a fundamental part of Rand's theory of concept formation. (It is the main tool she proposes to effect the differentiation and integration of referents in the abstraction process.)

I am confused by what you mean when you say "metaphysical levels" as a plural. There is only one level (the broadest) where abstractions can said to be predominantly metaphysical. After that comes the epistemological level. Then ethical, then political.

Obviously these are not boxes, but categories of scope of abstraction with respect to the quantity of types of referents included. But there are all kinds of crossovers. I visualize moving from one category (i.e., branch of philosophy) to another as similar to going from one place to another underwater. I do not see it as crossing a clearcut line from one place, where the rules are defined one way, to another where they change in a rigid manner. Also, some things cannot be eliminated, so categorization does not always mean exclusion. For instance, it is OK to imagine metaphysical referents without awareness, but the fact is you need awareness to do that, so there is an automatic flow between metaphysics and epistemology that you cannot eliminate right there. Incidentally, this is one of the reasons I consider the fundamental axiomatic concepts to be more like facets of the same gemstone than separate entity-like categories.

Still, they are extremely useful for identification and discovering where the premises are in a concept.

The higher you go, the narrower the scope. If you eliminate the broader base underneath, you get a floating abstraction not connected to reality. For instance, with any concept you use, if you claim that existence does not exist and this notion is part of that concept, you have made a floating abstraction. This is because the metaphysical abstraction (existence) was severed from it.

If you do the contrary, eliminate a narrower consideration, you have merely stopped focusing on it to differentiate and/or group it. You thereby un-integrate the abstraction.

You can only differentiate and integrate something if it exists in the first place, has identity, etc.

That's how I learned it. Do you have something else in mind that maybe I am not seeing?

Michael

[merjet]

I will insist on keeping to what I proposed, at least for now: i.e., the metaphysical part of the concept. That's where the problem is. Not the history. History is only good to see where it came from, not what it is.

Speaking of metaphysics and history, here is a little piece of history about metaphysics.

http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/ArticleDi...339_7.shtml#158

At the time MSK was buddy-buddy with Lindsay Perigo, his favorite words were "horseshit" and "horseshitter", and he supported a "primacy of consciousness" view of logic. He has improved somewhat since then.

Edited April 5, 2008 by Merlin Jetton

[Brant Gaede]

I conrfess to being lucid.

--Brant