Difference between revisions of "Huben on Nozick"

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[[Category:Mike Huben]]
 
[[Category:Mike Huben]]
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[[Category:Robert Nozick]]
 
{{DES | des = [[Robert Nozick]]'s "[[Anarchy, State and Utopia]]" can be quickly summarized as a game of hide-the-fallacy.  After almost 40 years, it is still easy to identify new fallacies or describe the fallacies more obviously.}}
 
{{DES | des = [[Robert Nozick]]'s "[[Anarchy, State and Utopia]]" can be quickly summarized as a game of hide-the-fallacy.  After almost 40 years, it is still easy to identify new fallacies or describe the fallacies more obviously.}}
 
{{Under Construction}}
 
{{Under Construction}}
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Thanks for giving me a reason not to take Nozick seriously!
 
Thanks for giving me a reason not to take Nozick seriously!
 
http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2012/05/libertarian-arguments-from-slavery-caplan-as-exemplar/#comments
 
http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2012/05/libertarian-arguments-from-slavery-caplan-as-exemplar/#comments
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    How many natural rights can dance on a pinhead?
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> What are these "natural rights" that continually get spoken about as
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> if they are agreed on by all and sundry?
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        "Nonsense on stilts."
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                  Taner Edis
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Individualist philosophers seem blind to the basic importance of evolution
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to philosophy: that individuals are products of evolution.  This makes their
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philosophy as quaint and incorrect as geocentric cosmology.  It is only by
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insisting that individuals are the center of the universe that they can
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arrive at heavenly spheres such as "natural rights".
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The concept of inalienable rights was criticized by Jeremy Bentham and Edmund Burke as groundless. Bentham and Burke, writing in the eighteenth century, claimed that rights arise from the actions of government, or evolve from tradition, and that neither of these can provide anything inalienable. (See Bentham's "Critique of the Doctrine of Inalienable, Natural Rights", and Burke's "Reflections on the Revolution in France"). Keeping with shift in thinking in the 19th century, Bentham famously dismissed the idea of natural rights as "nonsense on stilts".
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Natural rights libertarianism is interesting the way cartoon physics is
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interesting: it makes us laugh by defying real-world knowledge of gravity and
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other everyday considerations.
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It always surprises me to see people who believe natural rights. But then it always surprises me to see people who believe in gods and other such superstitions.
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Like gods, and other such superstitions, lots of people can believe in them, but there's no way to agree on any fact about them. You may believe that there is a natural right to own land outright, while Georgists believe there is a natural right for society to collect a rent for that land.
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My personal explanation for natural rights is that they are simply rhetorical claims, created in response to other rhetorical claims such as "rights of kings".
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Real, enforced rights are coercive: they are political rights. Unless you are willing to coerce, mere claimed rights such as self-ownership will be laughed at by your slavemaster.
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You worry about real rights being unjust. Rights are amoral social tools just as weapons are. The idea of liberalism was to use rights in ways that pleased more than just the king.
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Natural rights were invented as a response to rights of kings.  Both are fictions and both were attributed to god.
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There is yet another obvious positivist alternative to claiming each man has the right to own his own person.
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Rights that exist are human legal creations: moral "rights" (including natural rights) are merely wishes like invisible pink unicorns.
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Since rights are what we actually create, we can look at various societies and see that humans never own their persons.  Somebody may say that a rebel rejecting all claims of others owns himself, but no, that is merely possession which can be easily changed.
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One of the major aspects of liberalism is to create the legal illusion of self ownership to whatever extent is practical, because it is what most of us want and because it has many beneficial externalities.  Libertarians, born on this liberal third base, assume they hit a triple with their philosophy.
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Practical limitations to legal self-ownership exist everywhere and in every society with law.  Those who can't support themselves (children, elderly, ill, etc.) everywhere have less legal self-ownership.  Duties to society (taxes, military service, obediance to laws) exist everywhere.
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http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2011/08/rothbards-argument-for-natural-rights.html#comment-form
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The concept of self-ownership fails with slavery.  Slavery (a common real-world practice) is obviously a contradiction to self-ownership.  But self-ownership implies that you CAN sell yourself into slavery because you own yourself.  You can try to salvage the idea by saying that self-ownership is irrevocable, but the real world contradicts that.  You can try to salvage the idea by saying that you can still control your own body and thoughts, but that undermines the whole liberty idea of self-ownership: you are saying slaves still own themselves in some way and so are free.  Prohibiting slavery redistributes freedoms: freedom to own slaves is taken away from everybody, and everybody is free from slavery.
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"This right inheres in the individual..." LP platform.
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Rights do not inhere in individuals: they are social constructs.  This is
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natural rights bullcrap.
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natural rights
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                The standard language of natural rights is largely idiomatic.
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                What is said is not literally true. But one is supposed to
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                understand the intent. For example: I have a right to liberty.
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                        These statements are moral claims, no more.
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Latest revision as of 14:00, 16 October 2016

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