From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Fri Jan 17 2003 - 17:25:06 MST
Mike writes
> > > Natural Rights are those legal liberties which
> > > the evolutionary history of human culture has
> > > demonstrated provide superior selection,
> > > survival, of both the individual and the society
> > > in which the individual resides.
> > Human culture has *not* demonstrated that these
> > legal liberties provide superior selection,
> > survival, and so on (except quite recently,
> > and for just a few people). These legal
> > liberties are a property of our civilization,
> > not our DNA. It's still a massive epistemological
> > error, IMO, to keep imputing these "properties" of
> > sentient beings as being in any way independent of
> > the historical situation in which the human beings
> > find themselves.
>
> These legal liberties are rules in which Darwinian
> and Lamarckian evolutionary agents (of which both
> types operate deterministically according to the
> embedded laws of physics) interact. It's not just our
> DNA, its our memes as well, our accumulated knowledge.
Yes, I certainly agree with that. Of course, you
are quite aware that the Darwinian processes lead
to human DNA and human nature on the one hand, and
by a quite separate process---though still Darwinian
of course---led to the world's various societies and
civilizations.
> The purported 'historical situation' human beings
> find themselves in is also dependent upon the
> characteristics of physics,
Rather indirectly, I must say!!
> but it is also merely a selection effect, much like
> it is a selection effect that life found it easier
> to evolve on the surface of a terrestrial planet
> like Earth rather than others like Venus or Mars,
> or Jovian worlds like Jupiter and Saturn.
Yes, of course.
> You are making a massive epistemological error of
> imputing the cause to these boundary condition
> selection effects rather than the more operative
> underlying rules which govern behavior no matter
> what point in history a human being finds themselves.
I'm sorry, you've waxed too abstract for me. What are
you saying in plain language? Now, "human nature" is
most usually (and correctly) taken to refer to our
biological heritage (often spoken of as our DNA). It
was about what was and was not universal in human nature
that the big 20th century fights took place. In the end,
Margaret Mead and her mentor Franz Boas lost, and Edward
Wilson and his allies won. There is a definite universal
human nature.
However, Mead and Boas were overreacting against an
equally wrong earlier conception: that upper class
people and white people were intrinsically superior
just because their cultures obviously were.
Well, then, for the purposes of the present discussion,
just how extensive is that "human nature"? Does it
encompass what the proponents of Natural Law and
Natural Rights are always talking about? I say it
does not, and that is the reason that you cannot
find up-to-date treatments of the human condition
that address these.
> > When, lastly, I wrote on this subject, I mentioned six
> > books I've read or re-studied recently that deal with
> > what I think are the relevant themes. They were
> >
> > Knowledge and Decisions, by Thomas Sowell
> > The Origins of Virtue, by Matt Ridley
> > The Fatal Conceit, by F.A. Hayek
> > Power and Prosperity, by Mancur Olsen
> > The Mystery of Capital, by Hernando De Soto
> > Carnage and Culture, by Victor Davis Hanson
> >
> > I now find that I could name another half dozen
> > seemingly relevant works that also fail to contain
> > "natural rights" or "natural law" in the index.
>
> Doesn't matter. The air exists for us to breath,
> so its existence is taken as assumed.
By whom? That's what I'm questioning!
> You don't need to recite such basic concepts
> and rules in order to build upon their validity
> (though apparently for some readers, it seems
> one must).
Indeed one must, and I do appreciate sincere
efforts to enlighten me. But the evidence is
becoming stronger and stronger that these are
outmoded concepts. Moreover, it is preposterous
that "everybody knows" this but me. And recall
my exchange with Lee Daniel Crocker:
> [Lee Corbin wrote]
>> The notation "Natural rights" is very *inconvenient* for many
>> reasons. First, people do not mean the same thing by it at all.
>> Many religious people mean something *quite* different from what
>> ordinary materialists could possibly mean. Second, it gets very
>> confused with "natural law" as this thread amply demonstrates.
> I won't disagree with that. But the fact that a term is used
> in ambiguous ways doesn't mean it can't also be used more
> rigorously by people who agree on a foundation. I think the
> libertarian/anarchocapitalist/individualist interpretation of
> "natural rights" is reasonably consistent and useful, even if
> some of those who use it probably go too far.
> I will also concede that "natural rights" is a term inherently
> two steps removed from reality in the sense that it implies
> both that there are natural laws of human behavior, and further
> that many of them are expressible in terms of "rights", which
> are restraints of secondary action.
So I say, "chuck it". It's a relic.
> I'll note that you seem to be cherry picking
> your books. For example, a more important work
> of Hayek is "The Road to Serfdom", in which he
> does endorse concepts of natural rights.
Thank you! Someone finally mentioned a good
book that contains such a discussion. Praise be.
I must seriously resent your implication, however,
that I have been at all dishonest or selective.
I have "The Road to Serfdom" around somewhere,
but did not run across it. By God, I would have
mentioned it if I had.
Can you mention any other books that discuss
either "Natural Law" or "Natural Rights"?
Lee
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