Epistemology In Short

Steve,

Okay, we may be at an impasse. But I have one more question:

Under your premises, can you have moral property rights without having any property -- for at least some short time (until you produce something of value for yourself)?

Ed

p.s., My answer is: Yes, you can and you do have moral property rights even in the total absence of property. This goes against the notion that moral rights are bound-up in some kind of a 'bundle' that is metaphorically attached to the material objects owned. For instance, in Man's Rights (1963), Rand wrote that ...

... the right to property is a right to action, like all the others: it is not the right to an object, ...

Post 101

Monday, August 19, 2013 - 1:03am

Ed,

Under your premises, can you have moral property rights without having any property -- for at least some short time (until you produce something of value for yourself)?

Depends upon what you mean by "property."
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You wrote:

My answer is: Yes, you can and you do have moral property rights even in the total absence of property.

You do realize that you just issued a contradiction? The word 'property' has to be given SOME respect.

My view of property rights matches Rand's as best as I can tell, but the concept of a 'bundle' I got elsewhere. It is very old. I think it was used in discussing property rights by Bastiat and that might be where I got it from.

Here is bit of an article in Wikipedia on "Bundle of Rights": The bundle of rights is commonly taught in US first-year law school property classes to explain how a property can simultaneously be 'owned' by multiple parties. The term, 'bundle of rights,' likely came into use during the late 19th century and continued to gain ground thereafter. Prior to that, the idea of property entailed more the owner's dominion over a thing, placing restrictions on others from 'messing' with the owner's property. 'Bundle of rights,' however, implies rules specifying, proscribing, or authorizing actions on the part of the owner.

Ownership of land is a much more complex proposition than simply acquiring all the rights to it. It is useful to imagine a bundle of rights that can be separated and reassembled. A 'bundle of sticks' - in which each stick represents an individual right - is a common analogy made for the bundle of rights. Any property owner possesses a set of 'sticks' related directly to the land.

For example, perfection of a mechanic's lien takes some, but not all, rights out of the bundle held by the owner. Extinguishing that lien returns those rights or 'sticks' to the bundle held by the owner." [Emphasis mine]
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Here is the deal. It is true that moral rights to an object are actually rights to actions. But the actions are related to objects (not necessarily material objects - could be intellectual rights, or rights to collect a performance, etc.)

Your rights to your car certainly aren't related to the trumpet once played by Dizzy Gillespie, or to the car in my garage. They are the actions possible for your car - like selling it, keeping it, leasing it, etc.

The actions that we can have a right to are those that are possible for the entity in issue. All of the actions that you can take, by right, relative to your automobile for example, when this collection of actions is spoken of as a group, they are your "bundle of rights" for that entity. The 'bundle' concept can be used with moral rights or legal rights.
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"Just as man can't exist without his body, so no rights can exist without the right to translate one's rights into reality, to think, to work and keep the results, which means: the right of property." Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

When you keep the results of your work, or you sell the results of your work, those are actions that tie to an object - an entity. The object isn't the property (that is a common misconception), the property is the right to the action relative to the object (which could be your body, your life, your car, etc.) And even though we might be talking about our moral rights relative to some object, it is only applicable in society - they are moral sanctions to actions, which means they may not to be interfered with by others. They are born of our being creatures of choice, and others can chose to respect moral rights or to violate them. Whereas lightning might destroy my house, I cannot hold it morally responsible like I can another human that destroyed my house.
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"Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself." John Locke, Second Treatise on Civil Government

Locke uses the word properly - not that our person IS our property, but that we HAVE property in our person. We HAVE rights to our person (in the form of actions).
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"Property does not exist because there are laws, but laws exist because there is property." Fr�d�ric Bastiat
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"Since property includes only value, and since value indicates only relationships, it follows that property is itself a relation." Fr�d�ric Bastiat

That one is fun to chew on, but I'm not sure I agree with it completely. I prefer this, "Property is the collection, or bundle if you will, of morally sanctioned actions an individual can exercise relative to an entity. This makes property a moral relationship a person might have with an entity."
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So long as an entity exists in a social setting, there will be a bundle of rights that relate to it. Technology or economic or cultural practices might add or subtract rights from that bundle - but mostly the bundle will stay the same, the rights in that bundle will arise out of the nature of that entity, and they will no longer exist when the entity no longer exists. Various 'sticks' in the bundle can be traded back and forth, bought and sold, or even gifted or inherited. The owners change as transactions occur. But when someone sells one 'stick' they own, it is in exchange for some 'stick' another owns.

Post 102

Monday, August 19, 2013 - 1:11pm

Steve,

Okay, regarding your Post 39, we're in agreement then.

Post 103

Monday, August 19, 2013 - 3:21pm

Thanks, Bill. I suspected we might be, or at least real close.

Post 104

Tuesday, August 20, 2013 - 3:37pm

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

Post 105

Tuesday, August 20, 2013 - 8:06pm

Steve,

Alas, we are still in disagreement. You didn't answer my question -- or even a substitute question that is more answerable to you after your personal modification of it -- and perhaps that is fine. It is not necessarily a sign of any kind of intentional conflation or even of any kind of evasion on your part. It is a chicken and egg question, and sometimes those remain unanswered even by thoroughly-honest colleagues.

Since you asked, I was thinking of property in the homesteading sense -- where you mix intelligent labor with nature and, almost like magic, property pops-up into existence (after your smart and hard work). As you first enter into this relationship with nature, you either start out with some kind of a right to the (future) products of your labor or you do not. If you start out with such a right -- even before you create "property" -- then you could answer my question in the affirmative.

Incidentally, if you answered in the affirmative, then the contradiction you mentioned dissolves. The question boils down to whether rights are metaphysical or man-made. If rights are man-made, then you could only ever have them after man makes some products -- and you would have to answer the question in the negative, saying that you did not start out with the right to the products of your effort (but acquired them, somehow, after the fact).

Ed

Post 106

Tuesday, August 20, 2013 - 8:43pm

Michael,

There were a lot of posts that discussed evolution - particularly on the first page of this thread. Can you point me at the post of mine you are referring to?

Thanks,
Steve

Post 107

Tuesday, August 20, 2013 - 8:50pm

Ed,

you can and you do have moral property rights even in the total absence of property. This goes against the notion that moral rights are bound-up in some kind of a 'bundle' that is metaphorically attached to the material objects owned. For instance, in Man's Rights (1963), Rand wrote that ...
... the right to property is a right to action, like all the others: it is not the right to an object, ...

I did answer your question. I said it depends upon what you mean by property. You have moral property rights to your life, to your body, and a general moral right to control things... things that might not even exist now (all in addition to moral rights to specific things). In THAT sense you can have moral property rights even in the "total absence of property" - EXCEPT, that I don't use the word property to mean some material object, or land, or intellectual work. When I use the word "property" I mean actions BUT the actions are related to something.

Do you have a bunch of property right actions that you can name that do not now, or ever in the future connect to something (something material, or an intellectual work, or some promise to perform? I doubt it. It would be too close to a floating abstraction. Notice that in the quote you supplied from Rand she not say that the action is free of an object, but that property is the right to action, not the object. Nothing in her quote says there is no object the action pertains to.
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You wrote:

The question boils down to whether rights are metaphysical or man-made. If rights are man-made, then you could only ever have them after man makes some products -- and you would have to answer the question in the negative, saying that you did not start out with the right to the products of your effort (but acquired them, somehow, after the fact).

Rights are moral principles that arise out of our metaphysical nature. But they are also a relationship between us and some entity. You have your body before you make any product. And you have property rights in your body - that is a relationship between a morally sanctioned set of actions (a bundle of rights) and an entity (your body). Once you have made something, then a set of right come into being that are the definitions of the morally sanctioned actions possible with that product. The rights aren't man-made, but the product is. They are part of the moral relationship between you and the object you made.

Post 108

Wednesday, August 21, 2013 - 12:05am

Steve your ealier point in I think either post #1 or post #6 on the distinction between an evolutionary process and an epistemological one. I think it is a crucial distinction and that's something that other people like Hayek/Haykeian liberterians neglect with their focus on just the evolved moral traditions in the Humean sense.

Post 109

Wednesday, August 21, 2013 - 9:19am

Michael,

I wrote:

Evolution is unthinking. It is automatic. It is present in every instance of biological life - at the DNA level. But knowledge is a product of thinking and that is volitional, non-automatic, and only related to biological evolution - not driven by it.

I then moved to discuss the different kinds of evolution in terms of the active agent involved. For biological evolution it is the gene - our DNA sequences - that we look to for explanations of change in that realm.

If a person abstracts human culture and wants to view the predominate changes in it over periods of time, the agent they could use is the meme - which we can think of as an idea. This is a way of thinking but it ignores the fact that the agent needs to work via the individual mind and the individual has volition. Because of that, talking about memes isn't illogical, but rather it is a kind of statistical entity and that is the context that has to be understood. For example, we can talk about Catholic beliefs supplanting Protestant beliefs in a particular population in some time and place, as if the memes were active agents, but that is only an intellectual model. The actual agent is the volitional faculty in the individual mind.

Is that in the area you were interested in?

Post 110

Wednesday, August 21, 2013 - 10:59pm

Steve,

I think what Ed is saying (and he can correct me if I am wrong) is that if the right to property is an action -- if it is the right to the action and consequences of producing or earning an object (such as a house) -- then the right to that action exists whether you actually engage in it or not. In other words, you don't actually have to engage in the action of producing or earning an object in order to have a right to do so.

You don't disagree with that, do you Steve?

Post 111

Thursday, August 22, 2013 - 8:13am

Bill,

I think what Ed is saying (and he can correct me if I am wrong) is that if the right to property is an action -- if it is the right to the action and consequences of producing or earning an object (such as a house) -- then the right to that action exists whether you actually engage in it or not. In other words, you don't actually have to engage in the action of producing or earning an object in order to have a right to do so.

I don't disagree with that. But that is just part of the moral rights picture for property and I don't think it is the most accurate way to express the ideas.

I have the right to take the actions my life requires, or that my happiness indicates (with the usual proviso that it not be an act that would violate the rights of another). And that would include the right to accept employment when offered, to keep the money earned, to purchase a house, and to keep people off of my lawn, etc. But only in general terms.

It would be stated like this:

I have the moral right to control that which I acquire through moral means. (No if's - unconditional)
If I am offered and job, and accept, then I have a moral right to the money I earn.
If I choose to buy a house that is properly offered for sale, I have the right to spend my money to buy the house.
If I buy the house, I have the right to keep people off of the grass, if the control of yard is included with the house.

That last sentence, with its two if's, explains that until there is a specific entity with its specific bundle of rights, the moral rights one has remain general. Yes, I have the unfettered right to own things, but I will only have the specific rights to control a thing, after I acquire it, and the specific rights depend upon the specific entity acquired. Once I go to buy the house, I may find that the lawn in front is owned by the condominium association or something and I don't get a right to keep people off the lawn.

My general right to acquire and control property covers such things as keeping people off the lawn of the house I buy... but, to deal with specific moral rights to the house, the house needs to be included. I mentioned that the moral rights to property are a bridge between the person and the entity in question. Well, if the the entity is discussed at the general level, then there are specific kinds of control that can't be discussed except in a conditional or general fashion. The object of the right is a key part of the context.

I have the right to control my property... True. But if my property is 3 months left in a one year lease of a car, there are very specific definitions of the actions. And things like disposing of my property would not include selling the car, or junking it. Morality covers the full range of contexts from the most general statement of rights to the most specific. And anytime an action is mentioned (and all rights are actions) there is an implied entity.
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You said, "...you don't actually have to engage in the action of producing or earning an object in order to have a right to do so." That's true, but I would have to own the house, before I had the right to keep people off the lawn. And I have the right to accept a job that is offered, but I don't have a right to get the wages without doing the work. There is a moral continuum from the most general to the most specific. The actions have to fit the entity they imply. For example, once I have the job, and have done the work, then there is a moral right to not just receive the money, but I have a right to be paid in a reasonable fashion (e.g, timely).

If we can't carefully match the context of the moral right to the entity, then we can't make intelligible judgments of morality on specific actions. But if we do, we get enormous power to objectively apply morality to the tiniest of actions.

Post 112

Saturday, August 24, 2013 - 9:56am

Steve,

I agree with your fine points but disagree with one general point (i.e., we're still talking past each other). I very roughly divide rights into "positive" and "negative" ones.

Positive rights are legal/ownership rights and they give rise to the "control/disposal" issue; though you can have rudimentary forms of them -- like the barbarian hordes who sacked Rome did -- even in the total absence of organized, positive law. I call them legal but I could also call them "potentially legal" (i.e., subject to adjudication via positive law).

The negative rights are moral/philosophical rights which are contextually absolute and metaphysically inalienable. They are universally dispersed and not subject to variation via intentional trade or even via the unintentional circumstances of actions which you may take in your life. They are the ones to which Rand was referring in this quote from the pamphlet Textbook of Americanism:

Since Man has inalienable individual rights, this means that the same rights are held, individually, by every man, by all men, at all times.

Nothing you say about the control/disposal of owned property addresses these rights, even though what it is that you have to say is indeed true, and even though you can identify the control/disposal of owned property as being something that is, in at least one respect, a moral issue. I think you are equating different levels of abstraction here -- making a concretely-instantiated relation to an object a moral issue (as in being rightly owned and controlled; or owned and controlled morally) in the exact same sense as the inalienable individual right is a moral issue.

Take the number 2 as it stands in the mathematical set of natural numbers versus where it stands in the complete set of integers (which includes negative numbers). The number 2 is the very same thing in both cases, but it has different significance or relational meaning. In the case of natural numbers, the number 2 is a pretty small number. Almost every other natural number is larger than 2. Alternatively, in the set of all integers (including negative numbers) the number 2 is not even a viable candidate for being small (it is not even close to being one of the smallest numbers).

What changed is not the number 2, but the level/type of abstraction we were using when evaluating number 2. Number 2 is, in one sense, not the exact same thing at the same time in the same respect on both levels of abstraction.

Ed

p.s., Perhaps we could say that you have been arguing for what is moral in the concrete (ownership/control/disposal) sense of being moral, and that I have been arguing for what is moral in the abstract (philosophical) sense.

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 8/24, 12:12pm)

Post 113

Saturday, August 24, 2013 - 5:36pm

Ed,

"Positive rights" versus "Negative rights" have been traditionally understood a little bit differently than your description. "Positive rights" are a claim to have a right to something that would have to be provided by someone else. The most famous example comes from the time of FDR where there was a lot of talk about a Second Bill of Rights to describe people's rights to a house, to a job, to medical care, etc. Positive rights are the basis for most entitlements. "Negative rights" have been understood as thing that others can NOT do to you. They cannot take away your freedom of speech, your right to pursue your happiness, etc.

All moral rights are contextually absolute. My moral right to rent out my house is absolute in its context. That is what it means to be a right... not a permission and not conditional. You always have to define the context. For example, you might say that the right to life is absolute, and I might say, "Yes, if the context is limited to human life, and not the life of some other animal." Context is king.
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You quoted Rand, "Since Man has inalienable individual rights, this means that the same rights are held, individually, by every man, by all men, at all times." and then said:

Nothing you say about the control/disposal of owned property addresses these rights, even though what it is that you have to say is indeed true...

Ed, everything I said about control/disposal of owned property derives from the more general and abstract moral principles. If the most general statement of moral rights didn't exist, I wouldn't have any principle to apply in a concrete, specific instance. And if we couldn't examine concrete, specific instances from a moral perspective then the general and more abstract principles would be useless - just floating abstractions.
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I think you are equating different levels of abstraction here -- making a concretely-instantiated relation to an object a moral issue (as in being rightly owned and controlled; or owned and controlled morally) in the exact same sense as the inalienable individual right is a moral issue.

I don't agree. I recognize, and agree with Rand on everything she wrote about moral rights. And, I'm guess she would agree with my application... but that's just my guess. You can't have the abstract moral rights without concretes (that would just be floating abstractions), and you can't apply moral judgment to a concrete situation without having the general principles.

As to the relationship to something... that can't be escaped. Name one moral right (i.e., an action) that has no entity of any kind. There are no actions without actors. Plus, these are individual rights. That is where the person comes from - that is whether it is a moral right that you have because you bought a particular car, or a moral right that every person owns... like the right to determine what they will put in their body.
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Perhaps we could say that you have been arguing for what is moral in the concrete (ownership/control/disposal) sense of being moral, and that I have been arguing for what is moral in the abstract (philosophical) sense.

I've never argued against that category of what is moral for all individuals. I've just been saying that is NOT the end of morality. It is not the whole picture. What about your body. You, Ed, have ownership/control/disposal moral rights to YOUR body. That is concrete. It is an application of the individual moral right all humans have their body. You have the right to the blood in body - and no one can morally force you to give it up, but you can go to the blood bank and sell it. Once sold, you no longer have any control over that blood. You have to be able to flow from the general to the specific in a way that maintains the logical matching of context of the relationship... otherwise, you have no way to make moral judgments on the concretes which is where life takes place.

Post 114

Sunday, August 25, 2013 - 3:29pm

Steve,

Good point about positive and negative rights. I should have said casuistrally* -instantiative versus abstractive rights; or casuistrally* -particular (or casuistrally* -specific) versus general rights.

In any case, perhaps we agree more than we think. In this last post, you say that specific rights over the control of owned things stem from prior or more basic, general rights. That's reasonable to me. In such a case, you could trade your right over the control of owned things, without trading away your general right to own things.

Ed

*def'n from Merriam-Webster online: a resolving of specific cases ... through interpretation of ... principles

Post 115

Sunday, August 25, 2013 - 4:54pm

Ed,

...you could trade your right over the control of owned things, without trading away your general right to own things.

Yes.

Post 116

Monday, August 26, 2013 - 7:08pm

Steve,

Oh, sure, right before you agree with me ... you ... you ... alter your avatar picture to a profile view so that you are looking away. What is up with that?

<<<-------sometimes struggles with egotistical/egomaniacal neurosis, let alone perfectionism -- both of which encourage the formation even of unjustifiable connections among disparate data in the world

:-)

Ed

p.s., Steve, you are a psychologist. Can I get a freebie?: If you are stricken with a bad case of perfectionism -- which is, itself, an imperfection -- then how do you go about improving on that? Do you try to make yourself at least a little more perfect (by fighting against the perfectionism in you)? Wrap your mind around that one at least once or twice.

:-)

What is there for a perfectionist to do, except to try to improve and to make oneself better?

Post 117

Monday, August 26, 2013 - 8:46pm

Ed,

It was time to change my photo. The other one was nearly 10 years old. Time marches on, hair goes from grey to white.
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Steve, you are a psychologist. Can I get a freebie?: If you are stricken with a bad case of perfectionism -- which is, itself, an imperfection -- then how do you go about improving on that? Do you try to make yourself at least a little more perfect (by fighting against the perfectionism in you)? Wrap your mind around that one at least once or twice.

:-)

What is there for a perfectionist to do, except to try to improve and to make oneself better?

Perfectionism isn't really about being perfect or even better. It is about a fear acquired at an early age - a fear that something terrible would happen if the child was seen as being wrong or making a mistake or not good enough in some way. Then, as the years go by, it develops into a complex of defenses that are complex and multifaceted. Some of the things are good - like studying, thinking, and getting better at things, but other aspects... not so much, like being defensive, or finding it tough to own an error, and carrying around tension about not being right, etc. It actually gets in the way of being right as often, or learning as quickly as would otherwise be possible. Increases in self-acceptance are probably the best source of increased clarity of thought.

Self-acceptance is the key. It lets a person continue to grow, to pursue improvement, but without the underlying fear or defensiveness. The chapter in Branden's "The Six Pillars" on self-acceptance has the best approaches to increasing self-acceptance. It is a kind of mental-emotional maturing that can continue on almost infinitely - definitely not just a change from youth to adult. I remember Branden saying just that and how pleased he was with his own progress in exactly that area in recent years. He saw it as something we could all do and without end.

When we are young we need to have all these external signals of authority that clue us in to when we are wrong, but the process should continually move in the direction of being our own authority, acquiring independence, and away from being a harsh, "You are wrong!" feeling or a struggle with defending against that, to one that is friendly, helpful, totally on our side and not negative. Perfectionism is a kind of an internalized, harsh voice, even though it may get so deeply buried under defenses that it isn't apparent. Another aspect that often, but not always, shows up is a projection of the critical view onto others. The more a person increases their self-acceptance, the more benevolent they feel towards others.

Post 118

Monday, August 26, 2013 - 10:50pm

Thanks for that, Steve.

By the way, I noticed that your new picture sort of makes you look like Sean Connery in The Hunt for Red October [big pic]:

"Shum shings down heere don't reoct well to bulletsch!"

:-)

Ed

Post 119

Monday, August 26, 2013 - 11:28pm