Do murderers have a right to life?

Bill,

In Post 84, you wrote, "For me, if you have a right to life it means a right not to be murdered."

That, I think, is your mistake. To be sure, a right to life includes a right not to be murdered, but that's not what it means. It means a right to self-sustaining, self-generated action.

I was trying to distinguish from the loss of life involved in things other than murder, such as when an animal attacks you and kills you. That is not murder, and you do not have a right against animal attacks.

Ed

Post 101

Sunday, October 23, 2011 - 6:59am

Bill,

To be sure, a right to life includes a right not to be murdered, but that's not what it means. It means a right to self-sustaining, self-generated action.

You keep dropping the context. A right to life (self-sustaining, self-generated action) only means those things in a social context, where men observe some sort of a code of behavior in order to live together. A right to life doesn't apply to things like animal attacks, or to a soldier getting killed in a war, or to a murderer receiving capital punishment.

Those are all non-social contexts.

This harkens back to the Bidinotto hypothesis of rights. In retrospect, Bidinotto was half-right. He argued that rights spring from the social context of civilized societies (rather than from man's nature, itself). The truth is that rights spring from man's nature, but their application is limited only to the social context -- rather than being applicable in every context (animal attacks, war, capital punishment), including an anti-social context.

Ed

p.s. Criminal behavior is not social, but anti-social ("hostile or harmful to organized society"; Merriam Webster)

Post 102

Sunday, October 23, 2011 - 8:20am

Steve,

I said that it only takes two people to make a social context... and I think that is obvious.

Perhaps we will have to continue to disagree. You are using the word social in its broadest sense and I would claim that we need a narrower sense for this context. I would argue that the sense you are using is merely a synonym for plural as in "more than one life-form" -- and would apply equally to an ant colony or bee colony, to one animal killing another animal, to soldiers killing one another on a battlefield, and to murderers put to death in prison. In all those cases there is "more than one life-form."

Ants and bees are "social" animals because they live together. There is a plurality. But that is where the commonality between ants and humans stops. In that sense, you are arguing for use of the "ant colony" definition of social and I am arguing for use of the human definition of social.

There is an underclass of criminals, like auto-theft rings, and they are part of the overall society - of our social context - that we live within. They are predators and any one of us could become prey. That doesn't mean that rights don't exist (unless you are saying that a car thief loses some portion of his rights by the act of stealing a car - that I'd agree with). In principle, the car thieves and the rest of us are no different in principle than you example of the cannibal and his victim - both are in a social context.

You keep saying that there is a possibility that I might be thinking that rights are lost by bad conduct, but that is the opposite of my stated view. Please refer back to post 87, where I think I stated my view (I called it "view 2") most clearly.

The rights of these criminals afford moral protection against (initiated) force while they are observing a behavior code that allows them to live together with other human beings. If they break that code, however, their rights no longer protect them from (retaliatory) force. They have the same rights as before, but -- with regard to their punishment -- those rights become inapplicable to the new situation that they created. A murderer, for instance, could not appeal to his "right to life" in order to escape capital punishment. The right to life doesn't apply to such anti-social contexts. It has application in a social context where in order to have any force, you have got to have an initiation of force.

You can have force in prison without an initiation of force in prison, but that force is a retaliation of the initiated force that you instigated in the social context. Rights aren't rights against retaliatory force.

You said that the prison is not part of the social context. Does that mean that their are no rights at all inside a prison? Are you claiming that it is okay to kill a person that is in prison for nothing more than writing a bad check?

What I meant was that rights protect you from initiated force outside of prison, but not from the retaliatory force that you get while in prison. There is a potential equivocation here between a prisoner's sentence and their physical jail cell. The physical jail cell is a space made up of concrete and steel. And, inside of that space, people might initiate force on each other. The question is, if force is initiated inside of a jail cell, does it violate rights? The answer is: Yes, if it is not part of the judicial punishment of the criminal.

It's not that rights don't apply in jail cells, it's that rights don't apply in jail sentences/sentencing. There are full rights in prison, but the prisoner's sentencing puts him on a judicial path where his rights will not protect him from punishment.

A social system created for the purpose of protecting rights would include things like laws, courts, and prisons. A social context is NOT the same thing as a social system.

Under the premise of the "ant colony" (more than one life-form) definition of a social context, you are correct. I don't question how you arrived at that conclusion, I question the underlying premise. A social context, when applied to humans, would include a behavior code men observe in order to live together. With "social" animals (ants, bees, etc), the requisite behavior code is pre-programmed. With man, it has to be willfully observed.

You wrote, "Rights refers to the actions that you should be free to pursue in a social context."
And you wrote, "I believe that you cannot say that prisoners would also be "in society" ... Prisoners are not included in her definition because they are outside of the social context."

So those two things clearly go together to say that prisoners don't have rights. Yet before they were caught, they did exist in society. Therefore when I said that under your model, going into prison is what removes rights, I was just logically putting YOUR thoughts together.

This is a tough point that needs more clarity. It is the same point made above about a prisoner's judicial sentence/sentencing and his physical jail cell.

There is the place (the prison) and there is the man (the prisoner). The man has placed himself outside of the context where rights afford him moral protection from force. We call it a prison but it is nothing special. It is just a place to put folks who have put themselves outside of the formerly-full protection of individual rights. They still have all of their rights, and their rights still morally protect them from initiated force (e.g., getting killed by prison guards for writing a bad check), but they don't have the same protection from force as they did in the social context they were in before they committed a crime.

Rights refer to the actions you should be free to pursue in a social context, not to actions you should be free to pursue in any/every context.

Ed

Post 103

Sunday, October 23, 2011 - 9:18am

I found Rand saying the same thing that I have been saying about how -- when it comes to mankind -- a social context involves more than just a numerical plurality. The broad, 'more than one life-form' view of a social context is so broad that it would apply to any creature in any group in any situation (ants, bees, soldiers on a battlefield, etc), but Rand meant for the term "social context" -- when applied to humans -- to be more limited than that:

�Rights� are a moral concept�the concept that provides a logical transition from the principles guiding an individual�s actions to the principles guiding his relationship with others�the concept that preserves and protects individual morality in a social context�the link between the moral code of a man and the legal code of a society, between ethics and politics.

--"Man's Rights", VOS, 92

Here, Rand is saying that, for man, a social context involves observation of a legal code (in order for these men to live together).

Ed

Post 104

Sunday, October 23, 2011 - 2:07pm

Ed,

In post #100 you said, "The truth is that rights spring from man's nature, but their application is limited only to the social context..."

Yes, well said.

But when you said, "Criminal behavior is not social, but anti-social..." in the context of your post on rights, you are implying that all actions that violate a law (criminal) are out of the realm of moral rights. But that isn't so. Illegal, anti-social behavior might violate an individual right, or it might not - some laws are bad. But in either case it still falls inside of the realm where we can judge it relative to individual rights.

"Anti-social" is either acting against the social structure, or just unsociable behavior, but in either case it can only occur in a social context. You can't be anti-social but not within a social context.

Post 105

Sunday, October 23, 2011 - 2:31pm

Ed,

In post #101 you said,

You are using the word social in its broadest sense and I would claim that we need a narrower sense for this context. I would argue that the sense you are using is merely a synonym for plural as in "more than one life-form" -- and would apply equally to an ant colony or bee colony, to one animal killing another animal, to soldiers killing one another on a battlefield, and to murderers put to death in prison. In all those cases there is "more than one life-form."

Ants and bees are "social" animals because they live together. There is a plurality. But that is where the commonality between ants and humans stops. In that sense, you are arguing for use of the "ant colony" definition of social and I am arguing for use of the human definition of social.

I have alway intended my use of the word 'social' in this thread to be within the domain of a human social context. I think that is clear and that you bringing in ants, bees or bears is not pertinent and certainly not what I meant. Do you seriously think I meant to say ants have individual rights, or that my description of rights would logically imply that?
-----------

Just to be sure we are clear, I'll say it now and intend it to apply to my posts in this thread - past, present and future posts. When I say "social context" or "society" unless otherwise indicated I mean "HUMAN social context" or "HUMAN society."
---------------

You have said that rights don't apply to attacks by an animal or harm to a person or property by a storm. You have stated that rights only apply to an act by a human. We agree on that.

And THAT is the nature of the social context. Rights only arise when there is a plurality of humans that could interact in a way that would result in the violation of rights.

My broad use of social context is the one that is required, because if you attempt to narrow it to a subset of that broad social context you are leaving out situations where there is more than one human, and there is the possibility that at least one human can engage in an act of initiating force against another. Doing that, leaving those out, makes it as if rights didn't exist in a context where there are two or more humans and there is the capacity to violate individual rights.

For example, if you leave out prisons, if you say they don't fall inside your definition of 'human social context' then it becomes impossible, in your model, to say one prisoner has violated the rights of another prisoner. One must understand that 'social context' is broad enough to include each situation where one human can potentially violate the right of another - and no broader. Anything else is logically untenable.

(Edited by Steve Wolfer on 10/23, 2:55pm)

Post 106

Sunday, October 23, 2011 - 3:04pm

Ed,

You wrote in post #101, "You keep saying that there is a possibility that I might be thinking that rights are lost by bad conduct, but that is the opposite of my stated view."

No, I was saying that you SHOULD think that rights are lost by bad conduct.
------------------

You wrote, "The rights of these criminals afford moral protection against (initiated) force while they are observing a behavior code that allows them to live together with other human beings. If they break that code, however, their rights no longer protect them from (retaliatory) force."

In that statement, you have made rights subject to whatever illogical, whim-based, tyrannical, altruistic 'behavior code' that might happen to exist in that society.

But that is only your first logical problem. Next you say that if they break the behavior code of their society, their rights no longer protect them from (retaliatory) force. That means that something in their behavior (when the broke the code) changed their relation to rights. Yet, you have clearly insisted that bad conduct does not diminish an individual's rights. The only alternative is to say that the gates of the prison are a magical portal which has one kind of rights on one side, and another understanding of rights on the other.

And the logic problems don't stop there. How in the world can you define bad behavior, or distinguish what social codes should be mandatory without FIRST knowing what individual rights are? Yet you have made the rights contingent in some fashion upon the social code, which I maintain can't be morally judged until rights are worked out. You are out on this limb saying that laws, which come from and are part of the society, somehow come before individual rights.

The only way out of the mess is to claim that what you mean by a 'behavior code that allows people to live together' is an objective code based upon individual rights - but then your statement would either be meaningless - or you would be saying, 'If they break [individual rights], however, their [individual] rights no longer protect them from (retaliatory) force.' I've been saying, all along, that we lose rights when we violate rights. And you would be agreeing with me, unless you think we had a right to be safe from retaliatory force before we violated a right - and that doesn't make sense.

Post 107

Sunday, October 23, 2011 - 3:42pm

Ed,

In post #101 you wrote, "The question is, if force is initiated inside of a jail cell, does it violate rights? The answer is: Yes, if it is not part of the judicial punishment of the criminal."

We agree on that. But we disagee on the reason that it is true.
------------------

You go on to say, "It's not that rights don't apply in jail cells, it's that rights don't apply in jail sentences/sentencing. There are full rights in prison, but the prisoner's sentencing puts him on a judicial path where his rights will not protect him from punishment."

I would definitely phrase that differently.

Rights do apply in sentencing. If a jury finds a man guilty, then, and not before, is the judge legally entitled to pass sentence. This is the legal system saying that a man has a right to be free unless he committed a certain act (an issue of fact) and if he did do it, then he lost the right to that freedom.

If the man still possessed the right to be free, on a moral level, there isn't anything a judge could do to change that. The judge can act in the legal realm to violate the right to be freedom (as in the case of an innocent man going to jail), or to engage in a moral exercise of retaliatory force by locking a guilty man up under an appropriate sentence, which does not violate his rights. But the moral lynch pin is NOT the words of the judge when sentence is passed, it is in the act of man when the crime was committed.

If the man violated the rights of another, then the judge has the right to pass an appropriate sentence. If the man did not violate the rights of another, then the judge can not morally sentence the man to time in jail. The man has a no right to be free if he did it, and clearly has the right to be free if he didn't. His rights changed if he did it, and they didn't if he didn't.

It is the actions of a man that must be judged. If they occur inside of the framework of individual rights then his rights remain unchanged. But if he steps outside of the framework of individual rights, which can only be done by the exercise of initiating force, fraud or theft, then he has voluntarily left the moral 'safe' zone, voluntarily stepped away from moral sanctity. The nature of the act committed outside of rights will be the measure of an appropriate retaliation.

The determination of fact regarding the alleged crime is a matter for the law and the courts and the judge is given a range of retaliatory force to use for a guilty verdict and he refines it within that range to best suit the crime. All of this care in finding the right sentence is to ensure that there is a match between the violated rights of the victim and the retaliatory force used. Too little is not justice, too much is a violation of the criminal's rights.

Post 108

Sunday, October 23, 2011 - 3:56pm

Ed,

Again, in post #101, you wrote, "A social context, when applied to humans, would include a behavior code men observe in order to live together. With "social" animals (ants, bees, etc), the requisite behavior code is pre-programmed. With man, it has to be willfully observed."

I've written above about what social context for humans must consist of to consider individual rights. It must consist of more than one human and the capacity of at least one human to violate the rights of at least one other.

We always have a 'behavior code' in the sense that all men who are conscious of the external world and make choices based upon reasoned conclusions (good or bad reasoning) as to how to act towards others are behaving according to their own behavior code. It is normal that humans will share element of this behavior code. But none of this is required to have a context where rights can be violated.

If I can be attacked by any other human -regardless of our respective 'behavior codes' and regardless of whether we share any elements of it or not, my rights will be violated. I don't lose all my rights and I don't start my life never possessing individual rights because of some condition in this or that societies code of behavior.

When you base the existence or nature of individual rights on some undefined 'behavior code' you have thrown the objective nature of rights out the window.

Post 109

Sunday, October 23, 2011 - 4:18pm

Ed,

Regarding your post #103, take a look at what I wrote in post #94. I addressed the same quote of Rand's in some detail - particularly in the 3rd, 4th and 5th blocks of my post.

Rand's quote does NOT give reason to believe that individual rights do not exist except in a social context where a legal code is observed.

(and, again, let me say that the idea that I might be referring to ants or bees is all of your making - I've never given reason to conclude that)

Do you really believe that soldiers on a battlefield are outside of the realm of individual rights... like ants and bees?

Post 110

Sunday, October 23, 2011 - 5:39pm

Steve,

"Anti-social" is either acting against the social structure, or just unsociable behavior, but in either case it can only occur in a social context. You can't be anti-social but not within a social context.

Good point.

I have alway intended my use of the word 'social' in this thread to be within the domain of a human social context. I think that is clear and that you bringing in ants, bees or bears is not pertinent and certainly not what I meant. Do you seriously think I meant to say ants have individual rights, or that my description of rights would logically imply that?

No, I wasn't thinking any of that. I just made a laundry list because sometimes that helps. In particular, what do you say about soldiers in war? Soldiers in war -- under the broad ("numerical plurality") definition of social context -- would actually be in a social context, and that would mean that they are all violating each other's right to life (they're murdering each other in a social context). But that seems absurd. It seems like a logical extension of the "numerical plurality" view ends up in a contradiction.

For example, if you leave out prisons, if you say they don't fall inside your definition of 'human social context' then it becomes impossible, in your model, to say one prisoner has violated the rights of another prisoner.

I have to take blame for being ambiguous here. Earlier, I said that rights don't apply to prisoners in prison. What I meant to say is that rights don't affect (hamper, mitigate) punitive sentencing. Someone's right to life does not morally protect them from being put to death (if capital punishment is a just sentence). I tried to address this earlier when I said that prisons -- the physical places where we keep criminals -- are nothing special. There is nothing special about being inside of a prison with regard to your rights. What is special, is the specific jail sentence that you receive -- and that is where your rights can't help you.

Ed

Post 111

Sunday, October 23, 2011 - 6:16pm

Steve,

You wrote, "The rights of these criminals afford moral protection against (initiated) force while they are observing a behavior code that allows them to live together with other human beings. If they break that code, however, their rights no longer protect them from (retaliatory) force."

In that statement, you have made rights subject to whatever illogical, whim-based, tyrannical, altruistic 'behavior code' that might happen to exist in that society.

That's an ungenerous interpretation of what I said. I put 'initiated-retaliatory' qualifiers in parentheses which indicate that the judgment standard might be an objective standard based on individual rights -- which are always and only ever violated by an initiation of force (or fraud). Sure, I didn't explicitly state it, but we were talking about regular criminals committing regular crimes and then, like a bait-n-switch, I got caught in a "gotcha'" moment. Maybe "behavior" was a bad word to use. Allow me to change behavior code to legal code and, on top of that, allow me to change legal code to objectively legal code (where law is based on rights, not whims). Then, with those substitutions, I can get away with saying what I did.

Next you say that if they break the behavior code of their society, their rights no longer protect them from (retaliatory) force. That means that something in their behavior (when the broke the code) changed their relation to rights.

No it doesn't. Rights never protect folks from (justice-based) retaliatory force. The reason I said that rights used to protect them from force is that, while innocent and in a social context, rights protect you from all instances of force -- because the only instances of force in that context are initiations of force (which rights protect against). Justifiable retaliatory force was never protected against by individual rights. So their relation to rights did not change, but their circumstances did. Upon capture, they will lose circumstantial freedom without losing the right to freedom.

This is because the individual right to freedom only applies in a social (non rights-violating) context. It doesn't protect against being judiciously sentenced to a jail cell.

How in the world can you define bad behavior, or distinguish what social codes should be mandatory without FIRST knowing what individual rights are? Yet you have made the rights contingent in some fashion upon the social code, which I maintain can't be morally judged until rights are worked out.

I haven't made rights themselves genetically-contingent upon a social context -- so that we have to have the social context before we have any rights (and losing a social context means that we lose rights). That is the Bidinotto view of rights. All I've said is that rights apply in the arena where the only force you encounter is initiated force -- and that arena is what I refer to as the social context.

Ed

Post 112

Sunday, October 23, 2011 - 6:59pm

Ed,

You wrote, in post #110, "In particular, what do you say about soldiers in war? Soldiers in war -- under the broad ("numerical plurality") definition of social context -- would actually be in a social context, and that would mean that they are all violating each other's right to life (they're murdering each other in a social context). "

When soldiers fire upon one another we presume that individual rights still apply. If John Smith was in the U.S. Army and the U.S. was attacked by Al Qaeda and his unit was sent to Afghanistan and he was fighting Al Qaeda he would not be violating individual rights when he killed one of the terrorists. And an Al Quaeda member would, in criminal terminology, be attempting to evade arrest and/or attempting to kill the police sent to bring him in. Soldiers are acting like police - when they are acting to defend a country that has been attacked, they are engaging in retaliatory force. If a country has not been attacked, they are violating the rights of anyone they use force against.

Like I said, the appropriate social context is any situation where there are two or more people where any one of them has the capacity to violate the right of another. So, yes, soldiers in war are in a social context where individual rights apply.
------------------------

You wrote, "Someone's right to life does not morally protect them from being put to death (if capital punishment is a just sentence)."

That is the whole problem. There can not be a right to violate a right. Take a simple mugging where the attack is brutal enough to kill the victim, except this victim fought back succesfully and the mugger was the one to die. We recognize this as a simple self-defense. I believe the only logical way to see this is that the mugger abandoned his right to life at the point of his attack. And at that point, in that context, he had no right to life. Therefore anyone who killed him at that moment (the victim, a cop coming buy, the guy's wife, etc.) would not be guilty of violating the muggers right to his life. He had already abandoned it.

Post 113

Sunday, October 23, 2011 - 9:51pm

Ed,

You wrote, in post #111 that I had made an ungenerous interpretation of what you said. I don't think so. I was attempting to point out that when you discussed people "observing a code of behavior" that it could be a code based upon altruism, tryanny, anything.

You said it was ungenerous because you put 'initiated-retaliatory' qualifiers in parentheses. But those parenthetical modifiers were for the acts of individuals and NOT modifying the 'code of behavior'.

You then explained that what you meant to communicate was 'objectively legal code' and not just any code of behavior.

That would change your statement to this: "The rights of these criminals afford moral protection against (initiated) force while they are observing objectively legal code... If they break that code, however, their rights no longer protect them from (retaliatory) force."

So, a pickpocket (the criminal) has rights against initiated force... but ONLY while he observes the objectively legal code. That doesn't make sense because he wouldn't be a criminal, wouldn't be picking pockets, if he were observing the law. And, I'd say that he always has had the right against initiated force. And that he always gives up some of his rights when he picks a pocket.
-----------------------

You wrote, "Upon capture, they will lose circumstantial freedom without losing the right to freedom."

Putting the word "circumstantial" in front of freedom doesn't make that a sensible statement. If they are locked up, then they aren't free. If they have the right to be free, and they are locked up, then their right to be free is being violated. The only way that they can be locked up (hence, not free) and not be suffering the violation of a right to be free, is if they do not have a right to be free. And if they violated someone elses rights, I say that that act was a voluntary giving up of some of their rights. That is a much better model.
-----------------------

Talking about a moral justification for jailing people who you say still have the right to be free, you wrote, "This is because the individual right to freedom only applies in a social (non rights-violating) context. It doesn't protect against being judiciously sentenced to a jail cell."

You have made the issue of individual rights dependent upon a social context - and that is correct. There MUST be social context. If there is only one human left on earth there are no longer any individual rights issues that can arise.

But the only social context required is more than one person where at least one person has the capacity to initiate force, fraud or theft.

That totally eliminates your model that requires a 'social context where people observe an objectively legal code that judiciously sentences criminals to jail cells.'
----------------

You also said, "All I've said is that rights apply in the arena where the only force you encounter is initiated force -- and that arena is what I refer to as the social context."

That is a significantly different definition of a society than one where an objectively legal code is observed.

We don't have to wait for an act of force to occur. We can examine, project, hypothecate, make laws ahead of time, make predictions, or just discuss. Rights are an available issue anywhere there are two or more individuals - initiated force and retaliatory force are both possible in any context with two or more people.

That is my definition of the applicable social context. And you have said, "... losing a social context means that we lose rights." So, if a society loses an "objectively legal code" (which was your social context, not mine) then we lose rights?

Post 114

Sunday, October 23, 2011 - 10:27pm

I wrote that "a right to life includes a right not to be murdered, but that's not what it means. It means a right to self-sustaining, self-generated action."

Ed replied,

You keep dropping the context. A right to life (self-sustaining, self-generated action) only means those things in a social context, where men observe some sort of a code of behavior in order to live together. A right to life doesn't apply to things like animal attacks, or to a soldier getting killed in a war, or to a murderer receiving capital punishment.

Those are all non-social contexts.

I agree that rights apply only in a social context (one involving the presence of other human beings). The concept of a right would have no relevance if one lived in isolation from other human beings with no possibility of being killed or coerced by them. But I wouldn't say that rights apply only within a context in which people already observe a code of behavior. Even if they didn't observe such a code -- even if they were completely nihilistic and amoral -- rights would still apply, because it would still be true that they ought to observe such a code, one that includes a respect for other people's rights.

A right to life doesn't apply to animal attacks, because a non-rational animal is incapable of respecting or violating rights, as it is incapable of grasping and applying moral principles. As for a soldier's getting killed in war, the right to life does apply in such a context. If the soldier is defending the rights of innocent people, killing him would indeed violate his right to life.

You say that a right to life does not apply to a murderer's receiving capital punishment. I agree, because the murderer does not have a right to life; he lost it when he committed murder. If he did have a right to life, then capital punishment would violate it, because it would deprive him of something he has a right to, namely his life.

(Edited by William Dwyer on 10/23, 10:29pm)

Post 115

Tuesday, October 25, 2011 - 5:33pm

Steve & Bill,

You've said that war is a social context because of the numerical plurality of humans involved and that rights are applicable to soldiers fighting (killing each other) in wars. But what do you think of this excerpt from an essay on Just War Theory from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy? It touches on about 3 potential problems with your position:

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Conversely, in joining an army the individual is said to renounce his or her rights not to be targeted in war � the bearing of arms takes a person into an alternative moral realm in which killing is the expectation and possible norm: it is [a] world removed from civilian structures and historically has evolved rites of passage and exit that underline the alteration in status for cadets and veterans; all analogies to the fair play of sports fail at this juncture, for war involves killing and what the British Army call �unlimited liability.� On entering the army, the civilian loses the right not to be targeted, yet does it follow that all who bear uniform are legitimate targets, or are some more so than others � those who are presently fighting compared to those bearing arms but who are involved in supplies or administration, for instance?

Others, avoiding a rights analysis for it produces many problems on delineating the boundaries of rights and the bearers, may argue that those who join the army (or who have even been pressed into conscription) come to terms with being a target, and hence their own deaths. This is argued for example by Barrie Paskins and Michael Dockrill in The Ethics of War (1979). However, since civilians can just as readily come to terms with their own deaths and it is not necessarily the case that a soldier has, their argument, although interesting, is not sufficient to defend the principle of discrimination and why soldiers alone should be targeted legitimately in war.

In turn, rights-based analyses may be more philosophically productive in giving soldiers and critics crucial guidelines, especially those analyses that focus on the renouncing of rights by combatants by virtue of their war status, which would leave nominally intact a sphere of immunity for civilians. Yet what is the status of guerrilla fighters who use civilian camouflage in order to press their attacks or to hide? Similarly, soldiers on covert operations present intricate problems of identification and legitimization: is there a difference between the two? Referring back to the fighters� cause (for example, the guerrilla is a �freedom fighter� and thus carries a moral trump card) creates its own problems, which the just war theory in dividing the justice of the cause from the justice of the manner in which war is fought attempts to avoid: the guerrilla fighter may breach codes of conduct just as the soldier on a politically sensitive covert operations may avoid targeting the wrong people.

Walzer, in his Just and Unjust Wars (1977) claims that the lack of identification does not give a government the right to kill indiscriminately�the onus is on the government to identify the combatants, and so, the implication goes, if there is any uncertainty involved then an attack must not be made. Others have argued that the nature of modern warfare dissolves the possibility of discrimination: civilians are just as necessary causal conditions for the war machine as are combatants, therefore, they claim, there is no moral distinction in targeting an armed combatant and a civilian involved in arming or feeding the combatant.
********************************
http://www.iep.utm.edu/justwar/

Ed

Post 116

Wednesday, October 26, 2011 - 12:13am

Ed,

"Conversely, in joining an army the individual is said to renounce his or her rights not to be targeted in war � the bearing of arms takes a person into an alternative moral realm in which killing is the expectation and possible norm..."

Does joining the police mean you renounce your right to not be targeted by a criminal? Does living in a large city mean you renounce your rights to not be mugged? Does the existence of possible attacks magically make your individual rights disappear?

I say, "No way." And contrary to the author's statement, there is no alternate moral realm... because there is no alternate metaphysics. The military are our police for external forces, not denizens of some alternate universe. It is the existence of individual rights that makes self-defense moral and the purpose of government, and the military, is to effect that defense.
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All of the talk back and forth about where to draw the line in terms of avoiding "collateral damage" (killing innocent civilians as an alledgedly unavoidable aspect of waging war) is too often not helpful.

Let's say a nation is attacked in a massive and vicious fashion. If that nation cannot defend itself except by attacks that might result in a some civilian deaths, then it it must accept that civilians will die, or the nation will die. On the other hand if a nation defends itself with attacks that far exceed the number of civilian deaths that military success requires it has clearly throw away all moral justification.

The old saying is that "War is Hell" and the best to be hoped for is that it is waged only when absolutely necessary, and by honorable men that won't pursue a blood lust, but will also never lose sight of the purpose which is to survive with the least damage.

So the bottom line is that you do your best while not losing sight of your purpose.
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Ed, I can't find any aspect of war that isn't fully inside of the moral realm. If anything, war heightens the moral drama. With the use of deadly force being the means, the ends are constantly examined that much more carefully. Wouldn't you say that the My Lai massacre was an issue of individual rights? How could the Nuremburg trials be conducted if moral rights don't apply during a war?

If anyone can find a single aspect of war where rights exist, then the social context that you described would have to be suspect. Weren't those who died at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked deprived of their right to life? Even if they were Army or Navy personnel? If so, then soldiers killing soldiers is not outside of individual rights.

Post 117

Wednesday, October 26, 2011 - 12:25pm

As I understand the Objectivist position on innocent casualties due to collateral damage, the people killed did have their right to life violated, but the violators were the enemy combatants who made the retaliatory force necessary in the first place, not the soldiers whose retaliation occasioned the collateral damage.

Post 118

Wednesday, October 26, 2011 - 12:36pm

Steve,

Ed,

"Conversely, in joining an army the individual is said to renounce his or her rights not to be targeted in war � the bearing of arms takes a person into an alternative moral realm in which killing is the expectation and possible norm..."

Does joining the police mean you renounce your right to not be targeted by a criminal? Does living in a large city mean you renounce your rights to not be mugged? Does the existence of possible attacks magically make your individual rights disappear?

I say, "No way."

Of course, I agree with you, as I don't even believe that it is metaphysically possible to renounce your own rights.

Let's say a nation is attacked in a massive and vicious fashion. If that nation cannot defend itself except by attacks that might result in a some civilian deaths, then it it must accept that civilians will die, or the nation will die.

Right. In this case, the nation should act so as to kill some civilians. The alternative is yet even more death and destruction (self-annihilation by proxy). I consider war to be an emergency, which requires different rules of conduct than the normal rules of life. Principles, such as Individual Rights, should apply differently in emergencies. In "The Ethics of Emergencies" Rand said this:

It is important to differentiate between the rules of conduct in an emergency situation and the rules of conduct in the normal conditions of human existence. This does not mean a double standard of morality: the standard and the basic principles remain the same, but their application to either case requires precise definitions.

An emergency is an unchosen, unexpected event, limited in time, that creates conditions under which human survival is impossible�such as a flood, an earthquake, a fire, a shipwreck. In an emergency situation, men�s primary goal is to combat the disaster, escape the danger and restore normal conditions (to reach dry land, to put out the fire, etc.).

By �normal� conditions I mean metaphysically normal, normal in the nature of things, and appropriate to human existence.

Also, I consider a social context to be "normal." This is why I say that war isn't a social context, and that rights don't apply the same in war (or "in prison"**) as they do in normal life.

Wouldn't you say that the My Lai massacre was an issue of individual rights? How could the Nuremburg trials be conducted if moral rights don't apply during a war?

In both cases above, innocent civilians were the target. Anytime that innocent civilians are the target of initiated force, it's an issue of individual rights -- and those rights do apply in those contexts.

Weren't those who died at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked deprived of their right to life? Even if they were Army or Navy personnel? If so, then soldiers killing soldiers is not outside of individual rights.

To be somewhat pedantic, my position is that nobody ever gets deprived of their right to life. Humans are not creatures with the metaphysical power to deprive others of their right to life (or to grant others a right to life, for that matter). Like a sticker-burr picked up on your sweater during a walk through the woods, individual rights stay with you no matter what you do -- no matter what. They are themselves absolute, but their scope of application is not absolute. They don't cover every situation you might place yourself within. They don't afford moral protection in life-death emergencies, for example (or cut-throat mob wars). They only "work" in what I refer to as a "social context" (the metaphysically "normal" context appropriate to human existence).

Ed

*When I say that rights don't apply the same "in prison" -- I don't mean that prisons are magic places where rights vanish in a puff of smoke, only that the specific prison sentencing (the punitive treatment) is orthogonal to -- or unhinged from -- the moral protection that rights normally afford.

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 10/26, 12:38pm)

Post 119

Wednesday, October 26, 2011 - 12:37pm