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Wednesday
April 13, 2005

Getting Rights Right by Robert James Bidinotto

[Editor's note—I have long held that there is confusion in Rand's writings as to whether "rights" are metaphysical properties of human beings or ethical concepts. It is true that by the time she got round to addressing the question specifically in Galt's Speech she defined them as concepts, yet elsewhere she appeared to be positing rights as ready-made "things" one is born with in the same way one is born with two thumbs & eight fingers. In this post on the SOLOHQ thread, Who's Better Off?, Robert Bidinotto both clears the confusion up & demonstrates its consequences. — Linz]

Should the concept of "rights" be interpreted within a moral context of rational self-interest? Or is it a kind of Kantian "categorical imperative"—a metaphysical commandment that shouts "thou shalt not impose force," without regard to any considerations of rational self-interest? (Read more...)
Discuss this Article (63 messages)

Post 40

Thursday, April 14, 2005 - 11:06am

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Ed, I second Michael. Occasionally but very rarely I will read a very wordy post, but I would have the sense at the start that it was integrated. Your first sentence starts out with a statement that Adler's view contrasts to Bidinotto's. I didn't see where if that was your topic you discussed it in the first few paragraphs. There is another fellow who writes this way (Michael? a pilot?) and I can't read him.

I don't mean to be insulting but to provide frank, helpful reactions.
--Phil

Post 41

Thursday, April 14, 2005 - 11:19am

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Michael and Philip, thanks for the advice.

I freely admit to a "mistake" in application by putting too much in one post (like trying to swallow a 2-lb hamburger!); and will own up to it--from now on ... no more "3000-word'ers!" (from me, at least!).

I'm also sorry to the rest of you, who may've found the post more-distracting-than-beneficial to this discussion of rights.

Point well taken, guys.

Ed

Post 42

Thursday, April 14, 2005 - 2:22pm

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Concerning Adam's post about the lost rights of dictatorial subjects, some ideas occur to me.

First, rights are an ethical principle that regulate the behavior of one toward the life of another. Thus, one should not initiate force against another except in rare emergency situations (the life boat), or in coerced circumstances (defensive war that involves non-combatants or draftees). From my understanding, Bob Bidinotto's statement that "if we do not establish generally recognized moral boundaries for individual action in society, the only alternative will be a society governed by unrestrained power relationships..." describes the route to defending rights. At least, that's the argument for rights that I've thought I understood. I haven't thought about more direct routes to the same destination.

What I find a little confusing is the (misleading?) question: are rights ethical restraints on what Smith must not do concerning the life, freedom, property etc of Jones? Or are rights ethical rules that work both ways--restraining or guiding Smith's choices concerning Jones' life (and Jone's choices concerning Smith's affairs) on the one hand, and on the other hand guiding and regulating Jones' choice if Smith (or Smith's choices if Jones) attempts force or coercion. Having written this out, I think the second alternative describes the purpose of rights: regulating the behavior of both potential aggressor toward some victim, and of potential victim toward the aggressor. (e.g. one must not use force to invade the moral sovereignty of another, but defensive force, subject to the principle of proportionality, is appropriate when attacked.)

But if rights are generalized rules of social behavior as I just tried to describe, then those rights are not so readily extinguished as Adam and other war hawks argue. I agree that in immediate situations where force rules, one may and even should reluctantly kill an innocent as a last desperate resort. But does this mean that the hostage, by virtue of his victimization, has no rights? I don't think so. The ethical norms still generally apply to that hostage, and to every other individual. However, the norms are momentarily suspended for the reluctant defender only by circumstances that immediately threaten his life, or more broadly, his security of rights. If the circumstances appear to so threaten, but then improve enough to allow other remedies, the hostage's rights remain intact. Moreover, the rights of the hostage, from the perspective of that hostage, are never suspended: he should fight for himself.

This is why individuals in dictatorships have rights. The ethical norms apply, unless the captives of a dictator happen to be, for example, military draftees invading one's country. In this case, the draftee is a sort of hostage (and perhaps someone's friendly next-door neighbor) who must be killed, if he won't throw down his rifle. If the invader takes a hostage (your friendly next-door neighbor?), then defending against the invader might require killing the hostage out of desperate circumstances, but not as a casual or routine defensive response.

However, to simply proclaim that the rights of all subjects of all dictatorships are automatically extinguished, thereby justifying the invasion by the United States of not only Iraq, but almost any country that "restricts" its subject's rights, is wrong. These people, wherever they happen to live, do have rights that we must respect, unless the state that rules them directly attacks us.

Post 43

Thursday, April 14, 2005 - 2:28pm

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Robert, machine guns and hostages aside for the moment, I liked the article the minute I read it. I actually wish I had written it. You did a great job. If I had said those things, people would be arguing with me, but your credentials are in place. It is true that it can make a difference on how rights are derived. It may not.

Let us say that rights are intrinsic. They can still be taken from the innocent to achieve a "greater" good -- if you think that way. If rights are contractual, then you can still refuse to violate the contractual rights of innocent hostages -- if that is your value.

In The Fountainhead, speaking of Howard Roark swimming off Wynand's yacht, Wyndand says that no power on Earth could have made him engage the throttle -- but, oh, sure, says Wynand, if you had to save a continent or something, what is the life of one man? Well? Is this an intellectual error from an unintentional second-hander? Did Rand mean that really you could tally enough votes to sacrifice one man? Emotionally, from the "sense of life" perspective, yes, anyone's so-called rights can be set aside, regardless of how they are derived.

That they need not be intrinsic -- though I believe they are -- is a significant claim among Objectivists.

Thank you. I clicked the Red Check for you.
Mike M.

Post 44

Thursday, April 14, 2005 - 2:33pm

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Mike, thank you. I'd like to say more right now, but The Tax Man Cometh.

Post 45

Thursday, April 14, 2005 - 2:37pm

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Mark, you make reasonable points -- and come to a conclusion or two that I have trouble with. But alas, I am being held hostage for the next day or so by the armed minions of the IRS, and as such, cannot be held morally responsible for placing my immediate financial self-preservation above the rightful demands of you and others here for my further Pearls of Wisdom. ;^)

Rain check?

Post 46

Thursday, April 14, 2005 - 2:40pm

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My old buddy John Paul Sherman had a poem about that -

called CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

"April is the cruellest month",
An imposition scarcely bearable,
Whose ides are pealed with a wicked toll,
A sadism most "income-pare-able".

(Edited by robert malcom on 4/14, 2:41pm)

Post 47

Thursday, April 14, 2005 - 2:54pm

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Thanks Robert. I think.

At this time of year, my interpretation of "capital punishment" is that everyone in the capital should be punished.

Post 48

Thursday, April 14, 2005 - 4:39pm

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Robert: “When an aggressor limits your choices to various harms rather than values, no fully moral choice is possible to you… That is the ugliness of force and coercion: it eliminates moral choice. And in the absence of morality, all are reduced to a primitive, often savage quest for simple self-preservation.”

I agree that in the hostage situation one’s moral choices are constrained, but the context here is an ethic that claims “man’s life” as the ethical standard. If ethics is a guide to action, but ethics cannot apply to a particular situation, then any action or non-action is the “right” course.

If there were no standard, your actions would be dictated by whim. You might just as well blow the hostages away or let yourself be blown away. Neither course could be morally condemned.

But you have opted for self-preservation as the preferred course of action. So you seem to be still appealing to “man’s life” as a standard. After all the life you are trying to preserve is the life of a man, including his values, not the life of a brute, even though you may have to use brutish methods to preserve it.

Of course the primary culprit here is the hostage taker. He bears the bulk of responsibility, and has created a cruel dilemma. Nevertheless, people do bring ethics to bear on these sorts of situations, and one would have thought that an ethic based on a standard of man’s life would have something useful or original to say in life-or-death situations.

Jon and Marcus have bitten the bullet and explicitly appealed to Rand’s ethic, to place their individual lives above the lives of the hostages. Consequentially, your outcome is the same as theirs, but you deny that the standard of life has any bearing on your decision. Yet you would still act to preserve your life. Why?

Brendan

Post 49

Thursday, April 14, 2005 - 6:21pm

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Brendan (post 48) writes:

If there were no standard, your actions would be dictated by whim. You might just as well blow the hostages away or let yourself be blown away. Neither course could be morally condemned. But you have opted for self-preservation as the preferred course of action. So you seem to be still appealing to “man’s life” as a standard.

But there are two aspects of Rand's self-interest ethics. The moral standard is only one. The other is the moral purpose. The moral standard is "Man's life." But the moral purpose of that standard is "one's own life."

And the latter has ethical primacy.

Rand described one's own life as the ultimate moral end (the highest value). Since a life can't be sustained for long arbitrarily, the standard "Man's life" serves as a basis for defining the proper means to that end, i. e., virtues.

Only by reference to the ultimate moral purpose -- your own life -- does the issue of proper value-choices arise; and only when it's possible to freely, rationally pursue values that sustain your own life, does the question of a proper moral standard arise.

Put another way: Only in the context of preserving your own life does the need for a moral standard arise. It doesn't have any purpose in and of itself.

Normally, the means and their end, the virtues and their ultimate value, the standard and its purpose, are in harmony. But force can sever them -- even pit them against each other. For example, by ignoring an aggressor's orders and still trying to act "virtuously" at the point of his gun, you can lose your ultimate "value," your life. So you are forced to make a choice: virtue or value?

Again, the latter has ethical primacy.

The coercive situations we're discussing all deprive you of the freedom to preserve your own life virtuously, i. e., by acting consistently according to the standard of your long-term well-being and happiness. But that does not necessarily mean coercive circumstances always deprive you of any means to preserve your life and some important values. People can and do survive under duress, even in concentration camps. But they can't do so by continuing their careers, hobbies, relationships and businesses as usual.

Coercion shortens the time-frame of your self-interested calculations, from life-long flourishing to immediate survival. The moral standard (long-term "flourishing," if you will) is rendered impossible; but your purpose (your basic survival) may still be possible; and by focusing on surviving, and on preserving your highest values, you may be able to endure until you can resume life under the proper conditions for full, long-term flourishing.

Brendan's statement starts one link down the moral chain: with the standard, rather than its purpose. Because it neglects the ultimate value which that moral standard is to serve -- your own life -- it erroneously concludes that under coercion, there's no "good" purpose to acting one way or another, that any whimsical course is as "good" as any other.

But if you still retain some freedom to improve your chances of surviving, at least that much of morality remains. No, it is not the morality or life fully proper to Man; but with some shred of freedom you may still find a way to return to the morality and life proper to Man.

Likewise, having a shred of remaining freedom may also mean that you still bear some remnant of moral responsibility for your actions.

Coercive circumstances are usually matters of degrees -- ranging from being coerced to pay taxes or serve on a jury, to being immobilized in a cell or straitjacket, or having a gun pointed to your head. But does facing a minor degree of coercion absolve you of all moral responsibility? Does anyone truly believe that because Bidinotto lives in a nation that forces him to pay taxes, "morality no longer exists," and he therefore has the right to go out and start shooting people, lying, stealing, etc.? No. Why? Because while his freedom is impaired, it is not obliterated: many life-serving values and alternatives remain open to him. It therefore would be utterly immoral for Bidinotto to use that partly coercive context as a carte blanche to amorality.

If, under duress, you still possess enough freedom of action to avoid harming others (without getting yourself or your loved ones seriously harmed in the process), it would then be immoral to gratuitously harm those others. For example, it would be immoral for police to simply blow up a house where a kidnapper is holding a hostage. It would be immoral for me to stop a thief who stole my wallet by shooting at him as he escapes into a crowd of innocents. It would be immoral for me to shoot a tax collector, an official of a regulatory agency or some drunk merely trying to push me around. In none of these cases is there an immediate mortal threat; in none of them am I deprived of all other options save the use of deadly force.

With freedom of action comes the responsibility to use that freedom morally. So while we can generalize that "morality ends at the point of a gun," we must also realize that there are degrees of coercive threat, degrees of personal freedom in the face of that threat -- and therefore degrees of moral responsibility in how we address that threat.

(Edited by Robert Bidinotto on 4/14, 6:29pm)

Post 50

Thursday, April 14, 2005 - 9:20pm

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I liked the long post presenting Mortimer Adler ideas about rights. I think it was a good introduction to Adler's approach. Some readers may be interested in Adler's book, "We Hold These Truths", where there is a similar discussion about rights and other ideas related to the U.S. constitution.

Post 51

Friday, April 15, 2005 - 12:22am

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At this time of year, my interpretation of "capital punishment" is that everyone in the capital should be punished.

Robert,

Given that April 15th is, for me, the most violent day of the year (and I do not mean this lightheartedly), I second your interpretation. Though I wouldn't put it quite so kindly.

But nevermind.

Post 52

Friday, April 15, 2005 - 11:07am

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Bob, your post to Brendan is outstanding. I appreciate your careful analysis of the hierarchy of concepts that comprise morality, and I was happy to read your commentary about degrees of freedom and the ethical bounds to defensive or retaliatory force. Bravo, man!

Our disagreement about the Iraq war, and probably other wars in American history, partly reflect our different understanding of the history of those events. However, we probably also differ in our theories about what actions are appropropriate to government. I see government as an organization that, to respect individual rights, must act in ways consistent with voluntary association. As such, it is necessarily limited to actions consistent with what its clients (citizens) are willing to finance voluntarily. Such voluntary association and financing would clearly eliminate the possibility of launching coercive crusades to "uphold the good".

You may see government as a necessary and benevolent institution of coercion. You might not call it coercion, since you think a state is integral to the very conception of individual rights; if so, the establishment and maintenance of a state would by definition not violate anyone's rights.
And so you might regard various government activities that wield coercion or offensive force as necessary to the pursuit of individual self interest. As you know, I consider such activities to be inconsistent with the requirements of long-range self interest. Thinking about and trying to resolve such issues ought to be interesting.

However, setting aside our differences about the nature of government, I think that a big source of confusion and disagreement about all of this flows from false history that the Left uses to propaganize on behalf of its goal of social reconstruction. Most Americans have innocently absorbed the Left's history of the Second World War, for example. This is not a matter of my attempting to rewrite history; it's simply a matter of recognizing undisputed facts that have always gotten the silent treatment from court historians. But World War II, as depicted in orthodox history, serves as a "role model" for appropriate American foreign policy, and those that embrace it unconsciously tend to uphold the altrusim and coercive paternalism of the Left as concerns foreign policy.

Thanks again for your great posts about rights.

Post 53

Friday, April 15, 2005 - 11:34am

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Thank you very much, Mark. I may try soon to pull my various posts together into a more comprehensive essay for Free Radical.

I think you're probably right about our areas of agreement and disagreement. For now, looming deadlines at work (I DID finish my taxes this morning!) make it impossible for me to explore all that. Let me get back to it soon.

Better yet, if you get east, toward DC/Baltimore, let me know.

BTW, I'll be flying into Missoula and speaking at the U. of Montana for Andrew Bissell's campus club on the evening of May 6; topic: Environmentalism. If you are in the neighborhood (and I know that Montana is a B - I - G neighborhood), drop in and maybe we can kick things around over drinks.

Post 54

Friday, April 15, 2005 - 12:38pm

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Robert,

Brilliant again as usual. Especially the distinction between moral standard and moral purpose.

Finally, with this purpose thing, I get to a point where I can state a slight difference. But I think this will be more of a slant difference than an essence disagreement.

What you call "purpose" I call "attribute" or "characteristic." This comes from starting by simply looking at the living being and seeing what exists.

There is an amazing little book I came across a few years ago while translating for a multinational consulting firm in Brazil, The Living Company by Arie de Geus. He compares companies to living organizations in an extremely convincing manner. But before doing this, he analyzes living beings. His starting point is that all living beings have two basic characteristics: (1) they try to extend their lives for as long as possible, and (2) they strive to fulfil their potential.

This book, by the way, has a great deal of insight that could be applied to Objectivism and should be dealt with from an Objectivist viewpoint (especially ideas on learning, memory, flocking - or epistemology and politics if you will - etc.)

This is not the place to go into a discussion of fulfilling potential. But I do want to point out that I do not consider a living being's quest for survival to be a moral anything. It is merely something that it does - it is an essential part of the living being. It is from survival that all values (and then later, morality) grow. Not the other way around.

I know this sounds like nitpicking, but there it is. I would appreciate your magnificent brain wrapping around this a little (shit, I know that comment will make an impossibly swelled head get worse!).

I gave you another well deserved sanction - as you so hungrily hinted at in another thread. (SOLO is starting to foster such a curious breed of sanction whores...)

btw - This whole topic deserves the full article treatment you mention. But may I suggest making it a book later too? This issue, especially your treatment of it, is way too important for just an article.

Michael

Post 55

Friday, April 15, 2005 - 12:51pm

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Thanks, Michael. A book? Yeah. Time permitting.

It never seems to...

Post 56

Friday, April 15, 2005 - 3:25pm

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Robert: Regarding your post 49, I disagree with it in part. I do agree that the purpose of ethics is for an individual's life, and that one form of error is to forget this and dogmatically adhere to ethics even when it undercuts man's life. But you accept the basic error here and just take the opposite but still wrong approach.

One's life does not have "primacy" over ethics, in the sense that it can be an either/or choice between them and that if they are in conflict you should choose your life. Other ethical systems have this very real conflict built into them between being ethical and serving your own life, but not Objectivist ethics. Man qua individual is the *purpose* of ethics - if so then how could ethics ever conflict with his life?

Your divorcing of ethics from the purpose of ethics in coercive situations unintentionally undercuts ethics at its root, for *all* situations: in *any* situation, whether coercive or not, you are not supposed to look at the ethical system as a dogmatic prescription, but as a contextually applied set of principles. The implication of what you said is that ethics is merely a system of rules, and when the rules don't work we toss ethics out the window.

I think the real issue for these coercive situations is that it creates complication in applying ethics that's not usually accounted for in their original formulation. If ethics were explicitly formulated for every perverse context that could come up, it'd look like the US tax code. You aren't supposed to be using it like that in the first place. You're supposed to use the same basic method (epistemology) and *apply* (not throw out because it doesn't have "primacy") ethical principles to your unique circumstance.

Ayn Rand gave an example of doing this in her article "Tax Credits for Education". I think she's done it in several other places but I don't recall them at the moment. What she does here is not throw out Objectivist ethics because the situation is perfect, she *applies* Objectivist ethics to the non-ideal context.

Post 57

Friday, April 15, 2005 - 7:51pm

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Shayne writes:

One's life does not have "primacy" over ethics, in the sense that it can be an either/or choice between them and that if they are in conflict you should choose your life. Other ethical systems have this very real conflict built into them between being ethical and serving your own life, but not Objectivist ethics. Man qua individual is the *purpose* of ethics - if so then how could ethics ever conflict with his life?

We have a different perspective over the meaning of "purpose."

The "purpose" of ethics is one's own life. Not "man qua individual" -- that's an abstraction. It's you. Your life. Your happiness.

The "qua" is all about the moral standard of ethics, not its purpose.

Post 58

Friday, April 15, 2005 - 8:17pm

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Robert writes:

The "purpose" of ethics is one's own life.

I agree with that. And, I still disagree with you.

Post 59

Friday, April 15, 2005 - 11:09pm

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Robert: “But there are two aspects of Rand's self-interest ethics. The moral standard is only one. The other is the moral purpose. The moral standard is "Man's life." But the moral purpose of that standard is "one's own life."
And the latter has ethical primacy.”

Robert, I appreciate your comprehensive reply to my post. I agree with your general point that our actions take place within various constraints, that there is no such thing as perfect freedom of action, but rather degrees of freedom and coercion.

In regard to the way the standard and purpose apply in extreme situations, you say that moral purpose – “ones own life” -- has primacy over the standard of value, and when the two are in conflict, the former prevails.

I don’t think this resolves the issue, for several reasons. Two important ones are:

1) The standard as “man’s life”. On Rand’s epistemology, the generic term “man” subsumes or means – or at least should mean – something like “all existing men”, or “each existing man”. Whichever meaning is taken, the phrase “man’s life” therefore subsumes all human lives, ie, your life, my life, and of course the lives of the hostages in question. But in that case, the standard subsumes the purpose, and it’s not clear why the purpose should have ethically primacy over the standard.

2) Even if one were able to establish the ethical primacy of purpose, this takes us back to the original question: whose purpose, that is, whose life, takes precedence? If moral purpose is taken to mean “one’s own life”, who does the “one” refer to, you or each of the hostages, and why?

Brendan