dr_who@umcp-cs.UUCP (08/07/83)
Human nature includes our needs as living creatures, and the requirements of a mind, says Tom Craver to Alan Wexelblat. I say that needs, in any absolute sense, are a figment of your lack of imagination. The only legitimate statements of needs are relative ones: you need such-and-such to do so-and-so. You need the wrench to fix the wheel; you can't do it without it. No moral conclusions can be built on relative needs, because one can always ask, "why should I seek the end for which the means is 'needed'?" But there are some things you need to live, to be human! will be the reply. So what? Why should I care about living, or being human? I do not ask these as rhetorical questions; i.e., I am not implying that there is no good reason to live. But Objectivism fails to supply it. It is no answer to point out that I *am* a living creature, and that I *am* human. I *am* frequently petty, oversensitive, and unobservant too. That doesn't give me the slightest reason to stay that way. But surely there's a difference between these qualities and my qualities as a human? Not a significant one. By saying that rationality and life are my "qualities as a human," one is merely pointing out that I am a member of a class which shares these traits. But I am a member of a class which shares the traits of pettiness, oversensitivity, and unobservance, too -- we might call this class "jerks". That being petty is one of my essential or fundamental qualities as a jerk, hardly makes me any more enthusiastic about being petty. Someone who asks "why should I care about living?" is not asking "what *am* I?" but rather "what *should* I be?" I wonder what Objectivism could say to a depressed person who asked this question sincerely. Why should we grant anyone the claim to a right to life? This seems particularly hard to justify for Objectivists. Not only does granting him the right to life restrict our pursuit of our selfish goals, it even entitles him to enforce these restrictions. Why aren't we free to do whatever we want to him, as long as it is in our best interests? Suppose you need an organ transplant to live, and the only way you can get it is to kill an innocent stranger. Surely we are not going to be told that it is really in your best interest to die, and let the stranger go. (You happen to be smart enough to get away with killing him). But if Objectivists would allow us to kill here, how about if it was a loved one that needed an organ? How about if it was two strangers, and you care more about two strangers than one? Accepting killing here leads down the slippery slope, right past the last pretensions to morality. Property rights are justified by our "need[ing] material things to survive"? That tells us precious little about *who* gets *what* as property. How about if I just appropriate the whole world? That'll insure my life and mind the best, 'cause people will have to pay me to use any resource whatsoever. And naturally, everyone gets to give it to his children, even if a parent gambles away his property and leaves his own child nothing, it's OK for other folks' children to let him suffer, I suppose. The concept of property as "stored up life" may seem to tell who earns what property -- until one wonders *where* it's stored. As Robert Nozick (an eloquent *advocate* of property rights) says, "building a fence around a territory would presumably make one the owner of only the fence (and the ground immediately beneath it)." But why even the ground immediately beneath? I've been too hard on property rights and rights in general. I used to believe in rights as commonly accepted, and I know the rights position is plausible. It's just that I don't see any justification for the concept of strong negative rights, and I think morality can get along without them. Still smiling about my "fundamental qualities as a jerk," --Paul Torek, U of MD College Park