Forums of the Libertarian Left

James wrote:No but then why should justice and good consequences be a seperate concept?

Actually, that's precisely the argument what I was thinking of and it seems to explicitly argue against pure consequentialism. I don't think consequences don't matter (which by the way should answer PC's question) and did not mean to imply that. What I mean is that ethics based purely on measuring consequences is, well, purely consequentialist and, as the link argues, consequences aren't the principium essendi of justice.

I've missed a lot of the comments along the way:

Well, see the one thing I've yet to see from natural law theorists is any actual reasoning on what rights are legit and which aren't. So far all I've read is a torrent of interesting stuff on who has the burden of proof and who hasn't and nothing to show that they can actually back up any of it -.-

Seriously? You've yet to see this? It's somewhat implied in the terms when the person is a libertarian natural lawyer. It's at least not true of the example of Long's research that we've been discussing. His answer is that there is just one right. Jumping to the end of a different essay than that link:

9. If we subordinate other people to our own purposes, treating them as prey or objects of manipulation rather than as equal partners to be dealt with through persuasion, we are choosing a life that is inferior by our own standards. Thus we are obligated to choose peaceful relations whenever peaceful relations are available; we are obligated not to impose our will on other people.

On the other hand, if we insist on renouncing violence even when peaceful relations are not an option — that is, if we refuse to defend ourselves from aggression — then we are declining to extend our lives even when we could do so without decreasing the humanity of our lives. Thus, while human beings are under an obligation to respect one another's autonomy, they are not under any obligation to refrain from forcibly defending their own autonomy. (Indeed, they may even be obligated to defend themselves, since we have other ends (such as self-preservation) which become imperative for us when they do not conflict with higher goals.) But this means that every human has an obligation to refrain from invading the freedom of every other human, and that it is permissible for the latter to defend this freedom by force against incursions from the former. In other words, every human being has a right to freedom — a natural right, one that derives from the Natural Law specifying our natural ends.

Agree or not, it sounds like a conclusion about content to me.

Zanthorus wrote:"Flourishing" is so vague you could use it to justify pretty much anything under the sun that was mildly left of centre.

ok let me call bullshit on this whole line of X is so vague you could use it to prove anything because its f'ed out. maybe the concept seems vague to you because you don't know much about it. i think we ought to be charitable to positions we know are commonly held and have a long intellectual tradition (eek...ie we ought to engage w/them rather than tossing them aside knowing cleverer people have already anticipated the moves we are likely to make). if you are going to go that route at least be fanciful about it.

All words are potentially vague until you clarify your meaning. What eudaimonists/aristotileans mean by "flourishing" is quite specific if one looks into their work and allows them to clarify their meaning.

shawnpwilbur wrote:The content of "natural law" appears to be an unknown, which makes its usefulness for guiding other sorts of law seem dubious.

Well, working backwards, libertarian concepts like, say, non-aggression can do real work in guiding positive law; that much seems clear from the stream of analysis that we see all the time. The question then is only whether you think that one can reason one's way to non-aggression. And if the eudaimonists and other naturalists (like Foot or Post) are correct (I won't try to comment on others) then "a) normative facts are actually a subset of descriptive facts (e.g., facts about our natural ends) and so we can after all interact with them; b) we cannot causally interact with mathematical facts, but we can nevertheless have mathematical knowledge, so causal interaction must not be the only possible way to satisfy the reliability condition". That's part of the reason for thinking naturalist approaches are more likely to be useful.

The burden of proof arguments seem just weird: without positive arguments, all you can really assert is a "right to believe;"

But I think that was acknowledged as such since it was only ever brought out to defeat a specific type of criticism that itself only went so far, namely, are you even justified in starting down the road of natural law because it seems that we value things because they are valuable. You are correct that that particular part of the story only goes so far, which is why it is far from the most interesting part.

Ceapmann, way to quote selectively. Maybe I should have made it clearer:

The burden of proof argument isn't an argument for natural law it's a counter argument against anti-morality arguments in general. It is a defence of morality, including morality not based on natural law.

"Flourishing" is so vague you could use it to justify pretty much anything under the sun that was mildly left of centre. And you haven't explained why flourishing is desirable, or why it should form the basis of our ethics.

Well I didn't claim to define flourishing, explain why it's desirable or argue that it should be the basis of our ethics I was responding to a specific point that was raised, the argument (strawman/non-sequitur?) that natural rights proponents haven't given any argument on what the content of natural law is we just come up with interesting ideas about the burden of proof, which I think I answered. By writing "we would need to move the discussion onto the nature of "flourishing" and what conditions would lead to it." I thought it was implied that my comment wasn't meant to address these things. Anyway there have been several links posted to stuff by Long so it's not really true that none of this has been explained.

Anyway, more on content when i'm feeling more awake.

shawnpwilbur wrote:If there are non-believers in "natural law" who are not also apostates and unbelievers on all moral or ethical questions -- and there are, however reluctant some may be to recognize it -- then the question (among non-nihilists) really becomes one of positive arguments, and the search this unknown but "objective" morality seems to be just one ethical project among others.

If I'm being too presumptuous in defining natural law as a synonym for non-relativist ethics, then first let me apologize. Next, let me scratch my head. I'm very interested to know more about your particular niche but I'm at a loss as to how it wouldn't introduce something fairly static that wouldn't invite comparisons to a natural law, however limited or basic.

James wrote:"at it's core it's nothing spookier than the idea that some principles will lead to flourishing (or well being, happiness etc), as individuals and society as a whole, while others won't. That's not far removed from the arguments you have to make to support any political ideology."

It could be just the way I'm reading that statement, but that sounds strikingly similar to utilitarianism to me.

"Individualist utilitarianism" perhaps. Of course, in the realm of politics, we're inherently talking about something interpersonal so it has social implications as well (not that there really is a strict dichotomy between individualism and sociality to begin with). More broadly speaking, the moment you advocate a political position you have implicitly entered into an interpersonal normative ethical discourse, since presumably you are speaking of a systematic end/goal and presumably you think it is preferable to other ones (I.E. you are using value-laden and normative language), which is part of why I find claims to non-prescriptive-ness to be disingenuous.

Part of the reason is I don't think justice and good consequences are seperate concepts (How could the concept "good" consequence exist without some criteria for "goodness"?) but a utilitarian would say X is just because it leads to good consequences whereas from a natural law or aristotelian perspective X leads to good consequences because X is just. Also rather than starting from "the greatest good for the greatest number" it starts from the individual and develops an interpersonal ethics from there.

neverfox wrote:Seriously? You've yet to see this? It's somewhat implied in the terms when the person is a libertarian natural lawyer. It's at least not true of the example of Long's research that we've been discussing. His answer is that there is just one right. Jumping to the end of a different essay than that link:

9. If we subordinate other people to our own purposes, treating them as prey or objects of manipulation rather than as equal partners to be dealt with through persuasion, we are choosing a life that is inferior by our own standards. Thus we are obligated to choose peaceful relations whenever peaceful relations are available; we are obligated not to impose our will on other people.

On the other hand, if we insist on renouncing violence even when peaceful relations are not an option — that is, if we refuse to defend ourselves from aggression — then we are declining to extend our lives even when we could do so without decreasing the humanity of our lives. Thus, while human beings are under an obligation to respect one another's autonomy, they are not under any obligation to refrain from forcibly defending their own autonomy. (Indeed, they may even be obligated to defend themselves, since we have other ends (such as self-preservation) which become imperative for us when they do not conflict with higher goals.) But this means that every human has an obligation to refrain from invading the freedom of every other human, and that it is permissible for the latter to defend this freedom by force against incursions from the former. In other words, every human being has a right to freedom — a natural right, one that derives from the Natural Law specifying our natural ends.

Agree or not, it sounds like a conclusion about content to me.

Well, obviously I know you lot would conclude that freedom is the prime right

What I meant was I'd never seen anyone reason from solid premises to a conclusion about the existence of natural rights, although Long's answer looks pretty good, I should probably read a bit more on this subject.

neverfox wrote:

shawnpwilbur wrote:If there are non-believers in "natural law" who are not also apostates and unbelievers on all moral or ethical questions -- and there are, however reluctant some may be to recognize it -- then the question (among non-nihilists) really becomes one of positive arguments, and the search this unknown but "objective" morality seems to be just one ethical project among others.

If I'm being too presumptuous in defining natural law as a synonym for non-relativist ethics, then first let me apologize. Next, let me scratch my head. I'm very interested to know more about your particular niche but I'm at a loss as to how it wouldn't introduce something fairly static that wouldn't invite comparisons to a natural law, however limited or basic.

Well, maybe you can tell me what you think it would be. I'm not sure I can even sign onto Roderick's "one right," as a "natural right." Nature seems to give very mixed messages about "property," and it appears to me that as we develop our innate capacities as human beings, and get to know our "selves" better, we only tend to deepen the antinomy. And once we start talking about "rights" and "justice" in libertarian circles, it seems like a whole apparatus is involved that I'm pretty sure is not natural or necessary.

It seems to me that there is actually plenty of potential ethical ground that does not depend either on the norms of one's culture (relativism), the impossibility of norms (nihilism), or the whole suite of notions that seem to be tied up with "natural law" -- unless "natural law" in the ethical sense finally just reduces down to a kind of ethical physics, observing tendencies and sketching out general relations on the basis of which we can hope to build relatively robust conventional laws and institutions. That's pretty obviously not what some participants in the debate believe.

From my perspective, the mutualist norm of reciprocity is more like a tool than a law. Even in the form of a "law of love," it's at most a conventional law -- and conventions are just approximations, levers that may get the next work done. "Justice" is nothing more than a level, separate indeed from good consequences, but for different reasons, maybe, than Roderick suggests. By 1858, Proudhon had pretty clearly laid out a world in which we had the justice-level, and pretty much everything else was a hammer -- and the ethical choices all come down to whether or not individuals were going to hammer each other down to the same level, build the general level of human existence up, or drop the level entirely and just hammer away at each other without any other guide than the "right" of the strong. I think that the more thoroughly we attempt to understand nature, including human nature, in its evolutions, the more efficient we can be at the job of just surviving, and the more energy we can devote to experimentation (for good and ill). Potentially, at least, we also learn to deal with the deepening antinomy involved in our phenomenologically separate but physically united existence. Progress (what Proudhon and others were happy to call "The Revolution") is driven by the recognition of new relations and new forces (new tools, and new uses, so that we start to have more than hammers, or stop using everything like a hammer), and new ethical subjects.

"The multiplication of free forces is the true contr'un..." : That's still just a working hypothesis, it seems to me, or more accurately a statement of experimental method.

Thanks, Shawn. That gives me some things to ponder.

neverfox wrote:Thanks, Shawn. That gives me some things to ponder.

Pardon the figurative nature of it, but it seems useful to lift it a bit out of language not already multiply "homesteaded" in the debates.