NationStates Jolt Archive

"Property is theft" takes numerous forms in Proudhonist anarchism, economic collectivism, collectivist anarchism, and the numerous forms of communism and socialism. It is, however, to say nothing of just plain wrong, logically impossible. If property were theft, nobody would own anything, ergo there would be no holder of property and nobody to steal from. You can't steal what doesn't/can't belong to anybody. So it's a self-invalidating statement.

Prove me wrong.

Erm.. as the title says.. "collective property". So you'd be stealing it from everyone..

i think that property in collective communities belongs to the community, so when you take more than you need you'd steal.

That's only if you believe in logic.

That's only if you believe in logic.

1+1=2. This applies no matter what the first 1 is 1 of and no matter what the second 1 is 1 of. 1 car and 1 blade of grass are still 2 things. Logic. Can't be disproven.

Alternatively, try the process of elimination. That's a logical process and when you perform it correctly it works. So logic works. There's also no alternative to believe in that I'm aware of short of the equally self-defeating surrealism.

Trilby63;12530676']Erm.. as the title says.. "collective property". So you'd be stealing it from everyone..

Been shown many times that what belongs to everyone belongs to no one. There is no entity "everyone."

Property is material owned by an individual, simply put. To stake your claim to that material you have to deny the rights of all other people to use it. To claim a piece of land as yours, for example, a fence must be put around it. If anyone tries to climb over it, you shoot them. This is property. Now, the material you have claimed as your individual property is no longer available to all people to use. You have stolen from the people who are now denied access to it because your sense of ownership is more important to you than the needs of others.

Im stoned so thats proabbly really rambling and bollocksy.

"Property is theft" takes numerous forms in Proudhonist anarchism, economic collectivism, collectivist anarchism, and the numerous forms of communism and socialism. It is, however, to say nothing of just plain wrong, logically impossible. If property were theft, nobody would own anything, ergo there would be no holder of property and nobody to steal from. You can't steal what doesn't/can't belong to anybody. So it's a self-invalidating statement.

Prove me wrong.

I'm no Proudhonian or an anarchist, but I think what you're trying to say, albeit rather poorly, is that there can be no theft without having property. So to advocate the dissolution of property based on it being theft is nonsensical.

I think this is an oversimplistic view of what the anarchist would or could suggest, to say the least. I doubt that any anarchist would deny that we have property in the sense that it has been socially and politically contructed under mercantilist, capitalist, and corporatist/neo-mercantilist systems. What they might deny is that such a construction of property is the most legitimate or ethical form of it. The person who advocates collective property does not have to deny property, merely the the way in which property is used currently.

Been shown many times that what belongs to everyone belongs to no one. There is no entity "everyone."

Has it? Show me now.

"Property is theft" takes numerous forms in Proudhonist anarchism, economic collectivism, collectivist anarchism, and the numerous forms of communism and socialism. It is, however, to say nothing of just plain wrong, logically impossible. If property were theft, nobody would own anything, ergo there would be no holder of property and nobody to steal from. You can't steal what doesn't/can't belong to anybody. So it's a self-invalidating statement.

Prove me wrong.Allow me to explain what Anarchists (and Marxists for that matter) generally mean when they assert that "property is theft."

An economic system that is based on the private ownership of the means of life and wage labor is much like a pistol and a license to rob handed to the owner. The owner will pay the worker the lowest wage he can. The owner will then sell the products of the workers' labor for as much as he can. The workers starve while their labor enriches the owner. The owner is using the brute force of the state that grantees him 'property rights' to rob the workers of the economic products of their labor. This is called 'turning a profit.' The holder of property uses the property to extort profit (which is theft) from those without property.

Anarchists recognize that the products of one's labor rightly belong to the producer. The property system is used to rob workers of this, thus 'property is theft.'

1+1=2. This applies no matter what the first 1 is 1 of and no matter what the second 1 is 1 of. 1 car and 1 blade of grass are still 2 things. Logic.

IT IS NO LOGIC! It is arithmetics.

"Property is theft" takes numerous forms in Proudhonist anarchism, economic collectivism, collectivist anarchism, and the numerous forms of communism and socialism. It is, however, to say nothing of just plain wrong, logically impossible. If property were theft, nobody would own anything, ergo there would be no holder of property and nobody to steal from. You can't steal what doesn't/can't belong to anybody. So it's a self-invalidating statement.

Prove me wrong.

Will do.

You said:
If property were theft, nobody would own anything, ergo there would be no holder of property and nobody to steal from.

That is logically untrue. Consider the following:

I steal your prized vase. I now possess this vase, but I do not own it. If someone else takes (steals) it from me, that's still theft, despite the fact that I did not own the object that was stolen.

1+1=2. This applies no matter what the first 1 is 1 of and no matter what the second 1 is 1 of. 1 car and 1 blade of grass are still 2 things. Logic. Can't be disproven.

What about a forest and a tree? a car and a tire? a cup of clockwork and a child's laughter?

You don't understand the concept. Property is theft because you are claiming something as your own and restricting others access to it. The classic example is that on an apple tree, and it revolves around taking more than you need. No one owns the apple tree, it grows of its own accord in natural conditions. You are a human, and you need to eat. So you go to pick apple to eat. You like apples so you pick the rest of the apples and save them for later. Then another person comes along who is also hungry. However, there are no apples left on the tree, but this person sees that you have picked the apples. He asks you for one, but you refuse. It is that act of refusing to share resources that you are not currently using that is theft.

The resource is natural, you had no hand in making it, even if you did you still cannot claim full credit for the creation of object as you are not god. Hence, you have no right to claim anything beyond your immediate needs. And most property is beyond the immediate needs of a person.

Allow me to explain what Anarchists (and Marxists for that matter) generally mean when they assert that "property is theft."

An economic system that is based on the private ownership of the means of life and wage labor is much like a pistol and a license to rob handed to the owner. The owner will pay the worker the lowest wage he can. The owner will then sell the products of the workers' labor for as much as he can. The workers starve while their labor enriches the owner. The owner is using the brute force of the state that grantees him 'property rights' to rob the workers of the economic products of their labor. This is called 'turning a profit.' The holder of property uses the property to extort profit (which is theft) from those without property.

Anarchists recognize that the products of one's labor rightly belong to the producer. The property system is used to rob workers of this, thus 'property is theft.'

But the employees agree to work for the employer, and give the products of the labor to the employer in exchange for their wages. So there's no robbery involved. As for "the employer will pay the lowest wage he can," it's simply not true. The employer will pay whatever he feels the employee is worth to keep him working for him. The employee can ask for a raise or quit if he feels he's being underpaid.

IT IS NO LOGIC! It is arithmetics.

Arithmetics is logic though, by definition of the word logic:
2. c. The formal, guiding principles of a discipline, school, or science.

Since, with all the accepted axioms of basic maths, 1+1 = 2, then that is very much logic. It describes the relation of integers in basic maths. Therefore, it is a formal, guiding principle.

What about a forest and a tree? a car and a tire? a cup of clockwork and a child's laughter?

A forest is a thing, a tree is a thing

1 thing + 1 thing = 2 things

A car is a thing, a tire is a thing

1 thing + 1 thing = 2 things

a cup of clockwork (what the?) is a thing and a child's laughter is a thing (if we take a liberal definition of thing)

1 thing + 1 thing = 2 things

There's a branch of linear algebra dedicated to this.

But the employees agree to work for the employer, and give the products of the labor to the employer in exchange for their wages. So there's no robbery involved. As for "the employer will pay the lowest wage he can," it's simply not true. The employer will pay whatever he feels the employee is worth to keep him working for him. The employee can ask for a raise or quit if he feels he's being underpaid.

They don't agree willingly. As they are denied land by those who own it they either have to sell their labour of face starvation.

But the employees agree to work for the employer, and give the products of the labor to the employer in exchange for their wages. So there's no robbery involved. As for "the employer will pay the lowest wage he can," it's simply not true. The employer will pay whatever he feels the employee is worth to keep him working for him. The employee can ask for a raise or quit if he feels he's being underpaid.

And the robbed man agrees to give his money to the robber. because he has a gun? Never mind he still agreed to do it! The capitalist's state-enforced monopoly over his 'property' is much like a gun. A worker does not own the tools he needs to perform his trade, so he is at the mercy of those that do. The contract that you describe is not made in a vacuum. There are few owners and many workers. The owners set the wages and then use the difference between what they pay and the economic productivity of the workers to enrich themselves. This is theft of labor using the 'ownership' mechanism as as the weapon of robbery.

Trilby63;12530725']Has it? Show me now.
He means apart from the existence of individuals. The term 'everyone' denotes no more than a group of these, and that is all. It does not exist on its own, no more than a forest exists without trees.

A forest is a thing, a tree is a thing

1 thing + 1 thing = 2 things

A car is a thing, a tire is a thing

1 thing + 1 thing = 2 things

a cup of clockwork (what the?) is a thing and a child's laughter is a thing (if we take a liberal definition of thing)

1 thing + 1 thing = 2 things

There's a branch of linear algebra dedicated to this.I was just pointing out the absiurdity and irrelevance of bringing this up here. :rolleyes:
Louis Carrol would have a field day with this.

He means apart from the existence of individuals. The term 'everyone' denotes no more than a group of these, and that is all. It does not exist on its own, no more than a forest exists without trees.

Sorry, you've confused me.. Or I've confused myself.. Forests do exist, right?

Trilby63;12530839']Sorry, you've confused me.. Or I've confused myself.. Forests do exist, right?
Not without trees they don't. They are nothing but a term for a collection of those, just like a herd is a term for a collection of sheep. And no more than that.

Not without trees they don't. They are nothing but a term for a collection of those, just like a herd is a term for a collection of sheep. And no more than that.


Nevermind..
I'm still confused..

Not without trees they don't. They are nothing but a term for a collection of those, just like a herd is a term for a collection of sheep. And no more than that.A forest is no more just a bunch of trees then a car is a pile of metal thrown together. But that was the general idea, yes.

I was just pointing out the absiurdity and irrelevance of bringing this up here. :rolleyes:
Louis Carrol would have a field day with this.

It probably was very absurd and irrelevant. I do not, in fact, see why he did bring it up.

Nevertheless, a forest as one entity and a tree as one entity are still two entities. This is, as I mentioned, because of a field in linear algebra which we have performed - basically, we've changed both the forest and the tree over into the abstract entity format, where they are equal each other :p

1+1=2. This applies no matter what the first 1 is 1 of and no matter what the second 1 is 1 of. 1 car and 1 blade of grass are still 2 things. Logic. Can't be disproven.

Alternatively, try the process of elimination. That's a logical process and when you perform it correctly it works. So logic works. There's also no alternative to believe in that I'm aware of short of the equally self-defeating surrealism.

The problem is that your logic is flawed. The phrase "property is theft" is an indictment of private property, which indeed was taken by force from its collective property origins.

A forest is no more just a bunch of trees then a car is a pile of metal thrown together. But that was the general idea, yes.

Okay, just stop it now! No! Either things exist or the don't! My doctor has been very clear on this issue.. Forests exist!

It's that radioactive-zombie-cat-inna-box all over again...

I need to go lie down..

You don't understand the concept. Property is theft because you are claiming something as your own and restricting others access to it. The classic example is that on an apple tree, and it revolves around taking more than you need. No one owns the apple tree, it grows of its own accord in natural conditions. You are a human, and you need to eat. So you go to pick apple to eat. You like apples so you pick the rest of the apples and save them for later. Then another person comes along who is also hungry. However, there are no apples left on the tree, but this person sees that you have picked the apples. He asks you for one, but you refuse. It is that act of refusing to share resources that you are not currently using that is theft.

The resource is natural, you had no hand in making it, even if you did you still cannot claim full credit for the creation of object as you are not god. Hence, you have no right to claim anything beyond your immediate needs. And most property is beyond the immediate needs of a person.


OH COME ON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The starving person does not have an ex post facto claim to the tree or any of the apples on it. If I find the tree first, and it has been claimed by nobody else, and I invest my time and my effort in the preservation of the tree, or employ others to do so in exchange for the apples, and then pick and eat the fruit and do what I will with the seeds, be it eating them, planting them, trading them, selling them, giving them away, whatever, the tree is mine, and the products are mine until I give them or sell them to someone else of my own accord. Whether I happen to be eating an apple or tending to a tree at the time a starving person asks for one doesn't change that.

But the employees agree to work for the employer, and give the products of the labor to the employer in exchange for their wages. So there's no robbery involved. As for "the employer will pay the lowest wage he can," it's simply not true. The employer will pay whatever he feels the employee is worth to keep him working for him. The employee can ask for a raise or quit if he feels he's being underpaid.Nope, the employer has done nothing productive. He is simply rent seeking. That's what the argument essentially comes down to.

A forest is a thing, a tree is a thing

1 thing + 1 thing = 2 things

A car is a thing, a tire is a thing

1 thing + 1 thing = 2 things

a cup of clockwork (what the?) is a thing and a child's laughter is a thing (if we take a liberal definition of thing)

1 thing + 1 thing = 2 things

There's a branch of linear algebra dedicated to this.I have an idea, you have an idea. They are the same idea. How many ideas are there?

OH COME ON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The starving person does not have an ex post facto claim to the tree or any of the apples on it. If I find the tree first, and it has been claimed by nobody else, and I invest my time and my effort in the preservation of the tree, or employ others to do so in exchange for the apples, and then pick and eat the fruit and do what I will with the seeds, be it eating them, planting them, trading them, selling them, giving them away, whatever, the tree is mine, and the products are mine until I give them or sell them to someone else of my own accord. Whether I happen to be eating an apple or tending to a tree at the time a starving person asks for one doesn't change that.

So you're putting your alleged right to own property above someone's undeniable right to live? Ethically, you've just committed murder.

[QUOTE=The Infinite Dunes;12530893]Nope, the employer has done nothing productive. He is simply rent seeking. That's what the argument essentially comes down to.
QUOTE]

The employer is doing something productive however. He is providing livelihoods for people he is willing to employ and who are willing to work for him and producing a flow of products or services into the market. Even if he weren', he is still taking a risk simply by running the business, and an additional risk by taking in every individual he employs. More importantly you didn't tell me how the employees didn't agree or how paying other people to help perpetuate the enterprise you run is exploitation.

"Property is theft" takes numerous forms in Proudhonist anarchism, economic collectivism, collectivist anarchism, and the numerous forms of communism and socialism. It is, however, to say nothing of just plain wrong, logically impossible. If property were theft, nobody would own anything, ergo there would be no holder of property and nobody to steal from. You can't steal what doesn't/can't belong to anybody. So it's a self-invalidating statement.

Prove me wrong.
Simple you over generalize "property" in your definition ... in those systems you claim PRIVATE property is theft. Theft does not require a private owner, just an owner.

As such there is communal ownership so there is ownership of the property stole.

Either way seems like a rather pathetic attempt to badmouth an idea based on technicality in the explanations you chose.

And this comes from the far side of the spectrum from 'communal property'

Your 'logic' is illogical.

Theft implies a transfer of ownership - it is just an illegitimate transfer of ownership.

Your whole 'argument' (loathe as I am to dignify it that much) falls down on that point - your first contingency just isn't true.

To illustrate: If property were theft, nobody would own anything, (yes, they would - but their acquisition of the property would be corrupt) ergo there would be no holder of property and nobody to steal from. You can't steal what doesn't/can't belong to anybody. So it's a self-invalidating statement.

And - that's why it appears to you that the concept is self-invalidating... because your own interpretation is broken.

Quoted because it is better then mine

"Property is theft" takes numerous forms in Proudhonist anarchism, economic collectivism, collectivist anarchism, and the numerous forms of communism and socialism. It is, however, to say nothing of just plain wrong, logically impossible. If property were theft, nobody would own anything, ergo there would be no holder of property and nobody to steal from. You can't steal what doesn't/can't belong to anybody. So it's a self-invalidating statement.

Prove me wrong.

Your 'logic' is illogical.

Theft implies a transfer of ownership - it is just an illegitimate transfer of ownership.

Your whole 'argument' (loathe as I am to dignify it that much) falls down on that point - your first contingency just isn't true.

To illustrate: If property were theft, nobody would own anything, (yes, they would - but their acquisition of the property would be corrupt) ergo there would be no holder of property and nobody to steal from. You can't steal what doesn't/can't belong to anybody. So it's a self-invalidating statement.

And - that's why it appears to you that the concept is self-invalidating... because your own interpretation is broken.

OH COME ON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The starving person does not have an ex post facto claim to the tree or any of the apples on it. If I find the tree first, and it has been claimed by nobody else, and I invest my time and my effort in the preservation of the tree, or employ others to do so in exchange for the apples, and then pick and eat the fruit and do what I will with the seeds, be it eating them, planting them, trading them, selling them, giving them away, whatever, the tree is mine, and the products are mine until I give them or sell them to someone else of my own accord. Whether I happen to be eating an apple or tending to a tree at the time a starving person asks for one doesn't change that.

Well that's the thing, isn't it? Is there any logical reason why you can claim lordship over something that is necessary for survival just because you saw it first? Private property is authority. You would give some control over others because of something as arbitrary as that?

The starving person does not have an ex post facto claim to the tree or any of the apples on it. According to Anarchists, He does so if he's been taking care of the tree. Even if the schmuck who has the papers that say that the tree is his paid him half an apple to do it. Other Anarchists would say that he has the right to take food by virtue of being hungry. I'm in that camp.

Behold two arguments against property: the rights granted by of labor vs. ownership (I went over this one at length earlier) and subsistence rights vs. rights to surplus production.

OH COME ON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The starving person does not have an ex post facto claim to the tree or any of the apples on it. If I find the tree first, and it has been claimed by nobody else, and I invest my time and my effort in the preservation of the tree, or employ others to do so in exchange for the apples, and then pick and eat the fruit and do what I will with the seeds, be it eating them, planting them, trading them, selling them, giving them away, whatever, the tree is mine, and the products are mine until I give them or sell them to someone else of my own accord. Whether I happen to be eating an apple or tending to a tree at the time a starving person asks for one doesn't change that.Let's say that we were both shipwrecked and knocked unconcious. We are both washed up on an uncharted desert island. I happen to gain conciousness first and claim all the island as my own. The then wake up and I inform you that I own the island and you may only have any of my fruit from the trees if climb up the trees and harvest my fruit for me, and then build me a shelter out of my wood.

Do you claim that I am justified in owning the island simply because I woke up before you? Even if I do nothing productive to sustain the island and get you to do all the work?

OH COME ON!!No, you come on...

The starving person does not have an ex post facto claim to the tree or any of the apples on it. If I find the tree first, and it has been claimed by nobody else, and I invest my time and my effort in the preservation of the tree, or employ others to do so in exchange for the apples, and then pick and eat the fruit and do what I will with the seeds, be it eating them, planting them, trading them, selling them, giving them away, whatever, the tree is mine, and the products are mine until I give them or sell them to someone else of my own accord.

Well, if you take the tree and the apples and the seeds, then you certainly have possession of them. But you don't necessarily have property.

This is because property is a juridical term--it describes the legal status of particular items.

In other words, just because you possess something, perhaps even work on it, and say "this is mine," it is not necessarily your property. It becomes property when you say "this is mine" and you convince everyone else to say, "Okay, makes sense to us."

Now, you are attempting to apply one of the most famous and influential theories of property, namely John Locke's labor theory. Let's follow the logic to find out where you (and Locke) go wrong.

1) Adding my labor to the natural world gives me some claim over what I work. I add something of myself to it, and to the extent that what I add is inseparable from the product itself, others should recognize my claim.

Well, we probably have to admit that there is some truth to this. If you add value to something, that added value is yours--you deserve, at the very least, some compensation for what you have added if the goods will be used publicly.

But what is value added? How do we know when value is added to something? Is it merely the fact of "working" the land that adds value to it?

2) Consider an unworked field, capable of producing abundant crops if only someone would work on it. The primitive community in which we live doesn't do anything with it, we just walk across it, hang out, play cards... whatever. In fact, this community has no concept of property.

Now, you come upon the field and you think, "Hunh, I could really do something with this." So, you plant some seeds. Months later, your crops grow.

When you produce a field of wheat, there is a fair (but not certain) chance that you will convince your neighbors that you have done something better than the field than what was done before, and you can probably convince them to give you some fungible trinkets in exchange for surplus food.

But what if, by mistake, you planted poison ivy? When the people come by and find your mess, they want to tear up the plants, but you protest: "I worked this land, it's mine!!" They respond, "No, you ruined this land, and we don't recognize any right whatsoever to it. We're going to tear up these plants and do what we want with our field. Asshole."

Now, this is an extreme case... but the problem runs deeper.

3) Imagine another society with no concept of property. This society lives near a beautiful waterfall that tumbles off the mountain into a pristine pool. People bathe and play in the pool, they paint pictures of the waterfall, they generally enjoy the space... but they do nothing at all productive with it.

One day, you notice gold flakes in the stream. Realizing that the mountain must be teeming with ore, you set yourself to ripping it apart, destroying the waterfall as you go. "I'm being very productive," you think to yourself, "And the gold that I mine will be my reward!"

When your neighbors protest, you insist that you have productively worked the land, so it should be yours. "Fuck that," they protest, "You're not improving the land, you're ruining everything we value about it!! You don't get any claim to do any such thing!!"

The problem here is very simple: VALUE IS RELATIVE. Because value is relative, there is NO UNIVERSAL CLAIM that you can make to "improving" natural resources through your labor--that is, you can make NO A PRIORI CLAIM TO PROPERTY THROUGH LABOR. You always need to state the conditions under which other people will recognize your claim, and that means taking their preferences into account.

So... back to our friend John Locke. How did he surmount this problem? In his own mind, he certainly did.

He went to the Bible.

That's right. The Bible.

Since God told us to "be fruitful and multiply" and set men to "labor the Earth," Locke reasoned that God set the trump card on value: productive labor is always value-adding, for Locke, BECAUSE GOD SAYS SO.

Of course, in today's world few of us are willing to accept "God says so" as a legitimate argument for overriding our own values and preferences.

Quoted because it is better then mine

*bows*

The really impressive thing was how you appear to have quoted it before I wrote it. :)

1+1=2. This applies no matter what the first 1 is 1 of and no matter what the second 1 is 1 of. 1 car and 1 blade of grass are still 2 things. Logic.

1 + 1 can equal 3 as well ... for the higher values of 1 of course.

Can't be disproven.
Just did I'm affraid.

1+1=2. This applies no matter what the first 1 is 1 of and no matter what the second 1 is 1 of. 1 car and 1 blade of grass are still 2 things. Logic. Can't be disproven.

It's only when you use base 10 numbers.

No, you come on...



Well...You sir, are a knowledgable and intelligent man.
So... back to our friend John Locke. How did he surmount this problem? In his own mind, he certainly did.

He went to the Bible.

That's right. The Bible.

Since God told us to "be fruitful and multiply" and set men to "labor the Earth," Locke reasoned that God set the trump card on value: productive labor is always value-adding, for Locke, BECAUSE GOD SAYS SO.

Of course, in today's world few of us are willing to accept "God says so" as a legitimate argument for overriding our own values and preferences.From what I know you're not quite being fair on Locke. Locke lived in a time where the Establishment still very much held sway over Europe, if not in the same way it had once held de facto power over Medieval Europe. Anyway, Locke had to base some part of his argument in Christianity if he wanted his ideas to be taken on board by the movers and shakers and the day. He would have been very much ignored had he completely ignored Christianity in attempting justify his ideas.

What an inconveniant way to argue against communism or anarchism, there are much easier ways then this.

From what I know you're not quite being fair on Locke. Locke lived in a time where the Establishment still very much held sway over Europe, if not in the same way it had once held de facto power over Medieval Europe. Anyway, Locke had to base some part of his argument in Christianity if he wanted his ideas to be taken on board by the movers and shakers and the day. He would have been very much ignored had he completely ignored Christianity in attempting justify his ideas.Actually, Locke was very devout in his belief. Moreover, he didn't just pepper his writings with the occasional obligatory nod toward a Creator (in the manner of, perhaps, Rousseau); rather God plays a central part in many of Locke's most significant theoretical moves.

The one just mentioned--appropriation--is the most damning overall. Because the real question is, what else could have substituted for God (and not just any God, but the God of the Old Testament who gives humankind a specific mandate to work the land) to supply a universal, objective value to productive labor?

But Locke also used God elsewhere, notably in his epistemology.

And we digress. ;)

I have an idea, you have an idea. They are the same idea. How many ideas are there?

1 or 2.

1a + 1a = 2a
where a = same idea

For one, you don't even go through the process of adding them together, as you instead have a definition:
a = number of individual ideas
a = 1

Because the real question is, what else could have substituted for God (and not just any God, but the God of the Old Testament who gives humankind a specific mandate to work the land) to supply a universal, objective value to productive labor?

ooh, ooh, i know - he could have just boldly claimed it. it seems to be good enough for the liberts these days.

Been shown many times that what belongs to everyone belongs to no one. There is no entity "everyone."Why does there need to be?

OH COME ON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The starving person does not have an ex post facto claim to the tree or any of the apples on it. If I find the tree first, and it has been claimed by nobody else, and I invest my time and my effort in the preservation of the tree, or employ others to do so in exchange for the apples, and then pick and eat the fruit and do what I will with the seeds, be it eating them, planting them, trading them, selling them, giving them away, whatever, the tree is mine, and the products are mine until I give them or sell them to someone else of my own accord. Whether I happen to be eating an apple or tending to a tree at the time a starving person asks for one doesn't change that.Why do you have the right to touch the tree in the first place?

ooh, ooh, i know - he could have just boldly claimed it. it seems to be good enough for the liberts these days.Who ever accused the libertarians of being philosophers? They are ideologues.

Consistency and burden of proof are none of their concern.

Who ever accused the libertarians of being philosophers? They are ideologues.

Consistency and burden of proof are none of their concern.

true enough. actually, i'm surprised at how little play locke's reliance on god's biblical commands gets even in philosophy courses i've taken that explicitly covered the topic. granted, it was an undergrad course, but it was essentially glossed over.

true enough. actually, i'm surprised at how little play locke's reliance on god's biblical commands gets even in philosophy courses i've taken that explicitly covered the topic. granted, it was an undergrad course, but it was essentially glossed over.That's because even professional philosophers often miss this aspect of Locke.

See, Locke's real masterstroke is that he writes in such a way that his biblical references appear to be mere side-notes, nods to the Creator that have no particular bearing on his argument. What makes him smarter than the libertarians is that he at least realized the relative-value problem, and one gets the sense in reading him that he knew he was pulling a bit of a fast one with the "God's will" argument... Thus, he works it in so that he passes over the point without the reader's realizing he's made one.

I didn't even see it for a long time--admittedly, largely because I loathe Locke in general, so that I rarely gave him a close reading. But one summer when I was teaching intro political philosophy, I had to read him close to be able to teach him. And that's when I saw it.

I'm sure I'm not the first, but my professors and colleagues were nevertheless impressed with the breakthrough. I haven't looked into whether someone's explicitly made the argument--again, I think that they have. In a certain sense, it's rather obvious once you try to lay out the actual steps of Locke's argument. You have to realize that he can't get from A to C without B... and B turns out to be the will of God.

Prove me wrong.

1. You don't understand the phrase as Proudhon used it. At all. He was attacking not "property" as you have used it but profit.
2. Material objects are not the only things a person can steal.
3. The usurpation implied in appropriation by labor could reasonably be labeled "theft" from the common stock.

"The rich, in particular, must have felt how much they suffered by a constant state of war, of which they bore all the expense; and in which, though all risked their lives, they alone risked their property. Besides, however speciously they might disguise their usurpations, they knew that they were founded on precarious and false titles; so that, if others took from them by force what they themselves had gained by force, they would have no reason to complain. Even those who had been enriched by their own industry, could hardly base their proprietorship on better claims. It was in vain to repeat, "I built this well; I gained this spot by my industry." Who gave you your standing, it might be answered, and what right have you to demand payment of us for doing what we never asked you to do? Do you not know that numbers of your fellow-creatures are starving, for want of what you have too much of? You ought to have had the express and universal consent of mankind, before appropriating more of the common subsistence than you needed for your own maintenance."
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality: Second Part

That's because even professional philosophers often miss this aspect of Locke.

See, Locke's real masterstroke is that he writes in such a way that his biblical references appear to be mere side-notes, nods to the Creator that have no particular bearing on his argument. What makes him smarter than the libertarians is that he at least realized the relative-value problem, and one gets the sense in reading him that he knew he was pulling a bit of a fast one with the "God's will" argument... Thus, he works it in so that he passes over the point without the reader's realizing he's made one.

yeah, i know i thought the same at the time (i also had picked up a bad habit of not closely reading most things myself, relying on discussion to pick up on important bits i glossed over).

I didn't even see it for a long time--admittedly, largely because I loathe Locke in general, so that I rarely gave him a close reading. But one summer when I was teaching intro political philosophy, I had to read him close to be able to teach him. And that's when I saw it.

I'm sure I'm not the first, but my professors and colleagues were nevertheless impressed with the breakthrough. I haven't looked into whether someone's explicitly made the argument--again, I think that they have. In a certain sense, it's rather obvious once you try to lay out the actual steps of Locke's argument. You have to realize that he can't get from A to C without B... and B turns out to be the will of God.

actually, now that i think about it, it may have been you that made me go back and read it again. have you searched the lit at all, to see if anyone else has mentioned it anywhere. it seems like it's worth putting out there even if it's been said before and just overlooked since.

actually, now that i think about it, it may have been you that made me go back and read it again. have you searched the lit at all, to see if anyone else has mentioned it anywhere. it seems like it's worth putting out there even if it's been said before and just overlooked since.Unfortunately, for now I just don't have the time for the kind of thorough lit review that would be required to address the issue. My dissertation work lies in a very different direction, and I don't know when I'll have a chance to engage diversions off in Lockean territory... although I did just finish a soon-to-be published essay titled "Jefferson Un-Locked: the Rousseauan Moment in American Political Thought" that breaks Jefferson out of the presumed Lockeanism with which scholars treat the American founders, and one of the critical differences between Jefferson and Locke is that Jefferson regards property as a positive, rather than a natural right--that is, Jefferson argues (like Rousseau) that property is necessarily based on the consent and conditions of an existing society.

That's because even professional philosophers often miss this aspect of Locke.

See, Locke's real masterstroke is that he writes in such a way that his biblical references appear to be mere side-notes, nods to the Creator that have no particular bearing on his argument. What makes him smarter than the libertarians is that he at least realized the relative-value problem, and one gets the sense in reading him that he knew he was pulling a bit of a fast one with the "God's will" argument... Thus, he works it in so that he passes over the point without the reader's realizing he's made one.

I didn't even see it for a long time--admittedly, largely because I loathe Locke in general, so that I rarely gave him a close reading. But one summer when I was teaching intro political philosophy, I had to read him close to be able to teach him. And that's when I saw it.

I'm sure I'm not the first, but my professors and colleagues were nevertheless impressed with the breakthrough. I haven't looked into whether someone's explicitly made the argument--again, I think that they have. In a certain sense, it's rather obvious once you try to lay out the actual steps of Locke's argument. You have to realize that he can't get from A to C without B... and B turns out to be the will of God.*takes notes* This goes directly in contrast to what I was taught on my course. If I can find what you're talking about in the literature then this should make for an interesting seminar/exam. :)

Since God told us to "be fruitful and multiply" and set men to "labor the Earth," Locke reasoned that God set the trump card on value: productive labor is always value-adding, for Locke, BECAUSE GOD SAYS SO.

Of course, in today's world few of us are willing to accept "God says so" as a legitimate argument for overriding our own values and preferences.

But most of us, rightly or wrongly, are willing to accept the doctrine that private property is superior to common use in terms of value even without God - a system of private property is more productive, after all.

So perhaps you can save particular places of value - national parks, your stream, and so on. But if you wanted to emerge from common use (as most of the societies in which Locke is invoked have), you would, the argument would still imply, have to accept a natural right to property on the part of the appropriators.

You could prohibit appropriation on the basis that it wasn't value-adding, and you could even regulate the use of appropriated property to ensure that it was value-adding. But you couldn't prohibit or regulate it on the basis of maximizing the public good. And most regulations of property in today's world have that basis, rather than either version of the first.

The problem with Locke, and his later followers, to me seems to be their mistaken evaluation of value-adding. They're right that on some level it seems to give us a claim... if I work hard and contribute a great deal to a project, it makes sense that I should be compensated for it. But what they neglect is that is never true in and of itself. Certainly it seems to apply when there's already a deal in place: if I invest a great deal of labor in a project on the rational expectation that I'm going to receive a certain quantity of money when I finish, then to be denied that money is an injustice. But if I invest a great deal of labor into it just because I want to, what claim of justice can I make to a share of the product? They never agreed to give me any; I did it of my own free choice anyway.

Similarly, if the society I live in declares that the land can be appropriated by labor, but puts on this the condition that any person hired by a landowner be paid a certain minimum wage, then when I actually appropriate land by labor, I can hardly claim to have been treated unjustly when they insist that I actually pay my laborers decently - I invested my labor knowing what I would get from it, and what I wouldn't. For me to object now would be changing the terms after the fact.

The fun part about this argument is that it echoes a crucial point of the capitalist response to Marxist notions of exploitation.

The basic argument is around the concept of property in a state of nature, whether it is owned in common, or if it is just now owned at all.

I tend to argue that there is a mere lack of ownership, and that all are free to take what they can out of a state of nature. I'd rather argue that it's a human beings duty to take everything he can out of a state of nature, but that's just me.

If nothing else, we've reached the point where property has been grandfathered into effect, and to return it to the common would, not only be excessively disruptive, but would involve multiple issues of moral justice.

Property can be theft when it results in usury, in that it is the means for stripping another of his property.

Your 'logic' is illogical.

Theft implies a transfer of ownership - it is just an illegitimate transfer of ownership.

Your whole 'argument' (loathe as I am to dignify it that much) falls down on that point - your first contingency just isn't true.

To illustrate: If property were theft, nobody would own anything, (yes, they would - but their acquisition of the property would be corrupt) ergo there would be no holder of property and nobody to steal from. You can't steal what doesn't/can't belong to anybody. So it's a self-invalidating statement.

And - that's why it appears to you that the concept is self-invalidating... because your own interpretation is broken.

Property is a right of nonintervention, a negative right. When someone has a right of property, others have an obligation to not interfere with your ownership, use, disposal, etc., of the thing that your property rights are in reference to.

So theft is a violation of property; where theft exists, property does not.

However, Proudhon was saying that state sanctioned property is theft of his natural interpretation of property, a moral property separate from state interference.

But most of us, rightly or wrongly, are willing to accept the doctrine that private property is superior to common use in terms of value even without God - a system of private property is more productive, after all.Well, at least within a certain context.

This is essentially the position that Jefferson and Rousseau take. Indeed, while both considered property a positive right, they both also considered it THE MOST IMPORTANT right--and for Jefferson, a "right" in the proper sense. He argued that anyone who didn't have property of his own should be given some outright, no strings attached.

But if you wanted to emerge from common use (as most of the societies in which Locke is invoked have), you would, the argument would still imply, have to accept a natural right to property on the part of the appropriators.Not a natural right, a positive right. You would say, collectively, "We think it is worthwhile to allow certain kinds of appropriation, and we will defend the property of an individual against invasions on the basis of that right."

What you don't have to say is, "We think it worthwhile to allow certain kinds of appropriation, and we renounce any collective right to ever decide otherwise." If conditions change in some way that makes private appropriation less valuable to the public, the public retains the power to revoke the rights associated with property--that's what it means to have a positive, rather than a natural, right.

But you couldn't prohibit or regulate it on the basis of maximizing the public good.Sure you could. Because "public good" is a relative term: it is merely a statement of "what the public wants."

Thus, while private appropriation may maximize production, it is not necessarily true that maximum production accords with the public good.

But if I invest a great deal of labor into it just because I want to, what claim of justice can I make to a share of the product? They never agreed to give me any; I did it of my own free choice anyway.It's the old principle of reciprocity that is the basis, in one way or another, for almost any argument for a natural right.

Rational individuals are expected to think two things:

1) If I expended all that effort, I would want people to respect my right to the returns.
2) A system in which, generally speaking, we respect the right of an individual to the returns from her/his labor will, in all probability, reduce conflict and the chances of my having to suffer violence for things that I claim.

Not a natural right, a positive right. You would say, collectively, "We think it is worthwhile to allow certain kinds of appropriation, and we will defend the property of an individual against invasions on the basis of that right."

What you don't have to say is, "We think it worthwhile to allow certain kinds of appropriation, and we renounce any collective right to ever decide otherwise." If conditions change in some way that makes private appropriation less valuable to the public, the public retains the power to revoke the rights associated with property--that's what it means to have a positive, rather than a natural, right.

Yes and no.

The public does indeed reserve the right to revoke the granted right... but ONLY if the original basis claimed for it (the addition of value) ceases to be.

If Locke is right, and adding value entitles us to a natural right to property, then as long as I add value to what I appropriate, I am entitled to that natural right.

The public has the right to decide what is and isn't adding value - and if my use of property is so egregiously abusive that it in fact lowers the value, then they can revoke my claim. But they cannot use the simple fact that my use of the property could better promote the public good to justify regulation.

So: I can be obliged to pay a minimum wage if society is so harmed by the alternative that it would be better off if my kind of property hadn't be appropriated in the first place. But I cannot be obliged to pay a minimum wage simply because otherwise my workers will be desperately poor and exploited.

Sure you could. Because "public good" is a relative term: it is merely a statement of "what the public wants."

Thus, while private appropriation may maximize production, it is not necessarily true that maximum production accords with the public good.

Of course not. But it may still be true that maximum production better accords with the public good than "primitive" common ownership.

And that, or so the argument goes, is all that is necessary - because value is being added.

Nozick makes an argument very much like this one in his reformulation of Locke.

It's the old principle of reciprocity that is the basis, in one way or another, for almost any argument for a natural right.

Rational individuals are expected to think two things:

1) If I expended all that effort, I would want people to respect my right to the returns.

Not if I did it because I enjoyed it, or because I thought it would teach me something, or because the physical labor made me healthier, or because the intellectual labor made me a superior thinker, or because it increased my social position... because then THOSE would be my returns. Not any share of the material product. And if I didn't think I had gotten a sufficient enough share, I always could have refused.

To then go and demand that they give me extra in addition to those returns would be unjust on my part - because that would be changing the conditions of the exchange after the fact.

Yes and no.

The public does indeed reserve the right to revoke the granted right... but ONLY if the original basis claimed for it (the addition of value) ceases to be.It ceases to be whenever the public says it ceases to be.

The public, after all, decides what is "valuable."

If Locke is right, and adding value entitles us to a natural right to property, then as long as I add value to what I appropriate, I am entitled to that natural right.Yeah, but you're not the one who gets to decide what "value" is. The public that accords the right does that.

The public has the right to decide what is and isn't adding value - and if my use of property is so egregiously abusive that it in fact lowers the value, then they can revoke my claim. But they cannot use the simple fact that my use of the property could better promote the public good to justify regulation.Sure they can.

What they cannot do is make such decisions on a case-by-case basis. They cannot say, "AnarchyeL's property adds to the public value, but Soheran's does not. Therefore, AnarchyeL has a right to his property but Soheran does not."

They can, however, say, "Rights to private property no longer tend to contribute to the public good. Therefore, we revoke the right (in general) to private property."

But it may still be true that maximum production better accords with the public good than "primitive" common ownership.It may be. And when the public perceives it to be so, it makes sense that the public should accord rights to private ownership.

Not if I did it because I enjoyed it, or because I thought it would teach me something, or because the physical labor made me healthier, or because the intellectual labor made me a superior thinker, or because it increased my social position... because then THOSE would be my returns. Not any share of the material product. And if I didn't think I had gotten a sufficient enough share, I always could have refused.Okay.

So that just means that if I do anything, I'm not entitled to any byproduct that I didn't intend. But this does very little to the argument, because I think we can presume that in productive activities the product itself is at least one of the ends sought by the actor.

And if not, all he has to do to assert his right, according to you, is to say, "I meant to do that" after the fact!!

To then go and demand that they give me extra in addition to those returns would be unjust on my part - because that would be changing the conditions of the exchange after the fact.What exchange?

If I polish a stone from the river, with whom did I exchange?

It ceases to be whenever the public says it ceases to be.

The public, after all, decides what is "valuable."

Yes... but they cannot both acknowledge that the appropriation of private property is valuable and demand that it be more valuable.

As soon as they acknowledge that it is valuable, then, according to the argument, the value added entitles the person to a right to it.

They can, however, say, "Rights to private property no longer tend to contribute to the public good. Therefore, we revoke the right (in general) to private property."

Of course they can declare this.

But they can't say "We'll let you keep your property, because the value it adds makes it clearly better than the alternative... but we want you to abide by certain rules in its use."

AS LONG AS property appropriation added value, the right to private property would remain - and, as the just return of labor, would need to be safeguarded from social regulation and taxation.

So that just means that if I do anything, I'm not entitled to any byproduct that I didn't intend. But this does very little to the argument, because I think we can presume that in productive activities the product itself is at least one of the ends sought by the actor.

Perhaps... but we have no obligation to respect ends we never recognized as legitimate in the first place.

If I work for you because I hope I'll be able to steal from you in the process, my stolen goods are hardly just returns of my labor, and I cannot claim them as such when I am called on it. I intended to break the rules; the fact that I failed is not your problem.

What exchange?

If I polish a stone from the river, with whom did I exchange?

With everyone else. You appropriated an object from the common stock.

On what other basis can you claim that society has any right to control property ownership at all? It could just as easily be said that the field or the stream were owned by no one, and if society objects to my use of them, well... too bad for them.

Yes... but they cannot both acknowledge that the appropriation of private property is valuable and demand that it be more valuable.Why not?

The appropriation of private property may promote certain values such as increased social productivity. But it may also involve costs such as alienation (from the product of labor, from ourselves, from each other, from our humanity), degradation, the destruction of the environment, and so on.

When the society determines the rules that are in accord with the "public good," it may decide that the weight of these costs outweighs any value added by appropriation.

As soon as they acknowledge that it is valuable, then, according to the argument, the value added entitles the person to a right to it.No.

Admitting that there is a "plus" to appropriation is not enough. They must decide that it accords with the public good, which entails a weighing of the various pluses and minuses at stake.

But they can't say "We'll let you keep your property, because the value it adds makes it clearly better than the alternative... but we want you to abide by certain rules in its use."Why not? If society cannot make rules for how people use their property, it can't do much rule-making at all.

AS LONG AS property appropriation added value, the right to private property would remain - and, as the just return of labor, would need to be safeguarded from social regulation and taxation.Nope. See above.

The question is not just "value added." The question is "public good." If private appropriation is in accord with the public good, then the public should decide to account private appropriation as a right, meaning that the proprietor is entitled to the value added.

Perhaps... but we have no obligation to respect ends we never recognized as legitimate in the first place.This is an old argument between us.

Some ends are ends-in-themselves. Some obligations are obligations in the proper sense of the word--we are bound, as rational creatures, to "recognize" their "legitimacy." If we do not recognize that legitimacy, then we are not rational, and we have no business trying to make binding moral claims at all.

If I work for you because I hope I'll be able to steal from you in the process, my stolen goods are hardly just returns of my labor, and I cannot claim them as such when I am called on it. I intended to break the rules; the fact that I failed is not your problem.Yeah, but here you violated an existing right.

The question is, what things should we consider rights in the first place?

With everyone else. You appropriated an object from the common stock.Yes, but "common stock" is very different from "collective property." Exchanges occur between property-holders. In the case of the common stock, there is no holder at all.

On what other basis can you claim that society has any right to control property ownership at all?Because only society can grant property ownership.

If I take something from the common stock, it is immediately my possession. It is only mediately my property--a relation mediated through the acquiescence of the people around me.

If I say, "This is mine," that does not make it my property.
If I say, "This is mine," and people generally agree with me, I have property.

It could just as easily be said that the field or the stream were owned by no one, an if society objects to my use of them, well... too bad for them.The field and the stream are owned by no one.

But if society objects to your use of them... well, too bad for you.

If it's a battle between Soheran and the rest of society, I'm going to bet on the rest of society every time.

Why not?

The appropriation of private property may promote certain values such as increased social productivity. But it may also involve costs such as alienation (from the product of labor, from ourselves, from each other, from our humanity), degradation, the destruction of the environment, and so on.

When the society determines the rules that are in accord with the "public good," it may decide that the weight of these costs outweighs any value added by appropriation.

Agreed. This is what I have said.

IF "primitive" common ownership is superior to private appropriation, in certain cases (say, areas of particular natural beauty) or in general, then society has the right to prohibit private appropriation in those circumstances. Your argument does establish that.

What it does not establish is that it is legitimate for society to regulate appropriated property simply on the basis of maximizing the public good.

Say, for the purposes of simplicity, that there are three possible social arrangements:

1. "Primitive" common ownership
2. Private property without social regulation (beyond perhaps protection of certain areas from appropriation and the provision of basic security)
3. Private property with a high degree of social regulation, heavy taxation for social services, and so on.

If (1) provides us with more value than (2), then we can revoke, or never grant in the first place, the right of private appropriation. We agree there.

But if (2) provides us with more value than (1), then we must accept the right of private appropriation... and it cannot be regulated or taxed even if (3) provides us with more value than either, because we have already conceded that the addition of value entitles someone to her property. If the portion is justly-earned, we cannot deprive her of it, in whole or in part.

The question is not just "value added." The question is "public good." If private appropriation is in accord with the public good, then the public should decide to account private appropriation as a right, meaning that the proprietor is entitled to the value added.

Right.

Which means that the public can do no more. It cannot deprive the proprietor of her entitlement by insisting that she, say, pay for universal health care.

Yeah, but here you violated an existing right.

You're missing the point, probably because I chose a bad example.

Here's a better one. A doctor in a communist society goes to the local assembly and demands higher compensation than everyone else. "After all," he insists, "I use my skills to save lives, and there is no one else with the same skills I do. What is more important than life? Why should I receive the same as the garbage-person over there, who never works as hard as I do, who is not as skilled as I am, who refused to pursue his education as far as he could have?"

The response is, as I have said, along these lines: "You chose to become a doctor knowing what you would get from it. You chose to maximize your skills knowing what you would get from it. You chose to pursue your education knowing what you would get from it. We never demanded that you do any of those things. You did them for your own, freely chosen reasons - knowing exactly what you would get from them. By what right do you now demand more? If you think the garbage-person is better off than you, then abandon your post and join him. But do not demand to be privileged because you made decisions we never asked you to make."

The same principles apply to appropriation by labor. I may indeed add value by my appropriation, but this, in and of itself, in no way entitles me to that value. Only if my objective is to garner the product would I have such a right, and I could only legitimately have such an objective in a society that already respected the right to private appropriation.

In the case of the common stock, there is no holder at all.

But there are others who have a claim.

This is why Locke makes the provision that we cannot claim so much as to leave nothing for others, at least not initially.

The field and the stream are owned by no one.

But if society objects to your use of them... well, too bad for you.

If it's a battle between Soheran and the rest of society, I'm going to bet on the rest of society every time.

Force is not justice.

I say, "I contributed my labor to my poison ivy project, and to me it has subjective value. As the just return of my labor, you cannot deprive me of it."

Society can only demand it have public value if it has some sort of claim to it in the first place.

Agreed. This is what I have said.

IF "primitive" common ownership is superior to private appropriation, in certain cases (say, areas of particular natural beauty) or in general, then society has the right to prohibit private appropriation in those circumstances. Your argument does establish that.Yes.

What it does not establish is that it is legitimate for society to regulate appropriated property simply on the basis of maximizing the public good.Sure it does.

Society is the right-grantor. It can put whatever conditions it wants on the protection of the right, provided it applies those conditions equally to everyone. That is merely to define the nature of the right.

Say, for the purposes of simplicity, that there are three possible social arrangements:

1. "Primitive" common ownership
2. Private property without social regulation (beyond perhaps protection of certain areas from appropriation and the provision of basic security)
3. Private property with a high degree of social regulation, heavy taxation for social services, and so on.

If (1) provides us with more value than (2), then we can revoke, or never grant in the first place, the right of private appropriation. We agree there.

But if (2) provides us with more value than (1), then we must accept the right of private appropriation...It's not that we "must," it's that we probably will, assuming we understand our own interests.

and it cannot be regulated or taxed even if (3) provides us with more value than either, because we have already conceded that the addition of value entitles someone to her property.No. "We" are the ones who decide what rights to property people have. If out of a thousand relationships to property, 999 do not suit us, we are under no obligation to take any one of them over the one that we prefer.

So long as we treat everyone the same. That's what it means to make it a "right."
Right.

Which means that the public can do no more. It cannot deprive the proprietor of her entitlement by insisting that she, say, pay for universal health care.Sure it can.

We say, "A particular right to private property serves the public good. That particular right happens to involve the condition that people return a portion of their proceeds to the public."

There is no a priori "absolute" right to property to which we can refer. We're the ones inventing the right. We can invent whatever the hell we want.

We could decide that people have a right to property six days out of the week, but not on Tuesdays, if that suits our purposes. So long as we don't allow some elite to control their property on Tuesdays while other people cannot, we haven't violated the logic of positive right.

The same principles apply to appropriation by labor. I may indeed add value by my appropriation, but this, in and of itself, in no way entitles me to that value. Only if my objective is to garner the product would I have such a right, and I would only have such an objective in a society that already respects the right to private appropriation.Right.

So in a society that lets people roam on your land on Tuesdays, you wouldn't have any claim to locking them out next Tuesday.

But if society decides that people should roam on your land Tuesdays and Wednesdays, you still don't have any claim to special treatment: because if society wanted to, they could let people roam on your land every single day of the week.

It's only because society grants a right that you can make a claim to right. You are not in a position to negotiate. You can try to change the collective judgment, but you have no inherent right to your land or your produce or anything else. You only have the right to which society agrees.

But there are others who have a claim.A "claim" to what? Property? Impossible: there isn't any.

Force is not justice.Yeah, but there is no justice without collective force. There is no property unless a society agrees to it.

Society can only demand it have public value if it has some sort of claim to it in the first place.Society has the first and only claim: the power to decide questions of "right."

Soheran, the problem is that you're still stuck in a natural rights mindset.

In a theory of positive rights, a right is really no different than any other law. It's a rule about how people may (or must) relate to one another as well as to the world of things. It can be changed at any time, just like any other law.

To state that an individual has a "right" to property, in terms of positive rights, is only to say that a rule is in effect that prohibits taking his property without just compensation.

Thus, a government action that simply re-appropriated my house would violate my right, and it would be illegal.

A government action that re-appropriated everyone's house, however, would simply be a change in the law relating to houses.

EDIT: I thought this first version hadn't posted when I wrote the next. But I'll just leave them both.

Soheran, your mistake is that you are still working with a natural rights mindset.

A positive right is no different than any other law. It can be suspended, revoked, altered... at any time. Just like any other law.

(For certain reasons, a given society may decide to institute special legal restrictions on how rights can be altered--e.g. by an amendment process that requires greater unanimity than passage of an ordinary law... but this is not strictly required for the theory of positive rights.)

To say that I have a "right" to property means that the government can only take my property according to specified conditions, e.g. market-value compensation by way of eminent domain.

Thus, if the government just comes in and re-appropriates my house, or my house along with the houses of other people in a certain class, without satisfying the conditions for such an action, then this would be a violation of right and illegal.

If, however, society were to decide that private houses no longer serve a useful purpose, the public could re-appropriate the houses of everyone, or it could change the conditions required for re-appropriation in general.

But how are such "rights" protected at all, you ask?

The key to positive rights is the rule of law: one law for everyone. Thus, I can only revoke a right for someone else if I revoke it for myself as well. This makes it extraordinarily unlikely that the most sacred rights will be revoked or even altered... and if they are, it can only be because as a society we have decided that there are more important things.

We can only take from others what we simultaneously take from ourselves. We can only grant to ourselves what we simultaneously grant to everyone else.

Soheran, your mistake is that you are still working with a natural rights mindset.

A positive right is no different than any other law. It can be suspended, revoked, altered... at any time. Just like any other law.

(For certain reasons, a given society may decide to institute special legal restrictions on how rights can be altered--e.g. by an amendment process that requires greater unanimity than passage of an ordinary law... but this is not strictly required for the theory of positive rights.)

To say that I have a "right" to property means that the government can only take my property according to specified conditions, e.g. market-value compensation by way of eminent domain.

Thus, if the government just comes in and re-appropriates my house, or my house along with the houses of other people in a certain class, without satisfying the conditions for such an action, then this would be a violation of right and illegal.

If, however, society were to decide that private houses no longer serve a useful purpose, the public could re-appropriate the houses of everyone, or it could change the conditions required for re-appropriation in general.

But how are such "rights" protected at all, you ask?

The key to positive rights is the rule of law: one law for everyone. Thus, I can only revoke a right for someone else if I revoke it for myself as well. This makes it extraordinarily unlikely that the most sacred rights will be revoked or even altered... and if they are, it can only be because as a society we have decided that there are more important things.

We can only take from others what we simultaneously take from ourselves. We can only grant to ourselves what we simultaneously grant to everyone else.

As a habitual offender, I recognized the idealism of the natural rights position. It is impossible to truly combat an argument for natural rights, but because of that, the entire argument is moot.

Now I understand that rights are never innate, so that version of natural rights is out. Where rights can be "natural" is when they are created by free claim and acceptance. Anarchy, in short.

Where rights can be "natural" is when they are created by free claim and acceptance. Anarchy, in short.I would readily agree to some version of that claim.

Certainly (ethical, healthy) anarchy represents an ideal point of social redemption, the ultimate reconciliation between nature and culture, between individual and society, between humanity and the material world.

To that extent, at the (perhaps unattainable) limiting point of anarchy, all dialectics collapse: the posited becomes the natural, the natural results in a rational posit. The words themselves would lose their useful meaning.

They are nothing but a term for a collection of those, just like a herd is a term for a collection of sheep. And no more than that.

A 'herd' of sheep? A 'herd' of sheep? A flock, surely?

To that extent, at the (perhaps unattainable) limiting point of anarchy, all dialectics collapse: the posited becomes the natural, the natural results in a rational posit. The words themselves would lose their useful meaning.

I am noticing some trends here.

What is the purpose of the dialetics, in your opinion or in what is commonly accepted?

I am noticing some trends here.

What is the purpose of the dialetics, in your opinion or in what is commonly accepted?

Isn't dialectics a never ending thought process of elimination to achieve some sort of a synthesis?

Isn't dialectics a never ending thought process of elimination to achieve some sort of a synthesis?

A never-ending string of contradictions and resolutions created by the tension between two polar ideas.

But this is the second time recently that I have thought of some personal goal of mine as a final conciliation of the dialectic.

The key to positive rights is the rule of law: one law for everyone. Thus, I can only revoke a right for someone else if I revoke it for myself as well. This makes it extraordinarily unlikely that the most sacred rights will be revoked or even altered... and if they are, it can only be because as a society we have decided that there are more important things.

Okay... but this doesn't really change the argument.

Locke's argument is as follows:

1. We have a right to something unowned if we add value to it.
2. Appropriation by labor always adds value to something, because God said so.
3. Therefore, we have the right to that which we appropriate by labor.

You granted (1), and I assume you did so on the basis you have laid out here: we would not want to be denied the right to the value we produce with our labor, and therefore we cannot deny this right to others.

Your objection is to (2): "God says so" is not a legitimate reason for anything.

My point is that (2) is not essential to the argument, at least not insofar as it is typically directed against socialists and left-liberals.

The defender of Locke could easily say, "Yes, you are correct - labor does not magically add value, and 'God says so' is not a proof at all. But we see that in practice, appropriation by labor does, in fact, add value. People value their labor, and don't expend it frivolously; their appropriation will be to good use. They are concerned for what is theirs, and will safeguard and protect it, avoiding the 'tragedy of the commons.' They will exchange it towards mutual benefit with others, ultimately improving the general social welfare."

This sounds like an argument from utility, but it's not. It's an argument only from enough utility that it surpasses the utility of the alternative: "primitive" common ownership. Because it does, the second premise of the argument is true: appropriation by labor does, in fact, add value.

This argument can be contested... but only from the perspective that we would be better off without private property appropriation in the first place, if we returned to the original "state of nature" with regard to property.

In order to make the other claim, that property appropriation by labor has served the public good but not as much as a third, regulated and taxed, alternative would, we must contest the first premise: the notion that the addition of value entitles someone to the appropriated property (and to its free use and disposal) in the first place.

That is what I have attempted to do.

What is the purpose of the dialetics, in your opinion or in what is commonly accepted?Well, there are different "kinds" of dialectics, or perhaps different approaches to dialectical reasoning.

In the version with which I most closely identify, dialectical oppositions represent the "forgotten" truths of reified knowledge. As Adorno reminds us, "all reification is a forgetting." Thus, dialectical reasoning--the attempt to break apart the whole of the opposition by constantly turning it on its head--is an attempt to remember what we have forgotten.

In other words, it is a way to critique the existing, fragmented, alienated society. It is an attempt to remember the "beyond" that can never be completely captured by the false logic of a dominated world--a "beyond" that appears in the possibility of free ethical choice, for instance; that appears in the sublime, in those aspects of art that cannot be reduced to "meaning" or "technique", that somehow reside both within and between such reifications.

In a technical totality that consumes everything that opposes it, that co-opts every attempt at revolution, dialectics is the last mode of resistance. It is the last way to remember what the systems of control desperately want us to forget.

Locke's argument is as follows:

1. We have a right to something unowned if we add value to it.Let's be careful here.

We cannot claim any such right as a natural "given." Rather, this is an argument that we use in convincing other people to agree to such a right.

Holding my newly carved stone knife, I say to my friends, "I made this, and you should respect that. If you made one, I would respect your right to it."

Under most circumstances, my cohorts are likely to agree that such a right makes a lot of sense. We will institute such a right as public policy.

But the problem is that you cannot simply abstract from reality: you cannot assume that people will always assent to such a proposition, nor can you assume that it would be rational for them to do so whether they actually do so or not.

Locke knew this. It's the reason he had recourse to the will of God.

Let's take our knife example. I made my knife out of a stone I plucked from the side of the hill. The stones were part of the common stock, and by labor I appropriated one as a knife. No big deal--people are likely to agree to my "right" to my knife.

But suppose everyone wants his own knife, and we all go to the hill to get a rock. Very quickly it becomes clear that plucking all these rocks from the hill is contributing to water erosion: the water in the common stock is becoming dirty from runoff, our gardens are being destroyed, and the occasional flash flood threatens the very safety of our community.

Collectively, we decide that no one has the right to appropriate rocks from the hill, no matter what labor he contributes to the endeavor. If someone does take a rock from the hill and make a knife out of it, we decide that the knife should be taken from him and replaced to bolster the hill.

2. Appropriation by labor always adds value to something, because God said so.Right. Locke needs this because he wants to say, "Even if my labor ruins the hills and the waterfalls of the common stock, you need to respect my right because God prefers productive labor to pristine hills and waterfalls... regardless of what's good for you."

My point is that (2) is not essential to the argument, at least not insofar as it is typically directed against socialists and left-liberals.Well, that's what the people directing it against socialists and left-liberals think. But they've never been known for careful reasoning... and in particular, they've always resisted attempts to contextualize their arguments. So long as they are allowed to retain their abstractions, their arguments make sense. Force them to consider actual conditions in the real world, and they quickly fall to pieces.

Locke was better than that. At least he knew he needed God as a trump card over every possible circumstance.

They are concerned for what is theirs, and will safeguard and protect it, avoiding the 'tragedy of the commons.'Perhaps. Or they may safeguard their own appropriations to the detriment of the commons. At any rate, collectively we have the right to institute any solution we want to the commons problem--and private appropriation certainly is not the only one.

This argument can be contested... but only from the perspective that we would be better off without private property appropriation in the first place, if we returned to the original "state of nature" with regard to property.What makes you think that society somehow has the right to determine the rules of property ownership once... but never again?

Soheran:

You also seem to suffer the delusion that society can never make a mistake.

You insist that once we decide private appropriation is better than primitive communism, there is no going back.

Why the hell not?

If, after years of private appropriation, we realize that we did not understand the costs at the beginning--we did not understand how miserable we'd be making ourselves laboring all day, we did not understand how violent and jealous we would become towards each other, we did not understand that private appropriation would entail immense wealth and power for a few coupled with crushing poverty for many others....

Don't we have the right to say "Ooops"?

Don't we have the right to say, "You know what, let's go back to the trees"?

If not, why not?

Collectively, we decide that no one has the right to appropriate rocks from the hill, no matter what labor he contributes to the endeavor. If someone does take a rock from the hill and make a knife out of it, we decide that the knife should be taken from him and replaced to bolster the hill.

Yes, and this is legitimate - because appropriation here is worse than the alternative of just leaving it alone.

But if we decide that knives can be appropriated, but then price-control them, the Lockean can say: "Wait! You have already conceded that appropriation adds value, and you have not changed your mind - you are not abolishing appropriation. But you are refusing to give us the rights we are entitled, as the individuals who have added value to the rocks appropriated with our labor, by restricting our rights of use."

At any rate, collectively we have the right to institute any solution we want to the commons problem--and private appropriation certainly is not the only one.

Yes, that's what I've been saying.

The argument from value-addition is based on the notion that society should accept added value as a legitimate basis for appropriation... but in its implicit moral assumptions it in fact presupposes such a society.

If society decided that land should be managed collectively, instead of handed out to anyone who added value to it, there is no compelling basis to object from a right to the value of what a person produces.

You insist that once we decide private appropriation is better than primitive communism, there is no going back.

No, I don't.

Actually, I've repeatedly insisted the opposite... that regardless of whether or not we accept the first premise, accepting that "primitive communism" is better than private appropriation would always serve as a good reason to go back.

It's what might be called the "half-way" position that needs further support.

Isn't dialectics a never ending thought process of elimination to achieve some sort of a synthesis?Strictly speaking, dialectics refers to a mode of analysis that relies on the play of opposites: a logic of contradiction.

Hegel famously defended a dialectical logic that sought syntheses of opposing terms. This is not the only way to approach dialectics, however.

Yes, and this is legitimate - because appropriation here is worse than the alternative of just leaving it alone.Why do you keep insisting that these are our only alternatives?

I can think of thousands of ways to relate legally to the material world. (Indeed, a friend specializing in South African legal systems recently told me that they have over one hundred ways to relate to property.)

1) No concept of property.
2) A right to appropriation contingent on a countervailing "giving back"... a theory realized at least symbolically in aboriginal hunting practices that require ritual exchanges when killing an animal.
3) Collective ownership.
4) A right to appropriation contingent on a payment to a collective fund.

The list can go on....

Hell, even Locke suggests a rule for appropriation separable from the "you work it, you got it" theory. Appropriation, for him, is contingent on the "as much and as good" proviso as well as the non-spoilage proviso.

But if we decide that knives can be appropriated, but then price-control them, the Lockean can say: "Wait! You have already conceded that appropriation adds value, and you have not changed your mind - you are not abolishing appropriation. But you are refusing to give us the rights we are entitled, as the individuals who have added value to the rocks appropriated with our labor, by restricting our rights of use."No.

Society does not have to say, "We agree to an unlimited right to appropriation by labor."

Rather, we tend to say, "We agree to a right to appropriation by labor as delimited by rules defending the public good. For instance, we agree to a right to appropriation by labor so long as some percentage of the proceeds are returned to the common property."

Only a theory of natural right can defend an "unlimited" right to appropriation by labor.

But natural rights in this sense are so thoroughly discredited that it's hardly worth resurrecting the argument in their favor just to demolish it one more time.

The rights we have are the rights we can agree to as a society. The only a priori rational rule is that we can only advocate rights for ourselves that we advocate for everyone else; and we can only advocate restrictions on others that we advocate against ourselves as well.

The argument from value-addition is based on the notion that society should accept added value as a legitimate basis for appropriation... but in its implicit moral assumptions it in fact presupposes such a society.Presupposing a society that accepts "value added" as a legitimate basis for appropriation is to presuppose an abstraction so devoid of specific content that it says nothing.

Why? Because you say nothing about what that society VALUES.
It's what might be called the "half-way" position that needs further support.I really don't see why.

You continue to assume that the only way to define a right is "absolutely." But this contradicts every sense in which the word "right" has been used throughout history. I cannot think of a single right that any society has ever taken as absolute.

Can you?

Let's be careful here.

We cannot claim any such right as a natural "given." Rather, this is an argument that we use in convincing other people to agree to such a right.

Holding my newly carved stone knife, I say to my friends, "I made this, and you should respect that. If you made one, I would respect your right to it."

Under most circumstances, my cohorts are likely to agree that such a right makes a lot of sense. We will institute such a right as public policy.

But the problem is that you cannot simply abstract from reality: you cannot assume that people will always assent to such a proposition, nor can you assume that it would be rational for them to do so whether they actually do so or not.

Locke knew this. It's the reason he had recourse to the will of God.

No, no, no. That is not the reason he had recourse to God; in fact, if memory serves, and granted it has been a while since I've argued this point with the last person to claim Locke lives or dies on the acceptance of Biblical recourse, he didn't need God to justify this claim at all.

Rather, what he claimed was that reasonable people would see this as self-evident. I respect what's mine, and it follows from that, insofar as you are just as rational as I and have much the same needs, and further insofar as I am rational, I respect what's yours as well because I recognize your need for survival, and by extension the liberty and the material conditions for survival, just as much as mine.

Now it is true that he used Biblical language; indeed quoted Scripture extensively at this point to back up his claim. But it is false to claim that he used the Bible as the sole source of his justification, and the reason why it's false is obvious: he just spent the entire First Treatise debunking the notion that God is the ultimate justifactory device for the existence of a political order. Now I don't know if Locke is the brightest man that ever lived, but I am positive he was not dumb enough to refute the notion of governmental order = Godly or divine support only to turn around and say that governmental order = support for property underpinnings, where property underpinnings = Godly or divine support.

What he is using the Biblical references for is to justify his notion to those many people who still do believe that government order = divine support. He is in effect saying "Even if you don't buy this notion that government is really a social order, ordained and supported by people, in support of property rights in a resource-scarce environ, you should still support me on this point because of Biblical scripture X: Y."

And as a side note, yes, your analysis of Locke is very common. In point of fact, I've argued this point seperately with the person who instructed me in Locke, as well as friends on the matter. Given the intelligence of my instructor and my friends, that may well mean you are right, but my reading of Locke's overall project, as well as my reading of the part you are directly referencing, simply do not support it.


Let's take our knife example. I made my knife out of a stone I plucked from the side of the hill. The stones were part of the common stock, and by labor I appropriated one as a knife. No big deal--people are likely to agree to my "right" to my knife.

But suppose everyone wants his own knife, and we all go to the hill to get a rock. Very quickly it becomes clear that plucking all these rocks from the hill is contributing to water erosion: the water in the common stock is becoming dirty from runoff, our gardens are being destroyed, and the occasional flash flood threatens the very safety of our community.

Collectively, we decide that no one has the right to appropriate rocks from the hill, no matter what labor he contributes to the endeavor. If someone does take a rock from the hill and make a knife out of it, we decide that the knife should be taken from him and replaced to bolster the hill.

Right. Locke needs this because he wants to say, "Even if my labor ruins the hills and the waterfalls of the common stock, you need to respect my right because God prefers productive labor to pristine hills and waterfalls... regardless of what's good for you."

The God argument aside; sort of. The kicker is that people accede to your right to the knife because a) they are rational, and thus respect in your actions and effort the same as they would expect from you, b) there is no acute knife shortage that might well overwhelm their calm rational deliberation on the matter, c) depending upon whether or not a state exists or not (my prior points assume it does not), and d) whether or not you are assuming recompense for productive value lost. I don't think there is any internal problem in Locke's account with people continuing to pull eventual knives out of the hill so long as 1) you also use productive value to reinforce the hill with something else, or 2) you recompense those whose labor will be lost for the poorer fisheries and lost farmland if you do choose to pull a future knife out of the hill. Locke doesn't specifically mention collective-action problems, but I would think his general principle of calm rationality and recompense in fair trade for productive value destroyed by your own action in the state of nature covers it nicely.

I really, really, really hate the "property is theft" 'argument.' Not that it's an actual argument. It's nothing but a cheap slogan designed to persuade anyone who isn't some sort of anarcho-communist (or whatever) to feel guilty for all the things they "stole" using their evil "thieving" non-communal economic system and to goad them by this emotive into thinking, "gosh, I don't want to be a thief. Quick, to the bat-commune!"

I really, really, really hate the "property is theft" 'argument.' Not that it's an actual argument. It's nothing but a cheap slogan designed to persuade anyone who isn't some sort of anarcho-communist (or whatever) to feel guilty for all the things they "stole" using their evil "thieving" non-communal economic system and to goad them by this emotive into thinking, "gosh, I don't want to be a thief. Quick, to the bat-commune!"

It often is used that way, but it doesn't have to be. The only time I've used anything like it is to rebut the standard libertarian's claim that any kind of collectivism must equal theft, because under such circumstances, they almost always say that theft is the taking of something that belongs to someone else without just recompense. To which it must be asked: exactly what is profit? Profit seems to be paying someone less for their labor and the products thereof than they are worth on the market, in which case profit seems to be a quintessential example of taking of something that belongs to someone else without just recompense. You can't invalidate one without invalidating the other under that definition.

Rather, what he claimed was that reasonable people would see this as self-evident. I respect what's mine, and it follows from that, insofar as you are just as rational as I and have much the same needs, and further insofar as I am rational, I respect what's yours as well because I recognize your need for survival, and by extension the liberty and the material conditions for survival, just as much as mine.No. You skipped a step.

Yes, I respect what's mine and therefore I respect what's yours. The problem is figuring out how things became "mine" and "yours" in the first place, from what Locke argues (appropriately) begins as a common stock.

The problem is that not just ANYTHING I do clearly gives me a right to what I take from the common stock.

Think of it this way: We share a natural environment in which a number of nice, flat rocks in a meadow serve as comfortable resting places. No one "owns" them and everyone uses them: they are a part of the common stock.

One day, I get myself a sledge hammer and beat one of these rocks into hundreds of smaller pieces. I then craft each of these pieces into a small trinket: a statue, a nice polished stone, whatever.

Now, you want to say, "AnarchyeL used his labor to produce these nice things, and if the people across the river want to pay him for them then he is entitled to the proceeds."

But everyone else says, "Fuck that. He broke a rock that was useful to everyone, and the Hell if we're going to acknowledge a 'right' of his to keep anything he gets out of it. If anything, we're going to see if we can trade his trinkets to the people across the river in exchange for a new rock."

The problem, again, is that VALUE IS RELATIVE. A "reasonable" person need not agree to ANY particular kind of appropriation, in the abstract. It depends on what things he and his society value.

So, Locke needs a trump. He needs to be able to say that regardless of what a particular society values, productive labor justifies appropriation.

Why? Because God told us to "be fruitful," to "labor the Earth."

It's on this basis that Locke can feel perfectly comfortable invading the land of the Native Americans. He was very explicit about the point: they weren't using their land as God intended, so they had no right to it.

Now it is true that he used Biblical language; indeed quoted Scripture extensively at this point to back up his claim. But it is false to claim that he used the Bible as the sole source of his justification, and the reason why it's false is obvious: he just spent the entire First Treatise debunking the notion that God is the ultimate justifactory device for the existence of a political order.No, he spent the entire First Treatise debunking the notion that God provides the ultimate justification for the existence of a particular political order, namely Filmerian patriarchy.

It is highly significant that the arguments of the First Treatise use the Bible itself--and virtually nothing else--against Filmer. Locke does not show that the Bible should not be used in political arguments, he just shows that the Bible does not say what Filmer claims it says.

It often is used that way, but it doesn't have to be. The only time I've used anything like it is to rebut the standard libertarian's claim that any kind of collectivism must equal theft, because under such circumstances, they almost always say that theft is the taking of something that belongs to someone else without just recompense.

Usually, it's taxation that's equated with theft, not just any type of collectivist situation. And that's a viewpoint I tend to agree with. A third of my life's energy, time and money goes, and if I refuse I get imprisoned. Sure, the one mugging me might give me benefits, like seeing dead Iraqis courtesy of my tax dollars, but I don't consider that even relevant to the fact that I had no choice in giving up my energy, time and money and because the one receiving it is the one who would directly use force to imprison me if I refused.

To which it must be asked: exactly what is profit?

Profit is the positive difference between expenses and revenue. Loss would be a negative difference.

Profit seems to be paying someone less for their labor and the products thereof than they are worth on the market

Not at all. One pays wages which are worth exactly what the labor is on the market.

What you seem to be desiring is paying someone who was only partially responsible for producing a product, the total value of the product. That is in turn depriving others involved in the process what they would earn for their labor, and that's where it becomes unfair. Example, you make a toy, and I manage to find a buyer overseas. Now I pay you the total price of the toy, and what do I have? Nothing. So why should I have bothered at all? Maybe corporations are wrong because someone who puts together automobile parts on an assembly line is perfectly capable of making automobiles without anyone else's help AND capable of selling them?

in which case profit seems to be a quintessential example of taking of something that belongs to someone else without just recompense.

If I spend five dollars and get a hamburger, I consider it profitable because I have exchanged less than one hour's labor for several hours' worth of food energy. I have profited because I have spent less than I gained. How is this taking something that belongs to someone else without just recompense?

And all of this is apart from the fact that while the government itself will use force (imprisonment) if you refuse to pay taxes, a business can't use force against you if you refuse it's products or services. It can fire you if you're employed there, but that's not using force, that's simply denying that you be a member. Quite different from the mass-mugging that we call taxation.

AnarchyeL: Enough of this.

I think I may have misread you from the start... because we seem to agree on the fundamental point I was trying to make.

No. You skipped a step.

Yes, I respect what's mine and therefore I respect what's yours. The problem is figuring out how things became "mine" and "yours" in the first place, from what Locke argues (appropriately) begins as a common stock.

The problem is that not just ANYTHING I do clearly gives me a right to what I take from the common stock.

Think of it this way: We share a natural environment in which a number of nice, flat rocks in a meadow serve as comfortable resting places. No one "owns" them and everyone uses them: they are a part of the common stock.

One day, I get myself a sledge hammer and beat one of these rocks into hundreds of smaller pieces. I then craft each of these pieces into a small trinket: a statue, a nice polished stone, whatever.

Now, you want to say, "AnarchyeL used his labor to produce these nice things, and if the people across the river want to pay him for them then he is entitled to the proceeds."

But everyone else says, "Fuck that. He broke a rock that was useful to everyone, and the Hell if we're going to acknowledge a 'right' of his to keep anything he gets out of it. If anything, we're going to see if we can trade his trinkets to the people across the river in exchange for a new rock."

The problem, again, is that VALUE IS RELATIVE. A "reasonable" person need not agree to ANY particular kind of appropriation, in the abstract. It depends on what things he and his society value.

So, Locke needs a trump. He needs to be able to say that regardless of what a particular society values, productive labor justifies appropriation.

Why? Because God told us to "be fruitful," to "labor the Earth."

It's on this basis that Locke can feel perfectly comfortable invading the land of the Native Americans. He was very explicit about the point: they weren't using their land as God intended, so they had no right to it.

I will have to go home and retrieve my copy of Locke to be sure, but that trump can be entirely explained by Locke's prior analysis, and the quote you provided gives only an addendum, not the proximate reason, for his thinking.

What is "mine" and what is "yours" is determined by the value of the object in itself (the degree to which it services either my direct survival needs or acquiring said survival needs), and the value of the productive labor I choose to install in that item to make it serviceable. Nothing more and nothing less. The "Be fruitful and multiply" quotation is in fact merely a restatement by other means of something he's already said, which is that it is a base material fact about the world that people do in fact try to survive, require material means and relative freedom to survive, and will fight to the death to retain these abilities; it merely refutes the notion that this fact about human existence somehow debases us or makes us less human.

The justification, then, is not Godly, but rooted in an assumption of natural rights properly understood. In your example (of which I am somewhat confused: are we speaking of a political order or no? If no, and this is an early apolitical period, then insofar as you fence in that part of the land that you use productively and leave land and stones you cannot use productively, they have no claim; you have not harmed them, and by asserting their claim assert to do war upon you. The relative value of their being able to use that stone to sit upon does not override your right to life, nor to instill productive value into stones in order to secure that life. If no, and it is a post-monetary apolitical order, then the above is still true, and you have the ability to buy as many stones as you want, even above my necessity, if it suits you, and sucks to be them, but possibly also for you if the masses get mean. If yes, then it is the determination of the deliberative body convened by the initial inception of the political state to decide in what manner you should use or refrain from using those stones, although a deliberative body that disenfranchises you arbitrarily from such stones is possibly illegitemate), those other people have claims that, to be enforceable, step over all kinds of lines that this base outline for the doctrine of natural rights sets up.

The crucial point then is that your point of relative value is not in fact grounded in Lockean notion of natural rights. Sitting on the ground or on a stone makes no difference when the matter is one of survival or securing the means to that survival, because sitting on a stone or looking at a pretty sunset is not a survival-beneficial action. Insofar as I am trying to do that and you aren't, that is my trump, not God. Insofar as you are trying to do that and I am not, that is your trump, not God. Natural rights certainly won't secure such rights indefatigueably (and here is one of the many points that libertarians simply do not understand and will not accept if they did); I can overwhelm you by force if I really feel it necessary to sit on that rock, but I would not be right to do so, and I would not be right not because God disapproves but because I am overwhelming your ability to do as you might to survive without harming me.


No, he spent the entire First Treatise debunking the notion that God provides the ultimate justification for the existence of a particular political order, namely Filmerian patriarchy.

It is highly significant that the arguments of the First Treatise use the Bible itself--and virtually nothing else--against Filmer. Locke does not show that the Bible should not be used in political arguments, he just shows that the Bible does not say what Filmer claims it says.

You are merely backing the point up a step: what was Filmerian patriarchy, if not for an attempt to justify governmental order through divine support? The how of course is important, but the overall purpose to which he is arguing is just as much if not more so.

Further, you are also neglecting Locke's intent. Yes, he used Biblical Scripture to refute Filmer, and yes, he shows that the Bible does not show what Filmer thinks it shows, but to the larger negative point of saying that you cannot use the Bible to justify the existence of a government. Locke was historically very Christian, but he was also historically opposed to both the monarchical claim to divine right and to the Dominion; I find it very hard to reconcile this notion of him supporting a divine right to property, and property rights underpinning all government action and legitemacy, with him also opposing two seperate forms of government in England that claimed their legitemacy as divine in origin.

Even further than that, you are also ignoring Locke's rationale for using Biblical support: the fact that a lot of people still supported this notion of Biblical basis for action, including governmental action. He uses the Bible because he has to argue on their turf that they misunderstand what they are supporting, not because he ultimately has aims of basing his own claim to what political legitemacy is on it.

Xenophobialand:

I do suggest that you go back to re-read your Locke. I think you are pretty clearly reading Locke as you want him to be rather than as he actually was.

Hell, he even based his argument for religious toleration on a specifically Christian rationale. He even went so far as to argue that toleration does not extend to Muslims (because they have an allegiance to worldly powers) or to atheists (because, according to Locke, you can never trust a person who does not believe in God).

I find it very hard to reconcile this notion of him supporting a divine right to property, and property rights underpinning all government action and legitemacy, with him also opposing two seperate forms of government in England that claimed their legitemacy as divine in origin.I oppose two separate forms of government that claim their legitimacy as "rational" in origin. Does that mean you would find it hard to believe that I should support a third form of government that claims its legitimacy in the mandate of reason?

No, of course not. My quarrel with other forms is not that they are based in reason, but that I believe reason does not actually lead to those conclusions.

Similarly, Locke's quarrel with Filmer was not that he based his argument on Scripture, but that he very badly misinterpreted Scripture. Read the First Treatise. The entire argument is composed of Old Testament passages that contradict Filmer's argument, combined with logical arguments that demonstrate that Filmer's interpretation of Scripture reduces to absurdities.

Locke does not claim that Filmer was wrong to look to Scripture for political guidance in the first place. Nor would he, since he opens his own more constructive Second Treatise with the argument that we are "God's property."

Even further than that, you are also ignoring Locke's rationale for using Biblical support: the fact that a lot of people still supported this notion of Biblical basis for action, including governmental action.Not that many.

Perhaps when he wrote the First Treatise that was still true. But by the time he had finished the Second Treatise and gotten around to publishing the two, the tide had turned decidedly in favor of the Enlightenment. In fact, his argument against Filmer was already out-dated, since people had stopped caring about Filmer a decade before the Treatises were published--clearly among the reasons that Locke never bothered to rewrite the substantial portions of the First Treatise that he lost (indeed, most of the book).

Locke's religious arguments are a holdover, not a concession.

Property is a right of nonintervention, a negative right. When someone has a right of property, others have an obligation to not interfere with your ownership, use, disposal, etc., of the thing that your property rights are in reference to.


I'm still seeing no reason to accept the base premise... sure, ownership relies on non-intervention... but what gives me the 'right' to own, in the first place?

As a habitual offender, I recognized the idealism of the natural rights position. It is impossible to truly combat an argument for natural rights, but because of that, the entire argument is moot.


It isn't impossible to truly combat an argument for natural rights, at all. It isn't even hard.

You are mistaking the fact that it is impossible to empirically defend natural rights... and consequently, no one bothers.... with the merits of arguing against them.

It is simple - where is the evidence for 'natural rights'?

Usually, it's taxation that's equated with theft, not just any type of collectivist situation. And that's a viewpoint I tend to agree with. A third of my life's energy, time and money goes, and if I refuse I get imprisoned. Sure, the one mugging me might give me benefits, like seeing dead Iraqis courtesy of my tax dollars, but I don't consider that even relevant to the fact that I had no choice in giving up my energy, time and money and because the one receiving it is the one who would directly use force to imprison me if I refused.Nope. You can refuse to expend your energy time and money and not be taxed, and therefore not be imprisoned, or you can refuse to live in a particular country and not be taxed.

Not at all. One pays wages which are worth exactly what the labor is on the market.

What you seem to be desiring is paying someone who was only partially responsible for producing a product, the total value of the product. That is in turn depriving others involved in the process what they would earn for their labor, and that's where it becomes unfair. Example, you make a toy, and I manage to find a buyer overseas. Now I pay you the total price of the toy, and what do I have? Nothing. So why should I have bothered at all? Maybe corporations are wrong because someone who puts together automobile parts on an assembly line is perfectly capable of making automobiles without anyone else's help AND capable of selling them?Then in such a situation, everyone who worked on the product should be entitled to an equal share of the product's value.

And all of this is apart from the fact that while the government itself will use force (imprisonment) if you refuse to pay taxes, a business can't use force against you if you refuse it's products or services. It can fire you if you're employed there, but that's not using force, that's simply denying that you be a member. Quite different from the mass-mugging that we call taxation.Is force the only way to negatively influence somebody?

Isn't a park collective property? :confused:

Nope. You can refuse to expend your energy time and money and not be taxed

...and die.

and therefore not be imprisoned, or you can refuse to live in a particular country and not be taxed.

All countries have taxes, and "Give me money, or leave the country" is every bit a mugging as "Give me money, or be imprisoned."

Then in such a situation, everyone who worked on the product should be entitled to an equal share of the product's value.

Not at all. If all you did was slap a label on it and what I did was market it, distribute it, handle the accounting and payroll, I would seem to be doing more work and receive more share. Life isn't "equal" even from the perspective of your flawed labor theory of value.


Is force the only way to negatively influence somebody?

...no. I could negatively influence someone by laughing at their choice of pants.

What exactly does this have to do with anything? Force is the key element in mugging and theft.

"Property is theft" takes numerous forms in Proudhonist anarchism, economic collectivism, collectivist anarchism, and the numerous forms of communism and socialism. It is, however, to say nothing of just plain wrong, logically impossible. If property were theft, nobody would own anything, ergo there would be no holder of property and nobody to steal from. You can't steal what doesn't/can't belong to anybody. So it's a self-invalidating statement.

Prove me wrong.

Ummm lets see, now I have an argument that throws all oftha outumm let me remember....


Ahh yes.



Why do anarchist only drink herbal tea?




Because proper tea is theft!:eek:

...and die.Which is the same choice that a person has when it comes to working for an employer.

All countries have taxes, and "Give me money, or leave the country" is every bit a mugging as "Give me money, or be imprisoned." Not all islands are currently inhabited by people. I'm sure you could find one if you wanted to.

Not at all. If all you did was slap a label on it and what I did was market it, distribute it, handle the accounting and payroll, I would seem to be doing more work and receive more share. Life isn't "equal" even from the perspective of your flawed labor theory of value.Even if this was the case, the entire cost of the sale wouldn't go to the person that made it.

What exactly does this have to do with anything? Force is the key element in mugging and theft.Which is exactly what occurs when governments create and defend property rights.

I'm still seeing no reason to accept the base premise... sure, ownership relies on non-intervention... but what gives me the 'right' to own, in the first place?

Society's respect of your claim, but I do not see how that matters.

It isn't impossible to truly combat an argument for natural rights, at all. It isn't even hard.

You are mistaking the fact that it is impossible to empirically defend natural rights... and consequently, no one bothers.... with the merits of arguing against them.

It is simple - where is the evidence for 'natural rights'?

I do not disagree with you.

The argument for natural rights is mainly made on semantic games, natural rights advocates generally build an untestable, nonfalsifiable position with which to support the ideologies. I found that tendency in myself.

Well, there are different "kinds" of dialectics, or perhaps different approaches to dialectical reasoning.

In the version with which I most closely identify, dialectical oppositions represent the "forgotten" truths of reified knowledge. As Adorno reminds us, "all reification is a forgetting." Thus, dialectical reasoning--the attempt to break apart the whole of the opposition by constantly turning it on its head--is an attempt to remember what we have forgotten.

In other words, it is a way to critique the existing, fragmented, alienated society. It is an attempt to remember the "beyond" that can never be completely captured by the false logic of a dominated world--a "beyond" that appears in the possibility of free ethical choice, for instance; that appears in the sublime, in those aspects of art that cannot be reduced to "meaning" or "technique", that somehow reside both within and between such reifications.

In a technical totality that consumes everything that opposes it, that co-opts every attempt at revolution, dialectics is the last mode of resistance. It is the last way to remember what the systems of control desperately want us to forget.


And if a person "forgets" everything, and only has themselves (and is satisfied with what he has), a sort of Nietzschean overcoming, would this be a fathomable end to the dialectic?

Which is the same choice that a person has when it comes to working for an employer.

Sorry, no. See, there are more than one sources of employment. Hard to believe, I know.

Not all islands are currently inhabited by people. I'm sure you could find one if you wanted to.

That's true. And, I could defend myself against a mugger by running away. It's still a mugging.

Even if this was the case, the entire cost of the sale wouldn't go to the person that made it.

Nor should it.

Which is exactly what occurs when governments create and defend property rights.

Hence property is theft right? Hur hur hur. No. Because a government doesn't come to anyone, use force to take away their property, in defense of property rights. You seem to want it to be the case very badly, but wanting isn't enough to change reality.

1+1=2. This applies no matter what the first 1 is 1 of and no matter what the second 1 is 1 of. 1 car and 1 blade of grass are still 2 things. Logic. Can't be disproven.

That is such a ridiculously restricted notion, 1 and 2 are in fact the same thing viewed from different precepts.
profiteroles for anyone who gets the reference

And if a person "forgets" everything, and only has themselves (and is satisfied with what he has), a sort of Nietzschean overcoming, would this be a fathomable end to the dialectic?First, I'm always cautious about invoking Nietzsche, because he is incredibly complex, probably contradictory, and therefore difficult to pin down according to "what Nietzsche thinks."

Here, it is particularly concerning to ask what one means by "only having themselves." What kind of "self" is this?

Meanwhile, I don't want to equivocate on the meaning of "forgetting" that I've used above... so if you mean it in that sense then forgetting and Nietzschean overcoming are antithetical to one another. Actually, Nietzsche very much wants human beings to remember what's been buried under the dead, reified, "aesthetic" ideals of Christian Europe.

But, perhaps the real answer to the question is to suggest that there could be a "negative" as well as a positive "end" to the dialectic, in the sense that the real "life" of dialectics is in their playing out, in resistance to dichotomized, reified existence.

If late consumer capitalism totally swallows the dream of something "other," the dream of a redeemed world... then yes, the dialectic has died. But it has died by being swallowed up in what Adorno called "identity thinking" that reduces human possibilities to the grinding gears of the world of so-called "facts."

Nietzsche's anti-positivism is very much allied with this Adornean critique of identity thinking.

If we allow ourselves to believe in identity--the notion that we can fully grasp the objective truth of "what is" through our subjective mental apparatus--then we cut off the possibility for change. We make ourselves into objects. We capitulate to our own unfreedom.

Sorry, no. See, there are more than one sources of employment. Hard to believe, I know.And there is more than one government to live under. What's your point?

That's true. And, I could defend myself against a mugger by running away. It's still a mugging.Yes, but in the case of living in a particular area, when you don't leave, you consent to paying taxes.

Nor should it.Perhaps not, but nonetheless, even the proponents of the labor theory of value would not discount the value of the labor that the distributor put into the sale of the product.

Hence property is theft right? Hur hur hur. No. Because a government doesn't come to anyone, use force to take away their property, in defense of property rights. You seem to want it to be the case very badly, but wanting isn't enough to change reality.Really? Where do the taxes that fund the police come from?
Do the police ever defend property rights?

Nonetheless, the government (as the representative of society) defines what property rights are. Therefore, the amount that you're being taxed could easily be viewed as something you don't have the right to anyway, and therefore taxation doesn't interfere with property rights.

First, I'm always cautious about invoking Nietzsche, because he is incredibly complex, probably contradictory, and therefore difficult to pin down according to "what Nietzsche thinks."

Here, it is particularly concerning to ask what one means by "only having themselves." What kind of "self" is this?

Meanwhile, I don't want to equivocate on the meaning of "forgetting" that I've used above... so if you mean it in that sense then forgetting and Nietzschean overcoming are antithetical to one another. Actually, Nietzsche very much wants human beings to remember what's been buried under the dead, reified, "aesthetic" ideals of Christian Europe.

But, perhaps the real answer to the question is to suggest that there could be a "negative" as well as a positive "end" to the dialectic, in the sense that the real "life" of dialectics is in their playing out, in resistance to dichotomized, reified existence.

If late consumer capitalism totally swallows the dream of something "other," the dream of a redeemed world... then yes, the dialectic has died. But it has died by being swallowed up in what Adorno called "identity thinking" that reduces human possibilities to the grinding gears of the world of so-called "facts."

Nietzsche's anti-positivism is very much allied with this Adornean critique of identity thinking.

If we allow ourselves to believe in identity--the notion that we can fully grasp the objective truth of "what is" through our subjective mental apparatus--then we cut off the possibility for change. We make ourselves into objects. We capitulate to our own unfreedom.

OK, first I misinterpreted you, partly due to shoddy reading and partly due to my general unfamiliarity with the concept of reification.

My statement came from the position that reification (and alienation) was a learning process, and that abstraction is achieved by "forgetting" this knowledge.

This is linked to my recent thoughts on the resolution of free will, where a person finds his true nature and subjective meets objective, with the result being an individual who is comfortable with his fate, so to speak (capitulating to our unfreedom).

When applied to the idea of alienation, the person continually drops (or forgets) his reliance on these social ideals until he finds only those ideals that truly rest inside of him. He is then with or by himself; he has no external influences. As no man can rebel against his own nature, this would represent an end to the tension of this particular dialect.

This seems to be similar to Nietzsche's coming of the ubermensch, and that is why I mentioned the overcoming.

The trend I mentioned that I noticed in my thinking is that the end of dialetical progression occurs when man's nature is reached. The problem is that, while behaving according to one's nature implies a freedom from one aspect, it also implies brutal, unforgiving slavery from another.

When applied to the idea of alienation, the person continually drops (or forgets) his reliance on these social ideals until he finds only those ideals that truly rest inside of him. He is then with or by himself; he has no external influences.

If I recall your earlier formulation of this in the free will thread correctly, this notion would depend on "higher" preferences being exclusively internal.

Why do you make that assumption?

My statement came from the position that reification (and alienation) was a learning process, and that abstraction is achieved by "forgetting" this knowledge.Allow me to clear up a few points of confusion.

First, there is a sort of "learning" involved in reification, as it adds objectified abstractions to our psychic repertoire. However, in a more important sense reification is a forgetting of the real.

Consider one of the first, perhaps the deepest, reifications of natural knowledge. So-called "primitives" have a relation to time as rhythm, as duration, but no concept of "time" as a never-ending progression of abstract, identical "moments" that we in our ignorance take as an objective fact of the universe... by which we submit ourselves to schedules, to the unfreedom of imposed activity.

At this point in our history, we can no longer remember what it is like to relate to time immediately, to experience the natural rhythms of the world without subjecting them (and ourselves) to the reified concepts of physics, mathematics.

We live perpetually under the dead weight of abstract nouns.

This is linked to my recent thoughts on the resolution of free will, where a person finds his true nature and subjective meets objective, with the result being an individual who is comfortable with his fate, so to speak (capitulating to our unfreedom).As soon as you assume "fate," you've given up on free will.

The proper resolution of the subjective/objective dialectic (if there is one) would rather involve a return to the natural such that the world of objects no longer threatens us, so that the assertion of will need not be a struggle against ourselves.

I'm still undecided whether this is a conceivable goal. I am, however, convinced that if it is a realizable goal it cannot be accomplished by the individual alone. It is a social problem.

The individual can, indeed, capitulate to unfreedom--and in this he may find a kind of peace, meditating on Fate. But only society taken together can redeem itself so that the individual need not struggle against his own objective nature in order to assert his agency.

To capitulate is to renounce agency, which is not to resolve the dialectic, but only to flatten it, to cut off one term. This is essentially the attempt of compatiblism today.

When applied to the idea of alienation, the person continually drops (or forgets) his reliance on these social ideals until he finds only those ideals that truly rest inside of him. He is then with or by himself; he has no external influences. As no man can rebel against his own nature, this would represent an end to the tension of this particular dialect.This assumes a kind of Western, masculine autonomous self that has been rightly attacked from many angles over the last one hundred years or so.

Any conception of self that attempts to abstract the individual from his embeddedness in natural and social reality is itself a reification, an imposition of a false "identity" on a much muddier reality.

This seems to be similar to Nietzsche's coming of the ubermensch, and that is why I mentioned the overcoming.It has some similarities, yes... but Nietzsche is not critical of all "public" ideals in any sense. Rather, he attacks the deadened ideals of Western Christianity that capitulate to false genealogies of "fact"--so that we come to think of the world as a "given" rather than itself an assertion of human wills.

Nietzsche's ubermensch practices the exact opposite of capitulation. He recognizes that ideals worth standing behind are ideals that a) face honestly (bravely) the possibility of their own failure; b) assert honestly the fact that they are products of the human imagination, and what makes them worthwhile is the fact that they impose life-oriented values on the world rather than resigning themselves to a world in which action is impossible.

He was equally opposed to theistic and scientific genealogies of human society: reified theistic genealogies hand us ideals from God to which we submit, and in the worst case a fatalistic concept of predestination based on our own idea of God; while scientific genealogies of human nature reduce us to biological/psychological organisms that similarly rob us of free will and subject us to a world of "facts" supposedly beyond our control.

The trend I mentioned that I noticed in my thinking is that the end of dialetical progression occurs when man's nature is reached. The problem is that, while behaving according to one's nature implies a freedom from one aspect, it also implies brutal, unforgiving slavery from another.But if by "nature" we are rational creatures, then finding our nature means learning to impose rational ideals upon the world. Finding our nature means finding the will to act.

That was Nietzsche's point. Any morality that forgets that all morality originates in the human will, human ideals, is a dead morality to which we enslave ourselves... when we should be creating morality (the "transvaluation of values") actively, knowingly.

Consider one of the first, perhaps the deepest, reifications of natural knowledge. So-called "primitives" have a relation to time as rhythm, as duration, but no concept of "time" as a never-ending progression of abstract, identical "moments" that we in our ignorance take as an objective fact of the universe... by which we submit ourselves to schedules, to the unfreedom of imposed activity.

I love that you get this. I have a hell of a time even explaining it in it's simplest form to people. They just can't wrap their heads around time as anything but discrete units.

But you might want to put your pants on...we're holding them at the pub...you never bothered to come back and claim them.

But you might want to put your pants on...we're holding them at the pub...you never bothered to come back and claim them.Since when have I ever needed pants? ;)

The proper resolution of the subjective/objective dialectic (if there is one) would rather involve a return to the natural such that the world of objects no longer threatens us, so that the assertion of will need not be a struggle against ourselves.

"No longer threatens us" in that we no longer mistake it for a genuine expression of reality?

"No longer threatens us" in that we no longer mistake it for a genuine expression of reality?No longer threatens us in two respects:

1) We redeem ourselves with respect to the natural world by forsaking the Western relationship to the material world as a world of "things" to be conquered and used. This is really about our relation to our own mortality: so long as we remain estranged from our own material existence, we persist in a desperate desire to stamp our imagined, phallic immortality upon the world.

2) We redeem ourselves with respect to other people such that even our competitors need not be our "enemies." Think of friendly, competitive associations between athletes. Think about what we mean by "good sportsmanship," and then contrast that to the world of capitalist competition. When all competition has the character of play, we no longer relate to other human beings as enemies.

1) We redeem ourselves with respect to the natural world by forsaking the Western relationship to the material world as a world of "things" to be conquered and used. This is really about our relation to our own mortality: so long as we remain estranged from our own material existence, we persist in a desperate desire to stamp our imagined, phallic immortality upon the world.

2) We redeem ourselves with respect to other people such that even our competitors need not be our "enemies." Think of friendly, competitive associations between athletes. Think about what we mean by "good sportsmanship," and then contrast that to the world of capitalist competition. When all competition has the character of play, we no longer relate to other human beings as enemies.

How does this resolve the objective/subjective dialectic?

I understand that how we see the world is fundamentally bound up in our own natures, and probably in our culture as well... but how can the causes of particular manifestations of this perceptive construct be traced to specific social causes?

"Property is theft" takes numerous forms in Proudhonist anarchism, economic collectivism, collectivist anarchism, and the numerous forms of communism and socialism. It is, however, to say nothing of just plain wrong, logically impossible. If property were theft, nobody would own anything, ergo there would be no holder of property and nobody to steal from. You can't steal what doesn't/can't belong to anybody. So it's a self-invalidating statement.

Prove me wrong.

Property came into being by one person saying "this is mine". That person can be argued to have stolen his claim from every other human being. You certainly can steal something that doesn't belong to anyone by depriving everyone else from the use of it.

How does this resolve the objective/subjective dialectic?It doesn't, per se.

What it does is to reduce the significance of the contradiction effectively to zero; that is, it makes subjective will compatible with objective determination because it eliminates the struggle between the two, the sense that one can only will freely by defying objective causal chains.

This aligns the notion with theoretical frameworks that imagine the possibility of a conflict-free future, in the manner of orthodox Marxism.

Again, I'm not fully endorsing the notion that we can, in fact, "resolve" the dialectic in this way. But for the sake of argument, that's what it would look like.

but how can the causes of particular manifestations of this perceptive construct be traced to specific social causes?It is a truism that our perception of the world is contingent upon social and cultural developments. As already mentioned, some cultures have a profoundly different experience of time than we do--that's a pretty deep manifestation of the constructs through which we perceive the world.

It is a truism that our perception of the world is contingent upon social and cultural developments. As already mentioned, some cultures have a profoundly different experience of time than we do--that's a pretty deep manifestation of the constructs through which we perceive the world.

That's what I said. But I don't see how this realization gets us very far in terms of actually proposing concrete solutions.

Especially when we have such trouble even comprehending the scope and nature of the problem, how can we isolate its cause?

How can we distinguish one plausible one from another?

That's what I said. But I don't see how this realization gets us very far in terms of actually proposing concrete solutions.It doesn't. It only gets us to the point of understanding that we can never conclude that there is no solution.

Actually coming up with solutions defensible against our best ideals is a separate project of the human imagination.

If I recall your earlier formulation of this in the free will thread correctly, this notion would depend on "higher" preferences being exclusively internal.

Why do you make that assumption?

Value can only be built upon values, for we only accept values after we have judged them favorably, and that process of judging is not possible without a set of values to operate as a yardstick. By extension of this logic, we must conclude that some values are innate, as without this core set of values, no other values would have been possible.

Now these values are the will, as will is our motivation to act, and we do not act for any other reason than value fulfillment.

Also, if we are to consider the concept of freedom, we will certainly establish it as a state of sovereignty, of self-control.

So, for there to exist a free will, it must be a motivation entirely controlled by the individual who possesses them, and as such must be a product of values over which the individual is sovereign.

With it being stated that there exists an innate set of values that are the root for all of our motivations, and that only those who control their motivations possess free will, we can define two possibilities, those who are self-creators and those who do not possess free will.

Since it is plain that there are no self-creators, we can say that nothing exists that possesses a free will.

Allow me to clear up a few points of confusion.

First, there is a sort of "learning" involved in reification, as it adds objectified abstractions to our psychic repertoire. However, in a more important sense reification is a forgetting of the real.

Consider one of the first, perhaps the deepest, reifications of natural knowledge. So-called "primitives" have a relation to time as rhythm, as duration, but no concept of "time" as a never-ending progression of abstract, identical "moments" that we in our ignorance take as an objective fact of the universe... by which we submit ourselves to schedules, to the unfreedom of imposed activity.

At this point in our history, we can no longer remember what it is like to relate to time immediately, to experience the natural rhythms of the world without subjecting them (and ourselves) to the reified concepts of physics, mathematics.

We live perpetually under the dead weight of abstract nouns.

We don't accrue these abstract nouns by forgetting, we accrue them by replacing. The act of replacing does not imply a complete destruction of the old, it just implies an acceptance of the new. So while it could be said there is a "forgetting", the key is that there is a learning.

For your example, we have not totally forgotten how to experience these rhythms, when we let ourselves go, they certainly make their presence felt. It seems more reasonable to me to state that they have not forgotten but replaced in their priority by the reified chronologies that you have mentioned.

In the end, I don't think these distinctions are all that important.

As soon as you assume "fate," you've given up on free will.

The proper resolution of the subjective/objective dialectic (if there is one) would rather involve a return to the natural such that the world of objects no longer threatens us, so that the assertion of will need not be a struggle against ourselves.

I'm still undecided whether this is a conceivable goal. I am, however, convinced that if it is a realizable goal it cannot be accomplished by the individual alone. It is a social problem.

The individual can, indeed, capitulate to unfreedom--and in this he may find a kind of peace, meditating on Fate. But only society taken together can redeem itself so that the individual need not struggle against his own objective nature in order to assert his agency.

To capitulate is to renounce agency, which is not to resolve the dialectic, but only to flatten it, to cut off one term. This is essentially the attempt of compatiblism today.

I have never taken up the flag of free will, except for its role as a necessary illusion. What I have done is deny free will its position as a virtue. Free will is not the subjective doing other than the objective, it is the subjecting wishing to other than the subjective. This is a doomed desire, and therefore free will can only result in frustration, sadness, resentment, and general malcontent.

In this sense, it is the illusion of free will that is the struggle (or at least the conscious manifestation of it), with slavery and liberty being the two sides of the coin. At the resolution that I am proposing, as I said it is equally and at once both liberty and slavery.

As for the necessity of a conducive social environment, I could not agree more.

This assumes a kind of Western, masculine autonomous self that has been rightly attacked from many angles over the last one hundred years or so.

Any conception of self that attempts to abstract the individual from his embeddedness in natural and social reality is itself a reification, an imposition of a false "identity" on a much muddier reality.

I do not wish to imply that man can be an island.

It seems quite plain to me that mimicry can be internally motivated. Just as a man can find beauty in a sunset, he can affirm his values in that actions of another, and we certainly would not argue that the sunset imposes this sense of beauty.

If you remember back to a past discussion, this natural compulsion to accept social values was the central method I could argue intense individualism and autonomy while rejecting extreme primitivism.

It has some similarities, yes... but Nietzsche is not critical of all "public" ideals in any sense. Rather, he attacks the deadened ideals of Western Christianity that capitulate to false genealogies of "fact"--so that we come to think of the world as a "given" rather than itself an assertion of human wills.

Nietzsche's ubermensch practices the exact opposite of capitulation. He recognizes that ideals worth standing behind are ideals that a) face honestly (bravely) the possibility of their own failure; b) assert honestly the fact that they are products of the human imagination, and what makes them worthwhile is the fact that they impose life-oriented values on the world rather than resigning themselves to a world in which action is impossible.

He was equally opposed to theistic and scientific genealogies of human society: reified theistic genealogies hand us ideals from God to which we submit, and in the worst case a fatalistic concept of predestination based on our own idea of God; while scientific genealogies of human nature reduce us to biological/psychological organisms that similarly rob us of free will and subject us to a world of "facts" supposedly beyond our control.

It was my understanding that the descent into nihilism was a rejection of all ideals, a tabula rasa that the person can then build their life-affirming ideals upon.

If I am incorrect, that is fine, I am wiser.

But if by "nature" we are rational creatures, then finding our nature means learning to impose rational ideals upon the world. Finding our nature means finding the will to act.

Replace "finding" with "uncovering" and this is no different from my argument. The will to act was always there, it is buried, however, and this sediment piled above our nature creates our illusion of free will.

That was Nietzsche's point. Any morality that forgets that all morality originates in the human will, human ideals, is a dead morality to which we enslave ourselves... when we should be creating morality (the "transvaluation of values") actively, knowingly.

All the while, Nietzsche denied free will.

"No longer threatens us" in that we no longer mistake it for a genuine expression of reality?

We accept our subjective position as simply another of the objects.

We are no longer "inside looking out", except that our eyes are positioned in our skulls.

That is what it means to me, at least.

Property came into being by one person saying "this is mine". That person can be argued to have stolen his claim from every other human being. You certainly can steal something that doesn't belong to anyone by depriving everyone else from the use of it.

We can posit the origins of property all day and all night, and we won't come to the slightest definitive answer, because it is nothing more than idle speculation.

We can posit the origins of property all day and all night, and we won't come to the slightest definitive answer, because it is nothing more than idle speculation.

Do you disagree that the concept of private property begins by someone claiming "this is mine"? That seems a pretty obvious beginning to me.

And i'm not entirely sure it was consensual (unless there was the rather unlikely situation of everyone having exactly the same share of resources as everyone else, so all could see a clear benefit in spending their share as they pleased.) Put it this way, if you're on a camping trip and someone decides to claim that the toilet paper is "his" and demands that you give him extra food in order to use it (and he claims he will use force to protect it), would you happily consent to that? I would regard that as theft, personally, whether or not I had the power to stop it.

Put it this way, if you're on a camping trip and someone decides to claim that the toilet paper is "his" and demands that you give him extra food in order to use it (and he claims he will use force to protect it), would you happily consent to that? I would regard that as theft, personally, whether or not I had the power to stop it.

This analogy does not work because you refer to somebody claiming a good that has passed through this entire distributive chain of property and now has several valid claims on it. We are addressing the origination of property, namely the claiming of it through homesteading.

This is a situation where there is no preexisting claim on it, as if the possessor of the toilet paper had managed through good fortune to find it. If you are to point to his exclusion of use and state that it is theft, then you must show that the others have some claim to the toilet paper, but I don't see just how you manage that.

Since it is plain that there are no self-creators, we can say that nothing exists that possesses a free will.While the logic that free will requires a self-creator is flawed in itself, so is the premise that it is "plain" that there are no self-creators.

This would be equivalent to the claim that it is "plain" that there is no God. While I happen to be a committed atheist, I do not think this claim holds in any sense whatsoever. The non-existence of God is far from self-evident. Indeed, it cannot be proven at all.

We don't accrue these abstract nouns by forgetting, we accrue them by replacing. The act of replacing does not imply a complete destruction of the old, it just implies an acceptance of the new.Actually, replacing does imply a forgetting of the old.

We can only replace what we displace.

To replace is not to "use also." It is to "use instead."

But even if replacement does not logically entail forgetting, as a matter of fact it has.

It was my understanding that the descent into nihilism was a rejection of all ideals, a tabula rasa that the person can then build their life-affirming ideals upon.There are two forms of nihilism, one we might call "positive" and one we might call "negative." The positive form (which Nietzsche advocated) takes a critical stance toward reified social ideals in order to carve out the space for genuine life-oriented ideals.

But even Nietzsche never pretended that a person can build "his own" ideals. Ideals are necessarily public, it's part of their nature. Indeed, it is only through shared ideals that we can come to respect one another as free, independent subjects.

So long as we engage with one another in relationships of "two-ness," we find ourselves trapped in Hegel's dialectic of master and slave: every interaction is a power relation in which someone wins and someone loses, someone commands and someone relents.

Shared ideals--and the recognition that they are shared--opens of a "third-ness," a perspective from which each person can view himself with others and negotiate these relations according to the ideal. Submitting to the ideal--to what is right--does not have the same character as submitting to another person.

All the while, Nietzsche denied free will.No.

Nietzsche is complicated on the idea of free will, at times attacking it and at other times defending it. There is much disagreement as to exactly what his real opinion was.

In the final analysis, I think that Nietzsche was a fatalist but not a determinist. This is the only reading that can be reconciled with his attacks against the "myth" of cause-and-effect.

With "Collective Property," it is not correct to say nobody owns anything. It is more like, everybody owns everything. So then theft is possible,

...but if you tresspass on my property at night I will shoot at you!

with my potato gun

"Property is theft" takes numerous forms in Proudhonist anarchism, economic collectivism, collectivist anarchism, and the numerous forms of communism and socialism. It is, however, to say nothing of just plain wrong, logically impossible. If property were theft, nobody would own anything, ergo there would be no holder of property and nobody to steal from. You can't steal what doesn't/can't belong to anybody. So it's a self-invalidating statement.

Prove me wrong.

Without property there would be no theft. With property, theft is possible.

Now, if I refused to acknowledge another's ownership of property, I would almost certainly commit theft as it is understood in human society. For instance if I was hungry, something which happens to all of us on a daily basis, I would very likely partake of the nice toasted cheese sandwich I saw and smelt on "your" plate at a sidewalk cafe. I might help myself to your funky fedora as well, if the sun was out.

To not negotiate with you, salivating before the nice hot sandwich and striking a proud pose beneath your funky fedora, would plainly be ridiculous. As is "property is theft." But I think there's some value in the proposition anyway, even if it's not unequivocably true.

"Theft" is the unlawful taking of another's property. It harms the other by denying them the use of it, and as such is a crime. If one could take another's property (eg unauthorised copying of a musical recording) without in any way impeding their use of it, that would not be theft.

If no-one owned anything, it would be equally true that everyone owned everything. To deny "ownership" we must acknowledge the concept "ownership" but (rather artificially, as my first example shows) define it as null. You may own a thing, and I may own it as well, and every being in the whole wide universe may own it until one of us defines ownership as the right to exclude another's ownership.

If everyone owned everything, one person denying another use of anything would be theft.

I feel that we must ascribe ownership of the living body to itself. But looking around (slavery, imprisonment and servitude) I see that we do not. Even among us humans, property is not honoured as it should be ... but if I steal your car, I fully expect to be jailed.

Hell, I give up. "Property is theft" is a bridge too far. It has some value, but I can't prove it to be true.

"Property is theft" takes numerous forms in Proudhonist anarchism, economic collectivism, collectivist anarchism, and the numerous forms of communism and socialism. It is, however, to say nothing of just plain wrong, logically impossible. If property were theft, nobody would own anything, ergo there would be no holder of property and nobody to steal from. You can't steal what doesn't/can't belong to anybody. So it's a self-invalidating statement.

Prove me wrong.

It wouldn't be "property", because you'd willingly give it up to anyone else.

I did it!

Of couse, you'd need a totally altruistic society for this to be possible, which would be rather difficult to accomplish.

Thet's deft. Reely quite deft.

*eats last cupcake, laughs*

While the logic that free will requires a self-creator is flawed in itself

In what way?

so is the premise that it is "plain" that there are no self-creators.

This would be equivalent to the claim that it is "plain" that there is no God. While I happen to be a committed atheist, I do not think this claim holds in any sense whatsoever. The non-existence of God is far from self-evident. Indeed, it cannot be proven at all.

Are you saying that there may exist something that is a self-creator, or are you saying that there may exist some person who is a self-creator?

Actually, replacing does imply a forgetting of the old.

We can only replace what we displace.

To replace is not to "use also." It is to "use instead."

But even if replacement does not logically entail forgetting, as a matter of fact it has.

Meh

While there may be a requisite forgetting of old values and knowledge, there is at least an equal amount of learning involved.

In the end I don't think this distinction is all that important.

Nietzsche is complicated on the idea of free will, at times attacking it and at other times defending it. There is much disagreement as to exactly what his real opinion was.

In the final analysis, I think that Nietzsche was a fatalist but not a determinist. This is the only reading that can be reconciled with his attacks against the "myth" of cause-and-effect.

I do know that Nietzsche was overly subtle on the idea of free will (I also think he loved that quality of his writing), but I took it to be a casual dismissal.

Do you think that fatalism is compatible with free will?

In what way?Free will requires only that a creature behave according to moral reason, not that it create itself.

Even if you consider that acting from duty initiates a new causal chain, there is nothing self-creative about this. The self is antecedent to moral reason.

Are you saying that there may exist something that is a self-creator, or are you saying that there may exist some person who is a self-creator?There may exist some entity that is a self-creator.

While this is not directly bound up with the argument for free will, the two are related in that they both involve a recognition of the limits of human knowledge.

Meh

While there may be a requisite forgetting of old values and knowledge, there is at least an equal amount of learning involved.Maybe, but the point is to ask whether the exchange is really worthwhile.

Scientists studying eidetic memory believe that many children remember photographically--indeed, that photographic memory may be the primary means of processing information in childhood--but that as we grow up we learn more abstract, verbal modes of remembrance that, arguably, better serve the needs of a reasoning creature.

By the time we are adults, eidetic memory has been completely eclipsed. There is virtually no evidence that it survives in adults; and if it does, it survives in such a bare minority that perhaps a handful of adults in the entire world have genuine photographic memory.

The kind of "forgetting" implied by Adorno's thesis about reification is similar. Yes, we learn new methods of processing information. These methods are clearly superior when it comes to the kinds of instrumental reason employed by advanced capitalist societies as we know them.

But Adorno's challenge is directed at the entire system: he wants us to ask if this forgetting is really better for the human "soul," for lack of a better word; if it does not entail renunciations that are more dangerous than they are valuable. No doubt some reifications are less alienating than others. But you cannot even begin to ask such questions until you recognize that every reification is a forgetting... until you start trying to wrap your brain around what it is that we forget.

I do know that Nietzsche was overly subtle on the idea of free will (I also think he loved that quality of his writing), but I took it to be a casual dismissal.Anything but.

Do you think that fatalism is compatible with free will?Yes... or at least, certain kinds of fatalism are.

Nietzsche's is. His fatalism is largely "epistemological" in that he thinks we cannot effectively project our knowledge either backwards or forwards, so that our action does not "matter" in any real historical narrative--because there is no such thing. This makes "will" unusually paradoxical for Nietzsche: he gives us agency, but he denies us any way to ascribe "blame" to individuals who behave "wrongly," because he denies any objective moral standard. The individual is thus left with a "now" in which he must perpetually assert himself in the form of life-affirming will (idealization) that he can nevertheless never know to be "right"... or to matter.

(There is also a "material" fatalism for Nietzsche in the sense that most people, most of the time, will never have the opportunity or the strength of character to do anything that matters. The inscrutable gears of history grind on.)

It is Nietzsche's powerful criticism of blameworthiness that leads many readers to think he casually dismisses free will. But the fact of the matter is that Nietzsche's existential dilemma is meaningless without it.

Free will requires only that a creature behave according to moral reason, not that it create itself.

Even if you consider that acting from duty initiates a new causal chain, there is nothing self-creative about this. The self is antecedent to moral reason.

Aren't you putting the cart before the horse?

Why should we even consider moral reason until we have established (or assumed) free will?

Why should we even consider moral reason until we have established (or assumed) free will?Because we cannot establish, nor even properly conceive, free will without a conception of moral reason.

If we cannot conceive an idea of the "right" thing to do as opposed to what natural causes determine, then we could not distinguish free behavior from determined behavior.

This is essentially the compatiblist argument, but they are the ones who put the cart before the horse. First they assume that determinism is true, then they construct a moral theory that is compatible with it--so that free (moral) actions and determined actions are indistinguishable.

But this really does put the cart before the horse because it proceeds from an assumption about fact ("is") to a moral ("ought") conclusion--troubling both for its unfounded assumption and for its logical fallacy.

As an incompatiblist, I draw up the standard for free action first before assuming whether people are free or not--and the standard for whether a person is capable of acting freely is whether they are capable of acting morally despite natural determination.

Thus, the only way to know if we are free is to know if we can be moral. And the only way to know that is to figure out what it means to be "moral."

Putting the cart before the horse? Nope. That is what we do when we try to argue about free will without first drawing our conclusions about morality.

Maybe, but the point is to ask whether the exchange is really worthwhile.

Scientists studying eidetic memory believe that many children remember photographically--indeed, that photographic memory may be the primary means of processing information in childhood--but that as we grow up we learn more abstract, verbal modes of remembrance that, arguably, better serve the needs of a reasoning creature.

By the time we are adults, eidetic memory has been completely eclipsed. There is virtually no evidence that it survives in adults; and if it does, it survives in such a bare minority that perhaps a handful of adults in the entire world have genuine photographic memory.

The kind of "forgetting" implied by Adorno's thesis about reification is similar. Yes, we learn new methods of processing information. These methods are clearly superior when it comes to the kinds of instrumental reason employed by advanced capitalist societies as we know them.

But Adorno's challenge is directed at the entire system: he wants us to ask if this forgetting is really better for the human "soul," for lack of a better word; if it does not entail renunciations that are more dangerous than they are valuable. No doubt some reifications are less alienating than others. But you cannot even begin to ask such questions until you recognize that every reification is a forgetting... until you start trying to wrap your brain around what it is that we forget.

I see the argument and I don't really disagree, but I still don't find it that compelling.

Adorno seems to be advocating a positive attempt at relearning what we have forgotten, and that doesn't seem necessary. I am advocating a return to what is natural (whatever that may be), and that which is natural will manifest itself as soon as it is unburied. There is no need to relearn it, as it has never truly been forgotten, only "displaced" as you stated.

It is Nietzsche's powerful criticism of blameworthiness that leads many readers to think he casually dismisses free will. But the fact of the matter is that Nietzsche's existential dilemma is meaningless without it.

I will return to Nietzsche with this insight, and see what new aspects I glean from his writings.

Adorno seems to be advocating a positive attempt at relearning what we have forgotten, and that doesn't seem necessary. I am advocating a return to what is natural (whatever that may be), and that which is natural will manifest itself as soon as it is unburied. There is no need to relearn it, as it has never truly been forgotten, only "displaced" as you stated.No, that's exactly Adorno's argument.

He doesn't think we can sit around and sort of "relearn" anything. He thinks our entire mode of life militates against it.

Rather, he thinks that in a redeemed world--a return to the natural in at least some sense, although Adorno is far from a "back to nature" anarchist--we will negate the terms that negated the real in the first place.

EDIT: The key point for Adorno is that we "forget" in such a way that we cannot know both at the same time--we cannot have our cake and eat it too. He is thus highly critical of all of these "self-actualization" movements, "find yourself" books, meditation seminars, etc. etc. etc.... all of which try to help the individual within advanced capitalism remember what he has lost. This is impossible, and in fact it winds up being even more alienating.

Because we cannot establish, nor even properly conceive, free will without a conception of moral reason.

If we cannot conceive an idea of the "right" thing to do as opposed to what natural causes determine, then we could not distinguish free behavior from determined behavior.

This is essentially the compatiblist argument, but they are the ones who put the cart before the horse. First they assume that determinism is true, then they construct a moral theory that is compatible with it--so that free (moral) actions and determined actions are indistinguishable.

But this really does put the cart before the horse because it proceeds from an assumption about fact ("is") to a moral ("ought") conclusion--troubling both for its unfounded assumption and for its logical fallacy.

As an incompatiblist, I draw up the standard for free action first before assuming whether people are free or not--and the standard for whether a person is capable of acting freely is whether they are capable of acting morally despite natural determination.

Thus, the only way to know if we are free is to know if we can be moral. And the only way to know that is to figure out what it means to be "moral."

Putting the cart before the horse? Nope. That is what we do when we try to argue about free will without first drawing our conclusions about morality.

I am not a compatibilist.

You are gainsaying my logic, not refuting it.

No, that's exactly Adorno's argument.

He doesn't think we can sit around and sort of "relearn" anything. He thinks our entire mode of life militates against it.

Rather, he thinks that in a redeemed world--a return to the natural in at least some sense, although Adorno is far from a "back to nature" anarchist--we will negate the terms that negated the real in the first place.

EDIT: The key point for Adorno is that we "forget" in such a way that we cannot know both at the same time--we cannot have our cake and eat it too. He is thus highly critical of all of these "self-actualization" movements, "find yourself" books, meditation seminars, etc. etc. etc.... all of which try to help the individual within advanced capitalism remember what he has lost. This is impossible, and in fact it winds up being even more alienating.

I will have to read some of Adorno's work, although I imagine I will get twisted up in the Marxist terminology and conceptual framework.

By the way, I'm not sure I ever supplied an answer to the original "property is theft" question.

Several people have already commented that the OP takes Proudhon's assertion out of context in a number of ways. I will not rehash these here, but I would like to emphasize one other.

When Proudhon proclaims that "property is theft" he is talking specifically about a system of private property. While it has been clear from the beginning that he contrasts this with a kind of collective property or common stock, what has been neglected is that he also contrasts private property with personal property. (Not exactly his term, but this is how anarchists have developed his insight.)

We tend to dichotomize property as "public" or "private," but we need to think very carefully about these terms, what they mean, and how they relate to one another. We must consider, in a certain sense, the "ontology" of the terms.

It is clear in this sense that public property has a primary place--even the proudest capitalist ideologues acknowledge that private property derives from the public, from a common stock. Indeed, the term "private" suggests its own definition--that which is "not public," which is "no longer public," which of which the public has been deprived. Indeed, we should recall that the term "private" had originally a derogatory sense as that which lacks public value--including private individuals who were deprived of public office, public significance.

The ontological primacy of the public is clear in a legal sense as well. The private is defined by a negation, a "don't touch," a "no" that is inscribed on private property removing it from the common stock. There is the "public" and the "not public" -- the "public" and the "private."

Because private property has only a negative ontological/legal status, the delineation of the private is essentially political, essentially a power struggle between those who would expand its protections and those who would contract them.

Proudhon, as an anarchist, was attempting to transcend struggles of pure power, definitions that could not be resolved in any other way. Thus, he needed to replace the concept of "private" property with something else, something with an independent ontological status that could stand against the ontology of the public, common stock. With two independent terms, reason can grasp the play between the two. With one independent and one dependent term, the only argument is an argument about definitions... and as I have argued again and again in these forums (and elsewhere), dictionaries never win an argument.

The term with which Proudhonian anarchists replace "private" (privation) is the "personal."

"Personal" property has its own primary ontological status. Just as "public" property is "that which belongs to the public," personal property is "that which belongs to the person." We can conceive of personal property in terms of its relation to the person: things that I use every day are clearly mine in a personal sense; things that were given to me as gifts are personal to me; and so on.

A home is personal. Tools of my own work are, perhaps, personal. The land I live on may be personal.

But a huge patch of land to which I merely have the deed? That is private (the public is deprived of it), but it is hardly personal: I could exchange it for any equivalent piece of land, and it would be all the same to me. It is not my personal property because it does not belong to my person, it is not bound up with my personhood.

Proudhon goes further, of course, to point out that things like large tracts of land that people might (if not for your fence) enjoy, work, or travel across... as well as factories in which large numbers of people work every day, office buildings, sports arenas... these are all, in an important sense, ontologically "public" even when they are legally privatized. Public activities take place there: people gather together, work together, play together. These places are not personal to anyone in particular, but they are inherently public.

In this sense, Proudhon argues that individuals holding private claim over such places is necessarily THEFT: it deprives the public of control over things that are, properly speaking, "public."

Personal property, however, is no kind of theft at all. Indeed, Proudhon argues that we should carefully protect the rights of individuals to their personal belongings, their personal property.

I will have to read some of Adorno's work, although I imagine I will get twisted up in the Marxist terminology and conceptual framework.Don't worry about Marx. Adorno is a Marxian politically in the sense that he follows (and extends) Marx's critique of capitalism and he idealizes something like a "communist" or anarchist future... but he also rejects Marx's historical materialism in two ways: 1) he sees that capitalism is capable of containing resistance for the foreseeable future, so he does not see revolution as inevitable; and 2) he does not think that the ideological superstructure is merely determined by the economic mode of existence; rather, he finds that culture itself has a force all its own.

To really get Adorno, the base you need is to be found in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. It is in Kant's sense of "critique" that the Critical Theorists consider themselves "critical."

I am not a compatibilist.I know you're not, but you accused me of putting the cart before the horse by considering moral reason independent of my knowledge of free will.

I merely pointed out that it is compatiblists who put the cart before the horse by assuming determinism without having the tools to actually pose the question of free will.

How about "excessively common property leads to theft from the collective." Alright you have a refrigerator in a commune. There are ten people who live in the commune, and each person donates $30 each week to help pay for "shared groceries", things like tofu, oranges, crunchy granola, and other commune food. The problem is that three of those ten people have special needs and should really buy their own food. Person one is really fat and eats too much, person two has a drug habit and it makes him hungry all time, and person three is an athletic freak and exercises all the time making him eat more. These three eat more than half the food, but they have already signed the agreement to share. This leaves the others very angry, complaining that these three take more than their share. In this case the idea of a common property is a bad idea. The other seven throw the first two out, but leave the athlete because they decide he is setting an example of good health.

I know you're not, but you accused me of putting the cart before the horse by considering moral reason independent of my knowledge of free will.

I did not accuse you of putting the cart before the horse for considering them moral reason and free will independently, but for saying in effect "because someone can be held morally responsible, we can assume he has free will."

While I would agree that determining some moral duty that involves acting out of accordance with the causal chain would imply a free will, the absence of moral duty does not imply the absence free will.

Free will is the root of morality and moral responsibility, and if we want to establish or deny its existence we have to consider it for itself.

I merely pointed out that it is compatiblists who put the cart before the horse by assuming determinism without having the tools to actually pose the question of free will.

And I am doing the same thing, in that I attempted a logical denial of free will without consideration of moral reason.

I did not accuse you of putting the cart before the horse for considering them moral reason and free will independently, but for saying in effect "because someone can be held morally responsible, we can assume he has free will."I'm quite sure I said nothing of the sort, but I don't care to read back through my posts to figure out where this confusion started.

The best I can figure is that it has something to do with the fact that Nietzsche rejects moral responsibility, and many commentators have taken this as a rejection of free will as such. I disagree, because I do not think moral responsibility follows from free will, although I do think that it is contingent upon free will.

While I would agree that determining some moral duty that involves acting out of accordance with the causal chain would imply a free will, the absence of moral duty does not imply the absence free will.Nor does the absence of moral responsibility imply the absence of moral duty, which is key to understanding Nietzsche's little paradox. While we cannot be held responsible for our actions in any meaningful sense, there is nevertheless a curious sense of "duty" (though a duty that looks so strange we hardly recognize it as such) in Nietzschean overcoming.

And I am doing the same thing, in that I attempted a logical denial of free will without consideration of moral reason.Yes, and there can be no "logical" denial of free will. There is nothing "illogical" about the idea of free will. Soheran tried this in the other free will thread, but his perception of the illogic of freedom was always grounded in his (vehemently denied) assumption of determinism.

If you assume cause-and-effect as a universal given that applies to laws of reason as well as it applies to natural laws, then of course free will appears to be absurd. But if you make the assumption of cause-and-effect, you have already taken determinism for granted. Your argument is circular.

Thus, the question of free will is inherently bound up with the questions surrounding practical (moral) laws of reason. If (right) morality obeys causal laws, then the question is moot: free action would be indistinguishable from determined action. But if (right) morality is derivable a priori, then it is (by definition) independent of any causal chain.

This is what opens the space for the (unanswerable) question of free will.

To clarify:

If there is no moral law independent of causation, then there is no point in asking whether we are free.

If there is a moral law independent of causation, then we must ask whether we are free to obey it in order to understand whether we can be held responsible for (im)moral actions.

But the question of whether we actually have free will, in fact, is impossible to answer either theoretically or scientifically. It is beyond the limits of human knowledge.

Nietzsche evades the problem of responsibility that apparently inheres in free will by attacking both causation and a priori practical reason at the same time.... which, in a sense, is a mirror image of the paradox of will as I present it.

For Nietzsche, we cannot know ourselves as the result of a causal chain, but we also cannot know ourselves as bound to an a priori moral law (whereas I see the dilemma as "both/and" rather than "neither/nor"). Therefore, for Nietzsche, we can only assert our will according to explicitly aesthetic ideals--a possibility that actually approaches us as a demand--for which we cannot be held morally responsible because no one can claim access to moral knowledge that necessarily holds for us.

But then, for Nietzsche, only I can judge my own actions, on the basis of my own aesthetic ideals. While I cannot hold myself "responsible," I can (indeed, must) assert an internal duty to uphold my own ideals. Nietzsche's existentialism sets up a sort of internal immanent critique for each individual.

Of course, I can only know them as ideals through my interactions with other people. Otherwise, the dynamic of immanent critique falls flat, because I have no symbolic space in which to take stock of myself, no "thirdness" that allows me to step outside my own subjectivity.

I'm quite sure I said nothing of the sort, but I don't care to read back through my posts to figure out where this confusion started.

The best I can figure is that it has something to do with the fact that Nietzsche rejects moral responsibility, and many commentators have taken this as a rejection of free will as such. I disagree, because I do not think moral responsibility follows from free will, although I do think that it is contingent upon free will.

If there is confusion, it stems from this statement:

Free will requires only that a creature behave according to moral reason, not that it create itself.

The (seemingly) conventional argument that states that by having free will, being the reason for our actions, we have responsibility for our actions. If morality is applicable to our actions, we therefore have moral responsibility.

That statement seems to turn the discussion on its head. If one can act by moral reason, then we assume that he has a moral obligation to do so: if the man has an understanding of what is right and it is in conflict with the causal chain, then by simply understanding his position and knowledge of what is right, he has a moral obligation. So the ability to behave by moral reason necessitates moral responsibility.

Here we find the turn in your argument, where free will and moral responsibility hinge: the ability to do other. It is the basic meaning of free will, and it is the only basis upon which we can hold someone morally culpable for his actions. When others, including myself, say that, if we determine that we have free will, we can assign a moral responsibility, you say that, if we can determine people to follow a moral obligation, we can assign a free will.

You state again:

As an incompatiblist, I draw up the standard for free action first before assuming whether people are free or not--and the standard for whether a person is capable of acting freely is whether they are capable of acting morally despite natural determination.

You are saying quite plainly that the signifier of free action is that a person can follow his own considered moral obligations in the face of natural determination.

I simply say that free action is all action, moral or not, that is not the result of natural determination, thus consideration of moral reason is not at all necessary.

Yes, and there can be no "logical" denial of free will. There is nothing "illogical" about the idea of free will. Soheran tried this in the other free will thread, but his perception of the illogic of freedom was always grounded in his (vehemently denied) assumption of determinism.

If you assume cause-and-effect as a universal given that applies to laws of reason as well as it applies to natural laws, then of course free will appears to be absurd. But if you make the assumption of cause-and-effect, you have already taken determinism for granted. Your argument is circular.

Thus, the question of free will is inherently bound up with the questions surrounding practical (moral) laws of reason. If (right) morality obeys causal laws, then the question is moot: free action would be indistinguishable from determined action. But if (right) morality is derivable a priori, then it is (by definition) independent of any causal chain.

This is what opens the space for the (unanswerable) question of free will.

You are drawing back to a skeptical position that is untenable. The way you describe the question of free will as unanswerable can be applied to all questions about the natural world.

In the end, it does not appear that you were ever disputing my logic, rather just denying my assumption that no person is a self-creator. If we were not to simply assume cause and effect, and that man is independent of if, would he not truly be a self-creator?

If there is confusion, it stems from this statement:

Free will requires only that a creature behave according to moral reason, not that it create itself.

The (seemingly) conventional argument that states that by having free will, being the reason for our actions, we have responsibility for our actions. If morality is applicable to our actions, we therefore have moral responsibility.It's that last statement where you go wrong.

Moral responsibility is one aspect of moral reason. Nietzsche is the prime example of a theorist who recognizes moral reason, but does not recognize within moral reason a justifiable claim to moral responsibility.

If one can act by moral reason, then we assume that he has a moral obligation to do so: if the man has an understanding of what is right and it is in conflict with the causal chain, then by simply understanding his position and knowledge of what is right, he has a moral obligation.Yes, this is the argument I make, and it is essentially Kant's argument as well. So the ability to behave by moral reason necessitates moral responsibility.While I would make this argument on certain terms, it does not follow logically from the fact of moral obligation alone. Moral responsibility requires more: it requires, among other things, a knowable morality as well as a way to situate one's actions clearly in the context of that morality.

Nietzsche denies these things, and therefore he can conceive of moral obligation while simultaneously dispensing with moral responsibility. We are obliged to act, but we can never know if we really did right; and neither can anyone else.

Here we find the turn in your argument, where free will and moral responsibility hinge: the ability to do other. It is the basic meaning of free will, and it is the only basis upon which we can hold someone morally culpable for his actions.True. That's why moral responsibility is contingent upon free will. But that does not mean that moral responsibility logically follows from free will.

When others, including myself, say that, if we determine that we have free will, we can assign a moral responsibility, you say that, if we can determine people to follow a moral obligation, we can assign a free will.No. I state that the definition of free will is the ability to obey moral reason despite natural causes.

This gets back to my argument with Soheran. If "free will" refers to the ability to do "something" despite natural causes, then that "something" appears as an essentially random element--and randomness is not free in any meaningful sense of the word.

In order to call ourselves free, we need to be able to defy natural cause in the name of some other reason.

You are saying quite plainly that the signifier of free action is that a person can follow his own considered moral obligations in the face of natural determination.Yes, exactly.

I simply say that free action is all action, moral or not, that is not the result of natural determination, thus consideration of moral reason is not at all necessary.But then you have to say what that action is the result of. If it is the result of nothing, if it has no reason, then it is random and unfree. If it is the result of something like "my preferences," then I cannot see how you distinguish your preferences as a biological creature from other natural causes.

Only moral reason gives us reasons that are neither determined nor random. Only by behaving morally can we know ourselves to be free.

You are drawing back to a skeptical position that is untenable. The way you describe the question of free will as unanswerable can be applied to all questions about the natural world.Not so.

We have a reasonable epistemic standard for objective empirical knowledge: those falsifiable statements that stand up to empirical tests we take, provisionally, to be true.

We also have reasonable epistemic standards for objective theoretical knowledge, involving logical consistency and derivation from reasonable premises.

We can answer very many questions using these methods. But not the question of whether we are free.

In the end, it does not appear that you were ever disputing my logic, rather just denying my assumption that no person is a self-creator. If we were not to simply assume cause and effect, and that man is independent of if, would he not truly be a self-creator?No, because he does not create himself.

If anything, he might be a self-changer. But it is ridiculous to insist that free will requires a self-creator. That is the most flammable straw man I have seen in some time!

It's that last statement where you go wrong.

Moral responsibility is one aspect of moral reason. Nietzsche is the prime example of a theorist who recognizes moral reason, but does not recognize within moral reason a justifiable claim to moral responsibility.

Yes, this is the argument I make, and it is essentially Kant's argument as well.

While I would make this argument on certain terms, it does not follow logically from the fact of moral obligation alone. Moral responsibility requires more: it requires, among other things, a knowable morality as well as a way to situate one's actions clearly in the context of that morality.

Nietzsche denies these things, and therefore he can conceive of moral obligation while simultaneously dispensing with moral responsibility. We are obliged to act, but we can never know if we really did right; and neither can anyone else.

I think the difference drawn between moral responsibility and moral obligation is specious at best.

It is nonsensical to say that we are obligated to act with perfect understanding of our actions, but we are not responsible for it.

It also nonsensical to say that we have an obligation to act right (even with insufficient understanding of our actions) but we are not held responsible if we don't.

What is an obligation without responsibility?

True. That's why moral responsibility is contingent upon free will. But that does not mean that moral responsibility logically follows from free will.

That is what I have been saying.

It seems to me that you are attempting to show moral responsibility and use it to derive free will, and while moral responsibility would show free will, it is not a true test of free will.

No. I state that the definition of free will is the ability to obey moral reason despite natural causes.


But you would make the argument that "If one can act by moral reason, then we assume that he has a moral obligation to do so", so when they are able to follow moral reason despite natural causes in effect "we can determine people to follow a moral obligation, we can assign a free will."

But then you have to say what that action is the result of. If it is the result of nothing, if it has no reason, then it is random and unfree. If it is the result of something like "my preferences," then I cannot see how you distinguish your preferences as a biological creature from other natural causes.

Only moral reason gives us reasons that are neither determined nor random. Only by behaving morally can we know ourselves to be free.

I have referred to the causes as "values", and I have not differentiated them from other natural causes. You should also know from my prior arguments that there are no actions without reasons, at least within the person.

But this is the cart before the horse again. How can we know them to be "moral reasons" without beforehand denying their causation and establishing it as free will? You affirm the priority of disproving determinism by maintaining that we must "conceive an idea of the "right" thing to do as opposed to what natural causes determine".

It is catch-22. Behaving morally gives us free will, but we cannot know if we are behaving morally without establishing our own free will.

Not so.

We have a reasonable epistemic standard for objective empirical knowledge: those falsifiable statements that stand up to empirical tests we take, provisionally, to be true.

I have never once noticed scientific results that deny causal determination in human behavior, but I have read many that add more weight to the argument.

What sort of empirical knowledge to you need?

We also have reasonable epistemic standards for objective theoretical knowledge, involving logical consistency and derivation from reasonable premises.

And I have asked you to show where my logic was faulty, but you have only responded with your own argument which only gainsays my logic.

No, because he does not create himself.

If anything, he might be a self-changer. But it is ridiculous to insist that free will requires a self-creator. That is the most flammable straw man I have seen in some time!

A self-changer is necessarily a self-creator, as he must create that portion of himself that changes the other portions.

In the end it seems you keep throwing out arguments that there are self-creators, but not arguments against my argument that those with free will are necessarily self-creators.

And to return to Nietzsche, in the aphorism in which he essentially makes a form of your argument:

The CAUSA SUI is the best self-contradiction that has yet
been conceived, it is a sort of logical violation and
unnaturalness; but the extravagant pride of man has managed to
entangle itself profoundly and frightfully with this very folly.
The desire for "freedom of will" in the superlative, metaphysical
sense, such as still holds sway, unfortunately, in the minds of
the half-educated, the desire to bear the entire and ultimate
responsibility for one's actions oneself, and to absolve God, the
world, ancestors, chance, and society therefrom, involves nothing
less than to be precisely this CAUSA SUI, and, with more than
Munchausen daring, to pull oneself up into existence by the hair,
out of the slough of nothingness.

I think the difference drawn between moral responsibility and moral obligation is specious at best.Well, so do I, but the significant point here is that it is specious in terms of the reasonable assumptions that, I suspect, you and I are willing to make about human reason and knowledge. The two are not logically equivalent, which means that it is possible, without contradiction, to hold one to be true without the other. That doesn't mean it's right.

It is nonsensical to say that we are obligated to act with perfect understanding of our actions, but we are not responsible for it.Who said anything about "perfect understanding of our actions"?

It also nonsensical to say that we have an obligation to act right (even with insufficient understanding of our actions) but we are not held responsible if we don't.It's not "nonsensical" if you believe that no one can make any defensible claim to knowing what is really right, a belief that I do not hold.

Think of it this way: you are obliged to act in good faith. acting according to your own perception of "rightness." You cannot be held responsible by anyone else for the consequences of your actions, because they cannot tell you that you are "wrong." (They can, however, punish you or retaliate against you in their own "good faith" enactment of what they believe is right action for them. What they cannot tell you is that you "deserve" such treatment.)

It seems to me that you are attempting to show moral responsibility and use it to derive free will, and while moral responsibility would show free will, it is not a true test of free will.No. I am not trying to "show" free will at all.

This is the root of our confusion: you persist in the belief that I am trying to "prove" free will. I am doing no such thing, because I do not think it can be done.

I do, however, believe that we have certain demonstrable, a priori moral obligations. And I am defining free will as the capacity to obey our moral obligations regardless of natural causes. I am not attempting to prove that we can actually do that.

But you would make the argument that "If one can act by moral reason, then we assume that he has a moral obligation to do so",No. If we have moral obligations, we have them whether we are capable of upholding them or not.

I have an obligation to submit my students' semester grades by May 15. If I get hit by a car (through no fault of my own) on May 14, no one would hold me responsible for the fact that I failed to satisfy my obligation. That does not mean that the obligation disappeared, just that I am excused from it.

If there is an a priori moral law but no such thing as free will, then people are still obliged to follow the moral law. But they are also excused for their failure to do so, because they had no choice in the matter.

so when they are able to follow moral reason despite natural causes in effect "we can determine people to follow a moral obligation, we can assign a free will."If we could, in fact, prove that a given person had obeyed moral reason despite every natural cause, then we could, in fact, conclude that he has free will.

That should be obvious.

The problem is that we can never prove that there was NO natural cause that led him to his decision. We might find examples in which natural causes seem very strongly to militate against a given behavior, like a person sacrificing his life for another, but it is always possible for someone to come up with a possible natural cause for his behavior, like gene-centered evolution.

It comes down to the difference between explanation and prediction. We can explain anything we want, but our explanations may not be falsifiable.

I have referred to the causes as "values", and I have not differentiated them from other natural causes. You should also know from my prior arguments that there are no actions without reasons, at least within the person.Right.

So then the only reasons that make a claim to being free from natural causation are a priori moral reasons. Only by choosing according to such reasons can we know ourselves to be free.

But this is the cart before the horse again. How can we know them to be "moral reasons" without beforehand denying their causation and establishing it as free will?We deny their causation as principles or as maxims separately from affirming that we can actually obey them.

If Kant and I are correct and there are principles of right action discoverable a priori, then these are necessarily independent of natural causation: to be true a priori means to be true regardless of circumstance, regardless of natural laws.

Whether or not we can actually obey such principles independent of natural causation is a separate question. If we can, we have free will. If we cannot, we don't.

You affirm the priority of disproving determinism by maintaining that we must "conceive an idea of the "right" thing to do as opposed to what natural causes determine".But I'm not trying to disprove determinism.

It is catch-22. Behaving morally gives us free will, but we cannot know if we are behaving morally without establishing our own free will.In a roundabout sort of way, I think you may be starting to understand the crux of the problem.

We CANNOT know that we are free. We CANNOT know that when we behave morally, we do so because it is right rather than because it satisfies some natural urge within us.

But if we recognize moral rules true a priori, we must recognize our OBLIGATION to obey them. Now, as I have already suggested, we would be excused from our responsibility to that obligation IF we knew that we are NOT free.

But there's the problem: we cannot know that, either. So we cannot excuse ourselves from responsibility to the moral law. Because we cannot excuse ourselves, we must take ourselves AS IF we are free: that is, we must TRY to do the right thing, because we cannot excuse ourselves for failure.

I have never once noticed scientific results that deny causal determination in human behavior, but I have read many that add more weight to the argument.You have read scientific results that demonstrate how this or that cause tends to produce this or that effect in human behavior--and the tendency is important because these results are almost always statistical in the sense that they always have some outliers. But even if some particular causes result in some particular effects, the contention that human behavior is wholly determined is facially unfalsifiable.

What sort of empirical knowledge to you need?The sort that shows that human behavior is, at least in theory, perfectly predictable. Results that show 80% of test subjects doing X following stimulus Y shows, very clearly, that human beings are influenced by our environment and by natural causes--which is no surprise.

But scientific methodology--as useful as it is for producing results that help us to understand ourselves, our world, and how to get things done--is simply not capable of answering deep metaphysical questions like whether it is possible for a rational creature to obey laws of reason. And most scientists are comfortable with that.

There are only a few left who actually demonstrate the level of hubris that believes we can answer every question.

And I have asked you to show where my logic was faulty, but you have only responded with your own argument which only gainsays my logic.What logic? Your entire argument, as I recall, rested on the notion that it is "obvious" that there can be no such thing as a self-creating entity. I not only explained why this is far from obvious, but I have explained why it has so very little to do with the argument about free will.

A self-changer is necessarily a self-creator, as he must create that portion of himself that changes the other portions.Who said there is one "portion" that changes "other portions"? Why can't he be whole? And why must he "create" that portion of himself that changes the other portions? Why can he not change one portion of himself with another portion that already exists?

I'm afraid we're getting into the kind of metaphysics about which discourse is truly absurd: confronted with an idea that we cannot test (or even quite understand) with human reason, shall we really pretend to discuss the mechanism of that idea?

Sounds a lot like trying to "explain" how three gods can be the same god.

In the end it seems you keep throwing out arguments that there are self-creators, but not arguments against my argument that those with free will are necessarily self-creators.First: I'm not throwing out arguments that there are self-creators. I've merely pointed out that you cannot know that there aren't, any more than you can know there is no God. You're welcome to believe that, but it makes a poor premise for what purports to be a rational argument.

And to return to Nietzsche, in the aphorism in which he essentially makes a form of your argument:

The CAUSA SUI is the best self-contradiction that has yet
been conceived, it is a sort of logical violation and
unnaturalness; but the extravagant pride of man has managed to
entangle itself profoundly and frightfully with this very folly.
The desire for "freedom of will" in the superlative, metaphysical
sense, such as still holds sway, unfortunately, in the minds of
the half-educated, the desire to bear the entire and ultimate
responsibility for one's actions oneself, and to absolve God, the
world, ancestors, chance, and society therefrom, involves nothing
less than to be precisely this CAUSA SUI, and, with more than
Munchausen daring, to pull oneself up into existence by the hair,
out of the slough of nothingness.

I've bolded the most relevant part of Nietzsche's critique. He is railing against the prideful notion that an individual can ever consider himself wholly free from the causal chains in which he is bound up, that he can take up the "entire and ultimate responsibility" for his actions.

He is NOT attacking free will as I have presented it: the capacity to resist causal chains, the possibility that I might choose to do what I rationally will as opposed to what I am fated to do.

Nietzsche reduces this possibility to its smallest possible significance, and for most people he thinks it is practically non-existent. But he cannot deny the possibility, largely because he also denies the apparently universal fact of cause-and-effect.

In the sense of freedom that Nietzsche attacks, the free person would indeed be a causa sui. But in the sense of free will that I have defended--freedom as a metaphysical capacity rather than as a metaphysical attribute--one need not claim to have "created" himself in order to claim that he has a capacity for freedom.

The difference between a capacity and an attribute? If I "have" free will as a metaphysical attribute, then I am always free in everything that I do, no matter what I do.

If I "have" free will as a metaphysical capacity, then I am ONLY free when I behave according to reason.

Who said anything about "perfect understanding of our actions"?

Isn't this what you are implying by stating that there is a definitively correct action that one has an obligation to follow?

Think of it this way: you are obliged to act in good faith. acting according to your own perception of "rightness." You cannot be held responsible by anyone else for the consequences of your actions, because they cannot tell you that you are "wrong." (They can, however, punish you or retaliate against you in their own "good faith" enactment of what they believe is right action for them. What they cannot tell you is that you "deserve" such treatment.)

Why do you keep drawing a distinction between obliged and responsible if you think the difference is specious?

No. I am not trying to "show" free will at all.

This is the root of our confusion: you persist in the belief that I am trying to "prove" free will. I am doing no such thing, because I do not think it can be done.

I do, however, believe that we have certain demonstrable, a priori moral obligations. And I am defining free will as the capacity to obey our moral obligations regardless of natural causes. I am not attempting to prove that we can actually do that.

Even if that is so, I understand that you are attempting to show a "test" of what is free will (that is the nature of all definitions). By setting a definition you are stating those characteristics that would allow us to classify an observation.

I am not concerned with whether you think proving free will is possible, I am concerned with whether the test you are creating to apply the definition is correct.

I have an obligation to submit my students' semester grades by May 15. If I get hit by a car (through no fault of my own) on May 14, no one would hold me responsible for the fact that I failed to satisfy my obligation. That does not mean that the obligation disappeared, just that I am excused from it.

Perhaps it is superfluous, but I would argue that, before the accident you had both the obligation and the responsibility, afterwards you had neither.

In my mind, obligation and responsibility are synonymous.

Right.

So then the only reasons that make a claim to being free from natural causation are a priori moral reasons. Only by choosing according to such reasons can we know ourselves to be free.

Why is someone who obeys moral obligations that are afforded them by their nature acting freely?

Why wouldn't someone who is the original cause of their own values have free will?

But I'm not trying to disprove determinism.

If I establish the ability of a person to act in opposition to natural causation, what have I done?

In a roundabout sort of way, I think you may be starting to understand the crux of the problem.

We CANNOT know that we are free. We CANNOT know that when we behave morally, we do so because it is right rather than because it satisfies some natural urge within us.

But if we recognize moral rules true a priori, we must recognize our OBLIGATION to obey them. Now, as I have already suggested, we would be excused from our responsibility to that obligation IF we knew that we are NOT free.

But there's the problem: we cannot know that, either. So we cannot excuse ourselves from responsibility to the moral law. Because we cannot excuse ourselves, we must take ourselves AS IF we are free: that is, we must TRY to do the right thing, because we cannot excuse ourselves for failure.

I have understood that problem for awhile now, I have just been trying to show how it is your problem, not mine. By defining free will as having a moral quality, you make it a definition that circles back upon itself for eternity.

By removing the immediate relationship between obligation and responsibility, it allows you to establish two moral standards, a priori and a posteriori. Where these two moralities are found in union is our free will.

However, we do not know any quality of our moral responsibilities until we determine if there is free will. You have completely cut off that possibility, however, by making our understanding of free will contingent on our understanding of moral responsibility.

You have read scientific results that demonstrate how this or that cause tends to produce this or that effect in human behavior--and the tendency is important because these results are almost always statistical in the sense that they always have some outliers. But even if some particular causes result in some particular effects, the contention that human behavior is wholly determined is facially unfalsifiable.

If a mechanical process that mimics all of our human processes is created, and this mechanical process cannot exactly replicate human responses to sensation, there exists an undetermined facit of human behavior.

What logic? Your entire argument, as I recall, rested on the notion that it is "obvious" that there can be no such thing as a self-creating entity. I not only explained why this is far from obvious, but I have explained why it has so very little to do with the argument about free will.

That was not the whole of my argument:

Value can only be built upon values, for we only accept values after we have judged them favorably, and that process of judging is not possible without a set of values to operate as a yardstick. By extension of this logic, we must conclude that some values are innate, as without this core set of values, no other values would have been possible.

Now these values are the will, as will is our motivation to act, and we do not act for any other reason than value fulfillment.

Also, if we are to consider the concept of freedom, we will certainly establish it as a state of sovereignty, of self-control.

So, for there to exist a free will, it must be a motivation entirely controlled by the individual who possesses them, and as such must be a product of values over which the individual is sovereign.

With it being stated that there exists an innate set of values that are the root for all of our motivations, and that only those who control their motivations possess free will, we can define two possibilities, those who are self-creators and those who do not possess free will.

Since it is plain that there are no self-creators, we can say that nothing exists that possesses a free will.

Who said there is one "portion" that changes "other portions"? Why can't he be whole? And why must he "create" that portion of himself that changes the other portions? Why can he not change one portion of himself with another portion that already exists?

Because the portion that already exists is causally determined and the change would not be his own.

I've bolded the most relevant part of Nietzsche's critique. He is railing against the prideful notion that an individual can ever consider himself wholly free from the causal chains in which he is bound up, that he can take up the "entire and ultimate responsibility" for his actions.

And what stops this from reducing the claim I made in the free will thread that one is free to the degree that one is a self-creator?

In the sense of freedom that Nietzsche attacks, the free person would indeed be a causa sui. But in the sense of free will that I have defended--freedom as a metaphysical capacity rather than as a metaphysical attribute--one need not claim to have "created" himself in order to claim that he has a capacity for freedom.

How does the capacity for free will come to exist in the person if not created by the person.

The difference between a capacity and an attribute? If I "have" free will as a metaphysical attribute, then I am always free in everything that I do, no matter what I do.

The attribute of free will would be the capacity of free will. Even if the capacity is severely limited, one has the attribute of severely limited free will.

Isn't this what you are implying by stating that there is a definitively correct action that one has an obligation to follow?I never said that. Moral reason rarely demands "definitively correct" actions. Rather, it prescribes rules for action.

Moreover, even if moral reason would prescribe, with perfect knowledge, a definitively correct action, the attempt to behave morally does not presuppose perfect knowledge.

Why do you keep drawing a distinction between obliged and responsible if you think the difference is specious?I think it is specious in the sense that Nietzsche makes it, a sense in which he rules out the possibility of moral responsibility all together.

I do, however, think that there is a very real difference between obligation and responsibility. I can be obliged without being responsible, as in the case when I fail in my obligation through no fault of my own. I can also be responsible without being obliged: for instance, when I could have saved another person from death by sacrificing myself, I am responsible for that death--and I may, for that reason, feel considerable guilt over the affair--but few moral systems would insist that I am obliged to sacrifice myself to save someone else.

Even if that is so, I understand that you are attempting to show a "test" of what is free will (that is the nature of all definitions). By setting a definition you are stating those characteristics that would allow us to classify an observation.

I am not concerned with whether you think proving free will is possible, I am concerned with whether the test you are creating to apply the definition is correct.It cannot be a "test" because there is no way to actually perform it. That would be like saying that we can "test" the existence of God by determining whether souls go to Heaven.

In my mind, obligation and responsibility are synonymous.I don't see why. Obligation entails a "should" or a "must," responsibility describes a matter of fact, an "is."

Why is someone who obeys moral obligations that are afforded them by their nature acting freely?I'm not sure what you mean by "afforded them by their nature."

Why wouldn't someone who is the original cause of their own values have free will?Because they have no answer to the question, "why this value or that?" If they have no answer to that question, then their values are essentially random and we cannot describe obedience to random preferences as freedom--at least I wouldn't.

On the other hand, if they do have an answer to the question, "why this value or that," I can only see two possibilities: an answer that depends on natural causes, or an answer that depends on reason. In the first case, the person is determined by natural causation. In the latter case, the person rules himself by laws of reason, in which case he does not "cause" his values--he derives them from a priori laws.

Of course, if you want to refer to the ability to give laws to oneself according to reason as an ability to "cause" one's own values, then our difference is semantic only.

If I establish the ability of a person to act in opposition to natural causation, what have I done?You have done one of two things:

1) You have shown that a person can randomly act in opposition to natural causation, in which case she is no more free than an electron that jumps from point A to point B for no particular reason.

2) You have shown that a person can act according to some other rule besides the laws of nature. In that case, you need to tell me what that rule is. The only sensible candidate seems, to me, to be reason.

However, we do not know any quality of our moral responsibilities until we determine if there is free will.There you are correct, in a sense.

But we can understand our moral obligations without knowing whether we are capable of living up to them, just as a person can accept any ordinary obligation without knowing whether he is capable of fulfilling it.

Once we know what our obligation is, the next question is whether we can be held responsible for it. If we are free, we must be responsible. If we are not, then we cannot be responsible.

If a mechanical process that mimics all of our human processes is created, and this mechanical process cannot exactly replicate human responses to sensation, there exists an undetermined facit of human behavior.And if that mechanical process does exactly replicate human responses to sensation? If it tells us, "I think, I feel, and I feel myself to be free"... will we be in a position to tell it that it is wrong? Will we have learned that free will does not exist?

No, we won't. Because the only answers we can offer a mechanical process that exactly mimics all of our human processes are the same answers that we can give to an actual human being who naturally possesses all of our human processes.

Value can only be built upon values, for we only accept values after we have judged them favorably, and that process of judging is not possible without a set of values to operate as a yardstick. By extension of this logic, we must conclude that some values are innate, as without this core set of values, no other values would have been possible.While I would dispute your first premise, viz. that "values can only be built upon values," since I believe that some values--indeed, some emotions--are arrived at through a rational process of judgment; I would also like to point out that I do believe we have innate "values"--preferences would be a better word, since I think there is something rational in the idea of "value"--for instance, pleasure, reduction of tension, etc. All the things we can look at an infant and say, "It values this."

With it being stated that there exists an innate set of values that are the root for all of our motivations, and that only those who control their motivations possess free will, we can define two possibilities, those who are self-creators and those who do not possess free will.That's a false dilemma for so many reasons.

First of all, you haven't done anything to explain why you think a free person must create "himself" or some part of himself rather than creating "value."

More importantly, as I stressed to Soheran previously, recognizing an obligation does not require any prior "value" at all. There may be some concern about how I come to "care" about my obligations, or whether I even need to care, but an obligation may exist whether I value it at all.

Since it is plain that there are no self-creators, we can say that nothing exists that possesses a free will.Again, it is NOT plain that there are no self-creators (this would be to assume determinism and make your argument circular), but this is not really necessary to my argument anyway.

Because the portion that already exists is causally determinedAnd there you reveal your assumption, namely determinism.

If you start out by assuming determinism, naturally your conclusions will agree.

And what stops this from reducing the claim I made in the free will thread that one is free to the degree that one is a self-creator?If one were a "self-creator" (whatever that means) then I suppose that might make one free.

I just don't think it's necessary.

How does the capacity for free will come to exist in the person if not created by the person.Who knows? I'm the one claiming that the whole question of whether we are free is beyond our capacity to test. If I can't figure out whether we are free or not, how do you expect me to make deep metaphysical arguments about its mechanism?

The attribute of free will would be the capacity of free will.No, there is a difference. An attribute would be like skin color. A capacity would be like musical ability: if you don't develop it, it may never appear; if you don't use it, having the ability doesn't make you a musician.

I'm not sure what you mean by "afforded them by their nature."

Possessed within their essense. Wouldn't that describe your a priori moral reason?

Because they have no answer to the question, "why this value or that?" If they have no answer to that question, then their values are essentially random and we cannot describe obedience to random preferences as freedom--at least I wouldn't.

On the other hand, if they do have an answer to the question, "why this value or that," I can only see two possibilities: an answer that depends on natural causes, or an answer that depends on reason. In the first case, the person is determined by natural causation. In the latter case, the person rules himself by laws of reason, in which case he does not "cause" his values--he derives them from a priori laws.

Of course, if you want to refer to the ability to give laws to oneself according to reason as an ability to "cause" one's own values, then our difference is semantic only.

Doesn't this reason have to be our own reason for it to be an expression of free will. If the reason is derived from an external source, wouldn't the resulting moral laws be derived from an external source as well?

You have done one of two things:

1) You have shown that a person can randomly act in opposition to natural causation, in which case she is no more free than an electron that jumps from point A to point B for no particular reason.

2) You have shown that a person can act according to some other rule besides the laws of nature. In that case, you need to tell me what that rule is. The only sensible candidate seems, to me, to be reason.

And the existence of either of these is a negation of determination.

When I ask you what is free will, you say free will is behaving morally.

When I ask you what is moral, you say that it is that which not determined and not random. Moral is behaving according to free will.

I don't believe that the question of free will is unanswerable by itself, I think you have boxed into its own universe.

There you are correct, in a sense.

But we can understand our moral obligations without knowing whether we are capable of living up to them, just as a person can accept any ordinary obligation without knowing whether he is capable of fulfilling it.

Then, even if it makes sense, it is pointless.

What is the purpose of an obligation that we cannot know how or if we can uphold it?

Who takes a loan who does not understand currency?

And if that mechanical process does exactly replicate human responses to sensation? If it tells us, "I think, I feel, and I feel myself to be free"... will we be in a position to tell it that it is wrong? Will we have learned that free will does not exist?

You suggested that "the contention that human behavior is wholly determined is facially unfalsifiable," and I offered a test that would falsify it.

We could continually test it down to the smallest detail, and all it would take would be one (repeatable) instance where human behavior would differ from mechanical behavior to falsify wholly determined human behavior. Of course it never proves determinism, but that isn't the point of falsifiability.

While I would dispute your first premise, viz. that "values can only be built upon values," since I believe that some values--indeed, some emotions--are arrived at through a rational process of judgment; I would also like to point out that I do believe we have innate "values"--preferences would be a better word, since I think there is something rational in the idea of "value"--for instance, pleasure, reduction of tension, etc. All the things we can look at an infant and say, "It values this."

We will have trouble with the issue of reason, as I have become increasingly skeptical of it, but have not formed any real opinion of it.

To put it simply, I do not believe reason operates except to sort out the struggle between the values (or preferences; I have toggled those words arbitrarily before settling on values, and that would probably reflect our differing opinions on the power of reason). As I said in this premise: "that process of judging is not possible without a set of values to operate as a yardstick".

How can reason build upon itself? How can reason "judge"?

That's a false dilemma for so many reasons.

First of all, you haven't done anything to explain why you think a free person must create "himself" or some part of himself rather than creating "value."

If a man creates a value through reason, he is not actually creating a value, he is categorizing and prioritizing his baser values (or his preferences). He is not creating values out of the blue through reason, but building value on top of value.

So for there to be a true creation of value there must be something added to the person himself. That value or preference that is added must be created by the self.

Who knows? I'm the one claiming that the whole question of whether we are free is beyond our capacity to test. If I can't figure out whether we are free or not, how do you expect me to make deep metaphysical arguments about its mechanism?

It is not very deep at all. Is free will not, by definition, interior motivation?

No, there is a difference. An attribute would be like skin color. A capacity would be like musical ability: if you don't develop it, it may never appear; if you don't use it, having the ability doesn't make you a musician.

I do not like these petty semantic disagreements, so I concede.

Possessed within their essense. Wouldn't that describe your a priori moral reason?Not if you mean that morality itself is somehow a part of the "essence" of a human being. I would agree that a human being, as a rational creature, has access to moral laws that are true a priori, but talk of "essences" is a bit too ontological for me. Remember, I am a deontological ethicist. ;)

Doesn't this reason have to be our own reason for it to be an expression of free will. If the reason is derived from an external source, wouldn't the resulting moral laws be derived from an external source as well?I'm not sure what you mean. Reason isn't "derived" from any "source." Rational creatures understand reason, we comprehend reason, but that does not mean it "derives" from us.

If it did, then it could not be a priori. It would depend on the kind of creatures who thought it up. "Our" reason might be different than the "reason" of an intelligent alien creature. If that is the case, then we may as well not bother with all that SETI stuff that supposes we could recognize intelligence by recognizing a grasp of mathematics--there would be no guarantee that the rational laws underpinning our understanding of number theory are, in fact, universal.

But if by "reason" you refer to the capacity to reason, the ability itself--then yes, clearly it must be ours and not someone else's... although if we rationally recognized that another person were a superior reasoner, it might be rational to follow his reasoning even if we don't understand it, in which case we would have acted rationally (freely) based (in a certain sense) on reason that was not ours.

And the existence of either of these is a negation of determination.Yes, but the negation of determination is not necessarily free will. That's a false dilemma.

Randomness is not free.

When I ask you what is free will, you say free will is behaving morally.No, I say that free will is the capacity to behave morally despite natural causation. Behaving morally as a result of natural causes is not behaving freely.

To behave freely, we must necessarily behave according to some rule besides natural causation. If you want to propose some rule other than practical reason, say so.

When I ask you what is moral, you say that it is that which not determined and not random. Moral is behaving according to free will.No, now you're putting words in my mouth... er, keyboard.

Moral behavior is behavior that is in accordance with the a priori rules of practical reason. It is possible that someone might behave morally due to natural causes... thus, it is not true from my perspective that "moral is behaving according to free will."

Then, even if it makes sense, it is pointless.It would be if we knew that we are so determined that we cannot behave morally unless we would have done so, as a result of natural causes, anyway. Then we could only relate to moral reason in a tragic sense: we could say, "We know what is right, but we have no choice in whether we pursue it." We could invent existential philosophies helping us to deal with our dilemma (indeed, we do). We could invent ideas about predestination giving us hope that we will still get to Heaven no matter what we do (indeed, religions have done this).

What is the purpose of an obligation that we cannot know how or if we can uphold it?As long as we don't know that we CANNOT uphold it, we can try.

Who takes a loan who does not understand currency?Quite a few people, I'm sure. You might just as well ask who gives a loan who does not understand inflation.

You suggested that "the contention that human behavior is wholly determined is facially unfalsifiable," and I offered a test that would falsify it.No, you didn't.

We could continually test it down to the smallest detail, and all it would take would be one (repeatable) instance where human behavior would differ from mechanical behavior to falsify wholly determined human behavior.No, you couldn't. Unless you can actually give a machine the exact same history as a given human being--which would mean somehow superimposing that machine on the person's physical space, which certainly seems impossible--then we can always explain the differences according to some possible variable.

Falsifiable tests are always about prediction, never about explanation. Prediction and explanation rest on two completely different epistemological foundations. Prediction rests on the foundation of falsifiability. Explanation rests on the foundation of plausibility. You can't jump back and forth between the two.

To put it simply, I do not believe reason operates except to sort out the struggle between the values (or preferences; I have toggled those words arbitrarily before settling on values, and that would probably reflect our differing opinions on the power of reason).Then you have already acceded to the determinist assumption. It's pointless to try to reason about determinism from that position.

How can reason build upon itself?Does the truth or falsity of Goldbach's conjecture depend in any way on a given person's preferences?

If a man creates a value through reason, he is not actually creating a value, he is categorizing and prioritizing his baser values (or his preferences).That's an assumption of yours, derived directly from your assumption of determinism. You can insist that "all we have are values" until you're blue in the face, but you can't actually prove it.

It is not very deep at all. Is free will not, by definition, interior motivation?No. Lots of interior motivations are the result of natural causal chains.

The definition of free will is the capacity to defy natural causality according to a non-natural principle. The only such principles that I can conceive are those of reason.