alexqr1 Posted December 26, 2013 Posted December 26, 2013 This is the transcript of a video I am thinking about uploading to Youtube but I need feedback and help. For those who want to read this and criticize either its content, meaning, language or semantics, all criticisms are welcome. Thanks I will start assuming that you understand the fact that you own yourself. If you don’t there are plenty of resources on the internet, also if you don’t then it really makes no difference what I say to you or don’t because what you do with it is not your choice. So first we have to realize that for a theory to be valid it needs to be universal. Morality deals with interactions amongst individuals. One’s actions can only be immoral if they directly impact someone else. So for a theory of morality to be universal, it would have to be applied the same to all individuals but it would also have to be applied the same to all interactions. A true theory of morality cannot pick can chose which interactions it applies to and which it does not the same way it cannot pick and choose to which individuals it applies to and to which others it does not. In order for morality to be universal, it can only judge actions that DIRECTLY affect someone else. There is no morality to be discussed in indirect consequences of an action upon someone else. For example there is no morality to be discussed in a situation where I decide to go through a yellow light and enable the situation where the driver behind me could go through the red light and kill somebody. Obviously, had I stopped at the yellow light, the car behind me would had had to stop and the accident would had not occurred, but I can’t be morally held accountable because I was only indirectly responsible for the death. If judging indirect results were to be universalized, then all of our actions (and non-actions for that matter) would be potentially immoral, and the only way to ensure not committing an immoral act would be not to act at all, which is impossible, since all humans act. Forcing someone to engage in a positive action would immediately constitute a violation of self-ownership, in effect negating the very concept of self-ownership which we already hold as true. If it is morally right for me to force you to feed me, do you really own yourself? From that we know that positive rights are not universally moral because they would negate fact of self-ownership. On the other hand negative rights, which require negative action, can be universalized to all individuals, without contradiction unlike positive rights. Furthermore, a violation of a negative right negates the fact of self-ownership. From that we know that negative rights are not only universal, but a violation of them is an immoral act. I have the right not to be killed, not as a result of my own subjective desires, but because implying that I do not have that right, also implies that I do not own myself. So, if someone uses violence against me, then that is a negation of self-ownership and thus necessarily an immoral act right? Well, not necessarily. If we answered yes, we would very easily encounter how this situation could degenerate into a logical impasse or contradiction. For example, if it is immoral for me to use violence to defend my negative rights from someone who is directly attacking or threatening them, can I really own myself without acting immorally? The only possible way to resolve this impasse is to realize that violence is a morally-neutral. It is neither good, nor bad. But then if it is not immoral to use violence against others, do those others really own themselves? Neither violence nor non-violence can be universalized as moral or immoral without creating contradictions. Here is where the non-aggression principle comes in. The immorality is not in the use of violence, but rather in the initiation of violence, which is the actual use of violence, the threat of violence or any deceitful means to obtain a goal that affect someone else directly like lying or coercing in any way ) We could call this immoral violence. Now this principle can easily be universalized. There are no contradictions with immoral violence. Violence does not necessarily negate self-ownership, but immoral violence does. Violence may very well actually uphold the principle of self-ownership, as would be the case in self-defense. In this way, one can voluntarily waive his or her own negative rights by initiating violence against others. So if I point a gun at someone’s head, I have effectively waived my right to be left alone, because someone can aggress against me without acting immorally. In fact, that action would be morally justified because it would intend to defend a negative right that I have myself have broken, effectively waiving my right not to be aggressed against. So we all have negative rights that we can voluntarily waive by aggressing against someone else’s negative rights. That sounds good so far, but if we truly own ourselves, then surely there must be a way to voluntarily waive our negative rights without acting immorally, if not, then that would also be a contradiction. It would be impossible to universalize self-ownership and morality if we can’t waive our own rights voluntarily and morally. But we cannot for example murder someone and then just claim that that someone had waived his or her right to not be killed. If that were the case, then negative rights would become irrelevant and thus the whole concept of self-ownership non-universal. For that reason, all negative rights that are voluntarily waived must be part of an agreement between individuals. This is a universal concept; all individuals can waive any of their rights voluntarily by entering into agreement with someone else. Here’s an example, no-one has the right to be taught how to play guitar by me, that would be a positive right that would require a positive action on my part which would negate my self-ownership. Unless, I have waived that right in someone’s benefit potentially for something in return, potentially a sum of money that that other person has waived the right not to have it taken from him. So now we have a mutual agreement, I will teach you how to play guitar for say $500. If I teach you how to play guitar and you don’t pay me $500, then I can morally take those $500 from you because you waived the right to retain them from me. And that works both ways, If you pay me $500 and I don’t teach you how to play guitar, you may have a tough time forcing me to teach you, but you can morally take back those $500 from me because I obtained them immorally and thus I have relinquished my right not to have those $500 taken away from me by you. So as a result of self-ownership we have the following: 1) Everyone has negative rights, and those are universal 2) Positive rights are not universal 3) One can only waive his or her own negative rights in a voluntary way 4) The two ways to voluntarily waive our negative rights are by initiating violence against someone else, or by agreeing to waive them in someone else’s favor. 5) By contrast, one can only acquire positive rights over someone else if that someone has voluntarily relinquished those negative rights by any of the ways described in #4 6) Any act of immoral violence is the initiation of violence by A against the negative rights of B that have not been voluntarily waived by B in A’s favor As a result, no action by itself can either be moral or immoral without a context. Punching someone in the face can be immoral or not. Killing someone can be immoral or not, but not because there is relativity of morality but because other parameters are needed in order to judge an action immoral. These principles are all universal, and we can judge the morality of any human interaction in any geographical area in any point in time using those parameters.
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