Philosophy Towards a Theory of Property

JagerIV

Well-known member
I don't think you understood my argument at all. In the arena of civilizations and competing moral standards, they more often than not don't care about your standards and consider them wrong, period. They are far more important for relations within a culture, or at least shared civilization.

Good or not, it sure is effective, or at least popular, we have to deal with such facts. If we try to build an ideal system on the basis of ignoring inconvenient realities, it's going to be a joke instead.


The important qualifiers here are "through Greece" and "treatment post war". The barbarians didn't care. I wonder how much of that outrage in this was due to a part of Greek civilization doing it to fellow Greeks, rather than the act itself, if it was committed by someone else, or against someone else.

Secondly, exploitative treatment post-war kinda puts a big question mark over Athen's justification for the conquest in the first place (which was supposed to be something they do reluctantly and out of strategic necessity).

Sure, and barbarians can be civilized or killed. This is why I put forward the Idea of conceptualizing the Federation as the single fully sovereign entity in existence, so that the full discussion is a within civilizational question, rather than inter. A Federation that I guess I'm theorizing currently as a Natural rights based society, though mostly because no one has really put forward an alternative system to argue morals or principles from. Because we keep not looking at principles, but just going "morality is stupid and dumb and has never existed, despite clearly existing, given the 2,500 year old moral argument referenced earlier".

Is your contention simply that being moral is stupid? That Moral people can't succeed against immoral people?. I don't understand why you keep making these arguments against civilized or moral behavior, unless you think morality and civilization are stupid.


The issue here is that with murder you have picked a very easy case for such wide universal law. After all, the treatment of such generally doesn't differ all that much across civilizations and even times. As you said, in this matter, the disagreements tend to be minor and in details.

Meanwhile, take something like free speech. Even within the EU member countries can't agree all that much on it. Nevermind EU and USA, despite being part of a shared civilization they have few pretty deep disagreements there. And let's not even get into China or the Arab world.

In terms of world consensus, the issue of homesteading\land claims is more similar to the issue of free speech (possibly even more controversial than that) than to the murder issue.

Well, the obvious conclusion is that natural law does not really imply US style, certainly as currently constructed, free speech.

Can the wolf bark at another wolf without consequence? Certainly not: the barking wolf either forces the other wolf to back down, or respond in kind, and maybe escalate. Nature is very much freedom to speak, but not freedom from consequences. Wolves don't really have freedom of speech, either within or without the wolfpack. Just prudent wolfs, who don't pick stupid fights, and imprudent wolves who do pick stupid fights and generally suffer for it.

Wolves do however have very well defined territories:

wolf1.jpg


So, looking at nature, natural law does suggest a fairly limited conception of freedom of speech, but pretty hard territorial limits.

We get a similar trend looking at natural law "discovered" through tradition and human history: how many societies have allowed blasphemy against god/the gods? To find any society without such I wouldn't be shocked if you have to go all the way to, what, the 1700s? Maybe the Netherlands in the 14-15 hundreds? Even today by a global survey most of the planet has blasphemy laws of some sort, and its not more extensive only because Communist Blasphemy laws aren't called Blasphemy laws:

1920px-Blasphemy_laws_worldwide.svg.png

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasphemy_law

Even someone central to the formalization of Natural Law does not believe its doable without Religion:

Locke expands on the problems with unassisted reason and natural religion by taking the “unassisted” moral writings of philosophers like Epicurus, Seneca, Zeno, Confucius, and others as an example. During the time when they were writing, Locke explains, the law of nature was manipulated and corrupted into whatever was “convenient;” because of this lack of intellectual integrity, Locke asserts that philosophers would never be able to establish a universal concept of morality that would rally mankind together.[19] Reason, so far, is established as a faculty of judgement that is susceptible to error that Christianity helps to avoid. But if Locke says that man cannot know natural law by reason alone, then why is it that reason alone can explain Revelation? Since this question isn’t answered explicitly by Locke, we can infer that reason is missing something. On the other hand, by virtue of its noble action that seeks to understand established truth, reason is also aided by something. That something is Christianity, which according to Locke can and ought to supplement our reason in order for it to be fully formed. Reason is not a singular, homogenous, and intransigent faculty of judgement. This response, then, reveals another facet of why Christianity is reasonable: Christianity perfects our reason by working with it and enhancing it.

Locke explained in the above excerpt that Christianity aids man’s reason in the business of morality. As concerns morality, Locke establishes that whatever is “universally useful” as the standard to which men ought to “conform their manners” needs to be validated from “the authority of either reason or Revelation.”[20] If this is the case, then the effectiveness by which morality is inculcated is also a factor that Locke takes into account when considering what constitutes reasonableness. Thus, Christianity, as it is revealed in Revelation, is superior to man’s limited reason, and a man whose reason has yet to be aided by the light of Christianity would be wise to heed to the authority of Revelation for the sake of his moral formation. He wrote, “The view of Heaven and Hell, will cast a light upon the short pleasures and pains of this present state; and give attractions and encouragements to Virtue, which reason, and interest, and the Care of our selves, cannot but allow and prefer. Upon this foundation, and upon this only, Morality stands firm, and may deny all competition.”[21]

From the dichotomy that Locke drew between natural law and Revelation, and from his preference of Revelation over natural law as the better alternative because it supplies man’s reason with a necessary element or morality, we can infer a third component of Locke’s understanding of what “reasonableness” means: Christianity is useful to inculcate morality. This element is a practical point that Locke makes because he explains that Revelation helps to direct men to be more moral, which leads them to live as better citizens. In the excerpt above Locke is mentioning how morality is the “great business” of reason, but also how reason fails at this task because it alone has been insufficient to inculcate a full sense of morality. It is in this gap that religion can insert itself as that missing link between reason and morality, making it “reasonable” to use Christianity.

This belief in the necessity of Religion to good morals for him went so far as to exclude athiests from his general belief in toleration.

What is of concern to society is not that we do right by God, but that we lack the intellectual understanding of why we must act within the appropriate moral boundaries (Locke does not specify what these boundaries are). This is the reasoning that will lead Locke to advocate against tolerance of non-believers.

Clearly John Locke’s religious beliefs play a major role in all of his political theory. His understanding of the social contract as an act of consent includes a basic acceptance of religious morality (the only kind of morality as far as Locke is concerned), as agreed upon by the majority. An individual, whose actions or beliefs are seen as dangerous by the majority, is perceived as breaching the contract.

As Lorenzo explains, Locke “disqualified anyone who disavowed a belief in God and an afterlife, arguing that such a disavowal ‘dissolves’ all moral ties between the individual and society” (250). Locke believes in majority rule and it is the majority which sets the requirements and expectations of society. It is also the right of the society to decide what is acceptable and what is not. As Locke expresses in his Letter on Toleration, for the sake of the community a generally tolerant attitude is advised; however exceptions exist where there is too great a risk.

As Locke says; “no opinions contrary to human society, or to those moral rules which are necessary to the preservation of civil society, are to be tolerated” (Locke, Toleration, 19). So we see that the exceptions are not limited to atheism, but to anything deemed unacceptable. I suppose Locke would liken atheism to a standard crime; we do not tolerate theft, or violence, nor would we tolerate the inciting of such behavior. Instead we advocate religion, morality and ethics, and the views of non-believers are seen as contrary to societal teachings; therefore as treacherous as the provocation of crime.

Locke does indeed target atheists specifically, in fact fervently saying; “those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of a God. Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all; besides also, those that by their atheism undermine and destroy all religion, can have no pretence of religion whereupon to challenge the privilege of a toleration” (Locke, Toleration, 20).

Not only does the simple idea of atheism rob you of your rights in society, but it proves you unworthy of the tolerance of others, which is apparently a benefit enjoyed by the devout exclusively. If atheists cannot be relied upon to fulfill ‘promises, covenants, and oaths,’ then they cannot be relied upon to be loyal to the ultimate contract which binds each man to all other members of society, government, and the laws thus established.

So, by classic Natural rights, I'm not sure there actually is a "right" to freedom of speech. Merely prudent or imprudent management of speech. The John Locke diagnosis on our speech problems would likely not be over any particular details of the management of it, but that its being imprudently managed by athiests and satanists, when speech really should be managed by good Christians, via burning reddit Athiests on stakes. That would solve the speech problem the traditional way.

A child does not have a right to say anything he wants to his father. A good father however will be prudent in his responses to what his child says, and know when to ignore the child, talk to the child, chide the child, or whip the child. So too is my impression of free speech in Natural Law.

Property rights, meanwhile, do seem to exist in Natural law. So, more complicated than Murder in natural law, but actually exists, unlike freedom of speech.

I did signal earlier with the "do companies really need to own land?" question that I'm prepared for Natural Law to lead somewhere else besides modern US norms.

Take the principle one - the qualifier "unjust" can get pretty wild. Sure, this works well enough if you have a space EU or space USA. Might even work with space West.

But say, Pakistan joins the space EU, and now you may have a problem. As it happens, someone in Balochistan gets killed for blasphemy. Was it murder? By the principles of space EU, yes, it was murder, and not even some boring one, but a particularly aggravated kind, might even be considered especially severely as a hate crime and act of terror. Meanwhile, in Pakistan that's gonna be controversy at best, with many arguing that killing a blasphemer not only isn't murder, because it's not unjust, but in fact it's even the righteous thing to do, and letting the blasphemer live would be an injustice if anything.
Or in a historical case relevant to our discussion of inter-civilizational ethics, the famous Charles Napier quote about handling the burning of widows.

Heh, I just got to this part after writing the rest of the above, so thinking through the logic of natural law, the Pakistani situation might be more in line with natural law, and the west might be dangerously permissive.

Or natural law says its a local question of prudent governance. Its not like we don't have our own blasphemy, we just don't punish it in same way (Germany I think just fines you).

Though were also getting into something a bit different than murder though, if this is the even being discussed.

This enraged Laasi who went to the Hub city police station to lodge a complaint of blasphemy against Kumar though he was the first to blaspheme Kumar’s beliefs. Laasi was accompanied by local leaders of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Pakistan, who adhere to the Barelvi sect.

When the police looked into the WhatsApp communications, the screen shots that Laasi provided to the police to get Kumar arrested showed he was the first to hurl abuse at Kumar’s religion. The Station House Officer of Hub city police station, Ataullah Nomani, told Laasi that he started all this by abusing the religious beliefs of the Baloch Hindu man so he detained him as well. To his rude awakening Laasi was informed by the police officer that blaspheming of any religion, not just Islam, is against the law.

It may in fact be prudent government policy to arrest troublemakers, especially when the situation is so high strung as seems to be the case there. I'm open to the argument. The spiraling into mob violence afterwards less a sign of good governance.
 

Marduk

Well-known member
Moderator
Staff Member
Sure, and barbarians can be civilized or killed. This is why I put forward the Idea of conceptualizing the Federation as the single fully sovereign entity in existence, so that the full discussion is a within civilizational question, rather than inter. A Federation that I guess I'm theorizing currently as a Natural rights based society, though mostly because no one has really put forward an alternative system to argue morals or principles from. Because we keep not looking at principles, but just going "morality is stupid and dumb and has never existed, despite clearly existing, given the 2,500 year old moral argument referenced earlier".

Is your contention simply that being moral is stupid? That Moral people can't succeed against immoral people?. I don't understand why you keep making these arguments against civilized or moral behavior, unless you think morality and civilization are stupid.
No, my contention is that moral systems that are more concerned with limiting their adherents in conflicts with non-adherents than helping the former are kinda silly and risk falling to natural selection. From what you are saying about the Federation it seems that this issue is irrelevant to it, but then you brought up an IRL case of such conflict that western colonial power's dealings with stone age natives of the New World were anyway, branching off the discussion.
Well, the obvious conclusion is that natural law does not really imply US style, certainly as currently constructed, free speech.

Can the wolf bark at another wolf without consequence? Certainly not: the barking wolf either forces the other wolf to back down, or respond in kind, and maybe escalate. Nature is very much freedom to speak, but not freedom from consequences. Wolves don't really have freedom of speech, either within or without the wolfpack. Just prudent wolfs, who don't pick stupid fights, and imprudent wolves who do pick stupid fights and generally suffer for it.

Wolves do however have very well defined territories:

wolf1.jpg


So, looking at nature, natural law does suggest a fairly limited conception of freedom of speech, but pretty hard territorial limits.
Well freedom of speech is not exactly something that can be properly compared to nature, because wolves, nor any other animals, are capable of speech as we understand it...
As for territory, well, the "hardness" of it comes with regular "warfare", so the comparison may not be exactly what you are looking for.
We get a similar trend looking at natural law "discovered" through tradition and human history: how many societies have allowed blasphemy against god/the gods? To find any society without such I wouldn't be shocked if you have to go all the way to, what, the 1700s? Maybe the Netherlands in the 14-15 hundreds? Even today by a global survey most of the planet has blasphemy laws of some sort, and its not more extensive only because Communist Blasphemy laws aren't called Blasphemy laws:

1920px-Blasphemy_laws_worldwide.svg.png

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasphemy_law

Even someone central to the formalization of Natural Law does not believe its doable without Religion:



This belief in the necessity of Religion to good morals for him went so far as to exclude athiests from his general belief in toleration.



So, by classic Natural rights, I'm not sure there actually is a "right" to freedom of speech. Merely prudent or imprudent management of speech. The John Locke diagnosis on our speech problems would likely not be over any particular details of the management of it, but that its being imprudently managed by athiests and satanists, when speech really should be managed by good Christians, via burning reddit Athiests on stakes. That would solve the speech problem the traditional way.
Important distinction - how many societies cared about blasphemy against gods that weren't theirs, and how many societies were multireligious, especially without one religion being clearly dominant and making the rules? The latter weren't exactly common, going back to my point about cultural homogeneity.
Obvious conclusion being that some questions that have simple answers in homogeneous
societies turn into extremely complex, even impossible ones in empires of a hundred nations.

A child does not have a right to say anything he wants to his father. A good father however will be prudent in his responses to what his child says, and know when to ignore the child, talk to the child, chide the child, or whip the child. So too is my impression of free speech in Natural Law.
Obviously children are a separate case from adult's free speech, and any other rights.

Property rights, meanwhile, do seem to exist in Natural law. So, more complicated than Murder in natural law, but actually exists, unlike freedom of speech.
And in most of nature, it is indistinguishable from military control and conflict. So if you want to really follow the natural world in this, you get the society of Clans from Battletech, and a lot of probably pointless infighting.

I did signal earlier with the "do companies really need to own land?" question that I'm prepared for Natural Law to lead somewhere else besides modern US norms.
Companies are owned by people and own land in a large part of the world besides the modern USA, pretty much everywhere except commieland and civilizations that don't even have companies due to how primitive their economy is, so the answer of yes is really hard to avoid.

Heh, I just got to this part after writing the rest of the above, so thinking through the logic of natural law, the Pakistani situation might be more in line with natural law, and the west might be dangerously permissive.

Or natural law says its a local question of prudent governance. Its not like we don't have our own blasphemy, we just don't punish it in same way (Germany I think just fines you).

Though were also getting into something a bit different than murder though, if this is the even being discussed.

It may in fact be prudent government policy to arrest troublemakers, especially when the situation is so high strung as seems to be the case there. I'm open to the argument. The spiraling into mob violence afterwards less a sign of good governance.
Well, back to my earlier point, the Pakistani situation is "natural" in the sense that the historically typical situation is that one state comes with one legal system and one dominant religion and culture, according to which obviously all the moral and legal questions like we throw around here are asked. But even then, it's not as natural as the vigilante mobs would like, as the government still has to give some concession to international reactions if it was to let the mob go wild.
But obviously that has no application to multicultural, multireligious societies, where these questions get exponentially more complex with the number of factions involved.
Hell, even relatively smaller, merely intra-cultural customary disagreements can "naturally" escalate into small scale modern warfare.

So, the question that raises is - how does the Federation look upon its member states, or even lower subdivisions, settling conflicts through violence? Is it more like all the modern federal states, with insisting that such conflicts should get settled through a high enough instance of the legal system no matter what, under penalty of being accused of vigilante justice or rebellion otherwise, or like the Clans, where limited scale, rules bound warfare *is* the customary and legal solution, something in the middle, like historical and current feudal/clannish societies, or something else?
 
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JagerIV

Well-known member
No, my contention is that moral systems that are more concerned with limiting their adherents in conflicts with non-adherents than helping the former are kinda silly and risk falling to natural selection. From what you are saying about the Federation it seems that this issue is irrelevant to it, but then you brought up an IRL case of such conflict that western colonial power's dealings with stone age natives of the New World were anyway, branching off the discussion.

Okay, where in any this have I made the contention that natural law is "more concerned with limiting their adherents in conflicts with non-adherents than helping the former"? That's why all your arguements seem so nonsensical, and basically seem to boil down to "ha ha, stupid moralists think stealing may be wrong".

I was building on your prior example, of the US owns an Island and whether people who live there have valid property rights. Your example was that if they moved onto government land, they could validly kick them out, and I countered that if they were already there, kicking them out may be an injustice.

Your counter seems to be obviously subjects of a state can't have property rights, so its morally impossible for a State to steal from its subjects. Or morally impossible to steal from non-citizens.

Well freedom of speech is not exactly something that can be properly compared to nature, because wolves, nor any other animals, are capable of speech as we understand it...
As for territory, well, the "hardness" of it comes with regular "warfare", so the comparison may not be exactly what you are looking for.

Okay, that seems to support my contention that property rights require some continuous effort in maintaining, otherwise they expire. You treat confirmation of the principles I was theorizing as some gotcha against them.

Important distinction - how many societies cared about blasphemy against gods that weren't theirs, and how many societies were multireligious, especially without one religion being clearly dominant and making the rules? The latter weren't exactly common, going back to my point about cultural homogeneity.

Obvious conclusion being that some questions that have simple answers in homogeneous
societies turn into extremely complex, even impossible ones in empires of a hundred nations.

I'm not sure why that is an important distinction. The theory of natural law, and it being an undergirder of the Federation, suggest yes, of course the Federation can't be against natural law, and those codes probably do need to be enforced. A communist party can't be run by a non-communist, likewise the leadership of the Federation can't be anti-natural Law.

But, well, that just further confirms blasphemy is not a Federal issue. You might have a Federal equivalent of the 1st amendment putting it in writing that its not a federal issue, but that's a division of powers/subsidiarity question, not a rights question. A federal system does need some idea after all of things that are local, and things that are national issues.

To use your Indian example, the British (eventually, in there later heavy handed phase of Empire) banned widow burning as overly egregious, but at no point mandated that high ranking officials had to be anglican, which was a rule back in England for some time.

Obviously children are a separate case from adult's free speech, and any other rights.

Is it?

And in most of nature, it is indistinguishable from military control and conflict. So if you want to really follow the natural world in this, you get the society of Clans from Battletech, and a lot of probably pointless infighting.

Given this seems to be your conception of property rights rest solly on military control and conflict, I'm not sure why this is a gotcha. Natural Rights I don't think does since it allows for morality and justice, which you don't seem to. Your the one who seems to argue stealing is only wrong if you don't get away with it.

Companies are owned by people and own land in a large part of the world besides the modern USA, pretty much everywhere except commieland and civilizations that don't even have companies due to how primitive their economy is, so the answer of yes is really hard to avoid.

Hm, the modern company though is a fairly modern invention I believe, and I'm not sure particularly natural righty in conception. We are starting to get extremely branched out without actually coming to any conclusion of earlier, more basic concepts.

Well, back to my earlier point, the Pakistani situation is "natural" in the sense that the historically typical situation is that one state comes with one legal system and one dominant religion and culture, according to which obviously all the moral and legal questions like we throw around here are asked. But even then, it's not as natural as the vigilante mobs would like, as the government still has to give some concession to international reactions if it was to let the mob go wild.
But obviously that has no application to multicultural, multireligious societies, where these questions get exponentially more complex with the number of factions involved.
Hell, even relatively smaller, merely intra-cultural customary disagreements can "naturally" escalate into small scale modern warfare.

There's a lot to unpack here, but I think the basic issue here is that your still starting from the idea of rejecting Natural Laws underling theory and declaring it inherently wrong, and thus discussing its logical outcomes pointless.

So, the question that raises is - how does the Federation look upon its member states, or even lower subdivisions, settling conflicts through violence? Is it more like all the modern federal states, with insisting that such conflicts should get settled through a high enough instance of the legal system no matter what, under penalty of being accused of vigilante justice or rebellion otherwise, or like the Clans, where limited scale, rules bound warfare *is* the customary and legal solution, something in the middle, like historical and current feudal/clannish societies, or something else?

Well, that's a multi issue wide ranging question, which we could come at from serveral directions.

One example being, is self defense a right? Feeling it out morally, if a man is attacked, and then punished for defending himself, that broadly feels like an injustice being done.

Or we have a principle that justice should be done. Like the murder situation, we have that's a serious crime and deserving of punishment. I could see a natural law argument for a right for Justice to be done, I'm not sure how much one can make a good natural rights argument for what level that's done on.

Or, I can see both of these being natural right's principles:

1) Justice is done.
2) Innocents are protected.

I'm not sure one can make a natural Law argument for a law of the universe of how those get balanced off against each other. Should 10 guilty be let go rather than mistakenly punish an innocent? That feels much more in the realm of the prudent execution of justice, rather than a uniform principle of justice.

Likewise, if you get a Hatfield-McCoy situation like your describing here, a principle of subsidiarity would suggest that gets resolved as locally as possible. Ideally, a local judge settles it in a generally just way. But, if one side does kill another, it may be more just to punish the killer for disturbing the peace, or it might be best looking at the situation to determine that the killer acted justly and killed with good cause, and let them go.

On my initial thoughts, that feels like a local conditions/practicality question, rather than a morality/principles question.

So, something for the "Federation Journal of best practices in Governance" rather than "Federation Bible of Correct Moral Thought".

So, in America, it may be an optimal solution that he go through a formal court process and he's not punished until that finishes. If a rape happens on an Asteroid mining ship 6 months out from any civilized location, the proper handling may be that the Captain of the ship makes a decision and mets out the optimal punishment, and after the fact when the ship gets back to civilization in a year a court may review his decision and determine if he acted justly.
 

Marduk

Well-known member
Moderator
Staff Member
Okay, where in any this have I made the contention that natural law is "more concerned with limiting their adherents in conflicts with non-adherents than helping the former"? That's why all your arguements seem so nonsensical, and basically seem to boil down to "ha ha, stupid moralists think stealing may be wrong".

I was building on your prior example, of the US owns an Island and whether people who live there have valid property rights. Your example was that if they moved onto government land, they could validly kick them out, and I countered that if they were already there, kicking them out may be an injustice.

Your counter seems to be obviously subjects of a state can't have property rights, so its morally impossible for a State to steal from its subjects. Or morally impossible to steal from non-citizens.
And i pointed out that this example was a form of inter-civilizational conflict rather than the government mistreating its citizens by arbitrarily taking away their property, so the considerations there have to reasonably get a lot more complex. This is why in vast majority of historical cases of interactions between settled and nomadic peoples get nasty.

Okay, that seems to support my contention that property rights require some continuous effort in maintaining, otherwise they expire. You treat confirmation of the principles I was theorizing as some gotcha against them.
That's a very select conclusion to take out of this. Technically that's less "effort to mtaintain rights" and more "it's only a right if you succeed in beating up the guy who tries to take it from ya, and you have it until another one shows up". Otherwise known as law of the jungle.


I'm not sure why that is an important distinction. The theory of natural law, and it being an undergirder of the Federation, suggest yes, of course the Federation can't be against natural law, and those codes probably do need to be enforced. A communist party can't be run by a non-communist, likewise the leadership of the Federation can't be anti-natural Law.

But, well, that just further confirms blasphemy is not a Federal issue. You might have a Federal equivalent of the 1st amendment putting it in writing that its not a federal issue, but that's a division of powers/subsidiarity question, not a rights question. A federal system does need some idea after all of things that are local, and things that are national issues.

To use your Indian example, the British (eventually, in there later heavy handed phase of Empire) banned widow burning as overly egregious, but at no point mandated that high ranking officials had to be anglican, which was a rule back in England for some time.
So however the Federation interprets natural law, it can ignore whether its members give a damn about segments of it or not by declaring these local issues?
Do member state's rights to local governance end where natural law begins, or just wherever the Federation feels like enforcing it at the moment?

Yes, Children are assumed to nor be responsible and have guardians to keep them from doing stupid shit. Adult citizens shouldn't be treated as such, though in some parts of the world some disagree.


Given this seems to be your conception of property rights rest solly on military control and conflict, I'm not sure why this is a gotcha. Natural Rights I don't think does since it allows for morality and justice, which you don't seem to. Your the one who seems to argue stealing is only wrong if you don't get away with it.
My contention here is that you are selectively picking the "natural" parts of natural rights when they fit your chosen conclusion (wolves recognizing territory), but ignore the parts that don't fit (wolves recognizing borders of said territory as a sort of skirmish line and fighting to get other's territory).


Hm, the modern company though is a fairly modern invention I believe, and I'm not sure particularly natural righty in conception. We are starting to get extremely branched out without actually coming to any conclusion of earlier, more basic concepts.
Yes "modern company" by definition is modern, but similar legal constructs are a thing since the ancient times.
Of course nature and sufficiently primitive people don't have those, but we don't want to live in that kind of economy, do we?

There's a lot to unpack here, but I think the basic issue here is that your still starting from the idea of rejecting Natural Laws underling theory and declaring it inherently wrong, and thus discussing its logical outcomes pointless.
Yes, i am approaching this in a skeptical way.


Well, that's a multi issue wide ranging question, which we could come at from serveral directions.

One example being, is self defense a right? Feeling it out morally, if a man is attacked, and then punished for defending himself, that broadly feels like an injustice being done.
For one it is ridiculous for the legal system to go out of its way to protect those who are a danger to the rest of society or prey on it from being harmed by their victims. It would be a case of what we call clown world. Worse than pointless and defeating the very purpose of the institution existing in the first place.


Or we have a principle that justice should be done. Like the murder situation, we have that's a serious crime and deserving of punishment. I could see a natural law argument for a right for Justice to be done, I'm not sure how much one can make a good natural rights argument for what level that's done on.
For one, for law to be a law it needs enforcement, otherwise it's indistinguishable from a polite suggestion.
Obviously large federal polities with subdivisions don't exactly exist in nature, they are very much a civilized society thing, so i guess "whatever the founding documents/contracts/constitution/whatever have been agreed upon" is the just option as following the deal that makes the polity possible at all in the first place, as if that was arbitrarily changed, then the citizens could suddenly find themselves living in a totally different federation, and that would throw any idea of citizen's rights and obligations into complete chaos.

Or, I can see both of these being natural right's principles:

1) Justice is done.
2) Innocents are protected.

I'm not sure one can make a natural Law argument for a law of the universe of how those get balanced off against each other. Should 10 guilty be let go rather than mistakenly punish an innocent? That feels much more in the realm of the prudent execution of justice, rather than a uniform principle of justice.
See: Blackstone's ratio. But then again, natural law doesn't settle this question, that debate is still ongoing. But that's still something for a well functioning legal system that wants to be trustworthy, which it can't be if it starts having fun with probabilities.

Likewise, if you get a Hatfield-McCoy situation like your describing here, a principle of subsidiarity would suggest that gets resolved as locally as possible. Ideally, a local judge settles it in a generally just way. But, if one side does kill another, it may be more just to punish the killer for disturbing the peace, or it might be best looking at the situation to determine that the killer acted justly and killed with good cause, and let them go.

On my initial thoughts, that feels like a local conditions/practicality question, rather than a morality/principles question.

So, something for the "Federation Journal of best practices in Governance" rather than "Federation Bible of Correct Moral Thought".
It doesn't *have* to be a morality\principles situation, but guess what happens if the local's idea of what exactly is just\natural law and if they care about it starts to stray more and more from what the rest of the Federation thinks. It's very much a matter of degree.
Otherwise you end up with colonies that do shit straight out of the worst feudal worlds of Imperium of Mankind and it's their law so....
So, in America, it may be an optimal solution that he go through a formal court process and he's not punished until that finishes. If a rape happens on an Asteroid mining ship 6 months out from any civilized location, the proper handling may be that the Captain of the ship makes a decision and mets out the optimal punishment, and after the fact when the ship gets back to civilization in a year a court may review his decision and determine if he acted justly.
Well there is a reason that we still have Law of the Sea even in the era of modern courts and governments. But that exception is in a large degree dictated by practicality, rather than principle.
 

JagerIV

Well-known member
And i pointed out that this example was a form of inter-civilizational conflict rather than the government mistreating its citizens by arbitrarily taking away their property, so the considerations there have to reasonably get a lot more complex. This is why in vast majority of historical cases of interactions between settled and nomadic peoples get nasty.

Is your position "it is morally impossible to steal from people outside our group". You keep going in circles when a yes or no here would suficie.

That's a very select conclusion to take out of this. Technically that's less "effort to mtaintain rights" and more "it's only a right if you succeed in beating up the guy who tries to take it from ya, and you have it until another one shows up". Otherwise known as law of the jungle.

So, what's your conclusion then?

So however the Federation interprets natural law, it can ignore whether its members give a damn about segments of it or not by declaring these local issues?
Do member state's rights to local governance end where natural law begins, or just wherever the Federation feels like enforcing it at the moment?

Things that aren't universal principles aren't universal principles. I'm not sure why your acting offended over that. Would you do this same wild thrashing if the Federation didn't declare all highway lanes were 3 meters wide. Not everything is a univeral rights questions. I'd figure as someone on a right leaning platform this wouldn't be an offensive concept.

Yes, Children are assumed to nor be responsible and have guardians to keep them from doing stupid shit. Adult citizens shouldn't be treated as such, though in some parts of the world some disagree.

And the State has no role in enforcing moral decency? Pretty much no one on earth would honestly agree to this. Mostly it comes down to differences in execution. If you defame someone, its the defamed to bring the suit against you, while is you go streaking though downtown, that's the police's responsibility to bring justice.

Likewise, if you repeatedly insult someone's mother, most regard it as the person insulted to respond, or the local group by kicking out the troublemaker. Meanwhile, if I had made facebook posts the Government found deceptive regarding the success of my sales job, I would have been fined for activates unbecoming of an insurance agent.

Speech is regulated in all sorts of ways by all sorts of groups. Some broad right to speech I think would be hard to ground in Natural Rights.

My contention here is that you are selectively picking the "natural" parts of natural rights when they fit your chosen conclusion (wolves recognizing territory), but ignore the parts that don't fit (wolves recognizing borders of said territory as a sort of skirmish line and fighting to get other's territory).

Lets go with some very basic then of the underlying assumptions of Natural Law.

1) Natural Law Exists: there is a law of justice and right actions that exist out in the Universe. Good is not merely preference, but the conforming to the Universe.

2) This Natural Law is discoverable by man.

3) This can be discovered through two primary methods, reason and revelation.

4) Proper reasoning is its own complicated ball of things. Indeed lists 7 types: Deductive, Inductive, Analogical, Abductive, Cause-and-effect, Critical thinking, and Decompositional reasoning. This is of course a giant conversation in and of itself.

5) Revelation traditionally focused on religiously revealed truths. I will use it more on the revealing of facts to us. There are several useful facts, worth laying out.

a) Observations of the natural world
b) Observations of the civilized world
b) moral sentiments
c) Popular sentiment

So, I would say less I cherry pick, rather you cherry pick to exclude all moral intuitions.

For one it is ridiculous for the legal system to go out of its way to protect those who are a danger to the rest of society or prey on it from being harmed by their victims. It would be a case of what we call clown world. Worse than pointless and defeating the very purpose of the institution existing in the first place.

So, is this an agreement on this being a reasonable natural right outcome, or some attack? Its very hard to tell when you always write as though your attacking.

For one, for law to be a law it needs enforcement, otherwise it's indistinguishable from a polite suggestion.
Obviously large federal polities with subdivisions don't exactly exist in nature, they are very much a civilized society thing, so i guess "whatever the founding documents/contracts/constitution/whatever have been agreed upon" is the just option as following the deal that makes the polity possible at all in the first place, as if that was arbitrarily changed, then the citizens could suddenly find themselves living in a totally different federation, and that would throw any idea of citizen's rights and obligations into complete chaos.

Eh, its more I'd say your unwillingness to consider moral dimensions. You can have an immoral, criminal group run the law for 50 years, but just because it was legal doesn't mean it was moral. Your again making the kind of argument where the USSR never did anything wrong, because what it did was legal.

More so that general principles are well, general.

See: Blackstone's ratio. But then again, natural law doesn't settle this question, that debate is still ongoing. But that's still something for a well functioning legal system that wants to be trustworthy, which it can't be if it starts having fun with probabilities.

Yes, that is our current preference. I'm not sure how much that can be argued as a right, rather than a local administrative preference. I guess as the administrative test, is this the kind of thing a supreme court could knock down as immoral, or is this a balancing of rights question, and thus properly a legislative question.

Natural law are your foundational, universalist principles that people can reason from. A state that doesn't punish murders can be morally shamed as a failed state. A State that only gives murders 15 years in prison rather than 20 years much less so.

It doesn't *have* to be a morality\principles situation, but guess what happens if the local's idea of what exactly is just\natural law and if they care about it starts to stray more and more from what the rest of the Federation thinks. It's very much a matter of degree.
Otherwise you end up with colonies that do shit straight out of the worst feudal worlds of Imperium of Mankind and it's their law so....

Well there is a reason that we still have Law of the Sea even in the era of modern courts and governments. But that exception is in a large degree dictated by practicality, rather than principle.

Actually, the 40k Imperium does somewhat show what I'm trying to put together for the Federation in laying out the natural Laws, as something of the bare minimum standard for being members in good standing.

For 40k, its the Imperial Creed:

The tenets of the Imperial Cult, known as the Imperial Creed, are actually highly flexible and are tailored by the Adeptus Ministorum's Missionaries to fit the native culture, existing religion, and cultural practices of whatever world it exists upon.

As such, Imperial Cult practices adhered to on one world within the Imperium may be held as abhorrent on another. The Adeptus Ministorum tolerates this vast range of practices and beliefs as it would be impossible to maintain the faith by a rigid adherence to a standardised orthodoxy across the more than one million worlds that comprise the Imperium of Man.

However, the Ecclesiarchy does enforce several basic tenets of the Imperial Creed, deviation from which is considered heresy. These tenets include the following beliefs:

  • That the God-Emperor of Mankind once walked among men in their physical form and that He is and always has been the one, true god of Humanity.
  • That the God-Emperor of Mankind is the one true god of Mankind, regardless of the previous beliefs held by any man or woman.
  • It is the duty of the faithful to purge the Heretic, beware the psyker and mutant, and abhor the alien.
  • Every Human being has a place within the God-Emperor's divine order.
  • It is the duty of the faithful to unquestionably obey the authority of the Imperial government and their superiors, who speak in the divine Emperor's name.

So, obviously this thread on Property rights is focused on a much more mundane topic, but is still seeking the minimally acceptable standards. Also by laying them out as principles, serve as guides when local governments have to make legislation and decisions regarding such matters.

When a local government is writing up rules on property, what principles have to be kept in mind and respected? If a judge is provided two competing claims on a property, what is justly considered?

And if someone feels wrong done by their local government and wants to complain to a higher power, what suggests a valid moral grievance against their local government?

If a mining operation went bankrupt 30 years ago and abandoned the mine, and today some scavengers came by and salvaged material lying around, are they involved in theft, or harvesting of unclaimed resources?

Stuff like that.
 

Marduk

Well-known member
Moderator
Staff Member
Is your position "it is morally impossible to steal from people outside our group". You keep going in circles when a yes or no here would suficie.
Unless you previously had some kind of mutual deal of recognition and basic understanding with them, it can get interpreted in countless ways. Was it stealing? Was it conquest? Was it a conflict of legal systems (aka settlers vs nomads vs property rights)? Depending on what angle one looks at it and the differences between said groups and their customs, it can be all sorts of things.

So, what's your conclusion then?
If you want to mix it up with some sort of replacement for the traditional "involvement" in form of farming in classic homesteading, it's a can of worms that raises more questions than it answers.


Things that aren't universal principles aren't universal principles. I'm not sure why your acting offended over that. Would you do this same wild thrashing if the Federation didn't declare all highway lanes were 3 meters wide. Not everything is a univeral rights questions. I'd figure as someone on a right leaning platform this wouldn't be an offensive concept.
I'm not acting offended, i'm pointing out that while there are cases of "minute details" where it's easy to agree to disagree, property claims aren't one of them.
Yes, people usually don't have total wars about the width of roads, or whether income tax should be rounded up or down to a dollar.
But when you want to discuss questions regarding far more practically, politically and morally significant things like murder, legal systems, and indeed property rights too, the significance of universal principles in these questions is hard to argue against, don't you think?

And the State has no role in enforcing moral decency? Pretty much no one on earth would honestly agree to this. Mostly it comes down to differences in execution. If you defame someone, its the defamed to bring the suit against you, while is you go streaking though downtown, that's the police's responsibility to bring justice.

Likewise, if you repeatedly insult someone's mother, most regard it as the person insulted to respond, or the local group by kicking out the troublemaker. Meanwhile, if I had made facebook posts the Government found deceptive regarding the success of my sales job, I would have been fined for activates unbecoming of an insurance agent.

Speech is regulated in all sorts of ways by all sorts of groups. Some broad right to speech I think would be hard to ground in Natural Rights.
On the other hand, in the most basic "is it a natural right?" thought experiment, it does pass.
If you were the only man on an island, would you have the right to say whatever you want?
As such, any limitations on that are limitations that need to be argued from other angles, even though for a functional society there may need to be some.


Lets go with some very basic then of the underlying assumptions of Natural Law.

1) Natural Law Exists: there is a law of justice and right actions that exist out in the Universe. Good is not merely preference, but the conforming to the Universe.

2) This Natural Law is discoverable by man.

3) This can be discovered through two primary methods, reason and revelation.

4) Proper reasoning is its own complicated ball of things. Indeed lists 7 types: Deductive, Inductive, Analogical, Abductive, Cause-and-effect, Critical thinking, and Decompositional reasoning. This is of course a giant conversation in and of itself.

5) Revelation traditionally focused on religiously revealed truths. I will use it more on the revealing of facts to us. There are several useful facts, worth laying out.

a) Observations of the natural world
b) Observations of the civilized world
b) moral sentiments
c) Popular sentiment

So, I would say less I cherry pick, rather you cherry pick to exclude all moral intuitions.
The problem here is that this makes point 1 logically invalid, because different people have quite different intuitions and sentiments about such things... As such, there would exist many valid variations of natural law, which is no problem for practical purposes, or if you interpret natural law as a whole category of law rather than a law in singular sense, but in philosophical terms it means there can be no single, 100% guaranteed correct natural law.


So, is this an agreement on this being a reasonable natural right outcome, or some attack? Its very hard to tell when you always write as though your attacking.
It is commentary, interpret it as you wish.
Eh, its more I'd say your unwillingness to consider moral dimensions. You can have an immoral, criminal group run the law for 50 years, but just because it was legal doesn't mean it was moral. Your again making the kind of argument where the USSR never did anything wrong, because what it did was legal.

More so that general principles are well, general.
Chances are that we, nevermind all the citizens of the Federation won't end up in total agreement on "moral dimensions", so trying to dodge relying on them excessively for establishing the ground rules is in fact a good idea.

On the other hand your reasoning leads to the SJW history where everyone in history was morally bad because they had serfdom, noble privilege, taxation without representation, limited rights and so on.
Yes, that is our current preference. I'm not sure how much that can be argued as a right, rather than a local administrative preference. I guess as the administrative test, is this the kind of thing a supreme court could knock down as immoral, or is this a balancing of rights question, and thus properly a legislative question.

Natural law are your foundational, universalist principles that people can reason from. A state that doesn't punish murders can be morally shamed as a failed state. A State that only gives murders 15 years in prison rather than 20 years much less so.
Of course the details about the scale of punishment are the easier and less spicy part. The details of what exactly counts as a crime are.

The problem here is that in a technological civilization within a single polity, travel is fast and easy, the icebergs such thinking is heading for are fugitives and inter-jurisdictional crime and its enforcement. Say, a dude commits murder in state A and flees to state B. However, due to differences in law what he did to be considered a murderer in state A isn't really seen that way in state B's legal system (limits of self defense? fighting words doctrine? blasphemy law?), and by both legal and cultural standards of state B he did nothing wrong.
They won't feel shamed as a failed state because they are genuinely convinced that their version of law regarding this is better.
State A demands extradition. State B says no, we won't enforce your stupid law.
What next?
Historically the most well known case of similar problem is pre-Civil War USA slavery enforcement in free states regarding escaped slaves.
Actually, the 40k Imperium does somewhat show what I'm trying to put together for the Federation in laying out the natural Laws, as something of the bare minimum standard for being members in good standing.

For 40k, its the Imperial Creed:
Which, as you can see, doesn't say much about the "minimal acceptable principles" regarding way of life of the member states and how they govern themselves, and how moral the way they do it is. Obey the central authority in religious (at least in the minimal scale) and security-military matters, that's about it, if someone wants to turn their planet into an outright gulag, feel free, the Imperium won't mind.
So, obviously this thread on Property rights is focused on a much more mundane topic, but is still seeking the minimally acceptable standards. Also by laying them out as principles, serve as guides when local governments have to make legislation and decisions regarding such matters.
Minimal acceptable standards? Ok.
When a local government is writing up rules on property, what principles have to be kept in mind and respected? If a judge is provided two competing claims on a property, what is justly considered?
Probably what claim is in fact formally notarized by both federal and local governments comes before any other considerations, states should stick to their constitution or whatever their founding rules are called, no seizing property without compensation, this kind of thing?
And if someone feels wrong done by their local government and wants to complain to a higher power, what suggests a valid moral grievance against their local government?
That completely depends on how exactly interested the Federation is in making rulings on moral matters. Is it more like the aforementioned Imperium, or more like USA, where the federal government will absolutely have a problem with a state if it decides that they want to have slavery, no political freedoms and declare the current governor a dictator for life (all of that being ok enough with the Imperium).

If a mining operation went bankrupt 30 years ago and abandoned the mine, and today some scavengers came by and salvaged material lying around, are they involved in theft, or harvesting of unclaimed resources?

Stuff like that.
Knowing who owns which land in the state would be a good case of a duty of state government.
What would be expected is that the local government looks into its administrative documents, tax records and the bankruptcy proceedings, see if the mining company was really the rightful owner of that property at the time of the theft in light of these, and if it is, then it was theft indeed. If, say, by their local law the mine has no owner, it was auctioned off to a different owner in bankruptcy proceedings, or the state impounded it on account of unpaid property taxes, it's not theft unless the current owner considers it such.
 

JagerIV

Well-known member
Unless you previously had some kind of mutual deal of recognition and basic understanding with them, it can get interpreted in countless ways. Was it stealing? Was it conquest? Was it a conflict of legal systems (aka settlers vs nomads vs property rights)? Depending on what angle one looks at it and the differences between said groups and their customs, it can be all sorts of things.

Okay, you don't want to answer, so I'll move on.

If you want to mix it up with some sort of replacement for the traditional "involvement" in form of farming in classic homesteading, it's a can of worms that raises more questions than it answers.

Which is the goal of having a conversation, no? Closing this line to consolidate.

I'm not acting offended, i'm pointing out that while there are cases of "minute details" where it's easy to agree to disagree, property claims aren't one of them.
Yes, people usually don't have total wars about the width of roads, or whether income tax should be rounded up or down to a dollar.
But when you want to discuss questions regarding far more practically, politically and morally significant things like murder, legal systems, and indeed property rights too, the significance of universal principles in these questions is hard to argue against, don't you think?

Universal, General principles. The goal is the 90% solution, keeping in mind there is always the exceptions that prove the rule.
We have minute details of property claims all the time. Each state treats things different. Trying to force an overly narrow definition is almost just as bad as having no definition.

Locals falling on different sides of gray areas in murder and property rights doesn't explode a system.

On the other hand, in the most basic "is it a natural right?" thought experiment, it does pass.
If you were the only man on an island, would you have the right to say whatever you want?
As such, any limitations on that are limitations that need to be argued from other angles, even though for a functional society there may need to be some.

This is probably the big point of disagreement I'm coming to with "traditional" natural rights, at least as I've been summarized to me. Is mans natural state to be a man on an island? Is that the condition to draw man's "natural" state?

Lets say I had a wolf alone in a cage. The wolf paces aimlessly and naws on the steel bars. If I used that observation to tell you a wolfs natural state is to naw on steel and pace alone, would you find that good evidence of a natural, healthy wolf life?

I would guess not. A small cave is not a wolfs natural living conditions, and part of being a proper wolf is to be part of a pack, being social creatures.

Likewise, a Man alone on an island is not a natural state: it is something that would only occur through the most abnormal situation. Thus, I would contend that the amount of insight one can actually gain from such mental exercises is extremely limited. On rights, virtually nothing, since rights I think are inherently social concepts.

Instead, a natural man is at least part of a family, a father or son. And at this point already drawing any sort of broad free speech principle is, difficult. A father or son might technically have the freedom to say anything they want to their wife or mother, but he certainly have little right to not suffer any consequences of it.

So, if we take Man's natural state to not be alone on an Island, but imbedded in at least a family, some of the traditional natural law logic breaks down.

And in fact, Man is even more social than that. Man is not imbedded in just a family, but in nature seems to have at least been in clans/bands of 30-50 people. This is I think uncontroversial: if even apes organize in family and slightly larger groups, that natural humans aren't at least as social seems hard to argue.

And I think one could argue natural human is even more social: not only do humans form families and Clans, but it seems they have for a long time formed tribes and peoples as well. For peoples, you can probably use nation somewhat interchangeably. And of course those peoples have long interacted in at least some pro-social manner for a very long time as well, given how technologies have spread and some evidence of very long trade routs in even hunter gatherer societies. Community of Nations is probably a too strong a term for this, but the level of cooperation between extremely distantly related humans is much higher than between neighboring wolves.

Of course, for something like the Federation drawing a chain of society from the individual to humanity as a whole would be useful, so it would be federation interest that natural man was as social as possible.

This is probably a big enough and controversial enough argument that I think I'll stop here, lest the post get eaten while I'm at work.
 

Marduk

Well-known member
Moderator
Staff Member
Universal, General principles. The goal is the 90% solution, keeping in mind there is always the exceptions that prove the rule.
We have minute details of property claims all the time. Each state treats things different. Trying to force an overly narrow definition is almost just as bad as having no definition.

Locals falling on different sides of gray areas in murder and property rights doesn't explode a system.
Depends on how big the differences are, and if they apply to edge cases or are major in scale.

This is probably the big point of disagreement I'm coming to with "traditional" natural rights, at least as I've been summarized to me. Is mans natural state to be a man on an island? Is that the condition to draw man's "natural" state?
I think this is a matter of different interpretation of "natural". In this case, it is a separation of what rights are necessarily a matter of compromise with society at large, and what rights naturally exist in absence of society's interference, and require other people's active effort to restrict.

Lets say I had a wolf alone in a cage. The wolf paces aimlessly and naws on the steel bars. If I used that observation to tell you a wolfs natural state is to naw on steel and pace alone, would you find that good evidence of a natural, healthy wolf life?

I would guess not. A small cave is not a wolfs natural living conditions, and part of being a proper wolf is to be part of a pack, being social creatures.

Likewise, a Man alone on an island is not a natural state: it is something that would only occur through the most abnormal situation. Thus, I would contend that the amount of insight one can actually gain from such mental exercises is extremely limited. On rights, virtually nothing, since rights I think are inherently social concepts.

Instead, a natural man is at least part of a family, a father or son. And at this point already drawing any sort of broad free speech principle is, difficult. A father or son might technically have the freedom to say anything they want to their wife or mother, but he certainly have little right to not suffer any consequences of it.

So, if we take Man's natural state to not be alone on an Island, but imbedded in at least a family, some of the traditional natural law logic breaks down.
You are half right. It's normal, but not guaranteed in nature, as in more natural state of human history lots of dying happened.
Also you have assumed a strict social hierarchy for such a natural state, while in practice it's one more based on force, direct or by proxy, which, unless you want to use this concept of natural state of mankind to argue for a system with similar significance of such, also doesn't fit well.

And in fact, Man is even more social than that. Man is not imbedded in just a family, but in nature seems to have at least been in clans/bands of 30-50 people. This is I think uncontroversial: if even apes organize in family and slightly larger groups, that natural humans aren't at least as social seems hard to argue.

And I think one could argue natural human is even more social: not only do humans form families and Clans, but it seems they have for a long time formed tribes and peoples as well. For peoples, you can probably use nation somewhat interchangeably. And of course those peoples have long interacted in at least some pro-social manner for a very long time as well, given how technologies have spread and some evidence of very long trade routs in even hunter gatherer societies. Community of Nations is probably a too strong a term for this, but the level of cooperation between extremely distantly related humans is much higher than between neighboring wolves.

Of course, for something like the Federation drawing a chain of society from the individual to humanity as a whole would be useful, so it would be federation interest that natural man was as social as possible.

This is probably a big enough and controversial enough argument that I think I'll stop here, lest the post get eaten while I'm at work.
And that in turn is a state of mankind very much different from "natural". While the previous one, of clans\bands, could be argued as such, as this is how humans lived since they exist until civilizations were formed, and some less developed ones still live in this way, the larger scale organization is a break from this, and is the very first and basic characteristic of humans living in civilization, rather than nature.
Which in turn raises the necessary point that there are multiple civilizations that develop over time, so reaching back to "universal natural civilizational law" is ridiculous because such a thing obviously doesn't exist.
There is also no real argument that the cooperation on this and larger scale is something inherent in human nature and based on some sort of universal principle, while in reality in most cases of such we can directly track the thinking, negotiating and debating around such cooperation is done in terms of, above all, expected practical benefits of these specific deals, contracts, treaties, laws whatever, and sometimes their breakage when the benefits aren't considered worth it.
 
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JagerIV

Well-known member
Depends on how big the differences are, and if they apply to edge cases or are major in scale.

Another major question that I think I might pause on for now.

I think this is a matter of different interpretation of "natural". In this case, it is a separation of what rights are necessarily a matter of compromise with society at large, and what rights naturally exist in absence of society's interference, and require other people's active effort to restrict.

Rights really I think only make sense as something in society, interpersonal agreements. Take a favorite "right" of the EU, freedom of movement: do you have a right to move on an Island? Well, no one's going to stop you. But, if you break both your legs, have you lost your freedom of movement? Discussing a freedom of movement on a deserted island gets some absurd.

Once you have a social situation however, suddenly one's freedom of movement becomes much more important: a right not to be imprisoned (without cause), for example. Classic negative right. However, one also quickly realizes a huge amount of the actual meat of a freedom of movement is a right to access public spaces: to be on roads, for example. Freedom of movement doesn't mean a whole lot without a fairly extensive commons to move in, whether publicly or privately owned.

It does make sense that a human right would be something a human can do. A human right to free speech is meaningless if humans couldn't speak. The man on an island thought experiance certainly can provide some insight. I think however its the wrong baseline to reason from.


You are half right. It's normal, but not guaranteed in nature, as in more natural state of human history lots of dying happened.
Also you have assumed a strict social hierarchy for such a natural state, while in practice it's one more based on force, direct or by proxy, which, unless you want to use this concept of natural state of mankind to argue for a system with similar significance of such, also doesn't fit well.

Hm, this is another case I think were your projecting your model into this one: your's doesn't really allow for anything but force. A family clan relationship innately brings in something else: love, for lack of a better word. Most children are not bound to their parents simply out of fear of them. Plus you know, general give and take self interest. Its a very dark vision to suggest the only reason a family would be together is fear of the father.

And that in turn is a state of mankind very much different from "natural". While the previous one, of clans\bands, could be argued as such, as this is how humans lived since they exist until civilizations were formed, and some less developed ones still live in this way, the larger scale organization is a break from this, and is the very first and basic characteristic of humans living in civilization, rather than nature.

Now, this gets to an obvious question: why is humans living in civilization considered unnatural? I believe it was C.S. Lewis (I thought it was from that work, but couldn't find it: still has stuff relevant to this discussion) once remarked as to why hunter gathers, a few thousand on the edge of civilization, are considered the natural human state, while the 99% of the population who do not are in an unnatural state. I know why, but it is something to keep in mind. We have about 10,000 years of history as farmers. Or, lets take some of the estimates of total humans ever.

Of approximately 108 billion people estimated to have ever lived, 107 billion of them were born post agriculture. Even assuming the hunter gather population stayed fixed since 8,000 BC, that would total about 2 Billion hunter gathers ever living. Suggesting 98% of humans ever born have lived in an agricultural society, counting both farming and pastoral, and given how thin the population of pastoralists tend to be (I think in China the Step nomads who gave China so much trouble were generally outnumbered by the farming Chinese at least 100-1) Your probably not talking about more than maybe 100 million herders, for maybe 20 billion pastoral nomads in history. Which would mean by rough inference at least 86 billion humans, 80% of the total, have lived in sedentary farming based societies.

If we judged humanities natural state the same way we regard, say, a Beaver, the observations would put the natural state to be a sedentary farming species, with 5% engaged in nomadic farming, and less than 1% involved in non-agricultural lifestyles. An interesting but non-representative sub-group like a purely vegetarian bear: they exist (pandas), they might have some interesting insights to bears in general, but in the end there's not very many of them (2,000 ish, compared to 400,000 American black bears) and are very unrepresentative of bears in general.

Which in turn raises the necessary point that there are multiple civilizations that develop over time, so reaching back to "universal natural civilizational law" is ridiculous because such a thing obviously doesn't exist.
There is also no real argument that the cooperation on this and larger scale is something inherent in human nature and based on some sort of universal principle, while in reality in most cases of such we can directly track the thinking, negotiating and debating around such cooperation is done in terms of, above all, expected practical benefits of these specific deals, contracts, treaties, laws whatever, and sometimes their breakage when the benefits aren't considered worth it.

The important issue in the above is that the trade happened, not that it wasn't in self interest. No amount of self interest will get wolves to trade across great distances. Its not in their ability. Meanwhile, we've had extremely long distance trade routs since at least the Bronze age, and much evidence of it even earlier.

There being multiple civilizations also doesn't seem a strong argument. There are literally billions of human families, but that not evidence of no "natural laws" that human families conform to. In fact, the immense similarity across a huge range of climates, time and cultures suggests much more a general uniformity than great diversity.
 

Marduk

Well-known member
Moderator
Staff Member
Rights really I think only make sense as something in society, interpersonal agreements. Take a favorite "right" of the EU, freedom of movement: do you have a right to move on an Island? Well, no one's going to stop you. But, if you break both your legs, have you lost your freedom of movement? Discussing a freedom of movement on a deserted island gets some absurd.
Yes, on an island you have the right to build a ship if you want and know how to.
EU freedom of movement of course is not some kind of divine right and no one sane claims it as such, it's a big pile of contracts agreed upon by different sovereign states with very conventional right to regulate freedom of movement on their own respective lands.
And as the case of UK shows, those contracts can be withdrawn from peacefully.
Once you have a social situation however, suddenly one's freedom of movement becomes much more important: a right not to be imprisoned (without cause), for example. Classic negative right. However, one also quickly realizes a huge amount of the actual meat of a freedom of movement is a right to access public spaces: to be on roads, for example. Freedom of movement doesn't mean a whole lot without a fairly extensive commons to move in, whether publicly or privately owned.
Again, depends on circumstances. Making travel possible for business, emergencies and other vital for the functioning of a country purposes is one of government's job, how exactly is it done is secondary. Even then, air and sea travel has its own rules less dependent on commons.
It does make sense that a human right would be something a human can do. A human right to free speech is meaningless if humans couldn't speak. The man on an island thought experiance certainly can provide some insight. I think however its the wrong baseline to reason from.
Well, yeah, practical and biological facts have to be considered in the discussion of human's rights.


Hm, this is another case I think were your projecting your model into this one: your's doesn't really allow for anything but force. A family clan relationship innately brings in something else: love, for lack of a better word. Most children are not bound to their parents simply out of fear of them. Plus you know, general give and take self interest. Its a very dark vision to suggest the only reason a family would be together is fear of the father.
Well, your earlier talk about "consequences" did imply the model i've suggested here, and in case of clannish societies it is not uncommon at all, while the model you imply here is more common in modern western societies that are less clannish.

Now, this gets to an obvious question: why is humans living in civilization considered unnatural? I believe it was C.S. Lewis (I thought it was from that work, but couldn't find it: still has stuff relevant to this discussion) once remarked as to why hunter gathers, a few thousand on the edge of civilization, are considered the natural human state, while the 99% of the population who do not are in an unnatural state. I know why, but it is something to keep in mind. We have about 10,000 years of history as farmers. Or, lets take some of the estimates of total humans ever.
Because up until 7-10 or so thousands of years ago that's how humans lived, despite homo sapiens sapiens existing for well over 100 thousand years, possibly more depending who you ask. And some still live like this. Let's not redefine what the term "natural" means. If you want to use the term "typical", do that.

Of approximately 108 billion people estimated to have ever lived, 107 billion of them were born post agriculture. Even assuming the hunter gather population stayed fixed since 8,000 BC, that would total about 2 Billion hunter gathers ever living. Suggesting 98% of humans ever born have lived in an agricultural society, counting both farming and pastoral, and given how thin the population of pastoralists tend to be (I think in China the Step nomads who gave China so much trouble were generally outnumbered by the farming Chinese at least 100-1) Your probably not talking about more than maybe 100 million herders, for maybe 20 billion pastoral nomads in history. Which would mean by rough inference at least 86 billion humans, 80% of the total, have lived in sedentary farming based societies.

If we judged humanities natural state the same way we regard, say, a Beaver, the observations would put the natural state to be a sedentary farming species, with 5% engaged in nomadic farming, and less than 1% involved in non-agricultural lifestyles. An interesting but non-representative sub-group like a purely vegetarian bear: they exist (pandas), they might have some interesting insights to bears in general, but in the end there's not very many of them (2,000 ish, compared to 400,000 American black bears) and are very unrepresentative of bears in general.
Pandas aren't black bears... That history of living in small groups doesn't apply just to some extinct hominids, but to homo sapiens sapiens too. There's no significant biological distinction there, only socio-cultural, civilizational one.
By your logic, bringing up population numbers and China, and letting such numbers be a major factor in defining human nature, i can remind you that the very large civilization of China never was and still isn't fond of the concept of natural rights at all.

The important issue in the above is that the trade happened, not that it wasn't in self interest. No amount of self interest will get wolves to trade across great distances. Its not in their ability. Meanwhile, we've had extremely long distance trade routs since at least the Bronze age, and much evidence of it even earlier.
And it was also based on pure self interest back then, and didn't happen where the self-interest wasn't satisfied.
What can we conclude out of it? There is no principle or human nature that makes such trade and cooperation happen, other than self interest, if you consider it such.
Guess one could use it to make a bow in the general direction of contractarian\mutualist libertarian concepts, but that's about it.
There being multiple civilizations also doesn't seem a strong argument. There are literally billions of human families, but that not evidence of no "natural laws" that human families conform to. In fact, the immense similarity across a huge range of climates, time and cultures suggests much more a general uniformity than great diversity.
Oh is it? The very fact that even isolated groups of jungle or island hunter gatherers were discovered to also form families more or less in a form recognizable to us, nevermind all the distant and exotic civilizations, point out that there is some degree of commonality there.
 
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JagerIV

Well-known member
Well, your earlier talk about "consequences" did imply the model i've suggested here, and in case of clannish societies it is not uncommon at all, while the model you imply here is more common in modern western societies that are less clannish.

Consequences only means terror?

Because up until 7-10 or so thousands of years ago that's how humans lived, despite homo sapiens sapiens existing for well over 100 thousand years, possibly more depending who you ask. And some still live like this. Let's not redefine what the term "natural" means. If you want to use the term "typical", do that.
(moved)
Oh is it? The very fact that even isolated groups of jungle or island hunter gatherers were discovered to also form families more or less in a form recognizable to us, nevermind all the distant and exotic civilizations, point out that there is some degree of commonality there.

Well, yes. That does suggest families are in fact natural to humans, and part of our human nature. You seem to be treating it as a rebuttal to the claim?

Are we agreed then that, at the very least, family units are certainly natural to human existence?

I think the next level up, what I'm calling the clan, is also pretty uncontroversial. People have pretty clearly always lived in at least small bands of extended families of 30-40 people. This appears to be the scale of a rough camp looking at the band societies. This level we have pretty definite archeological evidence.

The next level up, tribe, is a level of abstraction where physical proof is harder to find, but not free of it: for one, at least some idea of tribe above the band/clan seems well supported, with modern primitive societies having them, and a logical necessity: basic family formation, such as minimizing inbreeding, implies larger social organizations to marry outside the clan.

People is even harder to prove, but also seems likely: the Neanderthals had genetic groups spread over extremely large areas, as evidence of the time more easily researched, suggesting fairly extensive movement.

1920px-Neanderthal_genetic_subgroups.png

(Genetically, Neanderthals can be grouped into three distinct regions (above).)

"Genetic analysis indicates there were at least 3 distinct geographical groups—Western Europe, the Mediterranean coast, and east of the Caucasus—with some migration among these regions.[81] Post-Eemian Western European Mousterian lithics can also be broadly grouped into 3 distinct macro-regions: Acheulean-tradition Mousterian in the southwest, Micoquien in the northeast, and Mousterian with bifacial tools (MBT) in between the former two. MBT may actually represent the interactions and fusion of the two different cultures.[80] Southern Neanderthals exhibit regional anatomical differences from northern counterparts: a less protrusive jaw, a shorter gap behind the molars, and a vertically higher jawbone.[255] These all instead suggest Neanderthal communities regularly interacted with neighbouring communities within a region, but not as often beyond."
Neanderthal range
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal#Culture

Haman societies naturally being able to operate on similarly scaled groups, with our more advanced social abilities, seems quite reasonable.

So, naturally, we are at least tool using, cloth wearing, speaking people organized at least on the family and clan levels, and likely operating at least in part on the level of tribes and peoples.

Does that sound reasonable to you?

Pandas aren't black bears... That history of living in small groups doesn't apply just to some extinct hominids, but to homo sapiens sapiens too. There's no significant biological distinction there, only socio-cultural, civilizational one.
By your logic, bringing up population numbers and China, and letting such numbers be a major factor in defining human nature, i can remind you that the very large civilization of China never was and still isn't fond of the concept of natural rights at all.

I mean, defining human nature does have to reference humans, yes. I'm not sure why your bringing up other hominids when the argument your responding to is just Homo Sapiens?

Chinese are in fact humans, and also part of the universe, and thus would be included in the General human race and part of the natural order of the world. If they never thought along these lines, it would be very damaging to the idea of Natural rights.

However, it seems they did. Now, we do have to be a bit more specific in our terms, Natural Law rather than Natural Rights, though rights come out of Law. And, when I looked up Chinese natural law, the consensus seems to be that confucianism is a natural law tradition, if not most of the classical chinese philosophies:


"The first position is that there was indeed natural law in the
Chinese legal tradition, and it was Confucianism, grounded in the
idea of li, usually translated into English as ritual propriety or rites.3
This is the most popular, conventional account of natural law in
traditional China.4..."
Link

This includes an idea of invalid temporal laws when they conflict with natural laws. This is suggestive of a concept of rights, though the specifics I've not really found. General principles like Aquinas had, but less on the specifics, or really any access to them.

Wiki at least does suggest you had sharp moral limits on what kind of just, moral orders could be given. Limits on government power seems to be very suggestive of something like rights.

"Confucianism, despite supporting the importance of obeying national authority, places this obedience under absolute moral principles that curbed the willful exercise of power, rather than being unconditional. Submission to authority (tsun wang) was only taken within the context of the moral obligations that rulers had toward their subjects, in particular benevolence (jen). Confucianism — including the most pro-authoritarian scholars such as Xunzi — has always recognised the Right of revolution against tyranny. "

So, the mainline of pre-European political thought through most of Chinese history seems to have been a Natural Law philosophy, which included the idea of moral principles that existed even over the Emperor. Which strikes me as the essence of natural rights, though how similar and widespread this actually was to Western, especially pre-enlightenment conceptions of rights I'm not sure.

And of course, Communism talks endlessly of rights, but that's something of a poisoned well, being sometimes almost the satanic mirror of Natural rights.

And it was also based on pure self interest back then, and didn't happen where the self-interest wasn't satisfied.
What can we conclude out of it? There is no principle or human nature that makes such trade and cooperation happen, other than self interest, if you consider it such.
Guess one could use it to make a bow in the general direction of contractarian\mutualist libertarian concepts, but that's about it.

which does still point to a human nature above, say, the nature of dogs, who can't really create such an elaborate idea of their self interest to carry out such things. Language in general I guess.
 

Marduk

Well-known member
Moderator
Staff Member
Consequences only means terror?
This term does sound like a thinly veiled threat and is often used as such.

Well, yes. That does suggest families are in fact natural to humans, and part of our human nature. You seem to be treating it as a rebuttal to the claim?
Yup. And i'm using it as a contrast to the claim that wider forms of organization that are not as common as families are not natural.

Are we agreed then that, at the very least, family units are certainly natural to human existence?
Yup, that's what we can observe.

I think the next level up, what I'm calling the clan, is also pretty uncontroversial. People have pretty clearly always lived in at least small bands of extended families of 30-40 people. This appears to be the scale of a rough camp looking at the band societies. This level we have pretty definite archeological evidence.

The next level up, tribe, is a level of abstraction where physical proof is harder to find, but not free of it: for one, at least some idea of tribe above the band/clan seems well supported, with modern primitive societies having them, and a logical necessity: basic family formation, such as minimizing inbreeding, implies larger social organizations to marry outside the clan.

People is even harder to prove, but also seems likely: the Neanderthals had genetic groups spread over extremely large areas, as evidence of the time more easily researched, suggesting fairly extensive movement.

1920px-Neanderthal_genetic_subgroups.png

(Genetically, Neanderthals can be grouped into three distinct regions (above).)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal#Culture

Haman societies naturally being able to operate on similarly scaled groups, with our more advanced social abilities, seems quite reasonable.

So, naturally, we are at least tool using, cloth wearing, speaking people organized at least on the family and clan levels, and likely operating at least in part on the level of tribes and peoples.

Does that sound reasonable to you?
Yup. That's the "nature of human organization before civilization" as far as we know. Beyond that line civilizations lie, with their divergent paths.


I mean, defining human nature does have to reference humans, yes. I'm not sure why your bringing up other hominids when the argument your responding to is just Homo Sapiens?

Chinese are in fact humans, and also part of the universe, and thus would be included in the General human race and part of the natural order of the world. If they never thought along these lines, it would be very damaging to the idea of Natural rights.

However, it seems they did. Now, we do have to be a bit more specific in our terms, Natural Law rather than Natural Rights, though rights come out of Law. And, when I looked up Chinese natural law, the consensus seems to be that confucianism is a natural law tradition, if not most of the classical chinese philosophies:



Link

This includes an idea of invalid temporal laws when they conflict with natural laws. This is suggestive of a concept of rights, though the specifics I've not really found. General principles like Aquinas had, but less on the specifics, or really any access to them.

Wiki at least does suggest you had sharp moral limits on what kind of just, moral orders could be given. Limits on government power seems to be very suggestive of something like rights.


So, the mainline of pre-European political thought through most of Chinese history seems to have been a Natural Law philosophy, which included the idea of moral principles that existed even over the Emperor. Which strikes me as the essence of natural rights, though how similar and widespread this actually was to Western, especially pre-enlightenment conceptions of rights I'm not sure.

And of course, Communism talks endlessly of rights, but that's something of a poisoned well, being sometimes almost the satanic mirror of Natural rights.
Yet despite searching for those similarities damn hard here, you have to admit that Chinese version of "natural law" has only passing similarities to the western concepts, and their interpretation is significantly different. Yes, they have laws too, that is the sign of a successful civilization in general, but the laws are quite different, and it's a bit of a stretch to call them natural law in the western sense.
In the end, you can't deny that different civilizations are different in their laws and customs, some work better, some work worse, and those civilizations can try to change and adapt to their circumstances in a fairly meaningful degree, rather than being set in stone in their ways.
Take Western civilization - it's notably different from itself 100 years ago, which was also different from itself 500 years ago, and that in turn was not the same 2000 years ago.
which does still point to a human nature above, say, the nature of dogs, who can't really create such an elaborate idea of their self interest to carry out such things. Language in general I guess.
It points out that they can, not that they always do, as some don't, as if they do, they often end up with quite a different thing.
 

JagerIV

Well-known member
Yet despite searching for those similarities damn hard here, you have to admit that Chinese version of "natural law" has only passing similarities to the western concepts, and their interpretation is significantly different. Yes, they have laws too, that is the sign of a successful civilization in general, but the laws are quite different, and it's a bit of a stretch to call them natural law in the western sense.
In the end, you can't deny that different civilizations are different in their laws and customs, some work better, some work worse, and those civilizations can try to change and adapt to their circumstances in a fairly meaningful degree, rather than being set in stone in their ways.
Take Western civilization - it's notably different from itself 100 years ago, which was also different from itself 500 years ago, and that in turn was not the same 2000 years ago.

Well, all my research confirmed was that I don't know enough about Chinese philosophy to say either way. Chinese is a different tradition and the works have different emphases, if they're translated at all. One Tomist I listedned to seemed to believe they were pretty in line with natural Law as understood by, well, Thomas Aquinas. Be careful about relying to much on the pop cultural meme understanding of how China worked, vs its actual functioning.

Still, obviously there is diversity of people. Any look at people would say so. This would also suggest general superiority of local rule, that autonomy to the individual, family, and clan at least should be allowed, and maybe higher. Excessive limiting of this autonomy would be a wrong.

But, local variation don't I think speak to no moral standard: either there is some common moral standard that, say, 90% of humanity can be held to?

If a chinese steals from you, is he morally liable as a human, or as unmorally liable as a crow?
 

Marduk

Well-known member
Moderator
Staff Member
Well, all my research confirmed was that I don't know enough about Chinese philosophy to say either way. Chinese is a different tradition and the works have different emphases, if they're translated at all. One Tomist I listedned to seemed to believe they were pretty in line with natural Law as understood by, well, Thomas Aquinas. Be careful about relying to much on the pop cultural meme understanding of how China worked, vs its actual functioning.

Still, obviously there is diversity of people. Any look at people would say so. This would also suggest general superiority of local rule, that autonomy to the individual, family, and clan at least should be allowed, and maybe higher. Excessive limiting of this autonomy would be a wrong.

But, local variation don't I think speak to no moral standard: either there is some common moral standard that, say, 90% of humanity can be held to?

If a chinese steals from you, is he morally liable as a human, or as unmorally liable as a crow?
According to us, he is. According to the Chinese, taking into account some horror stories i've heard about doing business in China (there are many), not necessarily.
 

JagerIV

Well-known member
According to us, he is. According to the Chinese, taking into account some horror stories i've heard about doing business in China (there are many), not necessarily.

Eh, I don't believe the Chinese are so different to regard theft as moral. Though, there is also a degree where it doesn't wholly matter either. Obviously, part of natural law does suppose that people, even states, can be in breech of the natural law. And be morally judged for it.

So, the question would partially where can one reasonably judge them by some higher moral standard, and where is it local cultural differences. That question of the moral community, like the 40k Imperial creed which excludes the Mutant and Zeno from moral situation.

The Federation may need some idea also.

it might be time for me to return to some ideas property. Which I unfortunately don't have time to do tonight.
 

Marduk

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Moderator
Staff Member
Eh, I don't believe the Chinese are so different to regard theft as moral. Though, there is also a degree where it doesn't wholly matter either. Obviously, part of natural law does suppose that people, even states, can be in breech of the natural law. And be morally judged for it.
Exactly, it's one of the things that most modern westerners aren't comfortable discussing and doubly so, taking conclusions from - not all the moral systems of the world are absolutely and unconditionally universalist like the current western ones insists on being.
Historically it's not that uncommon for moral and legal system to consider crimes more lightly or not crimes at all if done to foreigners or other outsiders, especially ones of more ethno-culturally distant kinds. Say, islamists consider enslaving other Muslims an absolute no-no, but infidels, that's an open topic. Meanwhile Romans gave different punishments for the same crimes to citizens and non-citizens.

So, the question would partially where can one reasonably judge them by some higher moral standard, and where is it local cultural differences. That question of the moral community, like the 40k Imperial creed which excludes the Mutant and Zeno from moral situation.
And even then, practicalities within the Imperium do affect who ends up on the pointy end of moral judgement. While it is common for the "central" religious authority to send missionaries to odd, usually primitive world and teach them to be more culturally and religiously close to Imperial mainstream, often with more or less clear "or else", on the other hand they do understand it to be very unwise to try that with the worlds of Adeptus Mechanicus and Astartes homeworlds, even though their doctrine differs from the mainstream on some rather important points that would be enough to consider some random backwater people heretics, just because it is a very bad idea to piss them off.

Imperium by the way is also an example of a polity that is willing to live with some level of warfare between member polities as long as it doesn't escalate too much (noble families besieging cities with their armies occasionally is fine, global thermonuclear warfare or planetary invasions, that usually is a step too far), it's not anywhere too important and it doesn't involve any of the big no-nos like not paying imperial taxes or summoning daemons for support.
The Federation may need some idea also.

it might be time for me to return to some ideas property. Which I unfortunately don't have time to do tonight.
Depends on its level of cultural homogeneity. If it's closer to USA or EU, it may be able to agree or at least compromise on all things significant enough to raise tempers. If it's closer to 40k Imperium, then definitely.
 

JagerIV

Well-known member
Exactly, it's one of the things that most modern westerners aren't comfortable discussing and doubly so, taking conclusions from - not all the moral systems of the world are absolutely and unconditionally universalist like the current western ones insists on being.

Historically it's not that uncommon for moral and legal system to consider crimes more lightly or not crimes at all if done to foreigners or other outsiders, especially ones of more ethno-culturally distant kinds. Say, islamists consider enslaving other Muslims an absolute no-no, but infidels, that's an open topic. Meanwhile Romans gave different punishments for the same crimes to citizens and non-citizens.

Hm, I think you may be misunderstanding what I'm saying: a universal moral system means everyone is subject to it, regardless of whether they themselves subscribe to it: A large federation to exist probably does have to have some fairly universalist moral claims: the Federation as the final mortal arbiter of morality vs immorality, with a moral duty to punish the immorality.

I think you can however have people treated differently within a universal moral system. Maybe the correct word there is real morality, rather than universal. Allows a little bit narrowing to real Human Morality: ants or aliens may have different moral systems that are correct for them, but not particularly relevant to this discussion.

And even then, practicalities within the Imperium do affect who ends up on the pointy end of moral judgement. While it is common for the "central" religious authority to send missionaries to odd, usually primitive world and teach them to be more culturally and religiously close to Imperial mainstream, often with more or less clear "or else", on the other hand they do understand it to be very unwise to try that with the worlds of Adeptus Mechanicus and Astartes homeworlds, even though their doctrine differs from the mainstream on some rather important points that would be enough to consider some random backwater people heretics, just because it is a very bad idea to piss them off.

Practicality does always get involved to some degree. Especially at the higher levels: Federation might only really get involved in some local property dispute if some fundamental principle comes under question (otherwise some lower court or other means should resolve it) When the US and China get into a dispute, practical decision-making may dominate, though that does also involve the maintaince of moral credibility: after all, the Ukraine situation is largely argued on moral grounds, though it definitely helps that practical concerns line up a lot too.

Imperium by the way is also an example of a polity that is willing to live with some level of warfare between member polities as long as it doesn't escalate too much (noble families besieging cities with their armies occasionally is fine, global thermonuclear warfare or planetary invasions, that usually is a step too far), it's not anywhere too important and it doesn't involve any of the big no-nos like not paying imperial taxes or summoning daemons for support.

Depends on its level of cultural homogeneity. If it's closer to USA or EU, it may be able to agree or at least compromise on all things significant enough to raise tempers. If it's closer to 40k Imperium, then definitely.

This isn't something I think can be cleanly reduced to a universal principle: a principle of subsidiary suggests problems should be solved as low as possible. This keeps it as close to those who know the issue, and also ideally keeps problems localized: a $100,000 dollars of damage from arson ideally gets solved as a local issue, ideally costing something around $100,000 to fix, and should not be escalated up to a thermonuclear war.

How its resolved seem much more a best practice question than a principle question. Than the guilty should pay and innocent protected, there seems a lot of administrative/cultural concerns: whether a jury of piers determines the innocent/guilt, or a judge, is less clear.

Likewise, whether the guilty are punished by District police going after someone, or the guilty declared outlaw by a district court and killed by rival clan militia seems less a principle question than local conditions. Conflicts are part of life.

This would be part of the balancing act though of the multiple levels:

Humanity: The responsibly to look after humanity as a whole: likewise primarily guarding against a great power dominating. That "humanity interest" isn't made identical to "China's interest" or "America's Interest".

Great Powers: managing these, guarding their independence and security, from above or below.

Powers: Make sure these stay good, don't dominate those below them, or are unjustly crushed.

Individuals/families: people's health, and making sure individuals aren't overly raised over others nor crushed by those above them.

All of levels have rights and responsiblities that balance and play against each other.
 
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Marduk

Well-known member
Moderator
Staff Member
Hm, I think you may be misunderstanding what I'm saying: a universal moral system means everyone is subject to it, regardless of whether they themselves subscribe to it: A large federation to exist probably does have to have some fairly universalist moral claims: the Federation as the final mortal arbiter of morality vs immorality, with a moral duty to punish the immorality.

I think you can however have people treated differently within a universal moral system. Maybe the correct word there is real morality, rather than universal. Allows a little bit narrowing to real Human Morality: ants or aliens may have different moral systems that are correct for them, but not particularly relevant to this discussion.
Well then, that means like we got something set out. Whatever moral system Federation has, it's closer to the British Empire and will go Charles Napier if conflicts arise, rather than modern western countries trying to explain, beg and bribe, and in turn will eventually enforce some level of cultural homogeneity on everyone in its reach whether they like it or not. Definitely helps with all the edge cases and sets out how interactions with wannabe splitters\secessionists\other cheeky tricks would work.

Practicality does always get involved to some degree. Especially at the higher levels: Federation might only really get involved in some local property dispute if some fundamental principle comes under question (otherwise some lower court or other means should resolve it) When the US and China get into a dispute, practical decision-making may dominate, though that does also involve the maintaince of moral credibility: after all, the Ukraine situation is largely argued on moral grounds, though it definitely helps that practical concerns line up a lot too.
Modern western political culture and media *really* love their moral arguments beyond all reason, and consider arguing on national interests something at minimum morally questionable, so that fits the public discourse. But if you dig, you see very different arguments happening in different circles, in this case usually with similar, if not more radical conclusions, though there they are consistent since well before Obama's reset.


This isn't something I think can be cleanly reduced to a universal principle: a principle of subsidiary suggests problems should be solved as low as possible. This keeps it as close to those who know the issue, and also ideally keeps problems localized: a $100,000 dollars of damage from arson ideally gets solved as a local issue, ideally costing something around $100,000 to fix, and should not be escalated up to a thermonuclear war.

How its resolved seem much more a best practice question than a principle question. Than the guilty should pay and innocent protected, there seems a lot of administrative/cultural concerns: whether a jury of piers determines the innocent/guilt, or a judge, is less clear.

Likewise, whether the guilty are punished by District police going after someone, or the guilty declared outlaw by a district court and killed by rival clan militia seems less a principle question than local conditions. Conflicts are part of life.

This would be part of the balancing act though of the multiple levels:

Humanity: The responsibly to look after humanity as a whole: likewise primarily guarding against a great power dominating. That "humanity interest" isn't made identical to "China's interest" or "America's Interest".

Great Powers: managing these, guarding their independence and security, from above or below.

Powers: Make sure these stay good, don't dominate those below them, or are unjustly crushed.

Individuals/families: people's health, and making sure individuals aren't overly raised over others nor crushed by those above them.

All of levels have rights and responsiblities that balance and play against each other.
That sound like one hell of a balancing act. The moment power\great power game gets to spicy, this goes full League of Nations\UN.
 

JagerIV

Well-known member
Well then, that means like we got something set out. Whatever moral system Federation has, it's closer to the British Empire and will go Charles Napier if conflicts arise, rather than modern western countries trying to explain, beg and bribe, and in turn will eventually enforce some level of cultural homogeneity on everyone in its reach whether they like it or not. Definitely helps with all the edge cases and sets out how interactions with wannabe splitters\secessionists\other cheeky tricks would work.

Well, it is a state, not an Alliance. At the very least full participation requires meeting minimal standards. I don't think the system breaks down if some carve out for hunter gather tribes exists for example, but they probably shouldn't have all that much sway either.

Obviously this is easier to effect against the weird and powerless, rather than the satanic and powerful, of course.

Modern western political culture and media *really* love their moral arguments beyond all reason, and consider arguing on national interests something at minimum morally questionable, so that fits the public discourse. But if you dig, you see very different arguments happening in different circles, in this case usually with similar, if not more radical conclusions, though there they are consistent since well before Obama's reset.

Hm, I'm not sure if they're making strong non-moral arguments without specifics.

That sound like one hell of a balancing act. The moment power\great power game gets to spicy, this goes full League of Nations\UN.

I mean, a giant government is always going to be such. Still, thinking of some principles now. As laid out for Federation

1) Humanity is one species, with a recent common heritage and common nature.

Therefore, humanity has a unified moral nature and duty to the species as a whole. Thus, the Federation legitimacy is grounded in a common human cause that the Federation can defend and human law they can uphold. The existence of the Federation is justified, but also made dependent upon its mandate of heaven: it needs to defend its mandates, lest its legitimacy is undermined. By making this explicit, this provides at least a moral two way street.

2) Natural Law and morality rests on three pillars.

a) Virtue: Understood broadly as a drive to Good humans, including health. Self Cultivation.
b) Duty: Most relevant in taxes being moral, among other things. Primarily taxes for the issue of property taxes.
c) Industry: A mixture of a duty to be good stewards, including increase of production (humanity nature is to cultivate), and to see duty and virtue manifested in good ends.

you then have a 4th acknowledgement of humans:

d) Indulgence: humans have some weaknesses, and thus need some leeway, "fun".

Therefore, in regards to property, the big part is Duty of setting reasonable taxes. Mostly, how it balances between things. If the three moral pillars are roughly equivalent, then effort would be divided roughly as that:

a) Virtue: Individual well being, can't be claimed. 30%
b) Duty: Taxes. roughly 30% claim.
c) Industry: May be government revenue, maybe not. Ideally not though: 30%
d) Indulgence: 10%.

Therefore, duty places overall tax rate at 30%. This is a limit on how much people can be abused/oppressed. Or, at least 40% can go to private use, depending upon how that 30% to industry is used. It also outlines a rough fudge for outcome based regard: 2/3 morality, 1/3 consequence.

3) Subsidiarity: Closer relation grants greater claim and responsibility.

One's first duty and greatest responsibility is the self. One has the greatest right to oneself and responsibility for oneself. None can reasonably have more rights and freedoms than to oneself. The individual has the most freedom to do what he wills as he wills.

Therefore, taxes and normal obligations cannot exceed 40%, an individual may own property Fee simple with minimal restriction.

The next greatest duty is to family, those related by blood and household. A family can enforce many, but fewer, rights and responsibilities than an individual may upon themselves. As a crude example, the family may quite justly command which room a child sleeps in, but to mandate every detail of organization in the child's room feels a clear tyranny.

Moral intuitions show that even a child in a family deserves some autonomy from the family will.

Family property likewise cannot be so tightly owned or disposed of, it must be used with at least the family good in mind, if not with active family participation: a father can morally dispose of and purchase a new computer, especially a personal one, without immense concern to family well being. Selling the family house one is obligated at the very least heavily consider the family general welfare when making the decision, and likely has some obligation to at least consult with the wife on such decisions. Family property is thus not properly considered to be so tightly held or so freely handed off, but to be treated as some degree of community property.

The clan likewise has some claims to an individual, but less than that individuals immediate family. If one's nephew was starving, it would be immoral to let him starve, but one does not have an obligation to feed one's nephew over their own children, and represents some failure of one's brother's duties if it falls on you to keep his son alive.

The justness or unjustness of the failure would also further change the obligations. If the Nephew is hungry because your bother died, to let the children of your dead brother die would be a grave failing of familiar obligations.

If the nephew is hungry because your brother drinks his wages, the base problem is not that the nephew is hungry, but that your brother is unvirtuous and immoral, failing in duties one could reasonably expect him to perform.

As with family, is the government.

Currently I imagine the federation with 5 territorial governments, say locality (level 1) to Federation (level 5). So, in a fully developed area each piece of land and the people there have 5 different governments with claims upon them. By Subsidiarity, taking the example of family, the degree of authority and demands the higher governments can make are less than lower levels.

To take as an example from the conscription thread, a level 3 government (say Poland scale) may have a right to implement conscription, but the level 4 (say EU scale) and level 5 cannot. Perhaps the Federation has no conscription authority (so Federal Forces have to be volunteer). The EU might not have direct conscription authority, but can demand forces be provided: the EU might not have the authority to send its own bureaucracies to conscript individual poles, but might have the authority to demand 300,000 troops, which may require Poland to implement conscription to meet obligations. Those are some very tought to parse issues I haven't given nearly enough thought to.

More concretely would be an idea of taxation division: local governments have higher Taxation rights.

I'm currently liking Odd numbers: Federation has a 1%, EU has 3%, Poland 5%, Districts 7%, locality 9%. 25%, which is roughly around that 30% discussed earlier. Leaving another 5% to family, which is good.

This provides protection to lower levels against excessive centralization, such as large poor areas looting rich areas: a rich area in a sea of poverty, because the level of looting the poor majority can enforce is limited to non-ruinous levels. This creates space for these large governments to function even over large income variations.

It also brings a reasonable balance of power between the levels. Say you had 12 great powers: with the tax thresholds, the Federation is, well, 12x bigger than any one great power if equally distributed in power (unlikely, of course). One great power directly challenging the Federation is thus not likely to go well for the great power. But, if a mere 4 of them disagreed on something, 30% roughly, then they are equal in power, and the Federation would likely need to back down. One great power can be screwed over without too much risk, 30% can't.

But, that again only holds if this is an issue the rest of the great powers are neutral on. If its not something they're neutral on, and may take a side for or against the Federation, you need a 50/50 balance at least of pro Federation vs Anti Federation great powers. So, by raw financial power you get something like a need for at least 50% support, and less than 30% in opposition. Which is a reasonable area to build consensus in. And the taxing authority limits limits the degree such thing can reasonably spiral into an arms race, which is also a poor outcome for the internals.

You have even tighter balances of power, at least in funding on the lower levels: EU with a 3% taxing authority individually has more income than any one member government, but if a decision annoys more than 60%, the EU is the poorer party. And if the Federation supports Poland, well, the Federation has more funding overall than the EU. The Federation plus subsidary powers is a tough combination, classic high low vs middle, with power being fairly distributed so one of those can't just trivially override another level.

edit: this may be a bit long and ramby, I'll see if I can get time to tighten this up a bit.
 
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Marduk

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Well, it is a state, not an Alliance. At the very least full participation requires meeting minimal standards. I don't think the system breaks down if some carve out for hunter gather tribes exists for example, but they probably shouldn't have all that much sway either.

Obviously this is easier to effect against the weird and powerless, rather than the satanic and powerful, of course.
Full participation of course being something that would particularly interest large groups that can gain a lot of influence over the whole thing thanks to said full participation. Meanwhile relatively tiny groups, which in this scale will still include many millions, may be more interested in getting special, beneficial carve-outs.

Hm, I'm not sure if they're making strong non-moral arguments without specifics.
This is one pretty basic example.
This is one basic example, referring, among other things, to maintaining the status quo of international norms that the USA generally supports and considers beneficial to its interests, norms which Russia's actions violate, and if left to be violated with impunity, would encourage others to violate them.
Other refer to simple fact of Russia and USA being rival, if not hostile powers, a state of affairs that is really hard to question and is unlikely to change anytime soon, and as such, Russia failing in its actions, as described here, before the war, is in America's interest.

And yet others mention that as Russia loses its military power, credibility and economic influence in Ukraine, US position in any future geopolitical rivalry with China gets better, as the ability of Russia to mount an effective distraction in Europe or provide meaningful support to China in other ways gets ground away, allowing USA to focus more effort and attention on China, without needing to consider as many possible alternative scenarios under the title "but what will Russia do in the meantime?", if Russia loses ability to do much at all.


As i would sum it up in most concise terms, Russia's attempt to rebuild a great power status by hook or by crook successfully would in no way be a good thing from US perspective, as it is no secret how would Russia wield such influence (we can see things like vote records in UNSC), and it definitely would not be in support of US global policy.
On the other hand Russia failing in this means loss of influence, the harder, the bigger such loss, which again, is more often than not at odds with US global policy.
Is it in USA's interest for its rival powers to have more, or less global influence?
And the circumstances in Ukraine are such that USA and its allies can inflict significant loss of power and influence on Russia at an exceptionally efficient cost-effect ratio.
Wasting such an excellent opportunity to harm a rival power would be unforgivable.

I mean, a giant government is always going to be such. Still, thinking of some principles now. As laid out for Federation

1) Humanity is one species, with a recent common heritage and common nature.

Therefore, humanity has a unified moral nature and duty to the species as a whole. Thus, the Federation legitimacy is grounded in a common human cause that the Federation can defend and human law they can uphold. The existence of the Federation is justified, but also made dependent upon its mandate of heaven: it needs to defend its mandates, lest its legitimacy is undermined. By making this explicit, this provides at least a moral two way street.
Is it at least a "close enough" factual state of humanity, or is it more of an aspirational statement of the Federation, in the same way that many IRL states claim loudly to be one nation with shared values and common cause, while de facto they clearly aren't and a variety of separatist movements bide their time in every corner?

2) Natural Law and morality rests on three pillars.

a) Virtue: Understood broadly as a drive to Good humans, including health. Self Cultivation.
b) Duty: Most relevant in taxes being moral, among other things. Primarily taxes for the issue of property taxes.
c) Industry: A mixture of a duty to be good stewards, including increase of production (humanity nature is to cultivate), and to see duty and virtue manifested in good ends.

you then have a 4th acknowledgement of humans:

d) Indulgence: humans have some weaknesses, and thus need some leeway, "fun".

Therefore, in regards to property, the big part is Duty of setting reasonable taxes. Mostly, how it balances between things. If the three moral pillars are roughly equivalent, then effort would be divided roughly as that:

a) Virtue: Individual well being, can't be claimed. 30%
b) Duty: Taxes. roughly 30% claim.
c) Industry: May be government revenue, maybe not. Ideally not though: 30%
d) Indulgence: 10%.

Therefore, duty places overall tax rate at 30%. This is a limit on how much people can be abused/oppressed. Or, at least 40% can go to private use, depending upon how that 30% to industry is used. It also outlines a rough fudge for outcome based regard: 2/3 morality, 1/3 consequence.

3) Subsidiarity: Closer relation grants greater claim and responsibility.

One's first duty and greatest responsibility is the self. One has the greatest right to oneself and responsibility for oneself. None can reasonably have more rights and freedoms than to oneself. The individual has the most freedom to do what he wills as he wills.

Therefore, taxes and normal obligations cannot exceed 40%, an individual may own property Fee simple with minimal restriction.

The next greatest duty is to family, those related by blood and household. A family can enforce many, but fewer, rights and responsibilities than an individual may upon themselves. As a crude example, the family may quite justly command which room a child sleeps in, but to mandate every detail of organization in the child's room feels a clear tyranny.

Moral intuitions show that even a child in a family deserves some autonomy from the family will.

Family property likewise cannot be so tightly owned or disposed of, it must be used with at least the family good in mind, if not with active family participation: a father can morally dispose of and purchase a new computer, especially a personal one, without immense concern to family well being. Selling the family house one is obligated at the very least heavily consider the family general welfare when making the decision, and likely has some obligation to at least consult with the wife on such decisions. Family property is thus not properly considered to be so tightly held or so freely handed off, but to be treated as some degree of community property.

The clan likewise has some claims to an individual, but less than that individuals immediate family. If one's nephew was starving, it would be immoral to let him starve, but one does not have an obligation to feed one's nephew over their own children, and represents some failure of one's brother's duties if it falls on you to keep his son alive.

The justness or unjustness of the failure would also further change the obligations. If the Nephew is hungry because your bother died, to let the children of your dead brother die would be a grave failing of familiar obligations.

If the nephew is hungry because your brother drinks his wages, the base problem is not that the nephew is hungry, but that your brother is unvirtuous and immoral, failing in duties one could reasonably expect him to perform.
So far so good.

As with family, is the government.

Currently I imagine the federation with 5 territorial governments, say locality (level 1) to Federation (level 5). So, in a fully developed area each piece of land and the people there have 5 different governments with claims upon them. By Subsidiarity, taking the example of family, the degree of authority and demands the higher governments can make are less than lower levels.

To take as an example from the conscription thread, a level 3 government (say Poland scale) may have a right to implement conscription, but the level 4 (say EU scale) and level 5 cannot. Perhaps the Federation has no conscription authority (so Federal Forces have to be volunteer). The EU might not have direct conscription authority, but can demand forces be provided: the EU might not have the authority to send its own bureaucracies to conscript individual poles, but might have the authority to demand 300,000 troops, which may require Poland to implement conscription to meet obligations. Those are some very tought to parse issues I haven't given nearly enough thought to.
Yeah, that does require more thought, i think in terms of restrictions or treaties on the specificity of demands. Becaue this way, it would be no different how conscription in Russia works with "partial mobilization" - the federal government doesn't conscript people technically, just sends requests to provide x amount of manpower to local administrations, and if x is set high enough, there is no other way to meet it than to conscript people, and there is no right for the lower scale government to refuse, in the end still giving the higher scale government total power.

Even a 40k system of set tithes and treaties would be more balancing between the local and imperial power - a world has a set tithe, usually based on the world's capabilities and what kind of support is it best suited to provide, which may or may not include military forces, possibly a specific kind, and as long as the world meets the tithe, any support beyond that is up for further negotiation.

And the other option is some NATO inspired system, where all polities of relevant scale are required to maintain certain forces and\or funding and provide them to the higher command in certain circumstances.
More concretely would be an idea of taxation division: local governments have higher Taxation rights.

I'm currently liking Odd numbers: Federation has a 1%, EU has 3%, Poland 5%, Districts 7%, locality 9%. 25%, which is roughly around that 30% discussed earlier. Leaving another 5% to family, which is good.

This provides protection to lower levels against excessive centralization, such as large poor areas looting rich areas: a rich area in a sea of poverty, because the level of looting the poor majority can enforce is limited to non-ruinous levels. This creates space for these large governments to function even over large income variations.
The problem here is that this is cart going before the horse - right to tax should be based on the level of responsibility ascribed or taken up by each level of government, otherwise extremely inefficient, medieval style quarrels over things like funding armed forces or transport infrastructure will be natural. For example, things like airports or armed forces technically can be funded at the level of locality, and in your suggestion it gets the most tax money, but at the same time this is going to result in overall very unoptimal and poorly thought out network of airports and armed forces, that the EU level could make one clearly superior to with half the funding, but it won't, because it gets only a small portion of overall taxation while having lots of responsibilities. Meanwhile the Federation level may turn into a bunch of absolutely useless bureaucrats specializing in hosting fancy parties and arguing for why one of the lower levels should rightfully handle anything anyone requests from them.

It also brings a reasonable balance of power between the levels. Say you had 12 great powers: with the tax thresholds, the Federation is, well, 12x bigger than any one great power if equally distributed in power (unlikely, of course). One great power directly challenging the Federation is thus not likely to go well for the great power. But, if a mere 4 of them disagreed on something, 30% roughly, then they are equal in power, and the Federation would likely need to back down. One great power can be screwed over without too much risk, 30% can't.
It also risks the situation getting yet again downright medieval in terms of complexity, pettiness and chaos of politics. Some Federation or EU level Machiavelli grade politician will say, why bother challenging 4 great powers, when you can do the equivalent of what bribing major nobles was in feudal polities, and give some favors to a few less happy provinces of 2 of these great powers to put them into turmoil, and then crack down on just the other 2 while they are off the table, busy with own problems.

But, that again only holds if this is an issue the rest of the great powers are neutral on. If its not something they're neutral on, and may take a side for or against the Federation, you need a 50/50 balance at least of pro Federation vs Anti Federation great powers. So, by raw financial power you get something like a need for at least 50% support, and less than 30% in opposition. Which is a reasonable area to build consensus in. And the taxing authority limits limits the degree such thing can reasonably spiral into an arms race, which is also a poor outcome for the internals.

You have even tighter balances of power, at least in funding on the lower levels: EU with a 3% taxing authority individually has more income than any one member government, but if a decision annoys more than 60%, the EU is the poorer party. And if the Federation supports Poland, well, the Federation has more funding overall than the EU. The Federation plus subsidary powers is a tough combination, classic high low vs middle, with power being fairly distributed so one of those can't just trivially override another level.

edit: this may be a bit long and ramby, I'll see if I can get time to tighten this up a bit.
But if you want to artificially limit the power of higher level governments, then that just introduces a massive field of instability. Some of the EU scale polities may have subjects who barely stand each other and so follow the maximum taxation rules with lawyer's scrutiny.
However, some others, with more cohesive populations, will voluntarily reallocate funds between their various levels in more optimized ways, which in long term may let them punch significantly above their weight, both in literal and figurative ways. In this scenario, it could mean that while the Federation has 12 great powers, the most optimally organized 3 of them, two in alliance and one neutral towards the two, hold 60% of military power, including 80% majority of the first rate strategic weapons, and 95% of interplanetary expeditionary forces, throwing all the usual calculations of balance out of the window.
 

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