I don’t generally engage in discourse with nihilists. Clearly, this is someone who isn’t interested in discourse.
I have finally accepted that there are no rights. There is no non-aggression axiom, it’s all bullshit the randroids are trying to shove down our throats.
I am going to show you that there is not a single proof for natural law, Randian quasi-religious nonsense, or the allmighty NAP.
Natural law theories have been crap all along, it is just something easy to invent, easy to espouse and easy to explain:
God/nature/reason gave us rights, so we can make society better
I still haven’t heard a convincing argument that proves the axiom of self-ownership, or the axiom of anything. We must get rid of these proto-religious concepts we call rights.
I challenge everyone to try to prove me wrong, try to prove the existence of rights, try to prove the axiom of the non-aggression axiom or the axiom of self-ownership.
Did I miss the part where he “showed me that there is not a single proof for natural law”? Because it seems to me that he didn’t demonstrate any such thing. That said, I have no intention of “proving” any of these concepts; I’m neither a moral philosopher or a pedantic academic.
Look, if you want to have a discussion with people, you have to do more than assert the correctness of your position. Last I checked, “proof by volume” or “proof by repetition” is not a valid argument. I might recommend starting with these so-called unconvincing arguments has, and then describing the process by which one determines them to be “crap.”
Perhaps, assuming that rights are “given” is the first mistake. Reason doesn’t “give” rights to anyone. Also, only utilitarians honestly believe the consequentialist crap about how we have rights in order to “make society better,” and once we’ve gone down that road, we’ve clearly equivocated, because a utilitarian right is really more of a mob-rule privilege, it’s certainly not the same sort of “right” that is currently in question.
A “right” is merely the measure by which we determine the appropriateness (or inappropriateness) of human action. If nothing is appropriate, or inappropriate for that matter, why bother tilting against the ideas? This is sort of a variant of the estoppel principle.
If there is no such thing as a right, then you’re wasting wind by denying the existence thereof; if you believe yourself to be wronged or injured by my attempt to exercise what I understand to be “rights,” then you are at least tacitly claiming some sort of right, or privilege, of your own, which nicely invalidates the categorical “there is no such thing as a right”.
“I challenge everyone to try to prove me wrong, try to prove the existence of rights, try to prove the axiom of the non-aggression axiom or the axiom of self-ownership.”
My understanding of the term “axiom” is that it is a self-evident truth that neither requires proof nor can, indeed, technically be proven.
Ah – the American Heritage Dictionary backs me up:
“1. A self-evident or universally recognized truth….
3. A self-evident principle or one that is accepted as true without proof as the basis for argument; a postulate.”
So, on the off chance that you visit No Third Solution again and David didn’t make this point clear enough to you in his post: you’re an idiot. That’s pretty self-evident.
This whole arguement hurts my brain by trying to figure out why he would possibly say there are no rights.
We all know societal rules attempt or due limit or take away some rights. But how can they do that? Well, if you do not believe rights exist naturally, then the only way for society to take away or limit rights is to give rights first. So you would have to believe the arguement that rights were given so society can limit or take away them.
This idea is simply absurd. It is quite obvious rights just exist and societal laws are created to control these “god given rights” or however you believe they are yours. Personally, I think me being me gives me rights…to be me.
If rights do not naturally exist, then you would have to believe the arguement that rights were created so they could be taken away.
People di
It seems John beat me to the point I was going to make. You don’t prove axioms. They are assumed to be true, typically because they are thought to be self evident. Either way, they are the bedrock from which you derive logical conclusions. If your reader wishes to reject these axioms, that’s fine, but I ask that he put forth his own axioms that he thinks are so self evident. Unfortunately, it would seem his primary axiom is “nothing is true”, which is a poor axiom to lay a logical groundwork.
If nothing it true, then A is A is a false statement, meaning that A is not A is true. Except nothing is true, so A is neither A or not A. Well, then, what the fuck is it?
The people who attack natural rights as mystical hocus pocus are attacking a strawman, as I made clear in one of my posts:
http://corktageous.blogspot.com/2008/08/natural-rights-explained.html
The non-aggression ‘axiom’ is not an axiom, it’s a principle derived from various logical arguments concluding why the initiation of violence causes unintended consequences. If it is an ‘axiom’, then Rothbard does not have to write a whole book on arguements defending the non-aggression principle. Therefore, I prefer using ‘non-aggression principle’ instead of ‘non-aggression axiom’.
I also somewhat find the word “natural” in the term “natural rights” as vague. No formal definition of ‘natural’ exists. I prefer the terms such as ‘universal rights’ or ‘inalienable rights’. But I prefer the term ‘liberty’ instead of ‘rights’, since rights imply the obligations of others, while liberty means the freedom for the subject to make decisions and the freedom from interference.
That’s kind of funny to me. My blog post for tomorrow (Oct. 29) is “Why is it wrong to harm the innocent?” which I think touches on this idea. I wrote it a week or so ago. I doubt I would convince the nihilist, though.