Epistemology In Short

A 'right' is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context. (Ayn Rand)

Bill, I think that Liberty is the name we give to that full range of actions we can do by right, rather than to need permission. It could also be thought of as a kind of moral/political environment - that environment, or state, in which all actions that don't violate the rights of another can be engaged. But even if we think of it as a state or environment, it can't be separated from being a right to all proper actions.

In other words, liberty IS a right. To say that one has the right to liberty is like saying one has the right to rights. You wrote, "'liberty' is simply an opportunity to make certain choices." The problem with that is that the word 'opportunity' should be replaced with 'right' - it is more accurate. After all, one has the opportunity do things they have no right to do, either by violating another's rights or by getting permission - opportunity is more about access and physical ability than moral status.

You said that when one joins the military they are giving up some of their liberty, not their right to liberty. Because liberty is already a right, that only makes sense if understood as 'they are giving up some of their rights, not all of their rights.' Phrased like that, I would agree - joining the military is a loss of some, but not all of the actions that are available in a state of full liberty. Giving up all of a person's rights that they would otherwise have in a state of liberty is a very different kind of thing.

You wrote, "...however irrational your decision may be, you chose the relationship voluntarily. No one forced it upon you; no one aggressively interfered with your choice. In short, you can't give up you're right to liberty; you can only have it violated by others." Your distinction between giving up something versus having it taken from you is a real distinction, but it doesn't support the leap to say 'you can't give up your right...' I have the right to sell my car, until it is sold, after which I no longer have the right to sell it. The distinction that answers the issue at hand is temporal. You must have it before you can do anything with it, but after you have surrendered it, you no longer have it. Because someone chooses something at moment A does not, in itself, guarantee that they will be able to make that same choice at a later time.

Post 81

Thursday, August 15, 2013 - 12:03pm

I wrote, "...however irrational your decision may be, you chose the relationship voluntarily. No one forced it upon you; no one aggressively interfered with your choice. In short, you can't give up you're right to liberty; you can only have it violated by others." You replied,

Your distinction between giving up something versus having it taken from you is a real distinction, but it doesn't support the leap to say 'you can't give up your right...' I have the right to sell my car, until it is sold, after which I no longer have the right to sell it.

No, but your right to property is not your right to a car that you've already sold. It is the right to that which you currently own. Once you sell your car, you no longer own it and therefore no longer have a right to it, but your act of selling it is not the act of giving up your right to property as such. It is not the act of giving up your right to control that which you own, which is what "the right to property" means. "The right to property" does not mean the right to control that which you've previously owned but have already sold or given away. It means the right to control that which you presently own and have not sold or given away. Do you see the difference? In other words, you can give up the right to your car by selling it or giving it away. You cannot give up the right to your car without selling it or giving it away -- without transferring ownership to someone else.

You can also give up the right to your body by transferring ownership to someone else, but you cannot give up your right to liberty in the same way, because the very act of transferring ownership of your property to someone else is an expression of your right to liberty.

In short, it's impossible to give up your individual rights, because to give up your individual rights is allow someone else to initiate force against you, but even the act of agreeing to place yourself in the arbitrary control of another person is a voluntary choice. So any control that the other person exercises over you as a result of that choice is, by that very fact, not an initiation of force.

(Edited by William Dwyer on 8/15, 12:19pm)

Post 82

Thursday, August 15, 2013 - 5:07pm

Bill,

I understand what you are saying, but I still disagree. I think you are implying a right to a right. I wrote:

Your distinction between giving up something versus having it taken from you is a real distinction, but it doesn't support the leap to say 'you can't give up your right...'

Then I gave the example of a car being sold. You agreed with that specific example but didn't address my argument that you can give up ANY right that is yours. You refer to the car, which is a concrete, single instance of material property. But I see no reason why you can't (aside from it being totally stupid) sell your right to x in the future. Where x can be anything (or everything) that you have right to do.

You wrote:

You cannot give up the right to your car without selling it or giving it away -- without transferring ownership to someone else.

And we both agree on that. But look what happens when I change the wording just a little: "You cannot give up the right to choose your actions in a given time period without selling it or giving it away -- without transferring ownership to someone else." That is identical in the key issue we are discussing with what you said about the car. I can sell to someone, for money up front, the right to make my choices for me at some future time. And once I did that, I would no longer have the right to sell them to anyone else, or exercise them myself, during the period for which they were sold. This is just like selling the right to use your house for some period in the future - because you have leased it out - except that the you have transferred a very, very large number of the choices (freedoms) you would otherwise have been able to exercise.

You wrote:

you cannot give up your right to liberty in the same way, because the very act of transferring ownership of your property to someone else is an expression of your right to liberty.

You must not have read my argument in the post above: A right to liberty is a right to a right, because liberty is a set of rights. That creates a false entity that you then introduce into the argument. And you must not have read my argument about the temporal aspect of selling your liberty in the future for payment today.

You wrote: In short, it's impossible to give up your individual rights, because to give up your individual rights is allow someone else to initiate force against you. That argument doesn't hold together. If a person is a sadist they could pay someone to initiate violence against them. If a person is a professional football player, they have granted others the right, within a set of rules, to initiate violence against them. Law enforcement initiates violence against a person convicted of say murder. Some people call that a part of self-defense, but it isn't self-defense because the act of murder is long since over. It is retaliation. And the only reason that we (society) can morally use retaliatory force is because the murder surrendered his right to be free of initiated violence when he chose to initiate the violence that resulted in a murder. The initiation of violence (or the threat to do so, or theft, or fraud) are only wrong because the cannot coexist with choice. Choice is the primary. The exercise of choice is the exercise of the uniquely human faculty that is required to live as a human being.

It is possible (but stupid) to surrender your individual rights, because they belong to you and because we all have rights only because we can choose, and we can choose to give up any right that we have. Once we give it up, whatever its specification or description was, that is what we no longer have for the period of time we specified. What we give up is always specific in at least one way: they are the rights of the individual giving them up. John Doe can give up any rights he possesses, but none for anyone else.

Post 83

Friday, August 16, 2013 - 5:31am

Steve's earlier post on the distinction between an evolutionary process and an epistemological one is a neat distinction. I think that's something that other people like Hayek neglect with their focus on evolved moral traditions in the Humean sense

So Steve what would the purpose be behind the evolutionary process you described? Also do you think it gives rise to an epistemological one as in reason is the product of our culture/tradition?

(Edited by Michael Philip on 8/16, 6:31am)

(Edited by Michael Philip on 8/16, 9:11am)

Post 84

Friday, August 16, 2013 - 11:37am

Steve,

I think we may be arguing past each other. We both agree that you cannot give up your right to control that which you own while maintaining ownership of it. You can give up your right to control it only by surrendering ownership of it. In other words, you cannot own something yet have no right to control it. That is what I meant when I said that you cannot give up your right to property, because your right to property just is the right to control that which you own.

Of course, you can give up the right to control that which you own by selling it or giving it away. That in fact is what you do when you transfer ownership to another party. You can do this with your car, and you can do it with your body -- which we both agree would be stupid -- but you can do it nonetheless.

I thought that the point I was making was best expressed in the last paragraph of my previous post in which I wrote, "In short, it's impossible to give up your individual rights, because to give up your individual rights is allow someone else to initiate force against you, but even the act of agreeing to place yourself in the arbitrary control of another person is a voluntary choice. So any control that the other person exercises over you as a result of that choice is, by that very fact, not an initiation of force." To this, you replied

That argument doesn't hold together. If a person is a sadist they could pay someone to initiate violence against them. If a person is a professional football player, they have granted others the right, within a set of rules, to initiate violence against them. Law enforcement initiates violence against a person convicted of say murder.

This is not what Objectivism means by "the initiation of force." "Force" as Objectivism uses it refers to compulsion or coercion -- to contact with another individual's person or property without his consent and against his will. A football player does not initiate violence against an opposing player in this sense of the term, because the violence is consensual, nor does law enforcement initiate force against a person convicted of murder. The force in that case is retaliatory force, not the initiation of force.

Some people call that a part of self-defense, but it isn't self-defense because the act of murder is long since over. It is retaliation. And the only reason that we (society) can morally use retaliatory force is because the murderer surrendered his right to be free of initiated violence when he chose to initiate the violence that resulted in a murder.

Rand makes a clear and unequivocal distinction between the initiation of force and retaliatory or defensive force: "Whatever may be open to disagreement, there is one act of evil that may not, the act that no man may commit against others and no man may sanction or forgive. So long as men desire to live together, no man may initiate -- do you hear me? no man may start -- the use of physical force against others. . . . Whoever, to whatever purpose or extent, initiates the use of force, is a killer acting on the premise of death in a manner wider than murder: the premise of destroying man's capacity to live." [Atlas Shrugged, 1023].

Or again, from her essay, "The Objectivist Ethics," "The basic political principle of the Objectivist ethics is: no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. No man -- or group or society or government -- has the right to assume the role of a criminal and initiate the use of physical compulsion against any man. Men have the right to use physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. The ethical principle involved is simple and clearcut: it is the difference between murder and self-defense." (The Virtue of Selfishness pb, pp. 32, 33)

So when I said that it's impossible to give up your individual rights, because to do so is allow someone else to initiate force against you, I was using "initiate force" in the Objectivist sense of the term, just as I was when I said that even the act of agreeing to place yourself in the arbitrary control of another person is a voluntary choice. So any control that the other person exercises over you as a result of that choice is, by that very fact, not an initiation of force.

Post 85

Friday, August 16, 2013 - 6:33pm

Bill,

We both agree that you cannot give up your right to control that which you own while maintaining ownership of it. You can give up your right to control it only by surrendering ownership of it. In other words, you cannot own something yet have no right to control it. That is what I meant when I said that you cannot give up your right to property, because your right to property just is the right to control that which you own.

I would phrase things a tiny bit difference, but you are right that we agree here. I'd say that "ownership" is about a bundle of rights. And that "property" which is commonly used to refer to a thing, like a car, or intellectual property rights to a specific work, is also better understood as a bundle of rights. And these bundles of rights are the kind of control (actions) that have moral sanction.

There is no such thing as a right that one could surrender, even if they "own" it, without first defining it adequately, and concretely, such that there can be a meeting of the minds (with one exception, and I'll get to that below - criminal acts). I think that this distinction is important in the ways we appear to be talking past one another. When you say that a person can't give up his Liberty, I'm torn between saying, "Yes" and saying, "No" - but not for the reason you give. I'm thinking of how could a person define the concretes of Liberty adequately such that it could be a part of a voluntary meeting of the mind.

We know that we have property rights - moral property rights - and we agree on how they arise in metaphysics and their place in a social context. But that is a very general, and abstract definition of a very large bundle of potential actions that would be morally sanctioned. Right now, ARI is receiving very specific royalty payments for the sales of Atlas Shrugged as a result of Ayn Rand's intellectual work in creating the 'property' and the agreements that conveyed those rights to her heir, and that define the particulars right down to the single copy. The right to print and sell copies of AS are restricted to a publisher - they were surrendered to the publisher(s) and once surrendered cannot at the same time be exercised. All of this is well covered in contract law, but it is supported by a moral foundation.
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In short, it's impossible to give up your individual rights, because to give up your individual rights is allow someone else to initiate force against you, but even the act of agreeing to place yourself in the arbitrary control of another person is a voluntary choice. So any control that the other person exercises over you as a result of that choice is, by that very fact, not an initiation of force.

Without admitting that you cannot give up your individual rights (under appropriate conditions), I have to concede that you are right about my examples. They are voluntary agreements by a person to be subject to specific acts of violence. That means the person chose them, and we presume a meeting of the minds and that puts them in a different category. They gave up their rights to not be hit in a specific context, but not their right to be free of initiated force in general. Bad examples - mea culpa.

But it still doesn't answer this question: "Is there any right that you can define as a specific action, or set of actions, that a person has a moral right to, that they can't then trade away?" If you stay extremely broad and say "Liberty" or "Individual Rights" or "Property Rights" then you aren't being specific and that is a requirement of making a trade. I would certainly agree that no one can trade away the root concept in any of those because they are universal. But when you get specific and tie them to acts of a specific individual, that's different. When you say you can't give away what you don't own, then it implies being specific about what is owned before a deal could be structured.
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You quoted Ayn Rand:

No man -- or group or society or government -- has the right to assume the role of a criminal and initiate the use of physical compulsion against any man. Men have the right to use physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use.

And I agree. The question is how do we avoid the logical conundrum of such a thing as a right to violate a right. There can be no such thing. When we lock up the convicted murder there is no question but that he no longer has the freedoms of action he had before we locked him up - very specific moral rights are no longer his.

Ed answers this by saying (and he can correct me if I'm getting it wrong), that the murderer never did have a right to be free of punishment for acts that involve the initiation of violence. But, at the same time, that he never has lost any of his individual rights from the act of committing murder (because murder was never an individual right). It is certainly not an unreasonable way to view moral rights. But I disagreed since that way of viewing rights doesn't give any way to justify the specific punishment for the specific crime. Why would life in prison be appropriate but 6 months probation not be? The answer here has to be not just some rationalizing about best for society, or eye for an eye, what ever works. It has to be an answer to the question, "What rights did the criminal surrender by the nature of act?" Those will define the limits of what the state can do to him. It must be seen that the murderer voluntarily abandon's his moral rights in the act of violence, and in the proportion of violence. This view of rights ensures that good law doesn't go to far with punishment. With Ed's position, the matter of the specifics of the choice the murder made is separate from specific rights. I can say that because Ed can't say where he looks to find out a rational AND moral degree of punishment. It is anything or everything because it is called punishment which is 'said' to be a kind of force that can be used - Yeah, but how much?

A related problem with Ed's view is about how to bridge the divide between my right to trade a fish I caught, for someone else's coconuts (the old desert island and no government context). We agree that we have individual rights, and even if we agreed that there is no way they are 'owned' such that they could be traded away in toto, how do we end up with specific moral rights that can be surrendered? People try to say one is moral (individual rights) and the other is legal. - No, because all actions in a social context are subject to moral judgment.

I say that the murderer surrenders moral sanction, to the degree that he initiates violence. The worse the crime, the more leeway the state has to punish without fear of violating rights the criminal might still hold. And therefore he no longer possesses the right to be free. For example, it is morally right to punish a young person that shoplifts a copy of Playboy magazine, but not with an execution or life in prison. It is the degree to which the criminal act is violating the rights of another, that tells us the kind and amount of specific moral rights the criminal has surrendered by their voluntary criminal choice.

From my perspective we can give up any right, moral or legal, under the proper conditions. In economic trades, the conditions include the definition of what acts to which moral and/or legal sanction is being traded away. In the initiation of violence, it is seen as a proportional response by government will keep society within its moral rights to protect, to retaliate, to establish justice, and not go to far, or not far enough. Both are instances where the person had a moral right till they voluntarily surrendered it (by making a trade, or by initiating force).
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So, when you say:

... I said that even the act of agreeing to place yourself in the arbitrary control of another person is a voluntary choice. So any control that the other person exercises over you as a result of that choice is, by that very fact, not an initiation of force.

We agree on that. Commit a crime involving initiation of force, fraud or theft... you voluntarily surrender moral rights. Trade away some freedom of actions you had before (when you join the military, play football, rent out your house, etc.) and you surrender those specific moral rights (as defined, for the period defined). All cases of choice, and as you said, "not an initiation of force". My examples were flawed, but I still adhere to the principle that rights can be voluntarily surrendered if defined, either by criminal acts taken voluntarily, or by trades where the actions are adequately defined (meeting of the minds). (Note that the law doesn't punish someone for a criminal act that was not voluntary - insanity or under duress - the law recognizes that choice is required before a moral right is lost.)

Post 86

Saturday, August 17, 2013 - 8:26am

Steve,

If you take that first OPAR[even more emphasis added]** quote you can create 3 levels of "rights."

1) General rights to (against) general things: Life, Liberty, Property, Pursuit of Happiness

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2) General rights to (against) specific things: freedom of the press, trial by jury, etc.

3) Specific rights to (against) specific things: ownership/selling of a 2006 Chrysler Sebring, ownership/selling of your organs, etc.

According to Peikoff, simply moving from level 1 to level 2 (represented by the dashed line) already involves moving away from the moral foundation (where rights are both absolute and universal) and moving over into the legal 'apply-and-implement' realm. Now, if there is a spectrum coming down from the fully abstract to the fully concrete (or from the concrete up to the abstract) and these 3 things were placed on that spectrum, then (1) is the most abstract, (2) is in the middle, and (3) is the most concrete.

So, if moving down to (2) already involves switching for the moral/philosophical to the legal/ownership realm -- then (3), being even farther away from (1) than (2) is, is definitely in the legal/ownership realm (instead of being in the moral/philosophical realm). This means that trading a car doesn't trade away any moral/philosophical rights, because ownership of a car is a legal issue -- not a moral issue.

Ed

**

The rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness are the only rights treated by philosophical politics. They are the only rights formulated in terms of broad abstractions and resting directly on universal ethical principles. The numerous applications and implementations of these rights, such as freedom of the press or trial by jury or the other prerogatives detail in the Bill of Rights, belong to the field of philosophy of law and require for their validation a process of reduction to man's philosophic rights.

Post 87

Saturday, August 17, 2013 - 10:43am

Ed,

I agree that we can view rights as on a spectrum from broadest and most fundamental to least, and that we can define levels... and do so all within Moral rights - not legal rights.
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According to Peikoff, simply moving from level 1 to level 2 (represented by the dashed line) already involves moving away from the moral foundation (where rights are both absolute and universal) and moving over into the legal 'apply-and-implement' realm.

I very much disagree with Peikoff about something like the ownership of a car not being moral. It has to be moral before it can be a proper law. A country might have a law that says you can't drive your car after drinking one, small beer. And in that case, it makes perfect sense to say that "Steve has the full and complete moral right to use his car, even if there is some law that says otherwise."

The Declaration of Independence is a legal document - and it mentions our basic moral rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness. By mentioning moral rights on that document, our new nation tied our moral rights to legal rights (and gave the proper purpose for a government). It would be a mistake to think we only have the right to say what we think because of the Bill of Rights mentions freedom of speech. And it would be wrong to think that I don't have the moral right to buy or sell incandescent light bulbs, or an efficient flush toilet even if the laws changes and take away those legal rights. I would still have the moral right.

Rand was careful to define moral rights within the 'social context' which includes any context where there is government as well as any context that does not have a government or laws of any kind.

I have a moral right to the product of my effort even if I am but one of a handful of people on a deserted island with no law and no government.

Do you disagree?

Post 88

Saturday, August 17, 2013 - 2:56pm

Steve wrote,

When we lock up the convicted murder there is no question but that he no longer has the freedoms of action he had before we locked him up - very specific moral rights are no longer his.

Well, sure, because he no longer has the right to be free of incarceration.

Ed answers this by saying (and he can correct me if I'm getting it wrong), that the murderer never did have a right to be free of punishment for acts that involve the initiation of violence. But, at the same time, that he never has lost any of his individual rights from the act of committing murder (because murder was never an individual right). It is certainly not an unreasonable way to view moral rights. But I disagreed since that way of viewing rights doesn't give any way to justify the specific punishment for the specific crime. Why would life in prison be appropriate but 6 months probation not be? The answer here has to be not just some rationalizing about best for society, or eye for an eye, what ever works. It has to be an answer to the question, "What rights did the criminal surrender by the nature of [his] act?"

Well, he didn't surrender his right to be free from the initiation of force, because any form of incarceration or punishment that's an appropriate response to the crime he committed has to be viewed as a form of retaliatory force.

By the way, Steve, I agree with your critique of Peikoff. A "social context" is one that encompasses any interaction between two or more people. You don't need a government or set of laws to make it a violation of rights to rob someone of his product or to murder him in cold blood.

(Edited by William Dwyer on 8/17, 3:05pm)

Post 89

Saturday, August 17, 2013 - 7:49pm

Steve,

Like Bill, I don't disagree that you actually do have a moral right to the product of your effort -- no matter how many other people exist in your community, no matter what or which kinds of laws exist in your community, no matter what or which forms of government exists in your community. You have that right no matter what anyone else on earth ever says or does.

Ed

Post 90

Saturday, August 17, 2013 - 8:09pm

Steve,

Ed answers this by saying (and he can correct me if I'm getting it wrong), that the murderer never did have a right to be free of punishment for acts that involve the initiation of violence. But, at the same time, that he never has lost any of his individual rights from the act of committing murder (because murder was never an individual right). It is certainly not an unreasonable way to view moral rights. But I disagreed since that way of viewing rights doesn't give any way to justify the specific punishment for the specific crime. Why would life in prison be appropriate but 6 months probation not be? The answer here has to be not just some rationalizing about best for society, or eye for an eye, what ever works.

The short answer is that objective justice based on individual rights (OJIR) does, indeed, prescribe the appropriate punishment for varying levels of crime. You can't get too specific, though. For instance, you cannot demand to know why it is that the punishment for say, a given misdemeanor is 5, rather than say, 6 months in jail. But some things in law are definite and defined enough so that you can demand to know about them (and then get the appropriate, objectively-arrived-at answers). For instance, you could demand to know why it is that the sentencing for murder is longer than the sentencing for petty theft.

The reason is that murder is a larger infringement on others' rights. Now, just because we have the ability to tally up the level of infringement of another's rights -- so that we could objectively differentiate and hierarchify various levels of crime -- does not mean, under my assumptions, that we have to directly extrapolate and apply the loss in rights on one (victim) side of the ledger of crime, over to the other (violator) side of the ledger. It's nice and neat to simply look at the crime as if it is a mirror, so that rights violated on one side are automatically lost on the other side. It would effectively stratify levels of crime and punishment, but that just means it would work if we tried it -- and the criterion for truth isn't merely whether something would work if you tried it.

Another way that would work, one that I contend is more true than rights-violated-is-rights-lost, is a modified eye for an eye (retributive/retaliative justice).

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 8/17, 8:24pm)

Post 91

Saturday, August 17, 2013 - 8:22pm

Fun Facts regarding Justice and Punishment

1) Apparently, a $350,000 fine is objectively too much to charge someone for lying to Customs officials. Objective justice based on individual rights (OJIR) would result in a fine that is less than $350,000:

United States v. Bajakajian (1998) is the first and only case in which the Supreme Court has declared a criminal fine constitutionally excessive. There, the government sought the forfeiture of $357,144 from Hosep Krikor Bajakajian solely as a penalty for not declaring that amount to Customs when leaving the country

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_constitutional_sentencing_law [and quotes below are from this link]

2) Objective justice based on individual rights prohibits indefinite detention (for life) of non-homicidal juvenile offenders:

For example, the Eighth Amendment prohibits the imposition of the sentence of life without the possibility of parole on juvenile offenders if they did not commit homicide,^[7] or if automatically imposed by statute for homicide

3) You can't kill people for crimes other than murder, and you can't even kill them for murder if there are too many extenuating circumstances:

The Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause has more to say about capital sentences. First, the Clause entirely precludes the use of capital punishment for crimes other than murder.^[9] Even with murder, the defendant must personally kill, attempt to kill, or intend to kill.^[10] Second, the Clause entirely precludes the use of capital punishment against certain classes of defendants, such as the insane,^[11] the mentally retarded,^[12] juveniles at the time of the crime,^[13] and those who are not competent at the time of the execution

Post 92

Saturday, August 17, 2013 - 8:37pm

Steve,

With Ed's position, the matter of the specifics of the choice the murder made is separate from specific rights. I can say that because Ed can't say where he looks to find out a rational AND moral degree of punishment. It is anything or everything because it is called punishment which is 'said' to be a kind of force that can be used - Yeah, but how much?

I look at the level of infringement of another's rights (leading to a hierarchy of punishment) -- without going that extra step and extrapolating back to the rights of the violator in a mirrored fashion. I can "get away with" just looking at one side of the ledger of crime (the victim's side) because on my view objective punishment does not require a loss of individual rights of violators. Since violators don't have to lose their rights in order to get punished, I can simply focus on how much infringement/violation they caused.

A related problem with Ed's view is about how to bridge the divide between my right to trade a fish I caught, for someone else's coconuts (the old desert island and no government context). We agree that we have individual rights, and even if we agreed that there is no way they are 'owned' such that they could be traded away in toto, how do we end up with specific moral rights that can be surrendered? People try to say one is moral (individual rights) and the other is legal. - No, because all actions in a social context are subject to moral judgment.

But I say that you are freezing an abstraction. If a team owner pays a baseball player to hit home-runs, you can argue that money causes balls to be hit out of parks -- but it is actually baseball players, not money, that cause balls to be hit out of parks. Just because you can use levels of abstraction in order to determine that an event (i.e., hitting the ball out of the park) ultimately depended on money, doesn't make that event (i.e., that home-run) financial in nature. In the same way, legal rights ultimately depend on moral rights -- but cannot be equated with, or treated as, moral rights

Ed

Post 93

Sunday, August 18, 2013 - 12:39am

Bill,

Well, he [the convicted murderer] didn't surrender his right to be free from the initiation of force, because any form of incarceration or punishment that's an appropriate response to the crime he committed has to be viewed as a form of retaliatory force.

I agree with Ayn Rand's insistence on keeping the focus on where the initiation started, i.e., with who the actual initiatior is - the criminal. I also agree that what is done to the murder, when he is locked up, is not a case of "initiation." I agree that locking him up should be called "retaliation" (not self-defense, and certainly not initiation). And I agree that it the government has the moral right to engage in appropriate retaliatory acts of force.

The question is why do the government now have a right to lock him up now, yet the government didn't have the right to lock him up before?

This is how I answer it: He surrendered his right to be free of being locked up or executed. And that happened when he committed the murder. You can NOT commit murder without stepping completely outside of the realm of rights. We agree again that "any form of incarceration or punishment that's an appropriate response to the crime he committed has to be viewed as a form of retaliatory force."

So, maybe you misunderstood me to be claiming that forcing him into prison was an example of initiation of force. That is NOT my belief. I'm saying that he had a right to be free of prison - but that was earlier, before he became a murder. He no longer has the that freedom. He surrendered it when committed the murder.

Post 94

Sunday, August 18, 2013 - 12:45am

Ed,

Just a note aspects of post #91. The Eighth Amendment says only this: "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." The whole business about the imposition of life without parole on juvenile offenders who did not commit homicide... that was Justice Scalia's written opinion of what he interpreted the constitution to include as kind of cruel or unusual punishment.

And the other things you said that prohibited by the Eighth... same thing. They are how a justice interprets the Eight Amendment. Not saying I agree or disagree with any of the decisions as to what would represent Objective justice, but those opinions, even if they do, aren't the Eighth itself.
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In post #92 you wrote"

...legal rights ultimately depend on moral rights -- but cannot be equated with, or treated as, moral rights. [emphasis mine]

Yes, but so what? In my example there are NO laws, nothing is legal or illegal, and there isn't even a government. There are no legal rights in my example by its nature. So my question stands. How do we end up with specific moral rights that can be surrendered? How could I sell my moral right to eat the fish I caught for something else?

You say I am freezing an abstraction. But your example made no sense. No way that some misunderstanding regarding the player at bat in a baseball game being the cause of the home-run logically relates to your claiming that someone on a desert island where there are no laws, no legal system, no government has "legal" rights and that I have frozen an abstraction! Nope, they have moral rights and no legal rights because there is no law there.

Post 95

Sunday, August 18, 2013 - 11:47am

Steve,

How do we end up with specific moral rights that can be surrendered? How could I sell my moral right to eat the fish I caught for something else?

I have to reject the premise of the question. The question is only important if rights are viewed as meta-contextual licenses. Think of James Bond for a moment. He had a 'license to kill' -- the total (unlimited) freedom to do it. He did not have a moral right to kill, but that's okay -- because rights aren't total (unlimited) freedoms. So when you start out with the moral right to eat the fish you caught, that right does not include the right to eat the fish after you have traded the fish away.

Again, if it was a meta-contextual license to eat the fish wherever and whenever you felt like it -- regardless of context -- then we would have to start talking about how it is that people can surrender or sell moral rights. But because moral rights aren't meta-contextual licenses in the first place, the question never comes up.

Ed

Post 96

Sunday, August 18, 2013 - 12:58pm

Ed,

I asked, "How do we end up with specific moral rights that can be surrendered? How could I sell my moral right to eat the fish I caught for something else?" It IS a valid question. And your rejection doesn't stand up. I'll explain why.

1. You and I agree that one has a right to the product of their efforts.
2. That right might be represented by laws, in which case we could discuss it as a legal right, or there may be no law or only bad laws regarding the item discussed.
3. If there are no laws regarding the moral right to the product of ones efforts, the moral right still exits and there are no legal rights.
4. One's property rights, in the example of the fish I caught where there are no laws, is a moral right because:
... a. It arises in a social context
... b. It is a moral sanction of an action (keeping, selling, eating, etc.)
... c. It can't be confused with a legal right when there are no laws.
5. Because I can NOT sell the fish, and then violate the agreement by keeping or eating the fish and claim to be acting morally, I must give up the moral right to keep and or eat the fish if and when I exercise that right to sell the fish. It is a logical necessity.
6. My right to eat the fish, or to sell the fish can NOT be taken from me. They can be violated, but not taken from me.
7. I can voluntarily surrender one of them. I can choose to sell the fish.

You wrote the following:

So when you start out with the moral right to eat the fish you caught, that right does not include the right to eat the fish after you have traded the fish away.

Note: I NEVER claimed that anyone had a moral right to sell the fish and then eat fish. That is not even close to any argument I've made.

You conclude by saying the following:

...if it was a meta-contextual license to eat the fish wherever and whenever you felt like it -- regardless of context -- then we would have to start talking about how it is that people can surrender or sell moral rights. But because moral rights aren't meta-contextual licenses in the first place, the question never comes up.

I've never made a "meta-contextual" claim regarding moral rights - that is, I've not dropped context, or implied that context can somehow permit moral contradictions, like having a right to eat your fish after you have sold it.
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You have not demonstrated any dropped context on my part. So, the question remains valid. And I'll repeat it.

"How do we end up with specific moral rights that can be surrendered? How could I sell my moral right to eat the fish I caught for something else?"

You can try to argue that "Selling a fish that one caught is neither moral or immoral - that it is NOT an act that can be judged under morality." Or you can argue that it is a legal act even though there is no law, and no government. Or you can argue that some other problem exists with one of my points numbered 1 though 7 because you've found a logical error in one of those points (and then you would need to point out which one and the specific error). But so far you have avoided answering my question though putting up a straw-man - stuffed with jargon - a straw-man that didn't come from me.
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The heart of our argument is that I say there are such things as a moral right that can be voluntarily surrendered. And I gave an example. You still haven't shot it down.

I have a moral right to X. If, by my choice, I enter into an agreement with another person and we have a meeting of the minds, I can surrender that moral right in exchange for consideration. It is the moral basis for all contract law. Without out it your concept of moral rights can never leave the general and abstract plane and will forever be like a floating abstraction. I don't argue that rights can not be described and defined in a general context - in many, many general contexts. But I do argue that they can and must be seen as existing in a concrete and specific context as well.

Post 97

Sunday, August 18, 2013 - 1:15pm

Ed,

Think of James Bond for a moment. He had a 'license to kill' -- the total (unlimited) freedom to do it. He did not have a moral right to kill, but that's okay -- because rights aren't total (unlimited) freedoms.

James Bond never had a moral right to kill and we agree on that. A "license" in this case is legal sanction of an action, not a moral sanction of an action. Because of that, I'd say that "freedom" was a very iffy word to use because it might encourage or allow ambiguity regarding legal versus moral freedom.

Bond was given a kind of legal (or quasi-legal) PERMISSION to kill under conditions set by his governmental supervisor or that agencies policy. That isn't unlimited - it is limited, just with a wider set of limits compared to others in his department that did not have the double-0 status. That which requires permission, however limited, is not something one does by RIGHT. An ordinary man in the street has a moral right (and in many jurisdictions, a legal right) to kill in self-defense, while Bond had a quasi-legal right (but no moral right) to kill under a set of permitted conditions.

I can't find the value in that James Bond business as an argument that a person doesn't have a moral right to sell a fish they caught, and that once sold, the very act of selling it surrendered a number of moral rights that pertained to that fish, including such actions as selling it again, or eating it, or keeping it.

Post 98

Sunday, August 18, 2013 - 3:44pm

Steve,

You got me on the Bond example. The Bond example was just something I threw in there because it is the first thing that came to my mind when I was thinking about the difference between liberty and license. We can't find common ground because of differing definitions. For me, you don't lose any moral (philosophical) property rights when you sell fish -- whether there is established law or not. For you, you do. This makes your question relevant to how you think about rights, but also not relevant to how I think about rights.

Ed

Post 99

Sunday, August 18, 2013 - 4:19pm