alexqr1 Posted January 20, 2014 Share Posted January 20, 2014 I am not making a normative claim, how it should be. It is irrelevant if the act of coercion is valid or invalid. I am only noticing that not everyone owns himself.Question: Is the self-ownership a normative statement or descriptive statement? If it is a descriptive statement, then yes, slaves are a counter-example. If not, if it is a normative statement, then you cannot use the self-ownership principle as a descriptive statement. Its not that hard. This is the is-ought problem.Self-ownership is descriptive. It is factual for the reasons I already proposed. Individuals originally own themselves, it is part of their nature and that is descriptive, it can not be any other way.Partial transfer of the ownership of the self can be achieved either voluntarily or by coercion, this is where morality and ethics come in.I am not making a normative claim, how it should be. It is irrelevant if the act of coercion is valid or invalid. I am only noticing that not everyone owns himself.Question: Is the self-ownership a normative statement or descriptive statement? If it is a descriptive statement, then yes, slaves are a counter-example. If not, if it is a normative statement, then you cannot use the self-ownership principle as a descriptive statement. Its not that hard. This is the is-ought problem.Self-ownership is descriptive. It is factual for the reasons I already proposed. Individuals originally own themselves, it is part of their nature and that is descriptive, it can not be any other way.Partial transfer of the ownership of the self can be achieved either voluntarily or by coercion, this is where morality and ethics come in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Waster Posted January 20, 2014 Share Posted January 20, 2014 Self-ownership is descriptive. It is factual for the reasons I already proposed. Individuals originally own themselves, it is part of their nature and that is descriptive, it can not be any other way.Partial transfer of the ownership of the self can be achieved either voluntarily or by coercion, this is where morality and ethics come in.But a lot of libertarian use the self-ownership principle as the basis for their morality: property rights and the NAP. However if you say that it is descriptive, then there is no basis for libertarian morality anymore. How do you solve that problem? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alexqr1 Posted January 20, 2014 Share Posted January 20, 2014 Sorry I do apologize, I meant that self-ownership is NOT descriptive, it is a fact for the reasons I already proposed. It is not subjective but an objective fact provable by a priori logic. The fact of self-ownership is neither normative nor descriptive ethics, there is no ethics involved in it. The ethical implications that we can derive from such a fact are however deontological, thus normative. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PatrickC Posted January 20, 2014 Share Posted January 20, 2014 This is a weak point of UPB. It tries to wriggle around the is-ought problem, but you cant! You do realise that you are using an is/ought when you make this claim? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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