Good comments about principle and utility and rights violations.
Let me try to be clearer about my points regarding the abortion
dilemma.
Can not a principled argument be the best one because it solves
the most problems, but not all? Can not a principled decision be
based on the most evidence, but not all? MOST evidence shows the
NAP to solve the MOST social problems, but not all.
Besides, in the arena of libertarian political philosophy, isn't
the difference between utility and principle kind of small?
Utility seeks to please the most people. Principle seeks the
right ethics. Wouldn't universal employment of the right ethics,
especially regarding the NAP, please the most people? Isn't that
the point / goal / theoretical result?
Maybe this is just my long-winded/fuzzy way of saying nothing is
perfect (or need be to be principled).
-Mark
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------------------
Mark,
> Fetuses are not unable to exercise rights because they are
being
> prevented/violated; they are unable because they are inherently
> unable. Plus, chronologically speaking, a fetus did not once
have
> rights (or the ability to exercise them).
Bingo -- those two distinctions are good arguments to make versus
a
claim by analogy of fetal rights.
-----
I'm surprised you didn't remind me that a fetus at least has the
one
most fundamental rights: to live.
-----
Why would I "remind" you of something that I'm not arguing? A
fetus
doesn't have a "right to live" unless it's a person (and maybe
not
even then). The fetus having a right to live is a conclusion that
would come at the far end of a chain of arguments I haven't made
(and
don't intend to make).
-----
I don't know that my previously posted viewpoint can be described
as
"unprincipled", even by libertarians.
-----
If I described it as unprincipled, I apologize. What I meant to
imply
was that it was involved judgment based on probabilities rather
than a
clearcut application of principle. Most ideologues prefer to
believe
-- even to the extent of pretending, when necessary -- that their
principles are always neatly and easily applied, and that there's
never any room for dispute or doubt over what the proper
application is.
> Libertarians respect the principle of individual rights and the
> NAP, not because it creates absolute/total freedom for all, but
> because it creates MORE freedom than any known alternative. The
> evidence for the principle is not that no ones' rights are ever
> violated, but that the fewest rights are violated.
The foremost advocates of the non-aggression principle -- Ayn
Rand,
for example -- clearly disagree with you on this. You're making
what
most would classify as a utilitarian, rather than principled,
argument.
> Simply stated:
> If a decision is necessary, you make the best one possible. A
> decision is necessary because both fetuses and pregnant women
can
> not have the same rights when the women want abortions.
And according to NAP ideologues, there is no "necessary" decision
that
violates anyone's rights, because rights never conflict with each
other.
The pro-choice argument is obviously the default: If the fetus is
not
a person with rights, then there's no _apparent_ conflict.
A _libertarian_ (in ideological terms) pro-life argument requires
not
only proving that the fetus is a person with rights, and that
abortion
would violate one or more of those rights, but that there is no
conflict between the fetus's rights and the mother's rights.
Otherwise, the principle is invalidated and becomes a mere
utilitarian
prescription to be used when useful and discarded when not
useful.
Regards,
Tom Knapp
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