For Those Who Support Anarchy As A Form Of Government

[Winchester]

why is it whenever I truly try to understand you point of view on this you blow me off?

 

maybe I missed it, but I don't remember seeing you say all government taxation was an intrinsic evil.  so you never answered the question. 

From my perspective, your opinion on that is an error. Sorry. I've answered that question and I see answering again as spinning my wheels.

[Winchester]

Anarcho-capitalists cannot answer basic foundational questions about their propositions.  Basic questions about evidence that natural law/rights exist, what property is, how property claims are justified et cetera.  It's all fluff.  Also, I'm drunk.  

They cannot answer it according to your beliefs. They cannot satisfy your positivism. That doesn't mean they can't answer it; it just means you think their answers are BS.

[4588686]

They cannot answer it according to your beliefs. They cannot satisfy your positivism. That doesn't mean they can't answer it; it just means you think their answers are BS.

 

 

I'm not a positivist.  The pragmatists and the Kuhnians have always been in radical opposition to the positivists.  

[Aloysius]

the accusation of positivism clearly referenced your demand for "proof" of what a natural right is... even if you're not a positivist, your argument that there are no "natural rights" because one cannot "prove" them is solidly within a positivistic paradigm accepting many positivistic premises.

 

one cannot prove that it is immoral to murder.  one can argue it, and one can be absolutely right in arguing it, but one cannot prove it.  one also cannot prove that slavery is immoral, or a whole slew of other things, but that doesn't mean one is wrong to say they're immoral.  you have to actually engage with the argument over whether something is a right or not a right, moral or immoral, or else you're just being a philosophical anarchist that refuses to actually engage by throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

[4588686]

the accusation of positivism clearly referenced your demand for "proof" of what a natural right is... even if you're not a positivist, your argument that there are no "natural rights" because one cannot "prove" them is solidly within a positivistic paradigm accepting many positivistic premises.

 

 

um, asking for evidence of a claim is not anything close to an exclusively 'positivist' claim.  

[4588686]

But sloppy classification/argumentation is a major part of the anarcho-capitalist framework.  

[4588686]

I have a pragmatists acceptance of inherentish rights.  But the anarcho-capitalists don't claim that their right claims are socially useful tools.  They are making a realist claim about actually, topologically universal 'rights'.  

[4588686]

They're a lot closer to positivists than I am.  

[Winchester]

I'm not a positivist.  The pragmatists and the Kuhnians have always been in radical opposition to the positivists.  

Ists are always claiming opposition to other ists. And they're all full of it.

[Aloysius]

many people that disavow positivism hold positivistic premises,  but you're certainly relativistic on it, I'll grant you that--his use of the term positivistic was clearly not in the same classificatory sense that you're interpreting it as, he was asserting that logical argumentation counts for 'evidence' in juxtaposition to a kind of scientific positivism.

 

is your so-called pragmatist assertion of rights universal, are those rights inalienable or only allowable under certain circumstances?  if you assert that it is universally against people's rights to enslave them, then you're saying it's a natural right not to be enslaved.  whether that's ontological or inherent to human nature is irrelevant--it's a universal assertion based on the idea that it'd be immoral to enslave someone.

[Aloysius]

But sloppy classification/argumentation is a major part of the anarcho-capitalist framework.  

well as I've been spending the better part of this thread defending the concept of governmental safety nets as legitimate on the basis of natural law and natural rights (of course using our intra-Catholic common frames of reference though), I'm certainly not an anarcho-capitalist but I think any political philosophy that doesn't assert some basic standard defining "natural rights" is extremely dangerous.  how does your 'pragmatism' hedge against some kind of efficient utilitarian tyranny if someone wanted to impose it?  

[Aloysius]

and btw, I should note that I side-stepped the question of whether it's a realist claim or a "socially useful tool" because that question doesn't really matter.  it matters if you want to have an academic meta discussion that analyzes the way people are interacting in a way that's completely irrelevant and detached from the real world, but in the real context of actual engaging human interaction, things are only actually socially useful tools if you're asserting them as philosophically grounded.  abolitionists didn't say to slave owners "I am going to assert this socially useful tool against you in an attempt to change things"--they said "you are violating people's natural rights!" and they were RIGHT about that for a whole bunch of philosophical and logical reasons... politics should be grounded on actual philosophical arguments about the way things ought to be organized for human beings... anything else is sort of a meta-analysis best left outside the real debate as a reflection on it.  OF COURSE the rights you assert are based on your culturally biased philosophy and logical premises, but to shrug and say "oh well, guess I shouldn't make any such sweeping assertions about the way things ought to be because of that" is totally absurd.

 

most kinds of relativism turn into themselves forms of condescension towards other cultures, an attempt to subvert ethnocentrism that backfires and while purporting to respect other people actually implicitly treats them without common humanity.  two human beings from different cultures or philosophical backgrounds who have two different ideas should approach each other and debate as if one of them can be right and the other can be wrong... sure in a detached meta dissection you can acknowledge that your own position is culturally biased and of course always allow in humility that your position might be wrong, but when it comes down to it you have to stand and say something like "Hey, female circumcision is wrong, it is against womens' natural rights... I know you disagree, guy from Somolia, but I respect you as a human enough to tell you that you're absolutely wrong about that."  Sure it's your cultural bias that led you to that, but it still should be asserted under the concept of rights.[this paragraph may seem an irrelevant aside, but seeing as a kind of relativism between cultures is the basic "evidence" asserted that there is no such thing as real natural rights to be logically argued for, I felt it was relevant]

 

this is why I treat some total relativism in discussions of philosophy the way I treat anarchism in discussions of government--it's something that brings up an interesting fundamental question about how we justify ourselves, our positions, and our actions, but ultimately it's not tenable to actually hold to it philosophically.