Submitted by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
In 1780, John Adams succinctly defined the principle of the Rule of Law in the Massachusetts Constitution by seeking to establish “a government of laws and not of men”. This reflects the democratic principles enshrined in the Constitution’s preamble: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” The very foundation of our legal system says that the law should work for us all, not just a select few.
This raises the question of what is a good law that serves the majority of society and what is a bad law that doesn’t serve the majority of society?
This idea is further bolstered by the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment:
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The latter addition of the 14th Amendment as well as the Preamble of the Constitution both reflect the spirit in which this country was founded as set forth in the Declaration of Independence: “When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
Clearly, the pursuit of the Rule of Law under the Constitution as informed by the Declaration is a pursuit of the Utilitarian concept of the right course of action is the one that maximizes the overall good consequences of an action; what is in the best interest of greatest numbers of We the People is in the best interests of the country.
Utilitarianism is a quantitative and reductionist philosophical form. Utilitarianism, however, is not a unified philosophical view. It comes in different flavors with the two primary flavors being Rule Utilitarianism and Act Utilitarianism. Strong Rule Utilitarianism is an absolutist philosophical view and rules may never be broken. Like any absolutist view does not take into account that reality occasionally presents situations where breaking a rule results in the greater good. For example, the strong reductionist rule that murder is bad is countered by the exceptional example of murder is not bad if performed in self-defense or the defense of others. This result of practical application is reflected in what John Stuart Mill called Weak Rule Utilitarianism. It becomes apparent that since not all rules are absolutely enforceable when seeking the common good and exceptional circumstances require flexibility in the law, that the Utilitarian pursuit of the Rule of Law must be in Mill’s Weak Rule formulation of Utilitarianism. But is considering the greater good and circumstantial reasons for breaking or modifying rules the best way to judge whether a law is good or bad?
If one considers Kant’s Categorical Imperative – “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.” – then any law not universally applicable should not be a maxim worthy of being recognized as universal. This is contrary to Utilitarianism in general as well as Weak Rule Utilitarianism specifically, but while Kant’s view takes subjectivity into account when dealing with circumstances it does not take into account that there can be objective differences in circumstances as well. It is part of the judiciaries role as a trier of fact to consider not only subjective differences but objective differences in circumstances in formulating the most equitable and just solution to a case at bar. In seeking to be universally applicable in defining maxims, Kant is an absolutist as surely as Strong Rule Utilitarians are absolutists. As a consequence of reality not being neatly binary in nature and thus not often compatible to absolutists approaches to formulating laws for practical application, what can be done to keep Weak Rule Utilitarianism from degenerating into Act Utilitarianism where actors will seek the greatest personal pleasure when presented with a choice rather than the greater good? Utilitarianism conflicting with the Categorical Imperative? Is there a unitary philosophical approach to evaluating whether a law is good or bad?
The answer seems to be no. If there is no single view, absolutist or otherwise, that leads to a practical system for evaluating whether a law is good or bad, then there is only one option for building a framework for evaluation. That option is synthesis.
Consider that absolutist systems as they are not applicable in reality should be confined to being considered theoretical boundaries rather than practical boundaries. This does not negate the value of considering systems like Strong Rule Utilitarianism or Kant’s Categorical Imperative, but rather puts them in the place of aspirational goals rather than practically attainable goals in every circumstance. Given that Mill’s Weak Rule Utilitarianism can degrade into Act Utilitarianism and that degeneration can be compounded by the number of exceptions there are to a rule, are there ways to minimize the defects of using only Weak Rule Utilitarianism to determine the societal value of a law? What supplements can be made to that framework?
I submit that one such supplement is found in the form of Negative Utilitarianism. Negative Utilitarianism is exactly what it sounds like; the inverse function of Utilitarianism. Whereas Utilitarianism is the basic proposition that the right course of action is the one that maximizes the overall good consequences of an action, Negative Utilitarianism is the basic proposition that requires us to promote the least amount of evil or harm, or to prevent the greatest amount of suffering for the greatest number. If one takes both into account in evaluation of the social value of a law (a synthetic approach), the test becomes a balancing act. On one side of the scale is the societal value of overall good consequences, on the other side is the societal value of preventing overall harm. This proposition suggests the following framework for evaluation of whether a law is good or bad.
- How many people benefit from the good consequences of a law?
- How many people benefit from the reduction of harm as consequences of a law?
- Does the benefits from promoting good consequences outweigh the costs of reduction of harm?
- Does the benefits from reducing harm outweigh the costs to the greater good in taking no action?
- Are the net consequences of a law perfectly knowable from either perspective or does the possibility of unforeseeable consequences exist? Can the unforeseeable risks be minimized either by construction of the law(s) to allow for contingencies or by regulating other risks or contributing factors?
- Do solutions from either perspective negatively impact human and/or civil rights? Do those negative impacts outweigh the positive effects to the greater human and/or civil rights of all?
This is but one way to evaluate whether a law is good or bad for society. What are other methods? Are there ways to improve this method? What do you think?
Tony C:
“No, it doesn’t, this is an unsupported insult.”
Nah, Stephen supported it real well.
Then you aren’t looking very closely or well, Bron.
“For someone allegedly interested in protecting an individual’s rights, you Objectivists sure don’t give a shit about protecting people from economic tyranny.”
The only economic tyranny I see is that created by government. TARP, Stimulus and now a jobless rate of probably close to 15%. This has been going on for how many years now? At least 3 and probably 4. When markets were more free a depression lasted 6-18 months and was deep but done. When government started getting involved they started lasting for years.
@Grossman: The rest of my post was the refutation of your absurdly out-of-context claim.
I don’t believe so, I have read enough to know you are incapable of anything but vitriol and reasserting your indefensible, counter-factual, completely unscientific fantasy, that is why you cannot write a post without hurling insults. Because if somebody challenges your weak premises you cannot defend them logically, so all you have left is insults. But I am unconvinced by insults, so I see no point in reading them.
My sympathies on your wasted life, sucker.
Tony C.
>The rest of your post was ignored; there is no point in reading somebody whose only mode is insult.
There is no system that will work to govern millions without mandatory participation.
The rest of my post was the refutation of your absurdly out-of-context claim.
How do you justify your opposition to sacrifice of one’s mind? If one’s mind is not sacrificed, there can be no lesser sacrifice.
@Grossman: Your altruism requires, first, the sacrifice of your mind.
No, it doesn’t, this is an unsupported insult. The rest of your post was ignored; there is no point in reading somebody whose only mode is insult.
There is no system that will work to govern millions without mandatory participation. If benevolence is not mandatory it is not certain, if the defense of rights is not certain for those that cannot defend themselves, there is no “right,” there is only dependence upon the kindness of others, and that depends upon not alienating others, and that demands subservience to their judgment, and that is slavery.
It is morally repulsive to make a right to life, speech, opinion, religion, protest or their own moral choices dependent upon how well they are liked by the rich and powerful that can pick and choose who to defend.
That is what you advocate for in the name of “freedom,” subservience and boot-licking elitism. Either everybody is mandatorily responsible for the defense of rights and prosecution of rights violation, or nobody is, and there are no rights, there are only powerful benefactors (same root as benevolence), the 1%, and the peasants in the 99% are lucky if they even get to choose which of these benefactors will deign to protect them and decide whether they live or die.
You advocate for bloody anarchy, subservience, and brutality in the name of “freedom.”
Tony C.
>@Grossman: As for the weak, etc, their literal survival is made possible by the capitalist prosperity and benevolence
>The poor, paralyzed, or mentally disabled do not have prosperity, and it does not protect them in your system: In your system everything they need comes at a price, including their protection from criminals, and by definition the poor do not have the money to pay for it.
Your altruism requires, first, the sacrifice of your mind. You evade the nasty, brutish and short lives of almost everyone prior to capitalist prosperity and benevolence. You evade the historically unique and widespread and spreading (within limits) capitalist prosperity and progressive technology. The allegedly good intentions of altruists are worthless outside of our capitalist prosperity because there is nothing to little that can physically comfort the “unfortunate” (a sloppy concept). Before the current, spreading capitalist prosperity in India, there was insufficient material wealth and technology to help the “unfortunate” in any significant way. Now the method of help, ie, vastly increased productivity, is growing. You evade the impotence of “good” intentions split from reality. Your subjectivism is impotent except for destruction and dangerous fantasies of power.
Your Marxist altruist requires asking who was hurt when someone else benefited. Altruism is a zero-sum morality, making impossible the mutually beneficial trades of capitalism which constantly increase material well-being. Apparently, Bill Gates stole his software and billions from slightly above Stone Age Indians. And if Gates was reduced to the economic level of his janitor, his janitor would benefit because, allegedly, everyone is equally productive.
Capitalism increases everyone’s material prosperity because of the trickle-down effect of greater productivity. There is only a tiny benefit from the janitor’s productivity but a vast benefit from Gates’ productivity. And so for Rockefeller, Carnegie, Edison, Ford, Jobs, etc. But altruism condemns them because they did not sacrifice themselves. Altruism regards production for profit as evil. But since production is a selfish need of life, altruism makes life literally impossible to the extent that people dont smuggle some selfishness into their lives. Altruism thus creates moral guilt, weakening people’s pride against further sacrifice. Altruism requires evading all this, requires self-willed stupidity, requires accepting contradictions, requires evading past and future for the immediate moment of “good” intentions.
>If “benevolence” is not mandatory it is not certain,
Its certain that selfishness is man’s only hope for a happy life.
>If the only “rights” one is guaranteed are those they can defend for themselves,
You evade my repeated advocacy of govt.
>The ONLY system that works is mutual obligation to defend everybody
Youre begging the question by evading the difference between selfish and selfless obligation, between accepting govt because it protects one’s own selfish rights and because it protects society. A selfish person accepts govt because it protects his rights, not because it protects others’ rights. You confuse means w/end. But your altruism demand selfless intentions regardless of effect.
>Rights can only be derived from a large group that is mutually obligated to defend the rights of every member of the group, or punish those that violate rights.
Rights are derived from the conditions of survival in society, basically, the need for action guided by the judgment of one’s own mind free from others’ initiation of force. Freedom is a metaphysical need of life. Slavery, elitist or mutual, destroys the mind’s ability to guide action.
>the right is defended (or its violation punished) by the overwhelming force of the group.
Govt is the means, not the end, ie, the rights of the individual as individual.
>It is not slavery if it is not coerced, and in free countries as an adult you can renounce your citizenship and leave at will, eliminating both your obligation to the group and their obligation to you.
Ie, your altruism allows the choice of master but never freedom from a master.
>Of course, the group doesn’t mind; your obligation is one of millions and a relatively insignificant loss.
Yet, curiously enough, the most consistently altruist states, ie, the most socialist, outlaw emigration because the most independent, ie, the most productive, would and have left by the millions, leaving those least capable of survival to huddle together in their poverty. Coincidence?
>one more lost obligation will not have any impact on the system.
This moral contempt for the individual is the justification for all tyranny and mass murder.
>that is life in any system, big or small: You seldom get the one-sided deal you want, choices are limited and every gain comes with obligations. Maybe when you grow up you will realize that, and stop wasting your life on a sucker’s philosophy.
So your life is a moral sewer of sacrificing your values but, once in a while, you can stick your head above the slop and breath some clean air until youre condemned for selfishness and you guiltily sink back down and taste the shit again. And if your alleged selfishness is destructive hedonism ,well, thats altruism. At least you know that others are also chained inside the sewer, too ,for your alleged benefit. This is the moral equivalence of a heroin “shooting gallery” in which drug addiction is justified as the only practical lifestyle. The alternative ,after all, is the unthinkable: the risk of independent judgment in an unforgiving universe that cares not for your “good” intentions. Best stay with a society of losers. At least your particular self-destruction will be tolerated as long as you tolerate others.
@Bron: You still cant get over the fact that I am all for a limited government the purpose of which is to protect individual rights.
It isn’t sufficient to agree with the requirement, engineer, the point is to detail how it is supported, how we decide what rights are and what is a good law or bad law, and how we then enforce those decisions to protect individual rights.
What I cannot get over is the hypocrisy of claiming we need a government while simultaneously demanding nobody should ever be compelled to pay for it.
What I cannot get over is the hypocrisy of a tiny percentage of the population calling themselves “Objectivists” claiming they have the monopoly on the logic of what is fair for everybody, despite the vociferous objections of virtually everybody; the Orwellian hypocrisy of a wannabe elite forcing their rules upon a population in the name of their “freedom,” with life and death consequences.
That is what I cannot get over, hypocrisy.
We need a government, and the only way to get one is to buy it with mutual obligation to protect each other, regardless of circumstance. If you insist on defining freedom as being free of obligation to others, you advocate for anarchy. If you insist that a few percent of people should decide what should and should not be law for the super majority of people, because you “know” what is good for them, you advocate for oppression, an absolute rule by an ideological minority that decides what is right or wrong, legal or illegal, regardless of the opinions of those being ruled.
When you argue for “free markets” you argue for institutionalizing the oppression of others in the name of profits for an elite, even if 90% of citizens believe that oppression should be a crime, even if that oppression is resulting in the death of workers or customers.
What you advocate for is bloody anarchy and the devaluation of human life over profits, both in society and in business.
The person in a wheelchair who thinks free markets are bad simply knows that abusive practices – tyranny – result from a game with no rules. They aren’t blinded by their religious devotion to the idea it’s okay to exploit others as long as you get what you want. For someone allegedly interested in protecting an individual’s rights, you Objectivists sure don’t give a shit about protecting people from economic tyranny.
Tony C:
It means about as much as a guy with a PhD telling me I am wrong, when I can find a guy with a PhD who says I am right.
The person in a wheelchair who thinks free markets are bad is a fool and doesnt know where his/her bread is buttered.
Tony C:
You still cant get over the fact that I am all for a limited government the purpose of which is to protect individual rights.
In fact that is how rights are protected and that was the intent of our founders a limited government which protected man’s rights.
@Bron: P.S. Even if you are in a wheelchair, does it add weight to your opinion? Suppose I find a socialist in a wheelchair, shouldn’t his/her opinion count just as much as yours? If I poll all the people with professional careers that are also in wheelchairs, and the vast majority of them are opposed to unregulated totally free markets, what will that mean, exactly?
Your individual circumstance, or mine, do not change the logic of how society can plausibly work or not, logic and reality have no sympathy. The only way the mutual obligation of protection will ever vanish is if it takes any right to protection with it. Without a mutual obligation of protection, there is no society, there is only dog-eat-dog, every-man-for-himself, strongest-arm-wins anarchy.
@Bron: You may have thought long, you haven’t thought well. I suspect you haven’t actually thought at all, just reread the thoughts of others you already agreed with over and over until they were set like concrete in your mind. There is a difference between 20 years of experience and one year of experience 20 times.
The question, at this point in the conversation, is whether it is possible to have rights without a group obligated to protect them. The answer is NO. Rights are restrictions on what citizens can do to each other. For example, you cannot murder somebody because you dislike them, or take their property from them just because you want it. That restriction is dangerous to enforce, and it will not be enforced unless it is somebody’s obligation and job to enforce it.
If a man is in a coma, who protects his right to life? If he has no money (and obviously cannot agree to pay anybody any money even if he had it) then who shall punish his killer?
Any answer that requires a family or volunteer means nobody protects his right, because it is irrational to volunteer to risk one’s own life to either protect or avenge the death of a complete stranger that will probably never reciprocate. It is a risk that may result in your own death for zero return.
Requiring volunteerism to protect rights means nobody really has a right at all, they have no protection from others other than what they can pay for or provide themselves, and that is anarchy.
As for free markets, this philosophy of mutual obligation to protect each other’s rights does not preclude free markets, but NO obligation does preclude them: It mean no contracts shall be enforced, no law will be enforced, no rights will be enforced, no courts will exist to prosecute any of it, because WITHOUT an obligation of the group to protect the individuals within it all that will exist are smaller societies: Roving bands or gangs or hordes that HAVE pledged a mutual obligation to each other, or an obligation of allegiance to a leader.
You haven’t thought very thoroughly; especially for an engineer. The parts of societies have to work, you have to have some detail as to why they work, or the philosophy is just bullshit wishful thinking. I can dream all I want about the benefits of some device, but if there is no way to engineer it, what’s the point? It is just wishful thinking with no traction toward reality.
That is the problem with Rand’s philosophy, free markets, and rights (protections) without any obligation: They are all just wishful thinking divorced from reality. So is “charity,” and relying upon “volunteers” to do for others what you yourself wish to avoid doing for others. They do not work. What does work, in general, is society as it stands throughout the world; rights accompanied by obligation. The challenge is to devise from that point to maximize personal freedom within such a system, but the obligation of mutual protection will NEVER be eliminated, you will never get something for nothing.
Tony C:
I am sitting in a wheelchair and I am pretty handicapped. I have thought a good deal about this issue. And I am pretty certain that a person like me has a better shot in a free society with a free market than in a collectivist society with a centrally planned market. Since I am selfish and like my life and wish to extend it for as long as possible wouldnt I choose the system best able to extend my life to the longest extent possible?
From the simple reason that capitalism provides abundance and centralized systems provide scarcity. When there is abundance people like me will be taken care of by charity or by the simple fact that there is enough work to go around. I have had people tell me they want an engineer who can walk but if all the walking engineers are working then there is some work left for me to do. And likewise with health care, in a centrally planned economy there is scarcity and so if I need a heart, I am not going to be at the top of the list, that position will go to a younger person or to person my age who is in good health other than having a heart problem. All centrally planned economies involve scarcity.
I will take my chances in a dog eat dog capitalist system of produce or perish. All other systems are bullshit. I trust the benevolence of the butcher to provide me with meat not one iota but I do trust the butcher’s desire for his own self-interest to provide me with meat. Similarly I trust the market to provide me with a new heart far more than the benevolence of some government bureaucrat sitting on a death panel rationing health care.
Any minority, if they had a clue, would choose free market capitalism over central planning and communism/socialism/fascism. The mere fact of the abundance of production means sufficient employment for all who want a job. Contrast that with France or the old soviet union. In France young people cannot find jobs.
@Grossman: As for the weak, etc, their literal survival is made possible by the capitalist prosperity and benevolence
The poor, paralyzed, or mentally disabled do not have prosperity, and it does not protect them in your system: In your system everything they need comes at a price, including their protection from criminals, and by definition the poor do not have the money to pay for it. If “benevolence” is not mandatory it is not certain, especially for the people that are not liked because they have spent their lives being selfish and self-centered.
If the only “rights” one is guaranteed are those they can defend for themselves, that has no functional difference from anarchy; in which the strong take from the weak with impunity, because the weak cannot defend themselves against a gang of thousands. That means there are no “rights” because nobody is protected or guaranteed anything. There are no contracts, because dead men cannot enforce their completion, and nobody else is obligated to do that (or if they are, their obligation is also a contract with a dead man that cannot enforce it).
The ONLY system that works is mutual obligation to defend everybody and prosecute criminals regardless of cost, regardless of whether the victim is rich or destitute, respected or despised, well-liked or a friendless loner, a child, adult or elderly, mentally competent or not, awake or in a coma. That is what works, it is the only logical thing that CAN guarantee anything resembling a human right to life or property, and no system that relies solely on benevolence and self-defense can ever guarantee anything.
Rights cannot be derived from individuals because no individual alone can defend themselves against overwhelming force. Rights can only be derived from a large group that is mutually obligated to defend the rights of every member of the group, or punish those that violate rights.
It is the obligation of the group that protects your rights, and your obligation to the group that protects their rights.
The net result of those symmetric obligations is rights for everybody, because the right no longer depends upon the individual capacity to defend it, the right is defended (or its violation punished) by the overwhelming force of the group.
It is not slavery if it is not coerced, and in free countries as an adult you can renounce your citizenship and leave at will, eliminating both your obligation to the group and their obligation to you. Of course, the group doesn’t mind; your obligation is one of millions and a relatively insignificant loss. The biggest loss is yours, you have lost the obligation of millions to contribute to your protection. So feel free to renounce and leave, we lose many thousands of people every day to death, one more lost obligation will not have any impact on the system.
It is a take it or leave it deal. If you think you have no plausible alternative: Well, Stephen, that is life in any system, big or small: You seldom get the one-sided deal you want, choices are limited and every gain comes with obligations. Maybe when you grow up you will realize that, and stop wasting your life on a sucker’s philosophy.
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Thanks for demonstrating once again that you don’t have a clue as to what you are talking about.
Tony C.
>Grossman: anarchy is entirely rational for predators that think they will be able to successfully take what they want.
Even if you meant reason as conceptualization instead of mere perceptual association, youre evading my repeated statements of Rand’s distinction between the objective requirement’s of man’s life and hedonism. The distinction between self-sacrifice and other-sacrifice is emotional. The distinction between selfishness and sacrifice is the fact of man’s life. The selfish man wants something because he is guided by the knowledge of his life as a whole. The sacrificer (of self or others) wants to act on his immediate emotional response to the immediate, concrete situation, out of context of his life as a whole. Selfishness is basically a focus on the facts of reality. Sacrifice is basically an evasion of that focus for a surrender to the emotion of the moment.
The basic selfish values are reason, purpose, and self-esteem. The basic values of sacrifice are evasion, action without purpose, and self-contempt.
As for the weak, etc, their literal survival is made possible by the capitalist prosperity and benevolence that ended floating granny out on an iceberg.
The allegedly good intentions of sacrifice are empty without capitalist prosperity, without the overflowing material abundance of the selfish value of production. Try feeding the victims of famine on your good intentions.
@Grossman: It doesn’t make a difference if you think anarchy is irrational, anarchy is entirely rational for predators that think they will be able to successfully take what they want. You (and Rand) have zero solutions to that dilemma except more anarchy; the weak, the elderly, the mentally disabled, the crippled or paralyzed that cannot defend themselves are not defended at all in your system, so the predatory humans can take their life and property with impunity, and their rights to life and property are mere words in your mouth that mean absolutely nothing, because in YOUR system nobody has any responsibility to protect anybody else, and the only property one can hold (including one’s life) is the property they can defend on their own.
The deterrent to murder is NOT a sacrifice to non-murderers, because the responsibility gives them far more than they must give in return: They get the entire group of millions to provide a deterrent to their own murder, while only contributing the effort of one out of millions to the deterrent of other murders. It is a good deal, but it will not work if it is voluntary, it must be an obligation of everyone in a society, and the only voluntary element is the freedom to leave that society and eliminate both the obligation and the protection. You are free to go; until you do, you are obligated to contribute.
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Gene H.
>There you go making up your own definitions again, Grossman.
Your depraved evasion of focusing mind onto reality is noted. Your cowardly sacrifice to social approval is noted.
>Your statement also begs the question that society exists for trade when it does not.
My repetitively stated context is life, so Im not begging the question. Further, your selfless opposition to trade is that of a thief or murderer.
>The foundation of societies is grouping together to attain mutually shared benefits, such as the Rule of Law, equal enforcement of said laws, common defense, and in the case of America, the promotion of the general welfare.
These are means to selfish ends, not ends in themselves (except for the invalid, collective meaning of general welfare). You selflessly evade the selfish values of trade and knowledge.
>absolute rights under the state of nature
Rights are objective, ie, the product of mind judging reality, not natural (intrinsic to reality). “Natural rights” are mystical. There are rocks in reality but no rights. I dont perceive them nor can they be inferred from perception, eg, electrons. Rights are conditions of survival in society, the basic condition being the ban of the initation of force.
>Selfishness in the pursuit of these benefits is entirely an individual motivation.
Psychological motives are not moral choices. Morality cannot be reduced to psychology. All life is motivated to seek values. The proper values for man is the moral issue. Selfishness is a moral ideal ,not psychology.
>motivation skews away from mutually derived benefits to individual gain of advantage,
“individual gain of advantage” is merely another begging of the question of what benefits the individual as individual (even in society). Youre selflessly assuming that its selfish to rob and murder, etc. but that you wont do it because its immoral. What a horrid psychology to carry around! Are you a heroin addict? The possibility of mutual selfishness (individual gain of advantage) is denied since it requires intellectual and moral independence, more terrifying to selfless people than physical danger. There is no god and no common good. There is only your own mind to face reality.
>There is nothing rational about selfishness in the context of society. It is in the selfish interest of a murderer to go unpunished no matter their motive.
Youre Pragmatically dropping the context of the murderer’s life as a whole, a destructive ,selfless situation always related to life as a brute, of kill and be killed, of waiting for someone to kill him, of constant dishonesty around others (except the depraved few who approve).
>i.e. there are consequences if you choose to kill another.
ie, its selfless to wait one’s whole life for the police or for the psychological pressure to motivate a confession. See _Crime and Punishment_. Or the pain of repression of that motive.
>The rational justification for that sacrifice is to protect men from the predation of other men and to punish those who do prey upon others – both as a deterrent to such behavior and to give some sense of equitable resolution (justice) to those who have been harmed by said behavior.
Youre defending selfishness-to protect men-with sacrifice, one of the many contradictions of the unrealistic, irrational, moral depravity of sacrifice. You confess again that you literally dont know how to live and live in society. All you know is sacrifice.
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1980 Tony C.
@Grossman: >The “rational justification” of sacrifice….For the rest of a group to be obligated to make their best effort to punish the murder
Why is a deterrent to murder a sacrifice to non-murderers? Its selfish. Its a sacrifice to have no deterrent. Why the quotes? Do you reject rational morality?
>rational murderer
perceptual association is not reason.
>But of course, as usual, I expect you to respond with non-sequiters about strong healthy men that defend themselves and their family in an armed fortress, blah blah blah, because you have no ability to answer to the real question; Rand failed to address that dilemma for you.
You drop my repeated context of Rand’s discussions about the rationally selfish need of objective law and about the irrationality of anarchy.