Vera, you wrote,

I understand, and agree, with your point that you don't have to sacrifice your life in vain (if it were me or the bunny my ethic vegetarianism would go out the window), however fully understanding such dire circumstances and their consequences is tricky. Knowing ahead of time that other life depended on my initiating force I'd forego the option to save my own life. Not knowing, I might accept the possibility of harm done to others, including endangering their life through my actions, but I'd have a hell of a lousy conscience and would probably offer my own life, whatever it's productiveness is worth to the damaged party, as recompense for damages incurred (the whole 'taking responsibility for one's actions' part - in full).

In that case, I don't think you're an egoist, because in a conflict of interest, you would value the lives of others above your own.  What makes a free society so ideal is that under normal conditions, there are no conflicts of interest, so that it's in my interest to respect your rights, and it's in your interests to respect mine.

Bill,

In that case, I don't think you're an egoist, because in a conflict of interest, you would value the lives of others above your own.

That's not necessarily the case. In such a circumstance the person might not know, or even care about the others. Instead, they might refuse to live as a thief or murderer.  They value the person they are, the principles they live by, and a lifelong refusal to give in to circumstances no matter how tempting.  They may well be someone who lives by absolutes. Their belief might be that there is no difference in principle between making an ethical compromise because it appears certain their life hangs in the balance, than to make a compromise where ten dollars hangs in the balance.  They have made a deal with themselves that they won't go back on - the deal is that they will do whatever they want, as aggressively as they want, but only within the rules of not initiating force, or using theft or fraud. They refuse to act against the principles they hold because they hold those principles, regardless of current circumstances.

Someone can argue that they aren't being consistent with the standard of value being one's life. One could argue that they are making a logical error along the way.  But to say that they value the lives of others above their own isn't necessarily the case.

Bill,

in case of the pharmacy I made preparations to save my own life and you stole those preparations endangering my life intentionally. In case of the kidney-donor you persuaded him - that's his choice and I abide by it. If however your doctor abducts the donor so he can transplant his kidney to you instead of me as the intended recipient because you bribed him, then you intentionally threaten my life.

That's initiation of force. Initiating force to save your own life (or life style or life goals or however far you want to break it down) has been the excuse of every conflict ever fought over: "I could not help it - I had to, to save my own ... (fill in the blank)". Initiating force, even to save my life, can never be in my own best interest - it would give the same right to every other individual to do the same to me and we're back to the law of the jungle: kill or die. Which is why I'd be angry with you ;)

Valuing my own life implies (for me) accepting that others value their's just as much and it is not my moral right to take their value by force just to save mine.

You can't have the killing of an innocent person come up as justified and have words still make sense.

'collateral damage'

I'm still amazed how easily that word is used these days ...

Steve,

There are innocents among them but they are the victims of their own government's immoral initiation of force. The alternative would be for pacificist behavior on a national level and that is unjustifiable and just plain doesn't make any sense.

It is easy to say that I as a German am a victim of my own government. I did not chose this government, I was not even given a choice to relinquish their ownership of my citizen status. I can only trade that ownership for another owner (the old discussion of nation-free citizen).

But, clearly, Pacificism is not a viable answer - not for an individual, and not for a nation.

"Stell Dir vor es gibt Krieg und keiner geht hin" (imagine there's a war and no one goes there)

If you make it a personal, individual choice of each and every single human, then it would most certainly make sense. However in our 'reality' that is defined by countries, ethnicities, religions, whatever groups, I do admit it is 'impractical' - nobody but me (and a few others) would agree.

If one views a violent struggles of a free nation against, say Hitler's Germany, then doesn't the ultimate value lie with those that are fighting for freedom win, and those fighting for Nazi Germany lose?

For the sake of this argument I'd even go so far as to ask: is it worth my life to rid Germany of Hitler? I'm not even given that choice as an individual - that value is dictated to me and I have to bear the consequences of reaching that value. If I were to use Bill's argument 'my life above all else', then my life would most certainly be above the freedom of Germany or above the destruction of Hitler.

I think that the heart of the resolution of this is in the application of human nature in logically deriving the standard of value... and it gets interesting trying to juggle abstractions that broad without losing a context along the way.

I've had the same 'war-discussion' with Joe many years ago. From an individualistic point-of-view I'd still argue that if every nation get's dissolved today, no more government armies (who needs a 600 billion dollar per year defense?), no more armies selling weapons to terrorists (no more strategic, tactical, political purposes), no more scientists inventing new arms for governments (who'd pay for it?), I think I as an individual could handle all forms of force initiated against me. And those arms still being invented and sold would be available to me, too. And most likely more affordable to me than to some terrorist in a skirt or some dictator with no followers to feed him.

Of course as you so rightly point out: juggling these abstractions (no matter how 'right') with the context of our present reality is a no-brainer: it does not work. So in this context you could easily argue my individualistic approach is nonsense if it only works as long as everybody becomes an individual. It will not happen and is thus only wishful thinking.

I hope that at least some of this is intellible.  It is very densely packed, and deserves a much longer presentation... replete with example.  Oh well.

I have to admit I probably missed a lot in there ... sorry. Maybe we can take this discussion to another thread?

If I were to simplify my own approach: I have morality on my side, but reality is against me. They have reality on their side, but struggle with the morality of their actions, trying to justify them. However I've yet to see a justification for war that claims innocent lives. If war was fought only between the armies of those countries, limited only to territory set aside for such disputes, then we might have a basis to continue arguing ... if that's not again just wishful thinking on my side ;)

Steve,

dissolution of army and government is not equal to dissolution of law - and it is still a far cry from anarchy (not falling for that old scarecrow ;). My point is that collateral damage is caused by armies and governments and could be prevented by individualistic law. I tried explaining with my 'limited warfare' example.

Of course HomoSaSa being what he is, namely a bag of contradictions, I don't see a way out of this dilemma: human life is a violent life and violence tends towards the results were trying to 'argue away'. So yes my ideals will probably never fly in the real world but that's sth they also said about some hicks in the sticks who took on the mightiest nation of the time ;)

Show me a way to convince Bill not to kill me to save himself and Joe's army not to kill me to exterminate ISIS and I'll happily follow such laws, even such a government if you deem that form necessary.

Steve,

I'd agree with you to have one universal body of laws, not each to their own gusto.

However 'living in the real world' we'll a) never agree on that universal body of law, no matter how well-intentioned and well-educated people become and we'll b) use government force not just to protect our own body of laws against others, but also to force our 'more enlightened version' on others (e.g. Civil War) to stop them from committing what they see as atrocities. That's where armies come into play and collateral damage happens. And that's where ISIS is not so far away from U.S.of A... after all: they are also just 'defending their body of law' (Sharia) and making sure the whole world reaches 'their enlightened level' (Jannah).

Plugging away at such a setup will not solve it's basic underlying contradictions. As long as there are separate governments they'll have their separate bodies of law, those governments require separate armies to protect those laws and where required force it on others, those armies will not distinguish between separate individuals but only between governments.

The universal body of laws you postulate would also be a prerequisite in your solution. Having separate governments under such universal law would only be a minor nuisance and not really required any longer, except to deal with law-breakers. Though I'd put those powers under police, not army - and I'm not only speaking of different names for the same function: police is to protect that one universal law - army is to protect against external, independent, contrary law.

Bill,

I wrote, " . . . the standard of life is not just their life, but the life proper to man qua man . . ."

And you replied, "Properly understood, there is no contradiction here. The life proper to man is simply a guide to sustaining and preserving one's own life."

But we are talking about a set of principles and values which might not be understood properly.  And whether or not there is a disagreement, we know that contradictions can't exist. And if a person has a right to X, there can be no such thing as another person having a right to violate that right.  It would become a self-contradicting sentence that would render the concept of rights meaningless.

The life proper to man is not "simply a guide to sustaining and preserving one's own life."  First, it goes beyond sustaining and presevering to include flourishing.  Second, it is the source for deriving that set of values and principles that will be common to all men. Then from that set of values and principles, individuals apply them to their concrete circumstances and individual preferences.

In the case of individual rights, they are a set of moral principles that preserve the ability to live among other men. If that isn't accepted, then, because it is the very foundation of moral values in any potential interaction with others, one can't have any claim to any rights of their own. Just as with any fundamental value, it is derived from human nature, and thus applies to all men.

If someone chose to say that they had reasoned from the concept of their individual life, (e.g., "I am alive. If I have a right to my life, then I have the right to that which it requires..." etc.) and then went on to say that they extrapolate this to all men, they still end up in the same place. That is that they cannot avoid this contradiction if they claim a right to do something (to preserve their life), yet it requires that they violate the rights of someone else. If moral rights exist and are objective they can't belong to one person and not to another. (There can be circumstances where a person voluntarily relinquishes their rights - like commiting a murder - but they can't claim that their right to sustain their life somehow entitles them to take away someone elses life under anything but self-defense.)

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You said, "One's own life (not the lives of others) is still the purpose to which that standard is to be applied."  Sort of.  It is actually your happiness that is your purpose, and being alive is a precondition. But you are correct that it is yours and not others that is the focus of your purpose.  However you can't say any action you might claim is needed to stay alive (or happy) is justified, ie., moral, if it violates the right of another.  Because I have the purpose of being happy, and because I have the right to not be subject to the initiation of force, threat of force, fraud or theft, doesn't add up to saying that I have the right to violate someone elses rights.

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You wrote:

Under normal life-sustaining conditions, it is ethical and moral to respect the lives of others because it is in one's self-interest to do so.

It certainly is in ones self-interest to respect objectively derived moral values and ethical principles. And it is the integration and application of those principles that make life proper to man possible - for each individual. But the phrasing you used allows for a strange dichotomy. It implies that pragmatism is at the heart of making decisions regarding the principles, and that anytime I reason that my self-interest would be served by sacrificing someone else, then all that is needed is to point at some conditions that fail to meet the criteria of "normal life sustaining" and I would get to be moral, retain my integrity, violate no principles, but sacrifice an innocent.

In fact, you don't "have the right to your life" technically speaking, what you have a right to is to not be subjected to the initiation of force, threat of force, fraud or theft, and in exchange you are obliged by logic and justice to not use those against anyone else.  If others are not interfering with you, then you get to take all the actions needed to pursue your life EXCEPT for those you don't have a right to take.

You went on to say:

However, there are circumstances in which normal conditions of survival do not obtain and in which one is morally justified in sacrificing other human beings in order to save one's own life. Lifeboat conditions are one; war is another.

I don't agree.  Lifeboat conditions, as I pointed out, are not deserving of serious discussion. I could create an imaginary situation that would make anyone uncomfortable, no matter which side of this discussion they are on.  They are just rhetorical tricks and don't help us understanding these principles.

As to war, as I said before, I'm not sure how to resolve the apparent contradiction. But I don't take my intellectual fumbling in this area as a sign that up might be down, right might be left, or that rights might be non-rights.

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You wrote:

The Israelis targeted the weapons of Hamas for the sake of their own self-defense and self-preservation even though they knew that innocent Palestinians would be killed in the process. Yes, the blood of those innocents fell on Hamas, but the reason it did is that the Israelis had a moral right to defend themselves. What was the alternative? Suicide -- the deliberate sacrifice of their own lives in order to spare the lives of innocent civilians.

I agree. And in this instance, the deaths were caused by Hamas and the Israelies didn't violate rights. But I still fumble about when trying to get a better grasp of where the line is drawn here. If the Israelies had the capacity to drive every single person in the Gaza strip into the sea - till they all drown - would that still fit the justification that we both agree was adequate to the actions they actually took? It gets complicated. If they stop too soon, they are just giving Hamas room to breath and rearm and stopping too soon will end up costing their lives (i.e., inadequate self-defense), but is there a point they could go to that would break the spirit of support for Hamas so that it would not be a threat to future loss of Israelie lives?  And is that point the defining line to be achieved.  If so, then the next step is to see which tactics would take them to that point with the least loss of Israelie lives, and within that condition, the least loss of non-enemy residents of Gaza.

We have laws that attempt to define the parameters of self-defense on an individual basis. Was the attack substantial? Life threatening? If it was a threat, was it something that a reasonable man would take serious? Was it imminent? Could it have been safely defused without the use of violence or loss? Etc. But we don't appear to have a set of commonly applied rules for determining what is proper for national self-defense.
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Our own military rules of engagement prevent soldiers from killing unarmed civilians who may also be scouts or informers for the enemy.

We need to have civilian control of the military for obvious reasons, but when those politicians in control are vote hungery, dishonest, unprincipled asses (as we have now), then they set rules of engagement that make no sense anywhere but in their befuddled poll-taking-is-truth-and-justice psychoepistemology.

Terrorism is particularly attrocious because of this method of hiding among and using of civilians.  It is why terrorism needs to be fought more vigorously and especially against those who make it possible by funding, supporting, providing cover, trading with, etc.  And we need a better set of rules such that if we declare war against a terrorist group, we have to declare war against any nation whose government supports them. Clearly we can't join the terrorists in abandoning the principles of discriminating between those who are innocent and those are enemies.  But I certainly don't have enough answers to be happy at this point.

Bill,

If you have a right against my coercing you, then I have no right to coerce you. To claim otherwise is to utter a contradiction. However, if my survival requires that I coerce you, then in that case, you have no right against my coercing you, for if you did, then I would be obligated to abstain from coercing you.

I do have a right against being coerced by anyone, because I've not left the realm of rights by violating anyones rights, nor have I voluntarily agreed to forgo any of my rights.  So, no one has a right to coerce me.  We agree that it would be a contradiction to claim otherwise.

But then you say, "...if my survival requires that I coerce you, then in that case, you have no right against my coercing you..."  Put bluntly, your survival isn't the issue. You might be dying of a kidney disease, and want to take my kidney, against my will, but the fact of your kidney disease wouldn't take away or alter my rights.  No one guarantees our survival. And our rights are not here to guarantee your survival, or anyone elses.  If someone will die without surgery, surgery that they can't afford, that does not give them the right to enslave the surgeon, or to rob a bank.

To me it is terribly clear that I would have the right to resist your attempt to take my kidney; the surgeon would have every right to resist your attempt to enslave him; and the bank owner would have every right to resist your attempt to rob him.   To say otherwise is to say they have lost rights they had, while you have acquired some kind of right to coerce, or it is the acceptance of a contradiction.

Rights are here to set the rules that give us the best moral/political environment - an environment that supports choice over coercion.

There are times where very unusual circumstances put an innocent person's survival at risk if that person doesn't engage in coercion. In those cases, their personal self-interest does not over-ride the rights of others.  Individual rights don't arise out this or that person's self-interest, but as a moral principle that governs moral relations that outlaw coercion in favor of choice.  And they don't disappear for one person because another person has a need.

The person might choose to abandon morality and adopt the use of coercion to satisfy what they see as their self-interest, but they have no moral right to do so.
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Remember, rights are contextually absolute, not intrinsically absolute. You are viewing them as though they were an irreducible primary -- a foundational principle -- rather than a derivative one that depends on a normal social context. Rights do not apply in extreme situations in which survival by a peaceful process of production and trade is no longer impossible.

I have been saying all along that it is the context that is being lost when people don't treat rights as deriving from human nature. That context is lost when people only look at a single individual's life or a single situation.  Rand has said individual rights are moral principles that apply to human relations. (Her words: "A 'right' is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context." Ayn Rand)  That is NOT treating them as intrinsic. They are a foundational principle - WITHIN their context. And I've been clear in saying that moral rights arise out of human nature. But they don't depend upon "a normal social context" - to the contrary, that's when they are the most needed. You said that "rights don't apply in extreme situations in which survival by a peaceful process of production and trade is no longer impossible." That would be to say that the people in North Korea don't have any rights? A situation can't take a person's rights from them. They are inalienable because they arise out of human nature.

I wrote, "if my survival requires that I coerce you, then in that case, you have no right against my coercing you, for if you did, then I would be obligated to abstain from coercing you. And since in this case, I am not obligated to abstain from coercing you, it follows that you have no right against my coercing you."

Steve replied, "Put bluntly, your survival isn't the issue. You might be dying of a kidney disease, and want to take my kidney, against my will, but the fact of your kidney disease wouldn't take away or alter my rights. No one guarantees our survival. And our rights are not here to guarantee your survival, or anyone elses. If someone will die without surgery, surgery that they can't afford, that does not give them the right to enslave the surgeon, or to rob a bank. To me it is terribly clear that I would have the right to resist your attempt to take my kidney; the surgeon would have every right to resist your attempt to enslave him; and the bank owner would have every right to resist your attempt to rob him."

Yes, you would be justified in resisting my attempt to coerce you, as would the surgeon or the bank in resisting my attempts to coerce either of them, but that's not the same as having a "right" to resist these attempts.  Do you see the difference?  An individual "right" to do X implies an obligation on the part of others to allow one to do X, and if I were justified in stealing your kidney, I would certainly have no obligation to "allow" you to resist my doing so.  That truly would be a contradiction.  In a genuine conflict of interest, rights take a back seat.  Neither party has rights against the other, but either party is justified in resisting the other.  Not that it would it actually be in my interest to try to steal your kidney, as I'd be unlikely to get away with it, and would also forfeit any chance to obtain a voluntary donation if such were to become available.  

But from your comments, I get the impression that you disagree with Rand's view that it would be okay to steal the medication from the pharmacy in order to save your own life, as long as you were willing to pay it back later.  Do you disagree? -- because technically, you would be violating the rights of the pharmacy by breaking in and stealing the medication, even if you were willing to pay it back later.

I said that "rights don't apply in extreme situations in which survival by a peaceful process of production and trade is no longer impossible."  Steve replied, "That would be to say that the people in North Korea don't have any rights? A situation can't take a person's rights from them. They are inalienable because they arise out of human nature."

No, you're missing the point! :-)  I meant that if a person cannot obtain his survival needs through a process of voluntary trade, he has no other alternative than to try to survive by means of force.

(Edited by William Dwyer on 9/12, 12:47am)