That may need to be demonstrated rationally to convince you but it does not need to be demonstrated rationally to hold true.

A libertarian is still a libertarian regardless of what convinces him to defend the non-aggression principle.

“The thing is that just because an individual has the ability to control themselves it does not then create a moral right to continue to do so without others controlling you.”

It is one thing to make such a statement, however it is an entirely different thing to make such a statement without falling into self-contradiction. A plain and simple fact becomes clear, if you stop to consider the presuppositions involved in making such a proposition as you have made. It is this: that in making such a proposition, you yourself have presumed that you have a right to make such an argument. You presume you have a right to exclusive control of your own body. You presume that you have the very best claim to the right to control your body. In short, you presume you are the rightful owner of yourself. Furthermore, you demonstrate a preference for self-ownership as do all who ever make an argument.

You cannot make an argument without presupposing self-ownership both of yourself and of those who you presume to debate an issue with. Furthermore, you presume that both you and the person you engage in discourse are both interested in determining the truth, and that whatever truth you arrive at, cannot be in contradiction with the presuppositions of the very act of argumentation itself.

Therefore, since no one can actually argue that people do not have a morally justified right to self-ownership without falling into contradiction, the libertarian self-ownership ethic is therefore indisputable, and universally valid. That’s all Kinsella is saying. I just worded it up a little bit.

“Only conventions create the guidelines for what acts are legitimate or not.”

But this is false. In order to communicate, people need language. This is not conventional, it’s a plain and indisputable fact demonstrated by reason. It is only the particular language that is the convention. Similarly, to achieve the goal of human cooperation and peaceful coexistence, with the possibility of avoiding conflict over scarce and valuable resources, a libertarian ethic is needed. This, as well is not conventional it is a fact again demonstrated by reason. All other non-libertarian ethics, if followed to the letter, result in either the extinction of the human race, or other problems that necessarily encourage conflict rather than allow for its avoidance. ONLY the libertarian ethic fulfills the goal of allowing for peace and justice.

“I just don’t think there is any need for the concept of self-ownership anyway even if it were coherent.”

Regardless of what you claim to think, or what you do think, your actions demonstrate that you, in fact very clearly value the concept of self-ownership. Your very act of debating the question demonstrates this indisputably. To demonstrate a clear lack of respect for the concept of self-ownership, you would need to act criminally, encroaching on other’s personal borders, aggressing in various manners like a wild animal. At that point, it would be clear that you had no regard for self-ownership and society could be deemed quite justified in putting you out of both yours and its misery.

“If X attempts to control Y without Y giving either implicit or explicit consent then Y is going to attempt to defend himself and the only way that X is going to be prevented from attempting to control Y is by ethical norms which themselves can only be conventional. You cannot derive an ought from an is.”

You miss a crucial point, which is that Y is also entirely justified by human reason in defending himself against the aggression of X. It is not simply a convention. You cannot derive an ought from an is, but you can show an act to be objectively justified or not. Justice is a science.

“We need to know what acts are just or unjust.”

Yes we do indeed. And the starting point of this is property. Justice and property are interdependent. The concept of justice demands the existence of property, and property implies justice.

“The category mistake is the application of ownership here and the meta-ethical and epistemological mistake is thinking that you can derive an ought from an is.”

Without the concept of property ownership, justice is meaningless.

“The cut off point then becomes conventional, yes?”

The cutoff point is conventional yes, the fact that there is a cutoff point is not. It is important to realize that in ethics there are principles which are necessarily true, and then there are empirical matters which must be weighed in the execution of justice. People cannot execute justice perfectly, but the principles of justice are perfectible.

“I mean voluntary communities in a free society can live by whatever rules that those individuals consent to, but these rules do not have to be even spoken never mind written in contracts. Indeed contracts need the convention of promise keeping in order to be kept. Without that contracts would be worthless.”

The key is consent and respect for property. That is the essence of a libertarian and just community. The principle is firm, conventions as to what people consent to are flexible according to preferences.

“Self-ownership implies that there is a distinction between a person and his body. Is this distinction a cartesian one between mind and body? It implies no such thing. Are you invoking the cartesian paradigm every time you feel proud of yourself.”

In this context self ownership means nothing more than having the best claim to have exclusive control over one’s own body. It does not imply the usual owner-owned relationship where one can alienate his body and sell it.
“Live Free”

Even this simple statement demonstrates an implicit preference for self and private property ownership and justice.

I absolutly agree. I think this is a very important point, sadly overlooked by Block and Whitehead and other pro-choice libertarian theorists for years. Positive obligations are generellay recognized in the case of “duty founded on creation of peril”. As Williamson Evers puts it: “The third sort of legal duty that is now enforced by the criminal justice process is duty founded on creation of peril. The criminal law punishes persons who put into motion some force that invades individual rights and who then neglect to halt the force which they originally set in What is really being punished is the bringing forth of an emergency, as when the pilot of a passenger airplane bails out on a whim, leaving the passengers to crash. Returning to the idea of causality and its central role in the law, we can see that the creator of the peril has effectively committed an invasive act. If he neglects to halt or mitigate the force or effect of that act, then he can rightly be held responsible. A person is culpable who omits to halt a force which he originally put in motion. If, for example, a person accidentally starts a fire in a building, then escapes the building, but sees others who could be rescued still in the building, it is his duty to try to aid them. While the accidental arsonist created the peril whicl served as an instrument for invading his victim’s rights, the duty of the perpetrator to aid the imperiled in such cases is to be distinguished from a more generalized duty that is sometimes advanced, namely, a duty of everyone to aid the imperiled.”

Or Posner, quoted here: “Thomson is right that we don’t force people to donate kidneys to strangers, or even to family members. But normally the potential donor is not responsible for the condition that he is asked to alleviate, in the way that a woman (unless she has been raped) is responsible, although only in part, for the fact that she is pregnant. The difference in evidentiary difficulty between asking who hit X and asking who failed to save X is a strong practical reason against liability for failing to be a good Samaritan. So although bystanders are not required to rescue persons in distress, someone who creates the danger, even if nontortiously, may be required to attempt rescue, and perhaps that is the proper analogy to the pregnant woman who wants to terminate her pregnancy.”

Beckwith and Thomas, in the JLS, relate this “duty founded on creation of peril” with pregnancy: For example, according to the prima facie case for negligence, one is liable for negligence if one (1) has a duty, (2) breached a duty, and (3) caused harm as a result of breaching the duty. One could argue against McDonagh in the following way: Since pregnancy is a foreseeable result of unprotected sex, and since for McDonagh a fetus is a human person, therefore, one who engages in sex has a duty to engage in due care so as not to bring into existence persons whose death due to abortion is foreseeable.

I think Feser gets right too: “it isn’t clear how it would justify any abortion other than in the case of pregnancy resulting from rape, with which the kidnapping by the violinist’s admirers is analogous. Surely a pregnancy resulting from consensual intercourseÑwhich, as everyone knows, has a chance of resulting in pregnancy even when contraception is usedÑis not analogous to Thomson’s example.”

See also Doris Gordon “Abortion and Thomson’s Violinist: Unplugging a Bad Analogy”.

Very briefly, the argument that justifies the obligations of parents to their children borrows from both the tort/crime and the contract models. In performing acts of procreation, just as in performing any other action, the parents are responsible for the consequences should those acts create rights in others (the defense of ignorance will no more avail here than in any other tort case). We are responsible, that is, for the upshots of the actions we voluntarily perform. Of course, in many cases of begetting-one would hope in most-the consequences are not only voluntarily but intentionally brought about as well. Thus the contractual model is more appropriate here. But whether children are willingly or only reluctantly brought into being, the special rights they hold against those responsible for creating them are every bit as real as the special rights of tort victims or contractors. The difficulty here, however, is that there is no status quo, as in the tort case, or no agreed upon terms, as in the contract case, to aid in delineating the content of these rights. As a result, such ideas as “custom” or “community standards” enter, with all their attendant problems, not only of verification but of justification as well.

We’ve taken a few turns and tangents along the way here, as you are telling me I have said things which I don’t recall ever crossing my mind. So let me just quote us both a bit to get back on track (correct me if you think I’m out of context):

You said something with this in it: “… we can simply state that deliberately and voluntarily creating a body…” to which I responded with something that included this: “…that may in fact be entirely void of such meaning and intent”. In response to this, you are claiming that I said “that sex (as a category) is ENTIRELY devoid of intent to procreate.” And you conclude that I am using some kind of fallacy. I think rather you got caught up in a fallacy in your original proposition, which was that we can state that people necessarily deliberately create a body (a new baby). My answer was that getting pregnant is not always deliberate, which you were clearly suggesting it was. Furthermore, since pregnancy is not always intentional, nothing of your argument follows. That’s all. The rest of your objections seem to reflect a communication problem between us as I cannot see how they relate to my arguments.

you claimed that sex (as a category) is ENTIRELY devoid of intent to procreate. I objected to that – now you’re trying to tell me that I claimed that sex is entirely about procrecation. Which I never did.

This is a logical fallacy, sorry. Quantifiers do not negate this way. I’ll pretty much ignore the rest of your counter-argument as it depends from that fallacy.

In any case, it does not matter if something is an undesireable consequence of some act – if a person knowingly engages in this act to gain some other benefit he STILL intends to accept the undesireable consequences.

Claiming otherwise would make a nice defense for someone discharging a gun at you – he didn’t intend to hit you, as he only intended to enjoy the boom. Like, yeah.

“Excuse me, but how did you ever come to a conclusion that act of human procreation can be entirely devoid of meaning and intent to create a conscious human being and endow this being with a body?”

There is no question that people know of the possibility of pregnancy as a result of sex. However, if you are suggesting that most people have sex even usually for the purpose of procreation, I have some news for you. Most of the time people have sex with the hope that pregnancy will not result. To presume to know that people have children only when they intend to and never by accident is quite something. This would imply that people have sex only near the approximate rate at which they have children. I don’t think you’re being serious.

Furthermore, even in the impossible event that we could know with certainty in every case that all people who ever had children did so by pure intention, it is an impossible leap to conclude that it follows that there is intent to give over ownership of the child to its self or anyone else. And the question must be answered and the answer must be justified, when the parent asks us: what gives anyone a better claim to the child than they have when they did not intend to gift the child to anyone, including the child. Kinsella answers this and shows this answer is justifiable. The child himself can and always will eventually demonstrate through his own actions a better title to his body than his parents have over his body. What’s the problem?

You mean to suggest that by decree we can give meaning and intent to an act that may in fact be entirely void of such meaning and intent?

Excuse me, but how did you ever come to a conclusion that act of human procreation can be entirely devoid of meaning and intent to create a conscious human being and endow this being with a body?

As for “decreeing” something – the set of rules of what is just and what is not just is not set in stone tablets: we can (and should) seek to improve it if a logical problem arises or if consequences of the reasoining from these rules yield a set of clearly undesireable outcomes.

The current set of rules does not really address emergence of consciousness, and does not have embedded criteria for differentiating between objects (which can be posessed) and subjects (which can have property rights).

Let me reiterate my position: applying homesteading principle to embodiment of conscious beings is not logically correct, and creates a lot of seriously strange results when applied in real (i.e. “borderline”) test cases.

Application of the idea that ownership is determined by strength of some vague “objective link” is also totally illogical because the strength of the “objective link” can change, while rights are meant to be immutable until voluntarily reassigned.

Hoppe (and Stephan, after him) confused the process of adjudication of challenged posession (which must by necessity rely on incomplete information, and thus can work only probabilistically) with the logical structure of the system of property rights which does not admit any vagueness. You either own something or not.

Empathy and the Source of Rights:
http://blog.mises.org/archives/005573.asp

I might add that the only reason i support the eviction stance is because mother to surrogate mother fetal transfers are not widespread and still experimental, which will invalidate that position because one must remove others with the least amount of violence. Until then, I think justice would be to leave it up to local communities revolving around the eviction stance.

As usual, what you write provokes me to think (and, occasionally, to scream at you). I admired your piece on property, “How We Come to Own Ourselves”. It provoked me to ask (an old question) — whether a theory must be able to supply an answer to every question. Whenever a theory of something is produced, it must be the result of considering a limited set of circumstances. So, Newtonian or Einsteinian physics, for example, does not (cannot?) produce an answer to the question, who will win the next election. Maybe, then, there are some questions, like who owns a baby, that can’t easily be squeezed into libertarian theory and have to be regarded as special cases or logical givens, unless you engage in some sort of acrobatic reasoning. Maybe the problem arises because the world is considered to be divided into 2 classes of things — those that are owned and those that are not, and this viewpoint produces a Gödelian-like paradox, which arose because the universe of mathematical/logical theorems was divided into 2 classes — true and false.

Just as the special case of black box radiation led to the overthrow of Newtonian physics, and Gödel’s theorem led to an understanding of logical incompleteness in mathematics, maybe the baby question will some day lead to the overthrow of libertarian theory, which will then be regarded as a limiting approximation to a new (better?) theory.

It’s simply invalid to argue that “asserting the will proves self ownership” or any other propositions of self-ownership in this article. These are not arguments, they are abstract (I know you hate meta arguments, but it has to happen) assumptions posing as real “things”.

Action shows a physical connection between mind and body, it demonstrates willfullness, it displays choice and ranking of alternatives as a given (or as Mises argued: we know these things are true because we are men, and we need nothing else to argue that other people share these same characteristics), but it never could be honestly construed as a general-purpose morality for structuring society.

Thanks Adem. What essay are you talking about though, other than this article itself? Daddy’s confused.

Unfortunately, I think your solution is also contrived. How many boat owners negligently or recklessly invite someone onto their ship? Say what you will, but some people do not intend to get pregnant, although they know it is a risk. That’s recklessness, at worst.

I’m trying real hard to think of an analogy where the owner recklessly “invites” someone onto their property, but can’t come up with one. I don’t think the concept of “invite” makes any sense outside intentional, or possibly, in some select instances, knowing conduct.

My view is that you are responsible not really becuase of an invitation (that was an analogy), but because, as in the push-in-the-lake scenario, you *caused* this human-with-needs to exist. Your voluntary action–wheter you really “want” to get pregnat or not–is the cause of the position of peril a child find himself in. By the *nature* of the situation, this is the result of one’s actions. I just believe actions give rise to responsibility. I admit however that this view of mine is not rigorous like my other rights views.

JC (Jesus Christ?):

The thing is that just because an individual has the ability to control themselves it does not then create a moral right to continue to do so without others controlling you. Only conventions create the guidelines for what acts are legitimate or not. I just don’t think there is any need for the concept of self-ownership anyway even if it were coherent. If X attempts to control Y without Y giving either implicit or explicit consent then Y is going to attempt to defend himself and the only way that X is going to be prevented from attempting to control Y is by ethical norms which themselves can only be conventional. You cannot derive an ought from an is.

I am not clear what you are saying, but I agree you cannot get an ought from an is. I am not. I am getting an ought from an ought. I am showing that IF you value XYZ, THEN something follows. It happens that participants in civilized discourse are, in fact, valuing XYZ.

The point is simply this: when civilized people inquire into who owns a given resource, such as a body, they are asking to whom should title be assigned so as to reduce conflict; the only answer can be, he who has the objective link to it; and this answer is obviously: each person himself that directly and immediatley controls, uses, and is basically defined by that body.

We need to know what acts are just or unjust.

No, “we” don’t. It just happens that some people choose to be civilized, which is to seek justification for their actions. THey happen to prefer to value this. Actually your statement is the categorical one that woudl violate the is-ought dichotomy.

The category mistake is the application of ownership here and the meta-ethical and epistemological mistake is thinking that you can derive an ought from an is.

A practical, libertarian minded jury would hear here, “blah blah blah”. Dispute resolution–and property assignment–is practical and basic. Not fancy. Neighboring farmers need to be able to do it.

Personally I think 8 is not old enough, except in extreme cases of abuse. I would think mid-late teens, but that’s just my judgment. Who knows what standards given libertarian communities would arrive at?”

The cut off point then becomes conventional, yes?

Maybe. AS with many rules that have to make descisions in the face of continnuums.

My point was that there is no cartesian dualism and that self-ownership is different to “I wash myself” or “I am proud of myself” which means I take pride in what I do or have done.

I think this is sophistry. It’s a distraction. A diversion. The question is who has the right to control A’s body: himself, or some third party. This is a real, practical question. the answer we give is: A. Don’t need to get all complicated about cartesian dualism.

I like that! Perhaps the only concept I missed in this interesting article: individual free will. That’s the true key to property, and I dare anyone to deny it! If you presuppose the existence (or at least the ideal) of free will… and only then, … there’s necessarily the need for property rights that is implied.

Property is a sheer expression of that free will in society and its uniqueness. Without any possibility of ownership, there’s no individuality possible either, as “your”, “mine”, and “his” gives to individuality the ability to trade, which just “you” and “me” and “him” don’t. Now to “trade”, that’s the essence of any social group.

Certainly Children don’t have yet the ability to self-determination in the eyes of society. That doesn’t make anyone else “owner” of their body though. Indeed, although it becomes quite unnecessary to question the incompatibility of the slavery of a body if one considers free will, … the mother of an unborn child in her womb still cannot pretend to own and do everything she pleases with it. A foetus is not 100% a part of its parent’s individuality, as all its living organs naturally strive to develop their own ability of free determination from the minute it is conceived. To kill it is to rob the first property it is fully entitled to: its human life.

… To suppose that God “owns” you makes no difference as God leaves you your free will in most religions.

The question is thus perhaps for some libertarian: can there be property without free will?
An absurd question. If there’s no free will, all questions are absurd indeed. Free will is the first principle of all social philosophy.

The thing is that just because an individual has the ability to control themselves it does not then create a moral right to continue to do so without others controlling you. Only conventions create the guidelines for what acts are legitimate or not. I just don’t think there is any need for the concept of self-ownership anyway even if it were coherent. If X attempts to control Y without Y giving either implicit or explicit consent then Y is going to attempt to defend himself and the only way that X is going to be prevented from attempting to control Y is by ethical norms which themselves can only be conventional. You cannot derive an ought from an is.

“Irrelevant. We need to know who has the say-so over a given pereson’s body. In the case of a jailed or punished criminal, we implicitly say that the victim or jailer has the right to control the criminal’s body. That is what justifies coercing him into jail and keeping him there. In the case of an innocent person, we say that he has the right to control his body, not others. This, in fact, is just why others may be punished for using someone else’s body without their consent.”

We need to know what acts are just or unjust. The category mistake is the application of ownership here and the meta-ethical and epistemological mistake is thinking that you can derive an ought from an is.

“That is an application, a detail. I have no idea. We all, I assume, believe that at *some point* a child reaches “adulthood”. What point or age, I do not konw. It’s a continuum and line-drawing problem.

Personally I think 8 is not old enough, except in extreme cases of abuse. I would think mid-late teens, but that’s just my judgment. Who knows what standards given libertarian communities would arrive at?”

The cut off point then becomes conventional, yes? I mean voluntary communities in a free society can live by whatever rules that those individuals consent to, but these rules do not have to be even spoken never mind written in contracts. Indeed contracts need the convention of promise keeping in order to be kept. Without that contracts would be worthless.

“Much as De Jasay is worthy of our respect, he is wrong on this point (see especially GA Cohen’s chapter defending the coherence of Self-ownership – Cohen later tries to reject it because he finds it immoral, not incoherent – in Self-Ownership, Freedom and Equality). The sentence “It is nonsense to talk of a relation between you and yourself.” is the weakest point, since one can quite clearly have relationships with oneself. There is noting incoherent with the statement “I wash myself,” or “I hurt myself,” or “I love myself.” Why then are we to suddenly suppose that “I own myself” is incoherent?

Self-ownership implies that there is a distinction between a person and his body. Is this distinction a cartesian one between mind and body?
It implies no such thing. Are you invoking the cartesian paradigm every time you feel proud of yourself.

Live Free

Richard”

I will try and check that book out sometime.
Saying that “I wash myself” is coherent because we are capable of self-reference. This is mere speak though, “I wash myself” is a description of my arms washing parts of my body. If ownership is defined as needing an owner and a thing owned then how can that relationship be coherent in regards to an individual and himself. You are both owner and the thing owned?

My point was that there is no cartesian dualism and that self-ownership is different to “I wash myself” or “I am proud of myself” which means I take pride in what I do or have done.

“Your solution does not work, since you are just deeming there to be a gift. But a gift is voluntary. What if a parent has child but does not grant this gift? Etc.”

Unfortunately, I think your solution is also contrived. How many boat owners negligently or recklessly invite someone onto their ship? Say what you will, but some people do not intend to get pregnant, although they know it is a risk. That’s recklessness, at worst.

I’m trying real hard to think of an analogy where the owner recklessly “invites” someone onto their property, but can’t come up with one. I don’t think the concept of “invite” makes any sense outside intentional, or possibly, in some select instances, knowing conduct.

And of course, there’s the always challenging issue of a rape-induced pregnancy. Can someone be forced to invite a third party onto their property? Does the concept of “invite” have any meaning if you stretch it that far?

“And at the point where the child can say and would be inclined to say something to his parents like “i’m my own person now, just as you are yours, and i will ask no assistance from you, nor take orders from you”, this child now unequivocally demonstrates his superior claim to his body.”

My 9-month old daughter is an example of this – although she cannot yet earn a living, she is definitely able to demonstrate when she will NOT take a bottle and will NOT go to sleep…they develop their own distinct personalities as early as 4-5 months, and as soon as they can crawl away from you their journey toward independence begins…to recognize this is to be aware that acting humans are always works in progress, only the potency of their actions changes, over time.

“The concept of a gift neatly sidesteps these issues – we can simply state that deliberately and voluntarily creating a body for a consciousness to arise in (or enter into, if one believes in reincarnation) consititutes the act of giving that body to the subject which comes to occupy it. One can give a gift to someone who does not exist yet.”

“We can simply state”? You mean to suggest that by decree we can give meaning and intent to an act that may in fact be entirely void of such meaning and intent? In order to enforce such a decision, one would need to demonstrate possession of a better objective claim to the child’s body than the parents did. And no one except perhaps the child would ever be able to do this, presuming no child abuse. Therefore, this approach is not justifiable. An ethic is concerned with establishing who possesses the best objective claim to a particular scarce and valuable resource. In this way, such an ethic, which focusses on the establishment of property rights, allows for the possibility of conflict avoidance. Your “gift by third party decree” is not consistent with such an ethic and is the basis of all statist thinking.

The proper method of establishing who has ownership of the child’s body is in determining who can demonstrate the better title to it. Clearly, the newborn child can scarcely act at all, if at all. Its motions are instinctual. But in time more and more of the behavior of the child is actually purposeful action of the child. And at the point where the child can say and would be inclined to say something to his parents like “i’m my own person now, just as you are yours, and i will ask no assistance from you, nor take orders from you”, this child now unequivocally demonstrates his superior claim to his body.

This strikes me as consistent with the reality of life and with the libertarian ethic.