Living Low and Crime High

For thanksgiving this year, I spent the entire first half of the holiday (along with my entire family and many other members of my church) delivering hot turkey meals to homeless people in downtown Philadelphia (wherever we could find them...in subways, under overpasses, begging on the sidewalk, train tunnels, etc). Most of these people have lived pretty long lives, and are just on hard times, and could greatly appreciate a warm meal (especially on the cold semi-rainy day that thanksgiving turned out to be). They may have lead lives of crime, or drugs, or any other number of things. They are in many cases no way innocent. But they were in need. However, they are in no way as needy as the innocent children in wherever UNICEF needs to send those hydration salts. They are not among the most needy individuals on the planet. But as a combined effort, our parishioners informed us, we fed over 1000 homeless.
Am I right in thinking that one of the consequences of Unger’s arguments, is that what my church and my family did was morally atrocious? We could have better spent the money for all that food. Merely granting a night of warm bellies for some overaged degenerate bums is not even close to what we could have accomplished through UNICEF saving hundreds of innocent lives. (Maybe I’m falsely attributing a strict utilitarian view to Unger, but the way it seemed in class today with arguments over donating money to cancer patients instead of Unicef, it seemed the Ungerian argument was of that sort of bend...even so, I still have an objection to the stealing thing I’m going to address in the next paragraph).
If Unger is right, and it is good for us to steal from others to help those in greater need, we should have TAKEN meals from those bums that had them (they would not be too terribly hurt by it, for they’ve lived fairly long lives as it is, one meal won’t make or break them, and they are not doing anything to morally pull their weight in the world anyway) and we should have used any money we could get from those meals to serve the innocent young dying of starvation. How far does this stealing thing go? If there is no serious damage done to taking small sums from mass amounts of homeless people (as opposed to one large sum from a single rich person)...according to Unger, It’s morally good to do that too. It’s okay to take the poor lady’s last three pennies...she can go without a meal for another week. We’ve got hydration salts to buy for kids across the world!
In Unger’s conclusion to chapter three, he says “When needed to lessen the serious suffering of innocent enough people, it’s morally GOOD to engage in what’s typically objectionable conduct, like lying, promise-breaking, cheating, stealing, and so on.” Why not add to the list stomping on the homeless. Or stealing from lesser charities where the money wouldn’t do as much severe good, (like say, the special Olympics). How about killing (in a pleasant painless way) your elderly cancer-ridden neighbor and selling all her things on the black market, where it can make substantially more money that can be put toward UNICEF than if you sold it back to the store...you would be putting her out of her misery anyway. PLUS you stop two serious cases of suffering with one stone. She will no longer have a long and painful death. Her death was needed to save as many innocent children as possible. Your intuitions that it is bad to kill your elderly neighbor are misguided. The liberationist view clearly shows that it is just as good to kill her as it is to steal the yacht or the money from the rich guy. Killing in this sense is always morally good behavior, because it lessens serious suffering of the innocent(on two counts!).
Maybe killing is too harmful for Unger to let it be passed by his need for relief of suffering. But is it really THAT harmful in the case of the cancer ridden elderly? I'm still concerned about my new found moral goodness in stealing from the poor. They couldn't suffer too badly, or even nearly as much as the kids who are dying of easily curable diseases. Perhaps even the small amount of suffering these people would undergo would be more than Unger meant would be allowable. However, if we are morally required to give until it HURTS, I see no reason why poor should not be required to do so as well. And since it doesn't cause them severe suffering (it doesn't HURT in a significant sense), they should shovel over the dough.
I'm pretty sure Unger isn't unable to come back from any of this. In fact, i'm more sure he'll have plenty to say in reply. But I had to write about SOMETHING and this (probably unfair attack) is the only thing I could impassion myself to write about.

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To Jen and Michelle

Before I begin I'd like to dedicate this post to Jen Ming who is always reminding me to post and to Michelle "Doubting Thomas" Heayn who flat out believed that I would forget to post this week. Hopefully this will be a good one.

My goal here is to try and figure out what exactly about unversalizability does not make it a sufficient condition for a moral rule or set of moral rules to be valid. As I understand the lay of the land morality deals with oughts and I suppose I want to say that ought implies can. See during class and before I've been of the mind that ought does not necessarily imply can but now I'm not so sure. It seems that if morality says that you ought to do something that the something should be within one's power to do and also it should be something that everyone is able to do(or would be able to do). But I do not think that it is enought that the rule is applicable to everyone, I do think that it is necessary for it to be universal. I think perhaps the way it might work is that if a rule is moral then it is universal. Its Universalizability is not an antecedent but it might yet be a foundation of morality.

"You shall not kill." If this is infact a moral rule then it is one that is universal because of some other factor. Still this doesn't get away from the fact that this is a necessary quality or property of morality and it doesn't help show me that it isn't the only one. Perhaps some statement about the nature of the good is necessary such that:

1. Humans are creations of God in his own image.
2. God is Good.
3. Therefore that which is created in the image of God is also Good by virtue of being created by the Creator who is Good and being created in his image etc.

It is clear then that the above priniciples apply to all people. There is a clear statement of the Good so then one can infer the following maxim:

4. We should not kill other humans.

It seems that if each of us ought to not kill and it also seems the case that we are all infact able to not kill. But this is a test of universality and I'm still not sure how to separate it out from the nature of morality.

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Rule No. 4

In class yesterday we discussed six rules that define the contractarian bargainers. We discussed some of them in detail. One of them that I think we passed over too quickly was number four – Do they know who they are? It seemed as though the general consensus was that it would be best if they did not know. However, I think that it is plausible that the bargainers knowing their identities would yield good results as well.

If they knew their identities – what jobs they had, how well off they were socio-economically, their relationships, etc – they could be representatives of different walks of life. For the rules to protect everyone’s rights equally I think it would be beneficial to get the input from people from across the spectrum. While being objective and not being influenced by forces outside of objective morality would yield seemingly good rules, I think that the rules agreed upon by those people with different perspectives would also have similar good results. In both cases unanimously agreed upon rules may be impossible, or at least improbable, but in both cases good results can be produced.

I'm sure this isn't a great argument, but I went with it anyway.

One possible objection to contractarianism, is that there cannot be enough practical agreement among rational agents at all to get the kind any kind of general moral principles. There are many issues, given even perfectly rational beings would still viably disagree on. It would be hard if not possible to create any over-arching principles of morality. Things would have to be a case-by case basis. This may not be a problem, It may even be a strength of the theory. But if the point and purpose of Morality is to be action guiding, it would be much more practical for there to be easy and simple rules to follow. Take for instance abortion, it is not irrational to chose to be either pro-life or pro-choice. A perfectly rational being can lie on either side of this decision. One could augment this, perhaps if the bargainers had perfect knowledge. But even then, I’m not convinced that there will necessarily be no room for issues with more than one rational answer. This may not be a problem, the ideal contractarian might say, because such cases would be rare, and on the whole perfectly rational and perfectly knowledgeable beings would agree on most things. However, If you are anything other than an ideal contractarian, I think there is a big problem. Imperfectly rational and imperfectly knowledgeable beings won’t agree on too many things. Not only would there not be a consensus on the general level, but it isn’t even clear that in the individual or local case that imperfect rational beings could agree on what someone should or should not do. The contractarian might reply that “look, we don’t mean people will agree on everything, but generally most rational people WILL agree on some basic things, and that’s good enough.” But what basic things are these on which most people will agree to them? Even common sense morality is rationally objected to by the many and the thoughtful. I think, that, aside from appeal to idealism, there will never be any real solid and generalizable agreement contractarians can conjure from the disjointedness of real humanity.

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What Would Gandhi Do?

I have to say that Dave’s entry was after my own, I too support a value system where pain, suffering and death do not hold as much sway as what is truly valuable. It’s counter-the common view to think that suffering is not sufficient for evil, and I’m almost alone in my Problem of Evil class when I stand up for a different theory of the good AND of the bad. I think, it is a necessary condition of a complete theory of the good, to include a notion of the bad. Unfortunately, however, most of philosophy has been dominated by the hedonistic idea of the bad: pain and suffering. I think, that having room for multiple theories of the good while maintaining a single theory of the bad is shortsighted on philosophy’s part.
I sort of jumped over it in class, because I had a different movie case I was interested in...but I’m really interested in the “what would Gandhi do?” question. Having read a lot of Gandhi, I thought I’d flesh out his view on the case. Gandhi has long been one of my role-model type of people (although, like with my high regard for Aristotle, I don’t want this affinity to entail I eat up all of their views because I think they are golden. Rather, I hold them up to the same skeptical standard I hold all views, and I am oft to disagree in one area or another. However, these are two people who I find myself doing a lot more nodding towards than head shaking.) At any rate, with the Nazi example from class, I think Gandhi would most certainly not kill the three men. It’s interesting to think about how he could handle the situation non-violently. But, I think, his views entail that he would make a stand by his people. Say, you can kill these three, you can kill me, you can kill us all. But you will never knock down what we stand for. It would be better for Gandhi to die without taking a gun in his hands, than to commit a violent act with the idea that it would prevent something more horrible.
Now, Gandhi is careful to skirt around some occasions where it’s permissible for a country to go to war...and he doesn’t want to be a pure pacifist. If the only way to peace is through war itself, then war must happen. But I still don’t think he would condone killing the three, because that would in no way promote his more supreme value of peace. Killing the three might save the village (if the Nazi’s keep their word) but that will not solve the problem that the Nazis are in power, and the symbolism behind the Nazi’s having the freedom fighters killed is a message of turmoil and oppression he could not condone. Gandhi was not a man for “do just enough to get people to leave you alone” kind of guy. He was a fight with peaceful actions until things are RIGHT. Gandhi was a doer of peace. And killing the three does not make peace or unity, it just makes fear and submission to power.
I think Gandhi would agree with me as well on the issue of suffering not being a true evil in life. He himself often used it as a tool to get great goods to come to pass. By showing people how much he voluntarily suffered for a cause, he could move people to compassion and just action. There is no intrinsic evil in suffering, it is undesirable yes. But just because we have hedonistic distaste for something doesn’t mean it is evil. Unless of course you take the hedonist theory of the good, then of course you would have to accept suffering as the true source of evil. But I think there are many plausible theories of the good which deny hedonism, or at least diminish it in it’s importance. Among these theories greater evils can come into play than merely pain and suffering.
The sacrifice of the entire village would be a great good if it was a symbolic gesture against the evil that was causing it. It makes the Nazis all the more evil for all that blood on their hands. Other villages could be inspired by this stand, and not commit acts of evil in fear of the Nazi power themselves. If the mayor had stood up to the proposition from the start, and stood by a value of freedom and peace...I think we would hold him in much higher regard then the actual case. He is very pitiful for having tried to kill the three, and then being un able to, losing the town non the less. Even if he had killed the three and saved the town, the demoralization would leave a town not worth saving. Or at the very least, it would leave his life in that town not worth living. He may have saved their lives, but he never stood up to the evil that threatened them peacefully or no. He merely complied so they would get off his back.

Things worth than death?

Suffering, pain and by extension death have been suggested as things which are bad. Perhaps they might be called things that do not make one's life go well. I would say that these things aren't truly bad and sometimes they can cause a life to go better. Moreover the only things that can really make your life worse are those that would cause one to act against one's principles. There has to be some value to one's principles otherwise one should wonder why would Socrates choose to remain in Athens and be executed. I haven't read Socrates in a while so I might not remember all of this correctly. In any case it suggests that there are principles that Socrates values more than even his own life, such that he does not even view death as a real harm. It would have been a harm to him to have repudiated his principles at behest of the Athenians. This is a substantially different view of the Good than the one that we would commonly think of but it is an important one. The Good(in this view) persists in seeking truth and holding fast to this and other related principles. So one might say that is all well and good for the Academy but consider some Nazi cases. We have the Mayor of a Town who must execute three men otherwise the Nazi Army will kill 1000 people. One might ask the virtuous mayor if he will kill the three men and I think he would as a man of principle say no.
1. Killing the men would be submitting to the Nazi Authority and becoming complicit in their evil.
2. Even if they Nazis kill you and your town thats all they can do to you, they can't hurt you anymore after that (I think Gandhi might have said something along these lines) because all they'll have is your corpse(s).

Take this example, we know that there were certain Jewish prisoners in the camps that worked for the Nazis. I am not sure to what end but those prisoners were probably executed eventually. To what end does serving the Nazis benefit one's life? If anything these people betrayed their people, the Jewish Nation. Better then to resist than to allow them to use you against your own people. That is worse than death, to be complicit in the extermination of one's own people.

No matter how many people the Nazis kill it is the Nazis who are killing them and not the one who refuses ones assent to take part.

So I leave you to consider:how much is integrity worth?

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Down on the farm...

I too wanted to elaborate on something I brought up in class. Egoism and virtue theory work well together in virtue egoism. The egoist acts according to expressing and developing certain virtues. These virtues make his life objectively better in the long run. They may not bring him immediate benefit; in fact they may bring him immediate misfortune or pain. This was said in class to be an instrumental use of virtue, which in the end does not seem as though it is very virtuous. However, I feel that there is a different, more intuitionally positive way that virtues are instrumentally good.

An egoist’s well-being, according to an objective-list theorist, can be high even if their desires are not met and even if their mental states are not the greatest all of the time. Typically when thinking of egoism we think of an agent who strives to fulfill his desires and to create happy and good mental states. While these things are good, they are not the only goods. Having virtues can be a good as well. Often most things the egoist tries to attain will lead to happiness or joy. But virtues may not actually lead to this. Having certain virtues can be good yet cause you pain or distress. One such virtue is that of helping others. I can give up all of my worldly possessions and live a very hard life in order to help others. I can give them all I have, all the money I earn. This will lead me to a painful life, but in the end it will be a good life because I have exercised and attained this virtue. It is instrumentally good in that in having this virtue one’s life is made good.

Virtuous Killing!

To elaborate on what I was saying in class: I want to make the bold claim that the only thing that matters morally is character. The only extent to which there is a constraint to my chopping up chuck to save five is insofar as it would be a person of bad character that would do so. In this case, I do not think a person of good character COULD chop up chuck merely to save five (if that were all there was to the case). But there are other much more ambiguous cases where I feel there is no actual constraint against killing in and of itself.
In class I used the example of pushing Wallace off of a cliff. I am not constrained in any way from doing this so long as I am acting virtuously in doing so. This may initially be a weird claim to make...but it turns out, in most cases I am not allowed to push Wallace off of the cliff, because it would be damaging to my character. (If he was my friend and had called me a bad name, it would be callous of me to shove him off the cliff). If however, in the rare case of Wallace’s being a malevolent attacker, and I act out of rational compassion to protect my friend Amy who is his next target...then I am allowed to push him off the cliff. (If it is the only way to virtuously stop him.) The key point is, I don’t see pushing Wallace off the cliff as wrong in and of itself. It is, on the whole, wrong because normally to do so one would be expressing some sort of vice. But it isn’t truly wrong until vice enters the picture.
Practical decisions of law are a good example of what drives this claim. After all, it is the act of malevolent cold blooded murder that offends the legal system most, and not merely being a causal agent in manslaughter. The presence of pain and suffering is not really what drives our moral intuitions. We are only truly offended by acts of bad character and hatred. The cause of pain alone is not enough to condemn a man as truly evil. Therefore, I claim, killing is not wrong in and of itself. (We often condone it in war, and in many other justifiable scenarios. These scenarios are justifiable, precisely because one can kill virtuously [however contradictory that might prima-facie seem to be].)
So, I think one could virtuously chop up Chuck...maybe not to save five, but if chopping him up saved a great multitude of people. Or, if Chuck was somehow responsible for the deaths his organs are going to prevent. Or, any other case one can imagine, where it would not be callous or slight minded to chop up Chuck...or where there might be a serving virtue that outweighs the vice. Just imagine any exception the deontologist wants to place outside of the constraint against doing harm. This exception is there because it is, in those cases, not a vice to cause harm.

A theory the pope could get on board with...

In class today I made the point that the reading could require people to not use even contraceptives, and I wanted to elaborate on this idea more. I wasn't able to articulate my thoughts very well in class, but maybe I can do a better job here. She discussed in the paper that the issue of abortion should be discussed without a consideration of the moral worth of the fetus at all. She went on to explain cases in which an abortion could be acceptable and those that wouldn't be. Without a consideration of the morality of the fetus or an argument for or against women's rights, she essentially talked about reasons why or why not it is acceptable to refrain from having a child. In cases in which one's admirable life goals would be hindered greatly from having a child, she saw it as within good character to refrain from having a child. Furthermore there were good character cases in which having a child would hinder health of the mother, or the mother's ability to care for her other children. However, it was found to be of bad character and immoral for one to refrain from having a child if they were simply doing so because they didn't feel like having a child. It would be unacceptable if the person didn't want a child so they could sit on the couch and watch TV all day instead (I use watching TV to try to avoid Dave's love of video games). In any case, these are her arguments of when it is morally acceptable to have an abortion or not. However, abortion to her is nothing more than refraining from having a child. She does not put any consideration on the fetus or the act of having an abortion at all. Instead she argues about reasons one may or may not be allowed to not have a child. Thus, her argument entails that in the cases of those that may not have an abortion morally, are morally required to not avoid having a child. Abortion in her argument becomes no more than a form of contraceptive. Without a consideration at all of the fetus, abortion is just another way to avoid a full pregnancy and birth of a child. If one is morally forbidden from abortion, than one would be morally forbidden from all kinds of contraceptives. Kelly pressed my argument when he considered abortion being worse off on the mother and thus different from the other contraceptives in this sense. I can concede this point because those that she feels are morally allowed to have the abortion can use other forms of contraceptives to avoid abortion. It is only those that aren't allowed to abort to begin with that wouldn't be allowed to use contraceptives. Thus, the pressure doesn't really change the entailment. It is a much different and more dangerous contraceptive, but if that changes the weight of it at all, it changes it in a way that less people should be allowed to have abortions because of the danger to oneself. Without a consideration of the fetus at all, I feel that her argument reduces abortion to a more complicated morning after pill. Further, in cases that she does not allow abortion I feel that she can't allow any contraceptives. The only way out of this I can see is allowing condom use to avoid STDs. However, this still does not allow for birth control or the morning after pill in cases that a woman could not morally abort a child.

Egoism eh?

I will admit that I find the idea of egoism attractive. If well being is the concern of the Good then in would make sense that the well being of the self would be the reason for acting. That is acting in concern for one's own well being. Act Egoism though seems as if it would produce only consequentialist normative factors and I cannot accept that. Perhaps it wouldn't. I have to consider the possiblity that there are other goods than well being but Iam not sure what sense to make of them. They might be only instrumentally good with regard to well being. However me feeling is that there are goods out there that are infact intrinsically good other than well being and that well being should not be persued to the exclusion of these goods. Then what is the difference between the "Goodness" pursued here and the one's own well being? Or rather what value does Goodness have if not for the increase (knowingly or unknowingly) of one's own well being? If one where to take well being to be a hedonistic sort then perhaps one could pursue a Good at the expense of one's own well being. This would not be in line with egoism though. But if that which is of supreme importance is eudaimonia, then it would seem that the singular pursuit of Good would be of one's own namely to have a good character. In that sense it has been said that no ill can befall a man of good character. But is this an egoist way? I want to say no actually it isn't exactly. The man of good character will act justly and so when he acts justly his well being increases, in this case I think that the increase of one's well being is a by product of acting justly and rightly. So if this is the case then I do not think egoism can be a foundational theory.

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rules, rules everywhere

Something that struck me as interesting was the question posed to rule egoism about rationality’s compatibility with the rules in rule egoism. There are certain times where the universal rule will dictate that you must do one thing, while rationally you, the agent, would be better off doing something else. In this case, the rules are set as a universal maxim such as “in most cases the agent will benefit the most from action A rather than action B, therefore the agent must perform action A.” But there can be times where this not true. The rules are made in regards to something like percentages it seems. In most cases A is the best action with the best results for the agent, therefore the agent should do A. As Kagan says, maybe this is not actually irrational. Maybe just conforming to the set of best rules is rational in itself; if something works 95 percent of the time, maybe acceptance of that 5 percent is something that you must do. It does not seem likely that one could come up with a system that would work completely 100 percent of the time.

I was curious as to an example of a rule that would normally lead the egoist in the “rational” direction but only sometimes led him in an “irrational” less beneficial direction. Take the case of cleaning. Let’s say there is a rational rule that an agent should keep his or her apartment clean. A guy, R, lives alone, he cleans his apartment. This means that he does not get bugs, or rats. He keeps himself away from many diseases by having a clean apartment. This is beneficial to him. Say then, that he gets a roommate, Q. He needs to have this roommate in order to stay in his apartment, he cannot really afford it if he does not have a roommate. Say Q starts leaving trash and dirty dishes everywhere. R knows that if he starts cleaning up after Q then Q will always take advantage of him, and will never learn to clean for himself. It seems as though R should leave Q’s mess out for him, so he can deal with it until he reaches a breaking point and starts to clean. It seems that rationally R should not have to clean Q’s messes, but the rule says that he must. R must clean in order to stick with the rules, even though, in the long run leaving the messes for Q to get frustrated with will benefit R more. It will benefit R more because it will mean a clean house with less work on his part. But the rule tells him otherwise, the rule sends him down a path of instant, yet fleeting betterment which overall, will do him less benefit.

On PEFP

I wanted to talk about the “new part of the picture” that we’ve been drawing of the periodic table of moral elements: PEFP or the Primary Evaluative Focal Point. It is along this principle (of where one focuses their evaluation) that I get most of my objection to consequentialism. It is also where I find most of my objections to a lot of deontological constraints/options. I’ve found it to be something that is very hard for me to push my intuitions around for the sake of argument. I take a very agent-centered view of morality, and my PEFP is in something like character or intent.
When I was writing my last paper on a basic attempt to deconstruct a constraint against lying, this turned out to be my greatest weak point. I constructed all or most of my examples with the focal point in the agent, and not in his acts or those affected by them (consequences, or etc.). I ended up not giving enough credence to the act-centeredness of the deontological constraint.
The way I see it, there are three primary places one can place evaluative focus: In the consequences after the act,in the act itself, or In character and intention/circumstances leading to an act. It might go without saying that a character buff like myself goes for the latter one. I think this is also the main difference between consequentialism, deontology, and virtue theory. Respectively, the consequentialist is concerned with outcomes and after-the fact value making, the deontologist is more act centered, it matters more THAT you are harming someone than if it ends up being good; then along comes my view which is centered the third way: it matters more WHY one does something.
Initially I want to say that where one places evaluative focus is equally plausible across the board....to the point where it seems kind of arbitrary. I want to approach the PEFP picture like an objective list of goods, or something like that. Each evaluative focal point contributes somehow to one’s overall worth, and it is good to have a well-rounded picture concerning each one. However, upon reflection on any of them I immediately start thinking about things in terms of the third one. I think of consequences in terms of relation to character...everything hatches back to an agent-centered focal point.
I cannot convince myself of any true value in consequences or acts in and of themselves. Maybe that’s a flaw in my cognitive abilities, or something so strongly built into my intuitions that I cannot learn to look past it. But for one reason or another, I’m ultimately stuck with one evaluative focal point. Maybe that’s not a problem, but I know other people certainly feel just as strongly or more so about other focal points, so there must be something of worth they see in them. I just can’t rightly put myself in their shoes.

Act egoism and dispositions

In class when we were attempting to make act egoism out to hold the same ideals of common sense morality, we discussed the important of certain dispositions in close relationships. The idea that was put forth was that in order to have good close relationships with people that give us the best mental states and wellbeing we must put ourselves out there to the point that we'd be willing to sacrifice our lives for it. Further, since there is a relatively low chance of us ever having to actually do that, it is a good chance to take. That is to say that it is worth the risk of having to sacrifice one's life for a friend in order to have that friendship. One thing I was wondering in class and never got to discuss was whether that ended up being a form of rule egoism after all. In this case, the rules that one would be following would be the dispositions themselves. Act egoism in the way I interpreted it involves following the action that is best for someone. In contrast, rule egoism is following the action that adheres to the rules that tend to result in what's best for someone. In following the disposition one has towards his or her close relatives to the point of self-sacrifice, aren't they simply following rule egoism, in which their act follows the rules of the disposition. I started to hit this point when I questioned the ability to change ones feelings on a dime. If one truly follows act egoism to the fullest, I still have a hard time believing that they wouldn't be able to change their dispositions on a dime. Act egoists are supposed to act in their best interest, not based on the rules of what would normally work out best. I feel that the dispositions one has to be willing to sacrifice their life for someone close to them is simply a rule that the rule egoist must follow, but not one that a true act egoist would. Maybe I'm misinterpreting the distinction between act and rule egoism, but that's how I tend to look at the two.

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So I just saw that "coffee" commercial...

And I couldn't think of a good title, so I said that.

When I was reading for class today I got caught by the idea of waiving a right, just like most everyone in our class did. There are two points I want to bring up in the blog post. Of the three “main” inalienable rights “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” I do not think that any of those are really inalienable. A rational agent should be allowed to waive any of these free rights. I do not think it would necessarily be right to do it arbitrarily, but I also do not think that a fully rational agent would do so arbitrarily. Can freedom really be freedom if it prevents you from making a decision when you are of sound mind (the decision to forfeit your right to the freedom)? That does not seem to make sense to me, that feels like a limited freedom. Funnily enough, intuition seems to be playing both sides here, because as Kelly said Mill would argue that having the freedom to give up your freedom feels like the contradiction!

I need more than an argument from intuition, but I am not sure if I have more than that right now. I feel that if someone is of sound mind they should be able to waive their rights, a rational being’s autonomy should be respected. I agree with Kant that the ability to be a rational autonomous being is valuable and should be respected. But I also do not think that its value makes it so an agent cannot rationally give up their right to it.

Blog Period 17 Begins

The new blogging period (the seventeenth one, covering Wednesday and Thursday, November 1st and 2nd) starts here.

This is the official separator post beginning the new period. By official decree of Starfleet Command!