SolarCross wrote:I aim to give it a stress test to see if it is solid, I don't care about winning.
Fair enough.
SolarCross wrote:I suppose, but we don't live in platonic space, at least I don't, if I want to determine if an entity is self-owning (basically a near synonym of alive to my mind) or not then stating that an abstracted universal human is self-owning because if he can make an argument and if another abstracted universal human replies then that confirms self ownership doesn't really help. Is a fetus self-owning? Somehow I think a lot of critters in this world won't be covered as the implication is only philosophy students are self-owning.
I read through your entire post before starting my response, a couple of times, and I see a pattern that starts here, and will be addressed throughout. This amounts to a concession. You first concede my point with "I suppose," but then complain I am being too logical, or too obtruse, or too philosophical, or too abstract.
Thats not an argument, and in case you didn't know, my argument is intended as a semi-rigorous deductive and logical argument in a philosophical debate concerning the universal, abstract, and objective nature of morality.
I don't care if you think my argument is too logical or too philosophical and so if you really intend to help me out by giving my argument a stress-test, then assess its logical strength and leave it there.
Given what you said above, you seem to concede the point. Thats good enough, your remarks of disdain towards intellectualism are quite irrelevant.
Also, on fetuses, they are not
ispo facto self-owning; however, their rights can be derived by the relation of potential and actual personhood (which is also in my original argument).
SolarCross wrote:I am not imputing to your argument, I am making a counter assertion. Let me re-iterate that my counter assertion is that the components of self ownership are self-will and self-power and that this may be demonstrated by broader actions than just making arguments.
If you are making a counter-assertion regarding self-ownership, which contains its own definition, then i need those definitions clearly set forth. Like I said, I think i know what you mean regarding self-will, but self-power will need unpacked if you are serious about pursuing this line of thought. I do think this will take us into the weeds though.
SolarCross wrote:I'll make that proof elsewhere I won't derail your thread with it. Your note is incorrect. The right of might allows me to make the criticism because I choose to make it and I have to power to make it, this in itself is an exercise of might is right.
I appreciate it and since I disagree with your claim that my note is incorrect (since I was talking about justification not actual action), I will refrain from arguing the point further until the time when you post your position elsewhere.
I look forward to it.
SolarCross wrote:Is this hair-splitting? An axiom is a self-evident statement, "evident" as in observable. You are starting with a claim based on a common, even trivial, observation and inferring a conclusion from it. This is not a radically different claim.
Isn't all philosophy hair-splitting?
The Axiom's self-evident nature does not derive from its being observed, but from its being assumed in reasoning. That an axiom has observable qualities is secondary. For instance, the law of identity is self-evident, but it is not derived from observation (in spite of the fact that all observed entities are instances of the law of identity in being differentiated).
Hence, this is no small matter. Empirical ethics are always fallacious as they attempt to derive both rights and obligations from observation. I am deriving rights and obligations from axioms and inferrable laws irrespective of any synthetic qualities. The gap is as wide as rationalism and empircism, as deontology and utilitarianism, as night and day.
SolarCross wrote:I would say being allowed to live is a negative reward, depending on the circumstances, by which I mean if being alive is a property I already possess then being offered the opportunity to not have my life taken from me is a negative reward not a positive one. A positive reward, as I define it, is a reward of property I do not already possess or have an existing right to. In other circumstances for the reward of being allowed to live to be a positive reward could be where, in some sense, I had lost the right to my life, perhaps as a convicted murderer, so thus I would be receiving something that I did not have already have a right to though I did currently possess it.
Serfdom could be either slavery or not depending on the exact circumstances. It was a condition invented by would-be slave owners as means of disguising slavery in semi-contractual clothing after overt slavery was condemned as sin by the church. The church eventually caught on to the ruse and condemned serfdom too. If a serf was permitted to leave service by his free will I do not see it as slavery as his remaining is evidence of choosing to serve.
In modern common language we use the word "slave" in figurative or metaphorical uses because almost no one in the west is a true slave: eg one will say a person in paid employment which he freely took up and is free to leave is a wage slave or say that a person is slave to fashion or a love slave etc. However I submit that in more rigorous debate we should not confuse metaphor, hyperbole and poetic licence for literal meaning. Slave means an involuntary servant.
No disagreement really. Very well stated and presented.
I will only say that the only involuntary slavery permissible under Ancap philosophy, as far as I can see, would be retributive slaves (spoils of a just and retaliatory war or debt slaves) which are taken as collateral for previous losses that were unjustly inflicted.
SolarCross wrote:My question is in what way does a voluntary "slave" differ from a voluntary servant?
None I suppose.
SolarCross wrote:If I succeed in these intentions then I have negated the reality of your self-ownership no matter what arguments you made. If I break your will or break your personal power your self-ownership is negated and no amount of "presuppositional inferences" or "undeniable axioms" can save you. As they say in Westeros "Words are wind".
This is the same thing you did earlier (and will continue to do below) where you don't deny the logic of the system, but claim it doesn't matter because of "muh force."
This would be like saying that I won the debate because I shot you.
I did not negate the validity or invalidity of your statements just because I shot you.
But under your argument, this would have to be the case, but that is clearly absurd. the truth of gravitational theory is not dependent on those supporters of such you happen to let live.
Same thing here, given the "undeniable axioms" and "presuppositional inferences" self-ownership is logically established no matter how many self-owning people you kill or make into slaves.
You may not like this and you may even say in a nihilistic way "it doesn't matter if its true if I have all the guns," but the truth pf the system
mattering to you personally is quite irrelevant.
SolarCross wrote:......In reality self-ownership is alienable, by violence, by torture and by psychological manipulation. Some axioms floating about in platonic space have done nothing to prevent actual slavery, actual negation of self-ownership, in the real world.
Same issue as above, the truth of a position or an argument is not invalidated by you killing the one arguing it.
If that were the case, you would be wrong just because I shot you and you would have to say the communists were right and their victims wrong, simply because the oppressors killed them and enslaved them.
Either way, this is not an argument and your conclusion does not follow from your premise.
SolarCross wrote:I think ultimately what the an-caps are fundamentally getting wrong with their NAP and their self-ownership is an "Is / Ought" fallacy. They want the NAP and self-ownership to be natural rights, to be something really fundamental to the way the universe works, but what they are, if anything at all, is just how things ought to be, for a nice civilised society. They are not natural they are artificial.
I am only trying to establish what people ought to do, the "is" is clearly all over the map if you look at world politics, that is not what is under contention and your critique of my argument is not really a critique at all.
I am claiming that my argument is logical, you are basically conceding this but saying it doesn't matter because the world doesn't act logically.
AGREED! but that is not a critique of my argument as I never claimed that people are or will naturally follow what I am arguing.
If you have a critique of the logic of my point, please present it; otherwise, I am quite satisfied with its strength given our discussion so far, and since you said that was your point in debating, and not winning, I don't see why we need to prolong this discussion unnecessarily if your only remaining point is that "might-makes-right" needs a separate hearing in contrast to the NAP. I would be glad to have that conversation with you, but this is obviously not the place for that (as you yourself have stated).
SolarCross wrote:So the imam who persuades, by means of heavenly sex bait, a stupid young man to do a martyr bombing is completely guiltless?
Whether he is guilty of something is irrelevant to the fact that
he is not guilty of doing the bombing itself. He's not, because he's not the one who did it.
Even criminal law assumes such a distinction, and for good reason.
SolarCross wrote:This is basically a strawman. I was saying that words can be used to cause harm. All this is simply irrelevant.
Its not a straw man, you said that convincing someone to kill themselves was the same as killing them directly. If this is your claim then my argument applies. If not, then I don't know what your are trying to say, because reasoning with someone necessarily presumes self-ownership and is logically respecting of that person's rights, even if the end goal would be the same as simply violating his rights through direct aggression.
Once again, convincing someone to kill themselves, through argumentation, is not a violation of the NAP. If it were, then my last rebuttal to you (that you would call a straw-man) would apply in full and you would be stuck with absurd consequences.
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