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The Forum > Article Comments > Human rights: where are we heading? > Comments

Human rights: where are we heading? : Comments

By Stephen Keim, published 30/11/2011

Just as in Australia, it is easy to forget the ways in which laws have been changed and security apparatus are used to affect the lives of many.

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“I have just lost half an hor's work replying to you”

My commiserations.

“--using a public compuer, where I cannot save my work.”

This is the price we pay for ironing out the world’s jurisprudential wrinkles, and for what recompense? None.

“You do not presuppose that you own your body when you engage in argument, but that you have rational autonomy.”

You haven’t given reason for that assertion, on which all your supposed refutation of my argument depends.

Just because you do have rational autonomy doesn’t mean you don’t have self-ownership.

Rational autonomy is a sub-set and a function of the fact of exclusive possession and use of one’s body.

There is no sense in which rational autonomy can be considered separately from the fact of exclusive possession and use of one’s own body, which in turn is the factual basis of the principle of self-ownership. We are not talking about disembodied wraiths ratiocinating in a vacuum; but real human action faced with real natural scarcity in a social context.

If there were no natural scarcity, there would be no need for rules of just conduct. A’s use of a resource would never impinge on B’s. What gives rise to the need for ethics and rights is the fact of scarcity. Even if we supposed a world without scarcity, as in a Garden of Eden, there would still be the basal scarcity of the stuff of one’s physical body, and hence the need for rules of just conduct to rationalize that scarcity; else we would have no ethical objection to A aggressing against B.

A world in which that basal natural scarcity does not exist is unthinkable. Why? Because it’s a non-negotiable fact of reality. It gives rise to the human condition which requires ethics to solve the problem it raises; otherwise we’re back to Nuhremberg.

The question is not whether you agree, it’s whether you can refute it. But to refute it, you have to exercise the exclusive possession and use of your body, thus affirming it. Therefore it’s axiomatic.
Posted by Peter Hume, Friday, 9 December 2011 3:20:01 PM
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As to the ethical basis of my argument, what claims can count is limited by the fact that a right is a rule of conduct that is *enforceable and enforced*. This automatically imposes a limit on what can be a right. The initiation of force needs to be justified, and what can justify it but defence?

Since self-ownership is axiomatic, the question is what ethical justification someone could have to use aggressive force to overawe your decision on how to use your body as you see fit, to force you to substitute his decision as he sees fit.

One doesn’t own one’s body in the computer sense, because self-ownership is the basal right which makes all subsequent and subsidiary property rights possible. A computer is a chattel; a man cannot rightly be. One’s body is the radical capital.

I prove as follows.

1. The argumentation ethic shows that you acknowledge the fact of self-ownership by entering the discussion. You perform a self-contradiction by denying it. That of itself is sufficient to prove my case (as to self-ownership) and disprove yours.

You still haven’t answered my questions, if this is wrong, then
I. by what right do you participate in the argument?
II. why are you talking to me?
III. How could any violation of self-ownership be anything other than arbitrary?

If I am right, it’s because you hope to persuade me with reason, because you acknowledge that I have the exclusive possession and control of my body, and that it cannot be any other way, else you would be talking to someone else.

If you are right, it doesn’t make sense.

2. For that reason this right is not arbitrary, but axiomatic. The only alternative is might-is-right.

3. The argumentation ethic accords to everyone an equality of rights, for which many a sage hath yearned; while respecting people’s differences, which has an ethical beauty and elegant jurisprudential parsimony about it.

4. All human rights and other rights are exercised through property rights.

5. This ethic avoids confusing unprovoked aggression with a claim of right.
Posted by Peter Hume, Friday, 9 December 2011 3:23:38 PM
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6. For that reason it would minimize unnecessary conflict, which is the purpose of rules of right.

7. The liberty that this principle justifies, optimises as best we know how, the co-ordination of human efforts and natural resources so as to satisfy the most urgent and important wants of society, as judged by society themselves on the basis of voluntary relations, not their political overlords on the basis of arbitrary prerogative and unprovoked aggression.

8. As all the revenue of the state comes from confiscating private property, therefore the utilitarian value of the principle of liberty has precedence both in fact as well as in logic.

9. If the starting point is not that A has the right to the use of his own body, how can B be in any better position in respect of A?

My ethical theory denies the possibility of a right of slavery; yours leaves open the possibility that A could own B, or the fruits of his labour which amounts to the same thing.

“it would not follow that I had an obligation to respect a right to own other property”

Yes it would, for that reason.

But if it doesn’t rule it out categorically, then it can only be arbitrary - dependent on the opinion of the aggressor.

The argument is, that arbitrary violations of property rights cannot make an ethical standard, but only an unethical double standard, because it presupposes that B has the right to control his own body *and* A’s, while A would not have the right to control his own, let alone someone else’s. “A is allowed to hit B, but B is not allowed to hit A.” It would set up two unequal classes, an exploiting class and an exploited class, based on who was most powerful - the opposite of right.

10. As you assert a right to *override pre-existing* property rights, the common starting point is acceptance, not rejection of them. (cont.)
Posted by Peter Hume, Friday, 9 December 2011 3:26:01 PM
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Therefore the onus is on you to show reason which would not negate property rights themselves. You haven’t done so.

I submit that your method of invoking contextless scenarios – e.g. starving man without saying why - is dubious for the reasons Jardine has identified.

Empirically, starvation is overwhelmingly the result of claims to violate property rights. It's the institution of property feeding unprecedented billions.

“I don't know where the argument comes from, but I think it is a shocker.”
Perhaps so, but you haven’t refuted it, nor escaped its manifold refutations of yours. It comes from the Austrian school: www.mises.org

See also:
http://mises.org/books/economicsethics.pdf

“The main line of argument I want to outline is that it makes sense to think of human rights as the requirements for a person to live a decent life--a life fit for persons.”

This could only ever depend on definitions of “decent”, of which, at last count, there were 7 billion; it would therefore be a recipe for chronic conflict. At best, it could only justify a moral rule, not an enforceable one. It could depend for its claim only on mere arbitrary power, else it would be voluntary, and not a right.

Therefore you haven’t shown that my original dichotomy is mistaken, not shown two fallacies in, nor any valid reason against the argumentation ethic; have not answered my questions which disprove you; and have given only arbitrary assertions as argument, unlike my argument which is validly deduced from an axiom.

Thus when all the rabbits are chased down all the burrows, either
a) a right is what the most powerful says it is or ought to be, or
b) a right is something which you hold equally with everyone else, which justifies you in using force to defend it, and the only things that could possibly qualify are your or anyone else’s life, liberty and property.

Unprovoked aggression can never be a right but is a wrong; and therefore a political state, being based on unprovoked aggression, is a criminal association.

By “resolve to” I mean “ultimately depend on”.

Pretty good, eh?
Posted by Peter Hume, Friday, 9 December 2011 3:29:22 PM
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Peter H,

You say I have not given a reason for my assertion that you do not own your body. What I clearly do presuppose is that there is a person there, manipulating a computer. I accept, though I do not think I presuppose it, that you are a brain, which is part of a body. It is up to you to prove that I presuppose ownership, which must be something different from being a part of a body for the rest of your argument to get started. True, I have not proven that you do not own your body--I assume that you do, for if you were a slave you would not be likely to be able to spend time debating philosophy with me. But the possibility that you are a slave shows that I do not have to assume that you own yourself. Entering into the discussion does not presuppose that you own yourself, only that you exist.

You accept that "self ownership" is not the same as owning a computer. That is, the concepts are different. The argument suffers from the fallacy of equivocation. If you don't like the part to whole notion, we could try 'embodiment'. I do assume that you are embodied. I fail to see that that implies ownership. And you have not shown that it does.
Posted by ozbib, Monday, 12 December 2011 3:51:51 PM
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Jardine,

The point of the blizzard example is that there are occasions where the right to life overrides the right to property. And Peter, whether or nor you need to spell out the details of a hypothetical assumption depends on the use to which it is put and the nature of the assumption. In this case, since people do die in blizzards, or even when they are lost in the snow or just unable to get to safety, they are entitled to commit theft. If
Scott of the Antarctic had come across a hut owned, say by Shackleton, would he not have been entitled to break in, to save the lives of his companions?

Peter again.

You assert in effect that embodiment is axiomatically a right. I agree that it is not arbitrary, because, as a person, you are entitled to continue to exist, and so far as we know, the only way you can do so is by continuing to be embodied. But you need that extra premise. If it wee not that I think that all assertions are value laden, I'd say you were breaching the is/ought gap. You are embodied--but why are you entitled to continue to be so?

By what right do I participate? Because you are interested in doing so; or you are graciously permitting me to do so. (I suspect your question was not quite what you meant.)

Would killing you be a violation of "self ownership"? You don't need me to tell you of circumstances when that would be justified. (I would hate to think that they might arise.)
Posted by ozbib, Monday, 12 December 2011 4:14:06 PM
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