Concern about UPB and the moral theory of non agression

[labmath2]

I am going to lay out some of the fundamental arguments that i think are confusing or maybe incorrect in UPB.

 

UPB is an attempt to create the scientific method equivalence in philosophy. There appears to be a misconception here since the scientific method is simply a systematic test which still relies on reality. Take Newton's laws of motion, how would you subject them to the scientific method? Well, you would go outside and say if newton is right, then x must be true. With UPB, what would be measured? While this is not very clear, my understanding is that you apply two tests, 1. Is it universalizable, 2. When it is universalized, does it lead to contradictions or is it impossible to be performed by everyone at all times and everywhere. There is another restriction on what we can apply UPB to and that is actions that involve one person interacting with another person (there is no clear reason as to why UPB only applies to humans, the only reason i can deduce from the book is capacity for reason, but there is no proposed way to measure this, so it seems to assume only humans have capacity for reason and i am not sure if it treats everyone equally in this regards or those who have greater capacity for reason have greater rights and those who have lower capacity for reason have lower rights). 

 

Then comes the moral theory from UPB which states the initiation of force is immoral and this extends from self ownership. Self-Ownership is a rather complex concept as it implies the self as property and owner. The first apparent concern is can one be owned by others? If the self is a property, then it can be bargained with like any other property, and if i were to enter into a contract with someone saying i owned them ( assuming hey signed it when they were floating in the ocean after a shipwreck and i happened upon them and the price for saving them was for them to sign over their self-ownership or some other situation coercion which makes it moral), would that be moral? The second category of concern is if i own myself and by extension i own my actions (ownership of actions is still a bit hazy, but i assume it means owning the product of my actions), then children as property necessarily follows. I am not familiar with how this seemingly inherent conclusion is avoided, but i think children are a simply put in the special case category where your actions (all the actions that lead to the child being born) is owned by someone else, the child. This also seems to violate the rule against initiation of force (well at least within my understanding of consent as necessary for interaction with others) since the child can never consent to be born. Again, here it seems another exception is added.

 

Under the category of Initiation of force, the sentiment, at least within my limited understanding of it, seems to be "you will know when you see it." It certainly is the case that any action that impacts another person can be put in the moral category, but only few are of concern. For example, i cannot murder, rape, theft, e,t.c. Outside of these uniquely intuitive categories, there are many more categories in between that is just much more difficult to place. Contract violations for example are considered retroactive theft of property or time of another person. Would misinformation that results in loss of time or property also be considered retroactive theft of property or time? What about cases where the effect on others is benign, e.g speaking around someone, or shining a light in someone's direction. I would assume the sentiment here is that since the effect is benign, it may not necessarily count as initiation of force. However, if we take these instances to their extremes, blasting loud music all day and night or shining a laser at an airplane, do they suddenly become immoral or do they remain in the benign category? 

[Bastii]

Let's just get rid of the 99% of evil that UPB can deal with and then we can think about upgrading it to include "playing loud music".

[tiepolo]

It rather goes over my head, but I gather it has been observed in metaphysics that universal laws break down and seem not to apply at certain levels. Chaos theory relates to this, as do paradoxes. So the idea of the universal cannot really be applied to anything. At a certain point the laws of physics cease to apply.

 

I think perhaps that UPB might break down at a certain level, in a similar fashion. It is good to push it as far as possible. An example would be limited state being, paradoxically, a prerequisite of liberty, in reality, because a free society would not be sustainable in the immediate term without some form of co-ordinated defence. You cannot devise a system assuming that everyone lives up to a minimal standard of virtue, rationality and honesty, moreover, so some standards cannot be applied universally.

 

Self ownership makes sense if you say the mind is the owner and the body and actions the property. 'Ownership' in the latter instance seems to mean responsibility for the consequences. However again this assumes a minimal standard of capacity for reason and responsibility. A great proportion of the human species would fall below this standard, I suspect. Say someone was murdered by a mentally deranged 'care in the comunity' patient, this killing would be more the responsibility of the authorities who closed the mental asylums than of the disturbed individual who physically carried out the attack. it would be more moral to initiate force restraining the dangerous lunatic before he went around attacking members of the public.

 

Personally, though I like UPB based morality up to a point, there comes a point after which utilitarian and consequential morality need to take over. If, for example, the consequences of not having some minimal form of state, and an army, involve being invaded by enemies who would impose a more intrusive form of state, then it would seem perfectly justified to make an exception to the UPB rule and to defer to consequentialism.

 

Children cannot be seen as property by anyone who doesn't want to acknowledge themselves the property of their own parents. If one asserts one's autonomy as anadult individual then it would seem to imply a duty to grant such autonomy to one's children, and to bring them up in such a way as to allow them to cope with it when they come of age. 

[labmath2]

Let's just get rid of the 99% of evil that UPB can deal with and then we can think about upgrading it to include "playing loud music".

 

This creates a short term approach to ethics and we will inevitably get into problems. The American ancestors used the same approach when they got rid of the English monarchs only to establish a government that became the very thing that oppresses Americans today.