DoubtingThomas

Yes, I think that we can reasonably suppose people naturally act on NAP whether or not they verbally acknoweldge it. Furthermore, I think the mischaractarization of this natural inclination by statists (such as the war of all against all, or the law of the jungle) is a tacit acknoweldgement of NAP. When they say that the strong will rule over the weak, what they are implying is that whoever can assert self-ownership and property rights will have property rights. Their continued supposition that this means the great majority will have no rights is in-fact an illogical conclusion. For if all of the supposedly strong individuals are capable of asserting self-ownership, so too are the weaker individuals able to do the same. The only disparity lies in their ability to defend their implied right to self-ownership, which is all too obviously negated by even the most basic self-defense mechanisms. So whether or not the "weaker," individual has a gun, is a member of a family with "stronger," members, or has ceded some of his own property to a defensive pact with other individuals, the result is the same. All people are acting as though they own themselves and the property extending from their self ownership. I don't know that either approach would make a diffirence. As I've stated, It doesn't particularly matter what they say and a cursory examination of the lunatic political theories out there show you just how many illogical conclusions people can paint atop that canvas. What I think bears repeating to someone who is unfamiliar with voluntarism is that they are, in no small part, always acting on NAP and engaging in voluntary interactions. If nothing else it will prepare them for the inevitable time when the state has bankrupted itself and leaves broad swathes of society to get along without so much coercive state imposition.

I think the problem is that people are delusional. Admitting that the state does protect them at times certainly doesn't damage the argument that they are woefully ineffiecnt at what little good they do, but rather making the case that they are inefficient when so few are even aware that alternative CAN exist, much less that they already do exist in the real world, is impossible in most cases. So I think either point of view works here, but neither works in practice with a statist audience.

I think you pressed on a salient point that a lot here are still hung up on, so I appreciate the provocation.

It seems you've anticipated my answer quite well. Sufficed to say, I think the situation in which the police fail to arrive in time to save the victim is much more likely to be the case and that is not a point to be glossed over. The complete inefficiency of the state police in handling crime, mostly due to the fact their budget is tied to the crime not being prevented, is a massive problem. I would go so far as to say the "mixed," view of it stems only from the fact that many people simply have little or no interaction with the criminal justice system. So while the example is valid, I think it doesn't speak very highly of why anyone could defend the state's ability to ward off evils that it has not itself produced. Even if we are to completely extradite the state from the cause of criminality and violence, that still leaves them operating a completely ham-fisted, inept, and inefficient racket. It would be much akin to saying that public sector unions create jobs. In the strict sense of the jobs directly created by that organization, they surely do. But in the aggregate their existence leeches resources out of the economy and produces even more inefficiency in the state sector, further compounding the problem of job loss. The point being, I don't think that the state can be said to legitimately protect anything, aside from its own power, in a manner that is preferable to a private alternative.

That's what I was implying, except I think that really means the correct extrapolation doesn't matter. Ultimately, everyone acts as if they own themselves and acts to preserve that which they believe to be their property through self-ownership.

Just to be an annoying devils advocate DT. Being obedient to a well established authority that gave great insight and empirical evidence that improved a persons life, say like nutrition. Then you could argue that obedience was a virtue, or at least led to a virtuous act. However, perhaps I'm pushing the boundaries of the definition of the term here somewhat. /emoticons/emotion-2.gif Yes, but again, that is obedience in part of an action. That is, you used your better judgement of who constituted an authority on nutrition. You were acting in the best interests of your own health. That we can put through UPB and see to be a virtuous action. Conversely, if you are simply describing yourself as an "obedient," person, then you have no actions in the sentence that are testable by UPB. It is only with the inclusion of the action that you have a testable hypothesis that something is UPB.

To be honest it sounds like he is a nihilist or relativist himself. To describe NAP as valid, but refuse to accept that anything can be extrapolated from it is contradictory. Either people will defend themselves from attack or they will not. Either people act as if they own themselves or they do not. If one says that they don't accept NAP because the only legitimate source of "rights," are having the most force or coercion to establish those rights, then one is tacitly accepting NAP already without saying as much. They are asserting that someone who has the ability to defend themselves does not want to be aggressed against. The second party who is being coerced, by definition, is not seeking to be aggressed against, and is also validating NAP by the act of being victimized rather than complying out of recognition that the first persons commands are inherently valid. This is why I find the relativist position to be so nonsenseical. It asserts that NAP is invalid, but validates NAP by asserting that the preference of the individual is supreme and defense of that preference is the only true rule. That isn't a refutation of NAP, but rather a crass re-wording of the definition.

I certainly agree with that, but I didn't gather that either of you were expressing this above. If that is the position being taken, you're arguing with a true relativist and I doubt very seriously they consider NAP of any value. If one is to maintain the position of a relativist, then principles of any kind don't make sense. They are not principles at all, but merely preferences. Taken to it's logical conclusion, the relativist must admit that some people have a preference for murder, rape, and theft, and that they have nothing to say about those people except that they subjectively dislike that kind of behavior. That seems to be the inverse of social order, not just inapplicable to it.

I just want to know if you can come up with a strait-forward example of government protecting from evil that does not originate from government. That's it. You did not answer that question.

I don't think their standards necessarily matter. What matters is the perception of goodness. If you percieve something a completely derranged person has done to be a good thing for yourself, you could interpret that as virtue, but it would not be objectively good and you would be mistaken just as in the case of the captive who sees their tormentor as good because they are not actively being punished in the worst possible way they can think of. Objective virtue only makes sense if you confine it to actions validated by UPB. In that sense almost nobody is acting virtuously all the time and scarcely anyone can be objectively worthy of love by a lot of people. That seems to match reality as far as I can tell. Virtue as an adjective doesn't make sense because it can only be judged through actions, but I don't agree that calls objectivity into question because we have UPB to test those actions. I think there is plenty of evidence on which to overturn classical philosphy in this case. Firstly, a long and troublesome history of violence and obvious ignobility on the part of socieities that adhered to those virtues. Secondly, the complete lack of empiricism within the old supposed calculus of virtue. To say that some supposed human charactar trait like "obedience," for-example, is a virtue, seems completley nonsenseical. When following an order would certainly lead to an evil act like murder, rape, or theft, then the quality of obedience is immediately negative. Conversely, obedience to NAP would be a situation when it is positive. So again, all turns on the axis of action, specifically human action. I don't think any discussion of morality will ever make sense if you try to divorce it from that platform.

So your goal was to avoid answering my question directly. How about another one then, this a little more direct: Where does government protect from evil that doesn't originate from government?

Again, I beg the question; What makes those two situations mutually exclusive? NAP could be a personal value of yours, but even if it isn't someone else has the right to defend their body and their property from you. If you violate it, you will suffer. If they violate you, they will suffer. The only way that there's any ambiguity about it is if you have people who honestly will not assert self-ownership and by extension property rights and the right to defend themselves. In that situation I would say it's more like a person attempting, in their ignorance, to divide by zero: No indication than dividing by zero is valid or that NAP is invalid.

In what way did he find these two propositions to be inconsistent? The way I see it, to aggress against someone is fundamentally diffirent than to defend one's self (property being an extension of self, through self-ownership). In the absence of the qualifier "except in the extremity of self-defense," NAP would completely negate self-ownership. If he could find no moral discrepancy between punching someone who was attempting to rob you and punching a stranger on the sidewalk for no apparent reason, then you have hit philosphical bedrock. Failing that he comes to his senses and realizes that he asserts self-ownership on a daily basis, and that such a premise is foundational to his everyday existence, I don't think you have much hope of bringing that argument to any kind of furtive conclusion.

The problem is all of those cases are brought about by government. Institutional racism was a product of legal restrictions on certain ethnicities. Socially normative racial prejudice can't be displaced by government, at least not a democratic one, because the implication is that the majority of persons want that descrimination. To the extent that the government does step in to hamper such activity is the extent that popular opinion is already against such practices. The second and third example are even more cut and dry versions of this. The Federal government steps in to check state government. The Judicial branch steps in to prosecute a member of the executive. These are all examples of government solving some of the problems directly associated with itself, not protecting from some outside evil. Right, I do agree with the premise that government can protect people from other governments or other parts of the same government, but that doesn't seem like a strong appeal to the idea of government protecting against evil. It's more apt, I think, to say that government, on occasion, limits the output of its own evil.

If you accept that UPB can resolve whether or not an action can be virtuous, then you have an objective means of determining wheter or not some (most?) actions are virtuous. When it comes to love, I think that the situation isn't so cut and dry since we can be coerced or simply mistaken in our interpretation of something as virtuous. I would say love indicates someone may be acting virtuously, or may have done something virtuous at some point, but it is no promise of someone who is always or even mostly acting virtuously. A woman who is highly effective at work and a great mother to her children would probably be widely loved as a result of her virtue there, but she might also strangle hobos on weekends, unbeknownst to anyone around her, and that would not be virtuous. Many politicans are widely loved and fawned over for their "generous," approprations of national tax money to their local districts, but that does not make their theft a virtue. It just means their fans are unwilling or unable to see the lack of virtue in their procurement of the funding. So again, I would say that one has to examine every action in order to determine virtue at that point in time. What it is to always be objectively virtuous? I suppose that would entail acting in a way that was consistent with virtue in every action you undertook. How you could do that in present society is beyond me. Most of the time your decision to act in a perfectly virtuous way is going to be thwarted by the state, some social dogma, or the threat of one/both.

In what way does government protect against evil?

I would say that a good as negation of evil doesn't make for a clear definition. I don't love strangers with whom I have no contact. Nor do I describe them as "good," unless I am aware of some action they have undertaken. I have to have some kind of neutral nondescript state to apply to something before it is apparent that they have or have not done anything to indicate their good or evil. If my car is sitting in the parking lot and I haven't turned it on in years, I have no idea whether or not it runs. Under those circumstances, I wouldn't be able to say it was a good car or a lemon to someone who wanted to buy it. We would first need to see if the action of turning the key in the ignition produced the desired outcome of the engine turning over. I was merely charactarizing the definition you were putting forward there. I, of course, have no idea what you actually believe. I think the trouble you're having is that you are comparing diffirent parts of speech with a device that is indended for verbs. If you are generally kind to people, you are obviously not doing evil, and that is a virtue. Prudence is just showing that you were careful in thinking through whatever it is you did. That could be someting good or something evil. Generosity is a little subjective for my taste, but against you'd have to fit it into a thought containing some verb to see. I would say in general virtue is an action that is not evil by UPB; however, it does not apply to naked descriptors with no context. Red is not good or evil. Neither is prudence. They're just ways of decribing actions or actors. So before you get too hung up on the literal meaning of things, take a moment to examine why you think that inert words and objects need to have inherent good or evil in the first place. I think you'll find that condition is unnecessary.

While it does pain me to come to that realization, I think you're absolutely right. This is both liberating and depressing.

I'm not sure about #5. Politics, or rather the results of politics, eat up a horrifying amount of your time, energy, and resources no matter who you are.

I'm not so sure. Even if you cannot define every possible combination of things that qualify as virtue, you can postulate that love is a response to virtue. Otherwise you would be presenting the case that love can be a response to evil or love can come about as a response to nothing. First example: I love my captor. (See: Stockholm Syndrome) In the cases where this does happen, it is because I have become convinced that there is some virtue in my captor overriding the fact that they have detained me. I percieve that they could hurt me more if they wanted, but they do not and so (under extreme duress) I mis-interpret this as virtue and respond with a facsimile of love. Second example: I love lamp. (See: Castaway or Anchorman - a film of moderate comedic value) In this case, I am quite likely imbuing the inanimate object with some kind of virtue due to extreme fatigue or lack of social contact and a desire to find an outlet for my emotion. If not, I am simply misuing the word "love," for the purpose of humor. So if we are comfortable saying that "love," is a response (full stop). Then it is a response to a virtue (no connotation) or characteristic of something, and the debate centers on whether or not we can response with love to something entirely negative. I would argue, as above, that this is never the case and that there is always a positive virtue (or the perception of it) being rewarded with love (even if the person is mistaken). I don't accurately recall how Stef specifically qualified the corrollary between UPB and virtue, broadly speaking, but I tend to view it as a general litmus test. If you view it as incomplete, I would want to know under what circumstances you think the test fails or yeilds a false positive. My understanding of the man-in-a-coma scenrio is that he is neither evil nor good. He is not actively displaying anything one way or the other. In that sense it requires action to be good or evil. I belive this is the definition you are working with. From the point of view of a moral relativist, and that appears to be what you're loosely defining, everything is subjective. There are no good or bad actions, but simply subjective actions and outcomes that arise from them. This is actually anathema to the premise of virtue itself, as it quite clearly nullifies any meaning of the word except as a substitute for quality or charactaristic. Furthermore, if virtue is aesthetic and goodness subjective then there is equally no possibility that evil can be objectively defined as evil is the opposite of virtue and a spectrum with only one meaningful end has no measure of real value. In practice, most people are not always or even usually virtuous in a non-relativistic sense. That isn't to say everyone pursues the inverse of virtue, but many are relativists who reject the notion of virtue or they adopt the supposedly absolute virtue of their culture/religion which can be easily spotted as containing evil if you apply the UBP litmus or even take passing interest in the Non-aggression Principle. Example: When is rape virtuous? According to UPB, rape can never be virtuous. It is defined as something which is no consented to and thus, always detrimental to one party. If, on the other hand, you are a relativist, then you can only say that you do not like rape. You cannot say the rapist is evil or even that s/he is displaying evil qualities. They are simply acting in a manner that is subjectively displeasing to you. Similarly, if the religious dogmatist is asked about the morality of rape, they would say the rapist is immoral; however, they would have to qualify their statment with "unless god commanded it." Because (and this is how obedience enters in the dictonary list of virtues) abject and unquestioning obedience to authority (in this case god, in other cases: social heirarchy) is of paramount importance. So while they would in most cases condemn rape as being evil, they would not be able to do so in all cases. Based on the above I find the UBP test for virtue to hold the fewest qualifiers in almost every case. I don't pretend to have tested every limit of UPB, but on the whole it defines non-virtuous or evil actions unequivocally where other means cannot. Sufficed to say, if one is willing to stand on NAP, the more classical definitions or tests for virtue do not work.

I think that more accurately describes minarchists, specifically objectivists. The family and the local community are what represents the libertarian philosophy on the tribal front. While that is once removed from the artificial classes and cultural divides generated by so many centuries of politics, it shouldn't be said that it would be no comfort to someone who readily understood the tradeoff. The practical problem is that the chronically disposessed, who have no notion of a family or community outside the superficial political sense of the word, will not respond in the short-term to any such appeal. So while I agree you hit on a problem and I don't see the answer either. I don't think it's quite as polar as you describe.

I agree with this asessment. Arguments for freedom are imperfect tools when the listener has no "free" point of comparison. That said, I don't think it's possible for any non-collectivist ideology to strongly appeal to the "neglected, lost, and abandoned," at large. The appeal of liberalism is exactly its ability to coopt just such a person. They offer a social heirarchy with the most oppressed and neglected seated at the top and copious amounts of stand-in parenting from the state. If there were such a corrolarry in the libertarian movement, it would probably migrate to the neocons or liberals.

I used the qualifier loosely and my meaning was imprecise, true. As for myself, I would say I too am in a statist conundrum with my engineering work being a licensed affair. I don't think this is inconsistent so much as non-descript. I did not actually lay out what my standard for convincing someone was in great detail, but sufficed to say I think the most important thing is accepting NAP on a rational basis. That is to say, ancap in philosophy, even if bound by some state appendage. To the extent that I consider my brother unconvinced, you are correct. He is the lone minarchist among us and I can't even be sure he's a minarchist most of the time. I don't pretend to care equally for individuals with whom I don't share any kind of relationship, but I would say I view the future of all children as worthy of present effort. Since I can't possibly know the future or my direct impact on it, I don't make the latter question's calculus. I recognize there is a correlation between virtue in the present and future, so my goal is to pay that forward while I pursue my own life. Since I have remained employed and in school and not devoted myself entirely to the pursuite of enlightening statists, I would have to say this represents the contrasting value of my present to their future. My life is not a sacrifice, but my compulsion to point people in the direction of voluntaryism does usurp what most people consider their free time. Yes, but we were both speaking in terms of dedication. Whether I am learning to speak Japaneese, compose an opera, plot the course of an asteroid, or tie my shoes I am still going to succeed or fail in the effort based largely on how much dedication is displayed in my preperation and execution of the task at hand. Rhetorical skills, as I understand them, do not present an exception to the rule. That is not to say that by sheer force of will one could make the entire world see reason, but if one is to convince more people of the validity of their arguments, some preperation of the material and practice at communicating would clearly be in order. This of course, is what I called into question entirely in the OP. My experience leads me to believe a lot of statists are simply unwilling to approach reason, let alone follow it to a logical conclusion.

I'm not up to date on what i'm supposed to believe as an FDR member, so you'll have to give me a pass on that. I find pre-historic academics to be incredibly bad at providing solid emprical evidence for their sociological claims. I think I specifically mentioned we should be looking from another, more-recent angle. Not at all. As I said, we could of course, extrapolate from near mamalian ancestory; however, that doesn't make a strong case. If I were to say our modern political paradigm was derrived from chimp behavior patterns, for example, that would simply be a specious claim. I could provide some tenuous analogy to further the argument, but it would be far more productive to find some juxtaposition within the more descriptive resources of history. By that definition of evolution cooperation is clearly something which would have entirely dissapeared from the animal kingdom. Clearly there are some species more predisposed to the practice of cooperation and others who tend toward exploitation. How did you manage to construe this as an argument that exploitation is the nature of all things by nature? Even between species we have cooperative groups that buck the evolutionary trend you describe.

Thanks. That was a very illuminating post.