mck@ratex.UUCP (Daniel Kian Mc Kiernan) (05/01/85)
Lines marked with one '>' are those of David Hudson; those with two are mine. >>Any ethical >>system other than Ethical Nihilism can be formulated in terms of rights. >>You may not agree with Libertarian assertions about rights, but you cannot >>rationally reject both them and Ethical Nihilism. > >An ethical system suitable for a Robinson Crusoe sans Friday would not >have to take rights into consideration. I agree that Robinson Crusoe (sans Friday) does not need to work-out a system entailing rights; however, such a system would not be a complete system. In the discussion in which I made the quote remark, we were concerned with codes of human interaction. > A complete ethical system >would only in part be dealing with rights, and therefore could not >be formulated in terms of rights. If what you mean to say is 'formulated ONLY in terms of rights', I agree. > Furthermore, it is not necessary >for a complete ethical system to formulate rights, although it is >necessary to provide a basis for rights, which are formulated (no, >not arbitrarily as legal "fictions") in political philosophy (dependent >for their existence on the existence of a societal framework that >most of us would call government), and to relate values to rights. Rights are NOT dependent for their existence on the existence of a societal framework; altho it CAN be argued that such a framework is necessary for their OBSERVANCE. >I apologize for not having been prepared to oppose that ridiculous >assertion that all rights derive from self-ownership that crept into >the Libertarian platform at the 1983 convention. (If you want to see >how stupidity creeps into a platform, go see a convention. Watch how >things are rushed and swept aside in confluent attempts to get pet >amendment passed.) Yep. > I oppose both that particular Libertarian >assertion about rights and also ethical nihilism -- rationally. >(An ethically subjective approach to values is consistent with >ethical objectivity and does not imply nihilism.) Last time that there was an argument (on the net) about Subjectivism, it was largely resolved by acceptance (amongst the disputants) of a common terminology. When you refer to 'An ethically subjective approach to values', I initially take that to entail a notion that values have no existence EXCEPT to the valuer. What you may mean to say is that values do not have an existence INDEPENDENT of the valuer. The first interpretation ('except') leaves us with no basis for a non-arbitrary objective ethics (and involves metaphysical impossiblities). The second interpretation has more merit IF you do not push it too far; that is, IF you do not say that NO values have existence independent of the valuer. If you say that no values exist independent of the valuer, then you say that there is no objective code of priorities -- no objective code of ethics. TNX, DKMcK