text:
In article <000a01c3a524$92642c30$6401a8c0@prescott>, James E. Prescott
<[email]> wrote:

Insentient living systems (e.g., the Microsoft Corporation) can have
their functioning interfered with by the actions of moral agents.
That's what I mean by "harm". Insentient living systems can also have
their functioning enhanced by the actions of moral agents. That's what
I mean by "benefit".

Moreover,  insentient things can be necessary or sufficient *means* to
the benefit or harm of entities that can be benefitted or harmed. I
suggest that if A is a necessary means to B, and B is good, then A is
good.

Since it is you that is making the positive claim of logical
incoherence, it is up to you to support that claim by argument. I
insist that until you demonstrate that my point of view is incoherent,
anyone, including me, may rationally suppose that it is coherent.

It is not up to me to prove that there is not a teacup suspended in the
air above my head out of my sight. If you assert that there is, it's up
to you to support that assertion by argument.

A chemical reaction is not a moral agent because it is not an entity
capable of choosing actions in accordance with moral standards. It is
not a moral patient because it is not an entity whose proper
functioning can be enhanced or obstructed by the chosen actions of a
moral agent.

I mean that it is logically coherent to have, say, N foundational goods
in one's moral system, rather than just one; and that it is logically
coherent that *one* of those foundational goods be the experience of
pleasure but not the only one.

For example, one of the foundational goods of my morality is the
*survival* of moral patients. I insist that

1. the survival of a moral patient is not identical to the experiencing
of pleasure by that moral patient;

2. whether a particular action results in the survival of a moral
patient is logically independent of whether that action produces
pleasure in the consciousness of that moral patient, in that lethal
acts can produce pleasure; and

3. there ain't no logical incoherence in taking an objective state of
affairs, such as individual survival, as a foundational good of a moral
system. Or even as *the* foundational good of such a system, though
that isn't what I do.

Again, assertions:

1. "'Pleasure is *the* good is *the* axiom of ethics". Wrong on two
counts:

a. It's not an *axiom*, by your own definition of "axiom", since to
deny it is not self-contradictory (but is only in disagreement with
your point of view); and

b.it's not even *true* in the form that I've stated it, which I think
is what you mean, in that there can be more than one foundational good
for a moral system without logical incoherence..

2." There can't be a good for an insentient being". On the contrary, if
you define "good" as "beneficial to a moral patient", as I do, and the
moral patient happens to be an insentient living system (like an
organization or society or ecosystem) whose proper functioning can be
affected by the chosen acts of moral agents, then there can be a good
(in the sense of benefit) for that entity.

No, you did not.

Yup.

On the contrary, I have just proposed another foundational good, namely
*survival*. You have not shown that it is logically incoherent to take
survival as a foundational good for a moral system. I certainly agree
that it is contrary to your belief to take survival as a foundational
good for a moral system.

You reject my proposal as logically incoherent. You have not exhibited
a contradiction. We are at an impasse.

OK.

If it is logically incoherent, then it implies a contradiction. You
have not shown that this is the case, and you have not exhibited the
contradiction that you say that it implies.

Okay so far.

But I am not proposing an *alternative* to that postulate. I am
proposing an *additional* postulate, logically independent of that
postulate. I'd say rather, " Action which benefits any moral patient,
whether or not the actor, is a good action". The "for whom" here is
"for any moral patient".

And for me there are at least two major categories of "benefits":
objective benefits, like enhancing the probability of survival; and
subjective benefits, like facilitating the experiencing of pleasure. I
give objective benefits priority over subjective benefits: I'd rather
survive than eat cheesecake, if I have to choose between the two..

Correct.

In my perspective this is translated as the statement, "You must
identify the moral patient benefitted by an action if you label that
action 'good'".  I agree.

Which I don't. Where I differ from you here is that I will allow the
same act to be evaluated "with respect to" several distinct logically
independent goods, several distinct logically independent kinds of
benefit, to several distinct kinds of moral patients (for example, with
respect both to survival-promotion and to pleasure-promotion). This is
not logically incoherent if I prioritize these several distinct
logically independent goods and the respective moral patients to which
they are benefits. An act is still morally right  if it interferes with
a good of lower priority but promotes a good of higher priority.
Something like that is what I think Rand meant when she proposed a
"hierarchy of values".

Not so. Two logically independent items cannot contradict each other.
If they did, they wouldn't be logically independent, but logically
dependent.

Agreed.

Okay. In fact, I identify several different and logically independent
"with respect to-s".

True. It is logically coherent. But it is not *uniquely* logically
coherent.

False. Universalism neither proposes nor implies a contradiction.

Yes.

The thing can obviously be beneficial for one moral patient and harmful
for another. So you have to rank different kinds of benefit and harm,
and different kinds of moral patients.

Not if you have a hierarchy of logically independent benefits and harms.

In my view a living system (i.e., an individual, group, organization,
society, or ecosystem) is objectively benefitted by an action if that
action enhances the proper functioning of that system, and objectively
harmed if it degrades the proper functioning of that system. For
example, an organism is objectively benefitted by an action which
improves its physiological health, and harmed by an action which
degrades its health.

I'm not speaking of legal prohibition here. I'm speaking of moral
prohibition. Legal prohibitions are enforced by force or the threat of
force on the part of some authority. Moral prohibitions are simply
negative prescriptions like "Don't do that: it's morally wrong". If
enforced at all, they are enforced only by feelings of guilt or shame
felt by persons who have adopted the relevant system of morality.

I suggest that we are at a stage of our discussion at which we have
each presented our point of view about as well as we can, and that we
are now just reiterating propositions that we've already presented.
Neither of us is demonstrating anything to the satisfaction of the
other: we're talking past each other. Will we really get any value from
continuing this process?

Best wishes,
Bert


author: James E. Prescott

subject: Re: How do children fit into Objectivism?

text:
"Bert Clanton" <[email]> wrote:

Insentient things cannot enjoy benefit or suffer harm. I do not need to
demonstrate this.

Yes, you simply deny, over and over again. It's not an impressive line of
argument.

Can you demonstrate this? Anyhow I welcome the agreement.

Every tenth- or twentieth-or-so of your assertions I will leave unsnipped,
just so it stays on the record. Someday, though, I expect you to explain
what you mean,

Not quite. You keep phrasing it this way, and I not only reject your
characterization of the issue, I also explain why. What I have explained is
that "pleasures is good" is the axiom of ethics because  it makes no sense
to ask further, "for whom/what is it good?" because either A) that would be
just another pleasure of another or the same sentient being and thus just be
pleasure-is-good again, from its perspective, and so reduce to the exact
same thing, or else B) would be a supposition that something can be good
without their being a "to whom/for what" at all (e.g., the "good" of an
insentient being; or good intrinsically, for nothing and nobody), which is
logically incoherent on its face.

I have and just did, again, above. What is happening here is that you are
merely asserting, over and over, that you deny the axiomatic status of what
I have explained and that you insist that there can be what you call "anothe
r foundational good." In response to my request and advice that you actually
try to present a justification for that assertion, you merely repeat the
assertion. It is not an impressive line of argument, and I will address
whatever arguments you care to make, should you make them.

Perhaps. But no fault mine, that!

And that is logically incoherent. If I did not explain this, well, I will
now. (Actually, I do not think it needs much explaining, and I believe my
earlier remarks have covered it.) Morality is a code to guide choices (guide
an actor, you would say). Action which benefits another (benefits someone
besides the actor) is good for that other being, not by a different but by
the exact same axiom (the one you claim you are proposing an alternative
to). This other (the moral patient, you would say) is not choosing and so
the benefit that it experiences is not a moral choice versus an immoral
choice. It is not a  choice at all, for the patient. But even for a
more-basic-than-morality reason, logical coherence demands that you clearly
identify the "for whom" whenever you label a thing as "good," otherwise you
will contradict yourself. For example, is my eating a steak good? Well, not
for the cow, it isn't. For the cow it is bad. So can a thing be good and bad
at the same time? Yes, but only if you drop the "with respect to." Which
means, only if you sacrifice logical coherence. Nothing can be A and not-A
at the same time and in the same respect. Logically you need to identify the
"with respect to" or else the meaning of good becomes ambiguous,
unintelligible, which is to say mystical, irrational, and
self-contradictory. On the other hand, "with-respect-to-the-actor" is
logically coherent, all the way through, because it specifies the 'for-whom"
right up through to moral choices, to evaluating as good or evil the choices
being made. Universalism loses this coherence. Good for the actor can at the
exact same time be bad for the others in society, to say nothing of being
bad for cows. Well, then, for whom is a thing good or bad under
universalism? The answer is incoherence: the thing is both good and bad for
everybody and for nobody. The very idea is logically incoherent on its face.

How can any sort of insentient being, even a living one, be benefited or
harmed in anything other than a metaphorical sense? And, how can a
non-living thing be benefited or harmed even in a metaphorical sense?

I look forward to it.

Again, immoral actions should not be prohibited. You are confusing law and
morality. I've explained this one at the considerable length it deserves.

Quite so. Sorry.

I'm nice. I'm also arrogant, I suppose. Nobody (else?) is perfect.

Best Wishes,
Jim P.


author: Bert Clanton

text:
In article <001801c3a389$5f5467c0$6401a8c0@prescott>, James E. Prescott
<[email]> wrote:

If we don't agree on the meaning of a term as basic as the term "good"
is to both of us, we are unlikely to agree on the truth or falsity of
particular moral propositions--and pointing out that fact IMHO isn't
trivial.

Let me clarify again: I do *not* deny that pleasure is *a* good and
suffering is *an* evil. I deny some other things, though:

1. that pleasure is the one and only thing that it is logically
coherent to take as a foundational good;

2. that suffering is the one and only thing that it is logically
coherent to take as a foundational evil; and

3. that if one allows more than one foundational good, pleasure is the
foundational good that must be given highest priority over all others
and suffering the foundational evil which must be given highest
priority over all others.

But I completely agree that pleasure is *a* good thing, that
pleasurable things are good things--so much so that I take pleasure as
*one* of the foundational goods of my morality, but not the only one.

As I have said, I take it as *a* postulate, *a* foundational assumption
of my kind of morality, that experiencing pleasure is *a* good. But my
kind of morality has additional postulates which don't contradict that
one, but are logically independent of it, in the sense that they
neither imply that one nor imply its denial.

But once more, I fully admit that experiencing pleasure is *a* good,
and a foundational good at that. What I don't admit is that pleasure is
the one and only logically coherent foundational good. And once more,
what you wrote in the paragraph above doesn't show that pleasure is the
one and only logically coherent foundational good.

To take the question "To whom"  as basic to all moral deliberation is
already to *assume* an egoist moral stance. In fact, to take *any*
subjective state of the moral agent as the one and only foundational
good of a moral system is already to take an egoist stance. You
continue to insist that any other stance is logically incoherent. I
continue to insist that another stance can be coherent but non-egoist.
To employ a bit of your own rhetorical style: my view is correct and
yours is mistaken. Have I proven that? No.

Patient-relative ethics is not my invention. Utilitarianism is a
venerable and widely respected patient-relative ethical system. While
not every moral philosopher is a utilitarian, few of them would assert
that utilitarianism is logically incoherent--mostly because it isn't.
BTW, I'm not a utilitarian either. I reject utilitarianism because its
foundational-good-of-highest-precedence is a subjective state of moral
patients, not an objective state; and I'm a moral (small-o)
objectivist.

If what you mean is that a proposition that denies "A=A" is logically
incoherent, I completely agree with you. Therefore "A=A" is
analytically true, true no matter what you mean by "A".  It is indeed
an axiom, in your sense.

What I deny is that "Pleasure is the one ond only logically coherent
choice of foundational good". I am  *certain* that one can deny this
without denying "A=A", because I do exactly that.

I'd still class that as a postulate, but one with which I agree.

But you have not demonstrated the irrationality of the supposition that
goodness can reside in insentient things. Nor have you shown that there
is no issue of value or disvalue with respect to insentient
things--though perhaps I don't understand what you mean by this.

Well, you could say that mine doesn't deny that "A=A", or any other
axiom of boolean algebra.

I'm not trying to escape the axiom "A=A",  or any other axiom of
boolean algebra.

...and no matter how many times you simply  *assert* that there is no
logically coherent alternative to egoism, you will not have *shown*
that this supposition is true.

But I think that I am just as convinced of the truth of "A=A" as you
are.  I just deny that this supposition has the implications for
morality that you think it does.

The purpose of everyone who adopts it as his foundational moral purpose.

Yes.

To the survivor.

I simply deny that such a supposition is logically incoherent, and you
haven't shown that it is. Here I agree in abstract principle with Rand,
not with you.

But chemical activity is neither a moral agent nor a moral patient.

That is *one* of the things that it means to *me*, but not the only one.

... but only *one* of *several* things that can reasonably be taken as
foundational goods. (*Not* axiomatic goods, in your sense of "axiom".)

I agree that calling mere chemical activity itself morally good or
morally bad is nonsense. But if the chemical activity is the result of
a chosen human action, and benefits or harms some moral patient, it is
worthy of moral consideration.

Aha! The standard Objectivist ploy: "You can't really believe that!
You're a liar!"

Stretch your imagination a bit.

At some point, justification has to *end*, unless you are willing to
accept circular justificational reasoning or infinite justificational
regress, which I'd guess that you're not. Just like me, you come
finally to a terminus of your process of justification. For you, this
terminal supposition (I insist that it's a postulate, in your own
terminology, but no matter) is, "Pleasure is *the* one and only
foundational good". You keep telling me that it is logically incoherent
to suppose that there are other foundational goods in addition to
pleasure. I keep telling you that I deny this, and that you haven't
shown that my denial is logically incoherent. We are stalled.

it simply *does* work. You haven't shown that it doesn't. A repeated
assertion is not a showing.

But you haven't *shown* that the supposition is false, or that the
conclusions to which it leads are false.

You mean "patient-relativism". *Agent*-relativism is what you and other
egoists believe in. And I am simply *not* an altruist, as Rand defines
the term. Altruism is different from egoism, but there's a third option
called "universalism". Pure egoists hold that how an act affects the
actor, regardless of how it affects others, is what determines its
rightness or wrongness. (Randians are not pure egoists, but
"rights-limited" egoists.) Altruists, in the Randian sense, hold that
how an act affects others is what determines its rightness or
wrongness, regardless of how it affects the actor. (There are actually
very few Randian altruists.) Universalists hold that how an act affects
anyone whatsoever, including the actor himself, is what determines its
rightness or wrongness.

For me, the flourishing of the species is *one* of the foundational
goods. The experiencing of pleasure by individuals is another. And
there are yet a few others as well. But even with respect to
individuals, I'm closer to Rand and Aristotle than I am to you.

It is a foundational assumption for my system of moral deliberation,
and it is not logically incoherent, and it contradicts no empirical
observations that I'm aware of.  That's all I claim for it.

*I* take it as an end. I know what my own purposes are.

Naturally, like you,  I believe that *my* system of moral deliberation
is the correct one. Otherwise I wouldn't use it to make moral
decisions.

But I don't apply it to insentient *action*. I apply it to the
*effects* of chosen human *sentient* action  on affected entities,
called "moral patients". In my view,  either sentient individuals or
insentient living systems may be moral patients. Insentient non-living
entities or systems cannot be moral patients: they can't be
"benefitted" or "harmed", except in a metaphorical sense.

You insist that there can be only one final end that can coherently be
pursued by a consciousness. I deny that. For the umpteenth time: you
have *not* shown that my denial is either logically incoherent or
contradicted by empirical observation. Period.

Goodness is benefit. Period. I don't even have to *know* that I have
been objectively benefitted, in order to have been objectively
benefitted. I don't even have to *know* that I have been objectively
harmed in order to have been objectively harmed.

It seems to me that in your way of looking at things, if I have just
been instantaneously killed, in such a way that I didn't suffer, then I
haven't been harmed. That's not the way I see it. As I see it, I will
have undergone the most harm that I could possibly undergo.

I agree.

I agree.

I disagree.

In your way of looking at things. Not mine. And not that of any
non-egoist. And you simply have *not* in fact shown that a non-egoist
way of looking at things is logically incoherent.

Not so.

Not so.

But I agree that the pleasing is *a* good. I do not agree even that *a*
good is necessarily *a* pleasing thing. And your statement is *not* a
tautology. It is a proposed definition, one which I reject as too
restrictive.

I agree that *if* one assumes that pleasurableness is *the* good, then
one has to be an egoist. I don't agree that pleasurableness is *the*
good. So I am not an egoist.

"Good is *the* pleasing and the pleasing is *the* good" is not only
*not* a tautology, it is not even a true statement.

Not so. Almost all ethical theorists disagree with you.

Not so. In fact this is a statement that portrays a degree of
intellectual arrogance which I don't often find in what you write. But
I'm not an altruist either, at least in Rand's straw-man sense.

But I insist that *every* moral system, INCLUDING YOURS, has to adopt
one or more foundational suppositions. One can't justify such
foundational suppositions *within* the system of moral deliberation.
By going outside the moral system, one may be able to vindicate one's
choosing the particular foundational suppositions that lie at the base
of one's moral system. As I understand it, you believe that such
vindication is provided for your system by the supposed fact that your
one basic foundational supposition, that pleasure is the one and only
foundational moral good, is axiomatic, in the sense that to deny it is
logically incoherent. I insist that to deny that supposition is not
logically incoherent. IMHO you have not provided a valid argument to
demonstrate its logical incoherence. We are at an impasse.

I'll do that. I'll send you an edited version of the most relevant
one--edited to use conventional terminology, and to explain some of my
less conventional assertions.

But that is exactly what I do assert, in common with every moral
theorist with whose work I'm acquainted. "Immoral" = " not-Moral", in
conventional terminology.

Taking "good" to mean "beneficial", as I do, I'd agree that there are
morally *good* (i.e., beneficial) acts, morally "bad" (i.e., harmful)
acts, and morally *neutral* acts (i.e., neither beneficial nor
harmful). But I insist that acts which are morally neutral, neither
good nor bad, are morally *right*. That is, an act is either right or
wrong, and in my usage it is wrong only if it is harmful. If you
investigate, I think you'll find that my usage is that of many moral
theorists.

In my view, they are *moral* actions: there is no reason to prohibit
them.

Not the conventional terminology.

It isn't. Either choice is completely moral. Which is in fact my point.

It's *neutral* on the "good"/"bad" axis. It's *moral* on the
"right/wrong" axis.

But I'd say that a legal right which prohibits an act which is morally
right, or a legal right which permits an act which is morally wrong, is
a morally wrong legal right. I insist that it is morally wrong for the
institutions of law to actively protect the commission of an act which
is morally wrong. You and other libertarians seem to be denying this
possibility.

OK so far.

Depends on what makes you happy. Maybe violating immoral laws makes you
happy. Maybe going to prison to protest an immoral law makes you happy.

And false.

In my view, it may or may not be the moral thing to do.

What I reject is the notion that the effect of an act on the actor
himself is the *only* logically coherent criterion of the moral
rightness or moral wrongness of the act. I reject this because I accept
several additional criteria, and it seems clear to me that these
criteria are logically coherent.

You mean "patient-relativism". *You're* the *agent*-relativist here,
not me.

I am a patient-relativist because it seems obvious to me that the
effect of an act on the entities which it affects (including the actor,
if he is affected, but not restricted to the actor) is the one proper
criterion for deciding whether that act is right or wrong. That's what
patient-relativism is, as I understand it.

Hmmm. I used to think that you were nice, but now I'm not so sure.

Best wishes,
Bert


text:
"James E. Prescott" <[email]> wrote:

Oops. I meant patient-relativism. Sorry, Bert. I'm not accustomed to these
terms, but I do know what is meant by them.

Best Wishes,
Jim P.


text:
"Bert Clanton" <[email]> wrote:

I know. Try not to pick apart every sentence. Let's snip to the point, shall
we?

question,

No, they are axioms. One can logically go no further than to identify
goodness (these are definitional phrases, what you have called tautological)
with pleasure since pleasure is experienced directly as benefit to the being
experiencing it. Ask someone why he thinks his pleasure is a "good thing,"
and the logical -- and a completely satisfactory -- answer is, because,
simply, it is pleasurable. In other words, that is what good means to a
person experiencing pleasure, axiomatically. But is it, as you have asked,
the only logical answer? Well, yes, of course,  /because/ if you go beyond
this and ask, Why is it good to experience pleasure?, then you have divorced
good from the answers to those questions I referred to earlier, and so
rendered it logically incoherent. I'll return to this in a moment so you can
see more clearly what I mean.

Axioms are protective not informative. You know they are true if you know
anything at all, but recalling them from time to time just helps one stay on
track and not fly off into illogical fancies, such as your notion of
patient-relative ethics.

A is A is the axiom of logic supporting all postulate-based systems
including, say, Euclidean geometry. You can step outside, go beyond, the
Euclidean geometry that is supported by its postulates. You can substitute
other postulates and build a different system. But you cannot step outside
of what is supported by the axiom, A is A (and its corollaries). This axiom
supports everything.

I did not make that claim. Again, egoism is not a "claim supported" by
axioms. Rather, it is simply axiomatic that pleasure is good, and "egoism"
is just a matter of remembering this axiom and not flying off into such
irrationality as supposing that suffering is good or that goodness can
reside in insentient things (in things to which there is no issue of value
or disvalue). Where I draw a moral conclusion is in regard to happiness
being the particular pleasure that is a man's proper moral purpose, and this
is not simply axiomatic, as I've said.

Sure. And yours like ours is based on axioms as well. There is no escaping
them. The "best" you'll do is ignore them once and a while, at your peril.
The possible problems include mis-identifying a postulate or an assumption
as an axiom or, in your case, mis-identifying an axiom as a postulate or an
assumption. Committing the latter error is what allows you to suppose that
there is somehow some logically coherent alternative to egoism, which is
simply a logical error on your part and nothing more.

Fair enough. Again, the role of axioms is one of protecting the logical
coherence of our systems of thought. They do not of themselves "inform us"
about empirical reality. You must gather empirical evidence, test hypothesis
and form theories in order to build knowledge, but you can only do these
things if you all-the-while remember the axioms upon which all such activity
is based.

Whose purpose?

You are trying to state an axiom. Good for you!

Yes, good means beneficial. And what is "benefit'? Is "surviving" a
"benefit"? How so? To whom? And for what? If you are trying to say that
surviving is "axiomatically" just what benefit happens to mean, well, you
would be in good company because Ayn Rand herself tried a related tack when
she talked about life being an end-in-itself. But that's fundamentally
incoherent. Being dead could just as easily be called "the good," the
"benefit," because chemical activity does not care one way or the other
whether it is living chemical activity or non-living chemical activity. It
is all the same.

So, to whom are these things supposedly "good." And why are they supposedly
"good"? Well...

Which means the individuals enjoy life, or it means nothing at all. Again,
pleasure, enjoyment is what is axiomatically "good." To call mere chemical
or biochemical activity good or bad is to ignore the axiom and so fly off
into mystical, irrational nonsense.

Believing and justifying are different things. Well, for that matter,
believing and saying that you believe are different things. I do not even
think you can genuinely believe something so outlandish.)

Again, Ayn Rand tried this and it doesn't work. I've warned her followers
many times that it leads to mistakes such as yours. It leads to altruism
(what you call agent-relativism, I guess). Metaphorically speaking life is
altruistic not egoistic. Things live not for themselves but "for" others of
their species. A living organism is just a reproductive tool serving the
survival of the species of which it is a member. The good is the good of the
many, the flourishing of the species.

Problem is, that's all just "metaphorically speaking." No, such an "end" is
not a purpose at all, not an end of any literal sort. Purpose is a
psychological and moral term. It refers to final ends, to those grasped and
pursued by a consciousness. It does not apply to insentient action. Applying
it there is a logical error.

Again, you must have a to-whom and for-what, or you do not have goodness,
for goodness /is/ benefit to something capable of enjoying benefit or
suffering harm. Enjoying is good and suffering is bad and goodness is
enjoyment and badness is suffering. This is what axiomatically sets the
logical context.

Egoism is simply the explicit /retention/ of the axiom. This is as opposed,
for example, to altruism, which /contradicts/ the axiom. Altruism sees
"goodness" in something other than enjoyment, as in even suffering when that
suffering serves to cause other people's enjoyment. But that is illogical.
Suffering is bad, not good. Altruism merely blanks out, ignores, tries to
get around, the axiom of ethics. It is a perversion of reason.

So, no, egoism is not an auxiliary axiom or postulate.

The problem is what you have not seen, not what I have not shown. To correct
you on this same point again, I have not tried -- even once, let alone "many
times'! -- to show a logical derivation of egoism from the axiom that
pleasure is good. Instead, what I have said -- and what you have not seen, I
believe because you are quite simply disinclined to see it; no fault of
mine, that! -- is that tautologically "good is the pleasing and the pleasing
is the good," as a definition-style, statement-form of a simple axiomatic
fact, /is/ egoistic. Ethics as such is egoism. Altruism is nothing more than
a contradiction, passionately rationalized for the sake of mere mysticism,
irrationalism and parasitism (and without which we would not need the word
egoism at all).

Which you had not done before, and which you cannot defend, because it is
illogical.

Yes they are. They are in fact blatantly, brazenly illogical. They are
merely asserted exactly as you assert them here, exactly as a person might
shout "A is not-A; this is what a lot of us here are asserting, and so,
since we assert it so regularly, it is therefore not mystical nonsense; it's
just a not-A system, a system different from yours," in other words,
brazenly asserted without even any pretense at a rational justification. As
I said...

Please send the most representative of them, so I can check my ability to
work with it.

Your rephrasing is not quite what you said. You said an action which does
not interfere with attainment is a moral action. This betrays a negative
approach to morality, one in which moral action is simply all action that is
"not immoral." Many of those actions which do not interfere with the
attainment of the ultimate purpose are amoral actions, they are morally
neutral. Moral actions are really ones which attain (a bit more in accord
with your rephrasing), not merely ones which don't interfere.

How on earth is a blue tie more or less morally right than a brown one? What
you are "allowing for" here is logical error. Choosing a blue tie over a
brown one is morally neutral. It is not right nor wrong.

moral
right

You seem to be confusing right (as opposed to wrong) with a right (as
opposed to a transgression of the rights of others0. Of course something can
be morally right. But in the context of actions protected by law we are
talking about moral-legal rights, and that's quite a different idea.

Absent law it would be morally good (attaining of the ultimate purpose,
happiness) to, let's say, occasionally use marijuana, in moderation, as one
uses alcohol, for relaxation and pleasure. But this "morally good' action
happens to be illegal. Doing it lands you in prison. Landing in prison is
not conducive to one's ultimate moral purpose, happiness. Doing that illegal
thing was therefore immoral. Simple!

It usually is not, for the simple reason indicated above. However, in some
emergency situations it can be necessary to violate the terms agreed to, to
thwart the valid moral interests of others, in order to preserve one's own
life and to preserve the possibility of attaining happiness in one's life.
When this is so, that is the moral thing to do, obviously.

Except that you did not state any reasons. Please send along those supposed
arguments in favor of "agent-relativism" or else kindly refrain from merely
alleging again and again that you are convinced by them. (There's a more
blunt, less kindly, way to phrase that, but I'm too nice.)

Best Wishes,
Jim P.


author: Roger Dodger

text:
Jerry Story <[email]> wrote in message news:<4fdac879.0310222027.37
[email]>...

I think Rand herself wrote a few articles on that, such as "The
Comprachicos" (sp?)  When that article was written, public schools
still had some education in them, and alternative schools were
pure "socialization".  Now, the opposite is more likely true.

Isn't she an altruist, mystic, and collectivist?


text:
In article <001f01c3a2bf$b978f0b0$6401a8c0@prescott>, James E. Prescott
<[email]> wrote:

Okay. But I warn you, we already start out having different meanings
for the word "good".

Okay. But for me, the "to whom" part refers to several nested sets of
moral patients, linearly ordered by precedence, not to an individual
human moral agent. The "for what" part refers to survival and
flourishing, not pleasure and suffering.

Okay. But we don't mean the same thing by "a being". I'd prefer to say
"a biotic system". I distinguish several different morally relevant
biotic systems, at different levels of biotic organization.

Pleasure is *an* axiomatic benefit; pain is *an* axiomatic harm.

Only to a subjectivist egoist, which I am not.

I simply totally disagree. I insist that there are "axiomatic goods"
other than the pleasure of individuals, and "axiomatic evils" other
than the suffering of individuals. Pleasure and suffering are
subjective experiential states of individuals. In my view there are
"axiomatic goods" which are not subjective states of individuals, but
rather objective states of individuals, societies, civilizations, and
the terrestrial biosphere. Subjective states of individuals, e.g.,
pleasures and sufferings, are also morally relevant, but not uniquely
so; and I take them to be less important for morality than certain
objective states of affairs.

I simply disagree again. You treat one possible point of view as if it
were the only logically coherent point of view--which it definitely is
not.

No way. If we're going to come to any kind of common understanding, we
have to use our terms of discourse in the same way. To some degree, I'm
willing to go along with your usage, as you'll see below.

Any word denotes whatever it is *used* to denote. Words don't have
built-in referents.

However, I'm willing to adopt your usage in order to facilitate
discussion.

Using your understanding of what axioms and postulates are, I have to
say that your propositions "Pleasure is good" and "Suffering is bad"
are *postulates*, not *axioms*. Adopting this usage (which is not the
conventional modern usage) I would substitute the term "postulate"
wherever I've used the word "axiom" in what I've said. What *I* mean by
"axiom" is simply "logically foundational assumption", but I don't mind
using "postulate" to designate that.

Okay so far.

In that case, the only axioms that exist are analytically true
statements, none of which are at all informative about the real world.

I don't understand what you mean by this.

Okay.

While I agree with every one of these statements, neither Rand nor you
has validly inferred any moral consequences from them. They are for all
practical purposes analytically true. But they don't logically imply
the moral conclusions which you guys claim to have derived from them.

I too believe that the concepts <existence>, <consciousness>, and
<identity> represent things that exist in the real world. I just don't
think that the particular system of suppositions that you and Rand
claim to base upon these concepts matches real-world states of affairs
very well. And I don't even believe that your system of suppositions
about morality actually follows from your "axiomatic" suppositions.

Okay. So my moral system is based on postulates, not axioms. That's
cool. But *so is yours and Rand's*--or at least I'll continue to think
so until you demonstrate to me that your moral system really is
logically implied by your "axioms", which I *insist* that you haven't
yet done. (And I also insist that, in your own terminology, they're
postulates, not axioms.)

But in my opinion the only propositions that pass that test are
analytically true propositions, which aren't at all informative about
contingent matters in the real world.

That *is* the purpose.

If, like me, you take "good" to mean "beneficial", it is "good" for
moral patients, i.e., for biotic systems, including individual persons,
who are affected by actions taken in pursuit of "the good".

It *is* the good, what accomplishes it *is* what is beneficial, and
what obstructs it *is* what is harmful.

I simply disagree. I believe that moral patients surviving and thriving
*are*   ends-in-themselves for an objectivistic morality.

Of course I distinguish several levels of "moral patienthood", and I
take some levels to be more precedent than others.

But ends-in-themselves *don't* serve any purpose. They are *themselves*
ultimate purposes. That's why we call them "ends". You can't get beyond
them without "going outside the system".

*An* axiomatic good. In *an* axiomatic, irreducibly foundational sense
of the word.

But in my view, your deriving pleasure from something is only one of
several possible indicators of whether it is good, and often not a very
reliable one. You and I disagree radically about what "good" means.

You seem to think that somehow your setting up *pleasure* as
axiomatically good is doing something different than what I do. I
disagree.

Egoism is a feature of your moral system. Either it is implied by the
axioms of your moral system or it is not. Even if it is, you haven't
*shown* that it is; you've simply *asserted* that it is. If it is not
implied by the axioms of your moral system, but is a feature of your
moral system, then it is an auxiliary axiom or postulate of your
system. Which is it?

I have no problem with your taking the goodness of pleasure as a
postulate of your system. I agree that pleasure is *a* good. But you
simply have *not* shown that egoism follows logically from "Pleasure is
good and suffering is evil", no matter how many times you *say* that
you've shown it.

There are agent-relative moralities, which hold that actions are to be
evaluated as morally right or wrong only on the basis of how they
relate to the person performing the action, independent of how those
actions affect other people. There are patient-relative moralities
(e.g., utilitarianism and my own system) which hold that actions are to
be evaluated as morally right or wrong on the basis of how they are
likely to affect other people (called moral patients).

I have just in fact defined patient-relative morality.

Universalist moral systems, which give equal value to the well-being of
every comparable moral patient, are not mystical nonsense.

But you *do* need to show this to someone who is not an egoist or an
agent-relativist, if you want to show them that they are mistaken.

I deny this, and once more, you haven't shown that it follows from the
meaning that *I* attach to the words. Nor have you shown that the
meaning that I attach to the words is incorrect.

But in my view, "Pleasure is *the* good" is not only *not* the
foundational supposition for ethics, it is a false statement.

But I insist that they are *postulates*, not *axioms*, if we're going
to use your terms. Their denial is neither logically self-contradictory
nor contradicted by empirical observation.

But these are not axioms, since I deny both of them without committing
a logical inconsistency or contradicting empirical observation.

No, I don't.

You have not demonstrated that my belief-system contains any
contradictions.

Can you receive PDF files? If so, I could send you a whole bunch of
already written stuff which states my position in excruciating detail.

I mean exactly what I said.

1. There are acts which *promote* the attainment, existence, or
preservation of these foundational moral goods.

2. There are acts which neither promote nor interfere with the
attainment, existence, or preservation of these foundational moral
goods.

3. There are acts which *interfere with* such attainment, existence, or
preservation.

A morally right act is an act of type 1 *or* type 2. (This allows for
such facts as that my choosing a blue tie rather than a brown tie is
morally right.) A morally wrong act is an act of only type 3.

But this view totally dispenses with the notion that there are purely
moral rights, independent of law. Do libertarians really do that?

I don't see how this can be the case.

See essays by Robert Bass on his website. He's a libertarian and a
eudaemonist, like you. (He's not an Objectivist, however.)

I do say that.

But I don't see how an act which interferes with a valid moral interest
can be a moral act.

I agree. I see no reason why there can't be an egoist moral
consequentialism. But my kind of moral consequentialism is not egoist.

One possible view, and one which I reject, for reasons already stated.

My different foundational assumptions lead me to a different
conclusion. But like you, I don't believe in "inherent goodness".

Best wishes,
Bert


text:
"Bert Clanton" <[email]> wrote:

Consider the meaning of good. As Ayn Rand noted, the idea presupposes you
have answers to the questions "to-whom, and for-what?" If you divorce the
notion of value or disvalue, of good or bad, from the idea of a being
for-whom/to-whom it provides some benefit or represents some harm then you
are talking nonsense. Pleasure is axiomatic benefit; pain is axiomatic harm.
Only these things qualify as irreducibly such, in a (fundamentally)
meaningful way. All other uses of the terms good/bad, values/disvalues,
benefit/harm are either A) ultimately reducible to these (as in "a pool in
my yard is good, because it increases my pleasures")  or else B) are mere
metaphorical usages that do not really apply to this discussion (as in
"moisture is good for algae, because it helps it to grow"). The latter can
be proven invalid and merely metaphorical by simply repeating the question,
so what? I.e., to whom and for what is this thing a supposed value/disvalue,
a good or a bad? (E.g., who in the heck cares whether algae grows or not?
Even the algae does not care.)

I am not going to debate the meaning of axiom. You are playing in my
ballpark now and I'll just explain the groundrules. Yes, some modern
philosophers may regard axioms as synonymous with postulates. That is
irrelevant. In fact the words denote different things. Euclid's postulates
(and Newton's, see Bob's really nice essay this morning) share with axioms
the trait of lying at the base of a system of thought, and share also the
trait of being not provable within the system. They are sources/foundations
themselves of the system's proofs, not provable themselves within it. To
prove them or to disprove them you would need additional postulates; you
would need to move outside/beyond that which they support. An axiom, though,
is a statement that must be known true by anyone who knows anything at all
(Aristotle). It shares traits with postulates (it does indeed support
systems of thought and is not provable within them) but it is not a mere
postulate because unlike the postulates of Euclid, Newton, et al, you
literally cannot step outside or beyond that which the axioms support. The
concept of proof or disproof does not apply to the axioms, regardless of the
context or system or range of postulates involved.

As Ayn Rand explained it, her axioms (existence exists, consciousness is
conscious, A is A) are really just the statement form of what she called
axiomatic concepts. These are concepts (existence, consciousness, identity)
which subsume all knowledge, which have no contraries, which are the base of
all that of which truth is. And this is the ballpark we are in.

But least you be overly concerned about it, her usage and mine are not
unorthodox. Check the Britannica's entry on axiom and you will find the
distinction is drawn on these exact same lines: all-subsuming (the base of
all logic) in the case of axioms versus serving a particular purpose (e.g.,
geometry, or a particular kind of geometry) but not other purposes (e.g.,
not other kinds of geometry) in the case of postulates. And assumptions are
like postulates. You can take them or leave them. They may or may not be
true. They may or may not hold true when context changes. Axioms, on the
other hand, are true always, everywhere, in every context. Without the
axioms you cannot even have postulates or assumptions.

For what purpose? To whom is that "good"? What benefit or harm does it do?
Moral patients thriving is not an end in itself. Like algae thriving, it
does not serve any purpose. If I derive pleasure from the thriving of
patients then that pleasure is something good-in-itself, good in the
axiomatic, directly experienced, irreducibly foundational sense of the word.
To set up something else (human beings surviving) as "good because....well,
no reason, it just seems good" is to talk utter nonsense.

Egoism is not an auxiliary assumption. To say pleasure is good is to both
state an axiom and to begin an egoist morality, the only kind that makes
sense. You have not defined patient-relativism, nor have you defended it.
And you have not because you cannot. It is logically impossible. Altruism
and all its variants are simply mystical nonsense, nothing more.

I do not need to "show" this. It is contained in the meaning of the words.
What needs showing is only that a peculiar pleasure called happiness is a
man's proper moral purpose, /given/ that pleasure-is-good is the foundation,
the axiom of ethics.

Better. Yes. But they are axioms in /my/ sense of the word, not yours.

You don't have a choice. Axioms are inescapable. You do share them and you
do live by them. You just happen to be vainly rationalizing and trying to
live with some contradictions. Go ahead. Try to prove me wrong by actually
writing that essay of yours. I think it will do you good.

That's not axiomatic, but okay.

Which attain them. Not just "not interfere."

"Moral right" does not make sense in this context. Right is not just a moral
term; it is moral-legal term. Morally, you do and should have a legal right
to do things which are morally wrong. The libertarians are absolutely
correct about this. (Where the libertarians do not go far enough, though, is
in recognizing that it can easily be morally wrong to do something illegal
even when the act by itself is morally good.) But when you say a moral right
to do something morally wrong I do not even know what you are referring to.

I'm not surprised. It is incoherent because it is not making any sense.
Please explain what you mean by the phrase "a moral right to do." To make
sense, you should say acts are moral or immoral, period. Then you can add,
certain acts are made illegal by agreement among men; specifically, acts
which interfere with their valid moral interests. Other acts may remain
legal because they are not such as to interfere with these interests (they
do no "wrongful harm to others") and yet still be immoral, such as poking
yourself in the eye with a sharp stick. It is immoral, but you obviously
have a legal right to do it. That is coherent. That makes sense.

If what's true? No, consequentialism refers to morality being in the effect
of actions, not inherently in the actions themselves. This is fine for
egoism. Goodness is in the effect/consequence of actions on one capable of
experiencing goodness, of benefiting from actions, the actor himself.
Inherent goodness is just another kind of mysticism, like your altruistic
patient-relativist notions.

Best Wishes,
Jim P.


text:
In article <001401c3a128$f40be590$6401a8c0@prescott>, James E. Prescott
<[email]> wrote:

Agreed. Some foundational moral assumptions, if acted upon,  facilitate
personal well-being and social harmony. Others, if acted upon,
obstruct personal well-being and/or social harmony.

If you had written, "It is reasonable to take pleasure as *a* good, and
suffering as *an* evil", I'd completely agree with you. But from my
point of view, taking pleasure as *the* thing which is worthy of being
valued without further justification, and suffering as *the* thing
which is worthy of being disvalued without further justification, so
that all other values and disvalues are derivative from these, is is at
best gratuitous, and at worst damaging in its long-term practical
results for the well-being of the community of valuers.

I'd agree that a moral sense can be said to proceed from *some* choice
of foundational values, and pertains to long-range interests guided by
reasoned moral choice based on a proper adjudication of those values. I
do *not* agree that pleasure is self-evidently the *only* reasonable
candidate for that honor, nor even the candidate to which we should
self-evidently give highest priority if we assume a hierarchy of
several foundational values, as I do.

In my view, you've made two mistaken assumptions (for assumptions they
are) in the same short paragraph: firstly, that happiness is
(self-evidently?) the one and only ultimate moral purpose, and
secondly, that it is so because it subsumes all other *pleasures*.

...which assumes an egoistic, subjectivistic formulation of ultimate
value, which I simply reject.

No matter how many times you assert that happiness is the one and only
proper ultimate moral purpose, your assertion produces no more
conviction in me than my different assertion produces in you. That's
because you and I simply start our processes of moral reasoning from
*different foundational assumptions*: yours eudaemonistic and egoistic
and agent-relative, and mine objectivistic and universalistic and
patient-relative.

Nor am I convinced by your assertion that all us objectivist
universalist patient-relativists are bad guys. I'm a good guy.

Morality *is* a social concept. We clever human beings invented it.
It's a very benign, useful invention, but an invention nonetheless.

I'd agree that rights are derivative from morality. But I have yet to
see a logically coherent derivation of *libertarian* rights from a
*consequentialist* analysis of  morality, which is the only kind of
analysis that makes sense to me.

I agree.

Seems correct.

You're certainly not afflicted with an excess of intellectual humility,
I must say. But then you Objectivist types have this "certainty" thing
going that we others lack.

Horseshit.

In my view pleasure is certainly *a* foundational good, but only one of
*several* foundational goods. These several foundational goods are
properly  linearly ordered by precedence as a *hierarchy* of
foundational goods, and taking pleasure as the most precedent of these
goods IMHO makes for social chaos in the long run.

...suffering is *an* evil...

One way of looking at it. In my view, an incorrect way. Too egoistic
and subjectivistic.

More horseshit.

It may be true that starting from your axiomatic assumptions as
premises, you can get the conclusions that you get. What you have
failed to show IMHO is that all reasonable people are somehow logically
compelled to adopt the same axiomatic assumptions that you have
adopted, as if one can't make other assumptions without logical
contradiction or empirical error. You simply haven't shown that this is
the case.

A long term project. I'll try to get to it.

Best wishes,
Bert


text:
"Bert Clanton" <[email]> wrote

Not self-evidently, no. What I said was self-evident was just the goodness
of pleasure and badness of pain. That's axiomatic. It is directly
experienced and self-evidently so. And "an assumption" it most assuredly is
not. An assumption is a proposition which for some purpose is treated as if
it were known to be true. Axioms are not assumed. They are known or they are
not axiomatic. However, I did not say that happiness being the proper
ultimate moral purpose is self-evidently true. It is true, yes, but its
truth is logically derived from the axiom just mentioned coupled with the
long-range, reason-guided nature of moral good (as contrasted with the
range-of-the-moment character of the fundamental goodness of pleasure and
badness of pain, which are more general rather than specifically moral
facts). Again, though, this is not an assumption. It is a derived truth.

That is not so simple as you assert. My starting points are givens; they are
not assumptions. Your assumptions are purely arbitrary until you deign to
present some argument for them, which, so far, you have not done.

I have not said you are a bad person. You have simply made a mistake
involving the choice of an immoral purpose. That may be a very corrupting
influence in your life or it may not, I do not know (or care). As likely as
not you do in fact adhere, as most people tend, to most of the common sense
values and principles of a proper moral code, which is to say, you are
probably a basically good person, one who does indeed seek happiness by
reference to values and principles (a moral code) affording you the
reasonable expectation of long-term well being (such principled adherence
being the very definition of a good person). You do this because whatever
your other faults you have not completely lost grip on reality, i.e., no
matter what you may say about seeing some mystic other kind of moral purpose
in your life -- undefined and undefended (so far) -- you in fact have little
choice but to act as if you stood foursquare with me, in agreement with the
truth.

Not every invented thing is social. Morality is the adoption and use of a
code of values and principles to guide one's choices and actions toward the
fulfillment of a long-range purpose. That concept makes no reference to
other men and women, and so it is not a "social concept." Rights, meanwhile,
are valid (agreed to) moral interests for which legal protection has been
established. A specific right is a moral-legal sanction/protection to act
for oneself in a specified reason-guided manner within a social context.
Rights derive from morality in the manner described in my first contribution
to this thread, and they represent the application of moral principles to
interpersonal relationships.

I agree with you that only consequentialism makes sense. I do not agree that
you have never seen a logically coherent derivation of rights. I presented
one myself earlier, albeit in an abbreviated form. I can give you a more
detailed version if you like.

Again I would welcome the opportunity to assess these purported several
other foundational goods that you refer to. It all seems so mysterious and
enchanting.

I think I have indeed shown this. I did so by pointing not to assumptions
but to axioms, and, here in this post, by pointing out that "axiomatic
assumption" is an oxymoron. An assumption is a thing not known to be true
but instead merely treated as if it were known true for some particular
purpose. An axiom is a general, all-encompassing truth that is directly
experienced and undoubtable. An axiom cannot be an assumption because the
former is known true and the latter is not. A is A is not an assumption.
Pleasure is good is not an assumption.

What I have shown is one thing. What you have seen is perhaps quite another.

Get to it when you can. Meanwhile, I say again, you have seen my derivation
in summary form and you are more than welcome to all the details, anytime
you like.

Best Wishes,
Jim P.


text:
In article <001c01c3a1f1$435aa4b0$6401a8c0@prescott>, James E. Prescott
<[email]> wrote:

But we agree about that. What we apparently disagree about is whether
pleasure is the *one* and *only* "foundational good" from which all
other goods derive, and suffering is the one and only "foundational
evil" from which all other evils derive. In my view, pleasure is *a*
foundational good, and a lot of other goods can be derived as necessary
or sufficient or effective conditions for that foundational good. But
to my way of thinking about morality, pleasure is not even the most
precedent good in my hierarchy of values.

Seems correct.

Seems correct.

And this usage of the term "axiomatic" is simply not a universal usage
of the term. It is certainly not the usage of the term current in logic
and mathematics. And it is not my usage of the term.

What *I* (and I think most logicians and mathematicians) mean by
"axiom" is "a proposition *assumed* to be true, without further
justification, as a foundation from which other propositions, called
theorems, can be validly logically derived". Now an axiom, in *this*
sense, can be false to empirical fact, and some of the propositions
derived from it therefore don't correspond to empirical fact. We
certainly wouldn't want to base a scientific discipline on such axioms.

Just as there are non-euclidean systems of geometry, which start from
*assumptions*  different from those of euclidean geometry, and produce
theorems contrary to those of euclidean geometry, so also there are
non-aristotelean systems of moral reasoning, like mine, which start
from non-eudaemonistic, universalistic, patient-relative moral
*assumptions* different from your eudaemonistic, egoistic,
agent-relative moral  *assumptions*, and produce some moral conclusions
different from yours.

I think that my assumptions better represent "what morality is for"
than yours do. Your view of what morality "is for" seems to be the
production of happiness for each individual moral agent. My view of
what morality "is for" is to maximize the objective well-being (e.g.,
survival, health) of the greatest possible number of moral patients,
and that being done, to maximize the subjective well-being (e.g.,
pleasure) of the maximum number of moral patients.

But in my view your conclusion ("Happiness is the proper ultimate moral
purpose") simply *does not follow* from your axioms ("Pleasure is
good", "Suffering is bad"). I agree with you your axioms that pleasure
is good and suffering is bad, but I don't arrive at the same
conclusions that you do, because my *auxiliary* assumptions of
non-egoism and patient-relativism clash with your auxiliary assumptions
of egoism and agent-relativism.

You certainly haven't shown that egoism and agent-relativism follow
from your "pleasure" and "suffering" axioms. Nor should you! Egoism and
agent-relativism are themselves foundational assumptions (axioms, in my
sense of that term) for your system of moral reasoning. I don't share
those assumptions, because I think that living by them tends to have
harmful consequences.

If something is an ultimate starting-point for a system of reasoning,
you can't justify adopting it by argumentation within the system: it is
a point *from* which all argumentation within that system starts out.
If you want to justify adopting it as a starting-point, you have to
justify that by considerations which are logically external to the
system.

If you adopt something as an ultimate starting-point for a system of
*moral*  reasoning, you can't justify adopting it by argumentation
within that moral system: it is a point from which all moral
argumentation within that system starts out. If you want to justify
adopting it as a starting-point for your reasoning about morality, you
have to justify it by considerations which are logically external to
your moral system, i.e., by non-moral considerations. So far, *neither*
you *nor* I has done this in this newsgroup.

Right back atcha.

[snip]

True.

I'd accept that as a *description* of morality, but not as a
*definition*. As stated, it might as well be describing prudence rather
than morality. Not all long-range purposes are morality-type purposes.

...And the very fact that it makes no reference to other men and women
implies to me that it is severely defective as a description of
*morality*, since I am a moral universalist and a patient-relativist
rather than an egoist and an agent-relativist.

I'm not sure I agree with all of that, but let's let it stand for
purposes of discussion.

Here's my quarrel with the libertarian view of rights as it relates to
a consequentialist view of morality.

A consequentialist moral system, as I understand it. takes as
"axiomatic" certain goods, certain "ultimate moral purpose(s)" or
"final moral end(s)", e.g., happiness. Morally right acts are then
those which do not interfere with the attainment, existence, or
preservation of those foundational moral goods, and morally wrong acts
are those which do interfere with such attainment, existence, or
preservation.

The libertarian view of moral rights, as I understand it, insists that
it is possible for one to have a moral right to commit an act which is
morally wrong. Given my description of a consequentialist moral system,
this asserts that one can have a *moral* right to commit an act which
interferes with the attainment, existence, or preservation of one's
ultimate moral purpose, one's final moral end. In other words,
considerations of what one has a moral right to do can trump
considerations of whether doing that thing is morally right or morally
wrong. That seems incoherent to me.

If that's true, then one can't be both a consistent moral
consequentialist and a moral libertarian. I opt for consequentialism
rather than libertarianism.

It seems to me that the alternative is just to identify "that which I
have a moral right to do" with "that which it is morally right for me
to do". But that is no longer libertarian.

I'll see what I can do.

We simply totally disagree about this. In my view, *all* axioms, in
whatever field of reasoning, have the logical status of assumptions.
But some assumptions work better as mappings of the real world than
others do.

Okay.

That simply is not the modern understanding of what an axiom is.

It is an assumption, but a tautological assumption, whose denial is
logically inconsistent.

Is too! But it's an assumption with which IMHO all sane people probably
agree.

I disagree.

I'd like. Parallel essays, maybe?

Best wishes,
Bert


text:
"Bert Clanton" <[email]> wrote:

Yours is wrong, even immoral. It is not true that one "foundational
assumption" is as good as any other. In a primary sense pleasure is good and
suffering is bad, axiomatically, as the directly experienced, real-life,
true-to-reality meaning of these things. A moral sense proceeds from this
and pertains specifically to long-range interests guided by moral choice,
which is to say, by reason. Happiness is the ultimate moral purpose -- the
morally proper end toward which all lesser ends are properly a means --
because it subsumes all other pleasures. It is one's emotional response to a
state of reasoned/justified assurance that the pleasures which make one's
life worth living will abound throughout the course of a long life.

So when I asked, WHY assert another moral purpose, and how justify it?,
those were just rhetorical questions meant simply to focus your attention on
the fact that there is no such reason and that there is no such
justification possible. Only happiness is a proper moral purpose. All other
selections are wrong, baseless and immoral.

Well, the proper view of rights is morality-based. Morality is not a social
concept. Rights are, and are derivative.

That's fine. They are different concepts. However, legality serves a moral
purpose, or else it is unjustified and invalid. Law is the extension of
personal morality into the arena of interpersonal commitments and then of
enforced interpersonal commitments.

Yes. You have chosen wrongly. I have chosen rightly. There's the difference.

Except that mine is not an assumption. Mine is a fact. Mine is a certainty.
Mine is true because it is the one-and-only really, truly, of-this-earth,
of-reality highest good that exists. I can prove this fact by pointing out
that pleasure is good and suffering is bad and that happiness is the
pleasure subsuming all pleasures as it is the contemplation/realization of
abundant pleasures over the fullness of one's life. There can be no higher
good, nor can there any other good to serve as a proper moral purpose. All
other choices are wrong, are immoral.

It's a big project, indeed, to try to find a way around the clear,
conclusive, iron-tight logic of the above. There is simply no way it can be
done. It is a vain quest, doomed from the start. But you are certainly
welcome to try. I would probably very much enjoy reading your essay. Please
send it along.

Best Wishes,
Jim P.


author: Acar

text:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert J. Kolker" <[email]>
Newsgroups: humanities.philosophy.objectivism
Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2003 3:37 PM
Subject: Re: How do children fit into Objectivism?

Give Kolker a typewriter and he will bash the head of millions. Give him a
gun and he'll just do target practice.

.
.

.
.


text:
In article <000701c3994c$6fada100$6401a8c0@prescott>, James E. Prescott
<[email]> wrote:

Where does what I just said, to which you just replied, refer to law?

Happiness is not *my* ultimate moral purpose. It may be yours.
Different moral theorists seem to propose different ultimate moral
purposes. Only some of them are eudaemonists. I am not a eudaemonist.

I'd agree that there ought not to be a law against it, but only because
of the total impracticability of enforcing such a law. Non-trivial
sanctions against trivial harms don't make sense to me. Better to
expend the same resources on enforcing sanctions against non-trivial
harms.

It is a foundational assumption in my moral system. Every moral system
starts out from some set of foundational assumptions or other about
what the system's ultimate value(s) are, including the ones that
propose happiness as the final end.

One's possible choices of justificatory scheme for  a moral system are:

1. circular justification: I value A because I value B, ..., and I
value Z because I value A.

2. infinitely regressive justification: I value A because I value B,
and B because I value C, ..., and so on without end.

3. foundationally terminating justification: I value A because I value
B, B because I value C, ... , and Y because I value Z. Period.

Anyone who engages in meaningful reasoning about value has to choose
option 3. It's just that your choice of Z is different from mine.

Depends on what one's own moral interest is--a matter about which you
and I apparently disagree. I'd agree that sometimes we have to harm
someone to avoid a greater harm to the same person, or an equivalent or
greater harm to more than one person.

Depends on whether one has a moral system like yours, or one like mine.

In my view, impoverishing oneself is probably, but not necessarily,
immoral. I'm not an egoist either.

My take on how to help the needy is not by impoverishing myself by
giving away my resources, but rather contributing a portion of my
resources to organizations which strive to organize the distribution of
wealth in a more equitable way.

But my view of morality is not rights-based. It's probable-results
based.

But I make no such attempt. In fact I insist on the separation of
morality and legality.

So far, right on! You and I just differ as to our choice of long-range
purpose(s).

Not reasoning from *my* ultimate values, it isn't!

I say again: I *assume* it...just as, logically speaking, *you* assume
*your* ultimate values(s). Why do I assume the particular ultimate
values that I do? I'd be willing to write an essay for you on that
subject, and e-mail it to you if you like. But that calls for a larger
project than I'm willing to undertake on HPO.

In my way of thinking, the attainment and preservation of objective
conditions needed for human survival doesn't serve a purpose, and is
not a means to any end, beyond itself. It is my *final moral end*, and
all actions are evaluated as to whether they are means, dismeans, or
irrelevant to that end.

It makes absolutely no difference to the Universe whether human beings
survive or not. If it *really* makes no difference to *you*, then you
and I have very little to talk about, morality-wise, and I'd question
your psychological health.

A clarification. When I label myself a moral objectivist, what I am
asserting is *not* that my adoption of "the attainment and preservation
of objective conditions needed for human survival" as my "final end" is
some kind of  "objectively justifiable choice". I don't know what that
would mean. What I'm asserting is just that there is a truth of the
matter, independent of anyone's feelings or opinions, about whether a
given state of affairs does or does not constitute or contribute to
"the attainment or preservation of objective conditions needed for
human survival"--i.e., that my final moral end is realized, if it *is*
realized, independent of human consciousness, and is not itself a state
of any consciousness.

Agreed. Any feeling is just a feeling.

I agree with you, except that in my view your own happiness is not
properly the final end of a moral system. Or at least, not properly the
final end of highest priority. I am not an egoist.

Best wishes,
Bert


author: Jerry Story

text:
David Ryan <[email]> wrote in message news:<83daef18.0310202250.1bcb
[email]>...

That question has more than one possible meaning. If you are asking
about raising children, then probably the world's foremost expert on
that is Dr. Laura. If you are asking how to teach Objectivism to
children, then Peikoff is probably the best expert on that.


text:
"Bert Clanton" <[email]> wrote:

Fine. There's obviously a lot we agree on. Difference, I thing, is basically
here...

Correct. The law concerns the terms of your relationships with other human
beings, not morality. Morality concerns what is needed for the attainment of
your ultimate moral purpose, happiness. It is thus immoral for you to poke
yourself in the eye with a sharp stick, but there ought be no law against it
because it has nothing to do with others.

WHY? The above proposition comes from...where? From what? It does not seem
to make sense. Actions which interfere with the human needs of others may
from time to time be necessary to the attainment of one's own moral
interest. It would then not make any sense to call those actions immoral.
Meanwhile, actions which serve to satisfy the needs of others (giving away
your fortune to the needy, for example) may be immoral (because they
impoverish oneself), but it would make no sense whatsoever to make those
immoral actions illegal (whose rights have you violated in giving away your
fortune??). So, you see, your attempt to make it all "one-tier" in which the
immoral is the illegal quickly leads to logical contradiction!

Clearly. Morality is the practice of choosing values and principles of
action (a moral code) and then referring to them as a guide in one's choices
and actions for the sake of attaining a long-range purpose. And since the
proper moral purpose of man's life is happiness, a proper (moral) moral code
is one suited to the attainment of happiness. For your different conception
of morality, I would suggest to you that it is a bit, well, incoherent to be
calling it "objective." Does it come to you from some other source than your
subjective feelings? If so, from where? From what reasoning?

And what purpose does that serve? Why should it make a difference, and to
whom should it make a difference, whether human beings survive or not?
Again, if you subjectively "feel" that other human beings surviving is just
a nice thing, fine, but that is hardly objective. It is a mere feeling. On
the other hand, if you argue, with me, that human beings surviving sometimes
serves a genuine moral purpose, namely, my own happiness, and sometimes does
not, then you can say, with me, that certain such survival-serving actions
are objectively moral and certain other such actions (giving away one's
fortune, for example) are objectively immoral.

Best Wishes,
Jim P.


author: Morgan Allen.

text: You'd think so, wouldn't you?  But he actually seems to mean it.


text:
The majority of ahem, *humans,* have this crackpot notion called
gratitude that will surprisingly frequently compell them to return
services received in kind.  If it is possible to restore them to a
viable livelihood, than this is not charity, it is an investment.
Allowing the poor to remain on the verge of starvation might be a
sustainable policy if you could guarantee that their numbers would
never swell to the majority of the population and hence threaten the
seat of government.  The history of the industrial revolution,
however, tends to suggest that in the absence of elementary welfare
infrastructure the lower orders have a strong tendency to multiply in
spite of wages barely above susbsistence level while the relative (or
even absolute) poverty gap tends to expand.  And large numbers of
desperate people are very, very dangerous.  They find the prospect of
hanging concentrates the mind wonderfully.  Remember 1848.  For that
matter, remember 1918.
The childen of the enemy most certainly do matter, because they will
retain the memory of your conduct for future generations, and that
will dictate whether they will go to war with you again.  And if you
decide to eradicate them in the hope there will be no future
generations, other peoples tend to get nervous.  And afraid.  And
justifiably _angry_.  And then you have no recourse but to
self-destruction or empire.  And empire cannot be sustained without
the support of your subjects.
Believe it or not, human compassion evolved for a *reason*.
You are a small-minded racist thug with a taste for genocide and
experimental science.  Who does that remind me of?  Oh yes, Mengele.


author: Gorne

text:
Starblade Darksquall <[email]> wrote in message news:<4aa861f
[email]>...

Not living on the moon, I can't escape noticing that the concept of
rights is a legal concept (moral rights is answering laws of
morality). So the question about anyone having any rights at all
depend on where the law involved find its legitimacy. Generally
lawyers pretend that it descend from natural laws . In my opinion
there is nothing of the sort and this natural law thing is a lame
excuse to introduce religious bias. In my opinion law come from
jurisprudence. With time we come to respect the laws that seem to work
best. Objectively, this is not very good because New events do not
repeats exactly so the lessons from the past have their limits. But we
haven't found any thing better yet so... The lesson from the past is
that we make a difference between children and foetuses. Lesson from
the past is that we have a Malthusian problem with population
explosion. And these problem don't impress some religious fanatics who
want to change the laws and insist that sex should not be for fun but
only to increase the population. It is remarkable that the religion
these people use to build their view of what the law should be were
the religion of people who often indulged in infanticide at a time
when their ruler needed new recruits for their armies.


author: David Buchner

text:
David Ryan <[email]> wrote:

Speak for yourself, goddammit. I happen to worry a lot about toads.


text:
In article <006b01c39830$79bbd170$6401a8c0@prescott>, James E. Prescott
<[email]> wrote:

I don't like this usage of the term "metaphysical", though I agree that
it seems to be standard Objectivist usage. Where you say
"metaphysical", I'd say "objective", that is, existing independent of
what anyone thinks or feels about it, and in fact independent even of
the awareness of any sentient being. The conditions needed for human
beings to survive IMHO exist whether or not any sentient being
subjectively  "takes an interest in them".

I'd say rather that a moral patient *has* a moral right to any
condition needed for his proper survival as a human being, but to say
that such a condition *is* a moral right doesn't seem coherent.

Correct.

...*objective* need for food...

Correct.

Correct.

Correct, given your usage of "need", which I don't like. In my usage,
we have an objective need for oxygen, but we fon't have to exercise our
reason to produce it.

I'd say that rights don't exist in nature, but are human conceptual
inventions. Some such conceptual inventions conduce to people's
satisfying their objective needs (e.g., arguably, rights to life,
liberty, and property) and others don't (e.g., arguably, the right to
own human beings as property, and the 'droit du seigneur'). Man can be
said to need  those conceptual inventions of this type which induce
behavior which satisfies his objective needs and constrain behavior
which interferes with this satisfaction, so these latter conceptual
inventions aren't really rights.

Correct. I'd also recognize as conditions necessary for proper survival
conditions such as adequate food, clothing, shelter, and medical
care--which have nothing directly to do with avoiding force,
retaliation, and violence. But I'm a liberal, not a libertarian.

Correct, given your usage of "need".

Agreed.

... and hence, in my view, as items to which a human being has a moral
right. Of course, with rights as I understand them come
responsibilities to cooperate in establishing and preserving the
objective conditions necessary to realize those rights.

Correct.

Correct.

I'd say rather that you have identified an item to which a human being
*has* a moral right, but also an item to whose provision that human
being has a moral duty to contribute. I'm a liberal, but I don't have a
"bleeding heart".

I'd agree, given your conceptual framework. But of course as a "moral
objectivist" (small-o) rather than a "moral contractarian" I see things
differently.

...given your particular libertarian-contractarian conceptual
framework. which I don't share.

Literally true, but IMHO misleading as stated. The condition is not the
right, but is an item to which there is a right.

But I would insist that a *moral* right, if it exists, exists
independently of whether it is legally sanctioned, and in fact even if
the positive law denies its existence. A "valid moral interest" is a
"valid moral interest" whether or not it is law-protected. I'd
certainly agree that it's good if a valid moral interest is in fact
law-protected, in which case it rises to the level of a "right" in
*your* usage. But IMHO it's already a *moral* right whether or not it
is law-protected.

I don't think I'm either. I'm a small-O moral objectivist. I believe
that a conceptual invention of the kind that we call a "moral right"
either does or does not promote the satisfaction of objective human
needs, entirely independent of whether there is intersubjective
agreement about whether it does or does not, i.e., independently of
whether there is a "social contract" in force concerning it.

But if, like me, you have a purely non-libertarian consequentialist
view of morality, then IMHO this "confusion" isn't a confusion. It's a
conceptual necessity if you want to avoid logical incoherence. A
libertarian view of moral rights proposes that there can be a moral
right to do something that is morally wrong. This proposes a two-tier
system of morality which I reject, since in my consequentialist view it
is morally wrong for you to do whatever interferes with the attainment
or preservation of conditions needed by human beings for their proper
survival, and morally right for you to do whatever does not so
interfere. But libertarians seem to me to say that a moral right can
license the performance of an act which interferes with the attainment
or preservation of conditions needed by human beings for their proper
survival, and I have to disagree. In the framework of my
consequentialist view of morality, that is logically incoherent.

So for me, you have a moral right to do something if and only if it is
morally right to do that something, i.e., if and only if doing that
something doesn't interfere with the attainment or preservation of
conditions needed by human beings for their proper survival.

I agree.

A moral act is one which does not interfere with the attainment or
preservation of any condition needed by human beings for their proper
survival.

You and I obviously have very different views of what morality is. For
me, a value is objective, subjective, or intersubjective. For me.
objective values trump intersubjective values (what actually conduces
to proper survival trumps what people agree about) and subjective
values (what actually conduces to proper survival trumps what you or I
happen to want or reject). For me the values of highest priority are
all objective values. What makes a value a *moral* value for me is
ultimately whether it relates to the attainment or preservation of
objective conditions needed for the proper survival of human beings.
Intersubjectively agreed-upon values are okay too, provided that they
are consistent with the higher-priority objective values; but IMHO a
"social contract" is neither necessary nor sufficient to make a value a
moral value.

Okay.

But in fact I believe that we *are* left with just moral right and
moral wrong. Defining a right as "a mutually defined, recognized and
enforced sphere of action within which a person may act without fear of
interference from other men", and taking that definition literally,
simply *does* in principle allow taking actions which, though
consensually permitted, do in fact interfere with the attainment or
preservation of conditions needed for proper survival as human beings,
and so are immoral. But I'd be willing to go this far with you:

"A moral right is a mutually defined, recognized, and enforced sphere
of action  *consistent with the attainment or preservation of
conditions needed for proper human survival*, within which a person may
act without fear of opposition from other men. "

But this  *does* identify "an act which one has a moral right to
perform" with "an act which is morally right". And so it is certainly a
non-libertarian view of moral rights.

Yes.

Yes.

Again, to me, agreement is neither necessary nor sufficient to
establish a moral right.

I couldn't disagree more.

Okay, I guess, provided that we get the "conditions needed for the
proper survival of human beings" clause in there somewhere.

Yup.

Okay, in terms of my amended version of your definition of a moral
right. I stand (conditionally) corrected.

"What one is entitled to" is a whole 'nother subject, about which I'm
pretty sure you and I would disagree somewhat. Though hopefully in our
usual civil mannerl.

Best wishes,
Bert


author: Starblade Darksquall

text:
David Ryan <[email]> wrote in message news:<83daef18.0310202250.1bcb
[email]>...

Well, about the whole birth thing... Objectivism is a philosophy for
those living on Earth. So children have a right to live as soon as
they are living on Earth.

However, the fetus is not living on Earth. The fetus is living inside
the mother. So therefore the philosophy of rights don't apply to it.

(...Starblade Riven Darksquall...)


author: Andrei Prokopiw

text:
David Ryan <[email]> wrote in message news:<83daef18.0310202250.1bcb
[email]>...

The child is not enslaving anybody. In case you didn't know, you
have to have sexual intercourse for somebody to get pregnant
(putting in-vitro fertilization aside). If somebody is having sex,
they are accepting the risks, one of which is pregnancy. The
child is created by the ones partaking in such action, and has
obviously no say in it. You can't chain yourself down and then
curse the chains that bind you!


text:
In article <002501c397c2$0bf5e5e0$6401a8c0@prescott>, James E. Prescott
<[email]> wrote:

I'm a bit concerned by what seems to me to be a failure to distinguish
between moral rights (which I think we'd agree are independent of
whatever the law happens to be) and legal rights (which hopefully
reflect moral rights as much as is practicable, but in fact vary from
one political entity to another). "Sanctions to act" seem to me to be
legal in nature, but "conditions needed by man for his proper survival"
I'd call moral.

Same reservation. It seems to me that "conditions needed by man for his
proper survival" *are* intrinsic traits of humankind, and are not
acquired. "Sanctions to act", while hopefully they reflect "conditions
necessary to survival", are not intrinsic traits of humankind, but are
"invented".

To me that statement seems problematic. There are indeed "conditions
needed by infants and toddlers for their proper survival", and it
doesn't seem unreasonable to say that infants and toddlers have a moral
right to those conditions in the same sense that juveniles and
teenagers and adults have the right to conditions proper to them.

Seems pretty contractarian to me, hence dependent on intersubjective
agreement, hence not objective.

I'd distinguish between an objective interest, a thing or condition
which in fact objectively benefits a living being, whether or not that
living being values or desires it; and a subjective interest, a
*value*, which a living being strives to get or to keep, whether or not
that thing or condition would objectively benefit it. We can strive to
get or keep something which objectively harms us, and we can strive to
avoid or destroy what would objectively benefit us. So subjective
interests are only imperfect guides to objective interests. Where the
two differ, I think we're courting ultimate disaster if we pursue the
subjective interest rather than the objective one.

I'd say that there are objective moral interests and subjective moral
interests. An objective moral interest is a thing or condition which in
fact objectively benefits a living being as moral patient, whether or
not that being values or desires that thing or condition, or is even
aware that it exists. A subjective moral interest is an interest in
accordance with the principles of any moral code whatsoever,
independent of whether the results of following that code are
objectively beneficial or objectively harmful. Ideally, subjective
moral interests should reflect objective moral interests, but often
they don't.

I agree, as long as you don't make it "if and *only* if".

Seems right to me.

I definitely disagree. A *subjective* moral interest might have that
property, but an *objective* moral interest is such independently of
any intersubjective consensus. A contractarian I definitely am not.

I can go along with that.

I agree.

In my view, that's a *legal* right. For me, a *moral* right is a valid
objective moral interest, or a subjective moral interest whose
satisfaction which does not interfere with the satisfaction of any
objective moral interest. Ideally, subjective moral interests will be
in accord with objective moral interests; but where they are not,
subjective moral interests must IMHO take second place.

Here's where you and I part company. In my view, when a legal right
conflicts with a moral right, one has a moral right, and sometimes even
a moral *duty*, to violate the merely legal right.

Insofar as moral rights are reflections of "conditions needed for
proper survival" they can IMHO reasonably be ascribed to infants and
toddlers and sociopaths. Whether one can ascribe *legal* rights to
infants and toddlers and sociopaths is IMHO a matter of the content of
specific legal codes.

Interesting, but in my view inadequate.

Best wishes,
Bert


author: Charlotte Corday

text:
"Robert J. Kolker" <[email]> wrote in message news:<Kz9lb.195
493$%h1.189510@sccrnsc02>...

Are not welfare recipients also "the enemy," Bob?  How about a final
solution for babies being fed via food stamps?

X
X
X
X
X
X
XX
X
X
X
X
X
X


author: Robert J. Kolker

text:
Charlotte Corday wrote:

Let them starve. Nature will solve the problem. A person cannot last
more than seven or eight weeks without food. Children starve much sooner.

Give a man a fish, you have fed him for the day. Let him starve and you
can forget him forever.

Bob Kolker


text:
"Bert Clanton" <[email]>

You're right I don't draw a real big distinction here. What Ayn Rand did --
sorry to say! -- is to blend that which is "morally right" into the concept
of that to which one has a (moral-legal) right. Those are different
concepts, and she purposefully glazed over the difference. Perhaps I'll get
into why she did this.

Actually, conditions needed for man is metaphysical, not moral. It is
certainly vital to the idea of rights, and it's objective. I agree with Ayn
Rand that rights are conditions of existence required by man for his proper
survival, and I agree with you if that's what you mean to say. But having a
need for something is not the same as having the something that one needs.
Man, like any animal, has a metaphysical need of food. Man, like any animal,
needs to act in certain proper ways to obtain the food he needs. It is right
that man act in his uniquely proper way (use his mind) to produce and
consume food. But this means, precisely, he does not already have food until
the time he exercises his reason and sets about producing it. Food is not
given to him by nature. That's precisely why it is properly called a need.

Well, by the same token, rights are things man by his nature needs. He needs
them because without them there is an endless destructive cycle of force,
retaliation and violence. He needs them because without them there is no way
open to cooperation, division of effort, and mutual prosperity in a
civilized society. But as with food or anything thing else he so desperately
needs, "needing them" means precisely that prior to the exercise of his
reason to obtain them -- here in conjunction with his fellow men and
women -- he does not already possess them.

Precisely right, as said above. But conditions needed by man for his proper
survival is merely a description of rights not a definition of rights. Other
conditions besides rights are necessary for man's proper survival. Food,
shelter, and so on, can all be correctly described as needed by man. This
denotes, as you say, intrinsic traits of humankind, but only with respect to
the "need of." It does not define the thing that is needed itself. When you
say, by his nature man needs it, you have described man; you have not
defined food. And when you say, man by his nature needs them, you have
described man; you have not defined rights.

Precisely right, again. But the fact is, man needs invention. Invention is
man's means of survival. Rights are needed by man, and man himself must
satisfy that need, just as food and all other human values (all other things
that are created/produced by the work of man's reasoning mind) are needed by
man, and as he himself must satisfy the need for them.

It may not seem unreasonable, but it is not proper. Again, conditions needed
describes but does not define rights. Rights are moral-legal sanctions to
take specified reason-guided actions in a social context. (That's not a
different definition, really, from the one I gave last time. This is just
"law-protected valid moral interests" as expressed in more conventional
language. Sanction is the "law-protected" part; "specified" is the valid
part; "reason-guided" is the moral part; all tied together with the
qualifier, "moral-legal.")

There are two choices. You are either contractarian or you are an
intrinsicist. Ayn Rand tried to have it both ways by the trick of confusing
"morally right" with "a moral-legal right." It doesn't work. But
contract/agreement does not have to mean "not objective," and shouldn't. If
agreement is required to make progress, this does not imply that there is
not an objectively right course to follow. It just means what it says,
progress is contingent on agreement. Naturally, then, the agreement ought to
be based on the objective facts of reality (read the map!) so that you both
do not head off in the wrong direction.

So would I. And I do, but that's a bit off the track here.

That would beg me to ask. what you mean then by moral? The moral is the
"chosen by reason." I'd agree something can be an objective value to you
without you being aware of it. But not a moral value.

Better to say, ideally our moral values and moral interests should reflect
what is objectively, genuinely of value to us and in our objective, genuine
best interest. But sometimes they do not. Sometimes -- often, actually --
the values selected by choice and thereby comprising a person's moral code
are the wrong ones.

retaliation

Wonderful!

Be careful. I use valid in a special way, as a quasi-legal term, denoting
the fact of agreement (prior to law) among men relating to moral interests,
as opposed to just their moral interests themselves. If you define rights
the way you suggest, you lose sight of their very purpose. Remember, rights
is a social concept. The purpose of rights is civilized society, cooperation
among men, productivity, division of labor, trade of values in the absence
of any force by men upon men. To make the concept of rights merely
synonymous with "that which it is right for me to do" reduces it to a mere
restatement of the obvious: moral right is morally right. But rights are
much more than that. Rights are mutually defined, recognized and enforced
spheres of action within which a person may act without fear of interference
from other men. Without definition, recognition and enforcement they do not
exist. Without those things, all you are left with is moral right and moral
wrong.

It's always sad to part company. I'll be scouting on ahead there. See you
when you catch up!

But seriously, there is indeed a distinction to be drawn between moral
rights and legal rights. It's just not a great gulf. The law can be wrong.
The law itself can misrepresent the valid moral interests that it is
supposed to enforce. Remember, "valid," here, refers to actual voluntary
mutual agreement among men, not mere legislative fiat. Legislation /should/
interpret and enforce valid moral interests, but since legislation is often
wrong, we can end up saying things like, "He has the legal right to do such
and such (to me, to my property, etc.), but certainly not the moral right."
That's just another way of saying "This (expropriation, etc.) is in no way
what we ever agreed to. It is a violation of our agreements, not an
enforcement of them. It is an injustice."

Such injustices, however, while lamentable and wrong, do not relieve a
person of the moral and legal responsibility to obey the law -- so long I
say again as the law is "constitutional, tolerable and of a free society."
That much /is/ agreed to, whatever your other disagreements. You may not
have agreed to a specific expropriation of your property (and so the law
effecting it is a moral injustice), but you did agree to live within the law
(as a necessary condition of your participation in a free society), and
hopefully, then, you can help to correct and to make better laws where
injustices are found.

So the law can be criticized, on moral grounds. However, the idea of a
purely moral right -- one with no legal sanction or protection whatsoever --
is really just the idea of -- if anything at all! -- a valid moral purpose
(a purpose agreed to) and is not a big step up from the jungle. You need
both recognition and some form of objective enforcement to truly have "a
right." It is, I say again, a moral-legal concept, not just a moral one. So
the "distinction" (not a big gulf) arises only when criticizing the law as
wrong, not when somehow dispensing with law, as if unnecessary. Laws
themselves can be illegal (unconstitutional), for example. It makes perfect
sense to say, "I have this as a actual existing right, morally derived and
legally guaranteed by our constitution, despite the fact that this
particular law impedes it."

Needs can. Not rights. But, as a matter of fact, infants, toddlers and
sociopaths have not even any need of rights. Infants and toddlers need care
and feeding, not moral-legal sanctions to act for themselves in a social
context. They do not need rights until they are able to think for themselves
to the point of choosing between trade and conflict.

Well, there's a lot more to be said, I admit.

Back atch'a...

Best Wishes,
Jim P.