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Have any prominent Objectivists addressed this point II?

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16 hours ago, whYNOT said:

You have not given an explanation, you have rationalized and endlessly repeated an irrational position.

I have discussed this extensively in another thread.

16 hours ago, whYNOT said:

i.e. Someone catching an infection has to involve "initiation of force". By and from - 'someone'. Who? Doesn't matter - someone aimed it at me.

The initiation of force lies in increasing the risk of spread, not in specific untraceable results.

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16 hours ago, whYNOT said:

Please open your eyes and think. The depth of outrage displayed is from those who want moral control over and punishment enacted upon any dissenters. It's not disease and sickness that most concerns them, it's anyone's independent mind to choose for himself (wrongly or rightly).

There may be some people who feel deep outrage because they want control, and they may be making a lot of noise.  That is not where I am coming from.

16 hours ago, whYNOT said:

Do you uphold freedom, from people and the force of government?

Yes, throughout this thread, throughout this site, and throughout my life. 

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16 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

But now we are talking about people who don't know if they are carriers.

 

As I have stated before, they are analogous to someone firing a gun without knowing whether it is loaded with blanks or live rounds.

16 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

This would probably apply to environmental issues too.

Like burning something on a hot day in a forest with dry brush.

Yes, it should.

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7 hours ago, whYNOT said:

I have not seen one logical and principled answer to why one should not equally defend the right to choose what they put in their bodies,

Suppose someone is smuggling sarin nerve gas, ebola virus, or ingredients which make a high explosive when combined, and they do it by putting the material into balloons which they swallow.  They are both endangering people during the carrying phase and taking part in a very serious physical aggression.  No excuse if they don't want to know how it will be used.  I maintain they do not have the right to put those loaded balloons into their bodies.

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2 hours ago, Doug Morris said:

Suppose someone is smuggling sarin nerve gas, ebola virus, or ingredients which make a high explosive when combined, and they do it by putting the material into balloons which they swallow.  They are both endangering people during the carrying phase and taking part in a very serious physical aggression.  No excuse if they don't want to know how it will be used.  I maintain they do not have the right to put those loaded balloons into their bodies.

But Doug, these examples are tantamount to quarantining or sequestering which we have a right to do as a self defense measure.

In these cases you should not do X.

In the case of mandated vaccine, it is you should do Y. It is not about separating your self or NOT doing something. It is being forced to do something. This is as apposed to being encouraged or given the facts to do something.

You are advocating for a different kind of government. It goes against "his freedom to act on his own judgment, for his own goals, by his own voluntary, uncoerced choice".

There is another issue to. You are advocating treating the innocent and the guilty exactly the same way. The knowingly carrying people, the unknowingly carrying people, and the non-carrying people are all to be vaccinated. Now, from a collective standpoint one can point to statistics that show a majority surviving. While some (maybe even one) dying from the vaccine itself. But not through voluntary means. Every one has been forced to survive. As if there is an intrinsic value to a particular group surviving.

 

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15 hours ago, Eiuol said:

Please split the thread from page 4, DW. This is all messy and off-topic (people can talk about it of course I just want things organized).

At the risk of injecting a [f]requent, long, or unseasonable epithet—done—though I suspect it won't make much difference.

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3 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

In the case of mandated vaccine, it is you should do Y. It is not about separating your self or NOT doing something. It is being forced to do something. This is as apposed to being encouraged or given the facts to do something.

You are advocating for a different kind of government. It goes against "his freedom to act on his own judgment, for his own goals, by his own voluntary, uncoerced choice".

Landlords should be required to maintain their rental property, especially when failure to do so physically endangers tenants or their property.  Even without direct danger, failure to maintain can easily rise to the level of fraud or breach of contract.

Owners and drivers of vehicles and owners and carriers of guns should be required to maintain their vehicles and guns to a sufficient extent to avoid wrongfully endangering people.

Owners of dogs and cats should be required to vaccinate them against rabies.

3 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

You are advocating treating the innocent and the guilty exactly the same way. The knowingly carrying people, the unknowingly carrying people, and the non-carrying people

Guilt and innocence here lie not in carrying versus not carrying but in wrongly increasing risk versus not doing so.

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2 hours ago, Doug Morris said:

Landlords should be required to maintain their rental property, especially when failure to do so physically endangers tenants or their property.  Even without direct danger, failure to maintain can easily rise to the level of fraud or breach of contract.

Owners and drivers of vehicles and owners and carriers of guns should be required to maintain their vehicles and guns to a sufficient extent to avoid wrongfully endangering people.

Owners of dogs and cats should be required to vaccinate them against rabies.

Would you agree that a fundamental disagreement is in implementing "requirement" via (one size fits all) prior restraint vs. after the fact liability?

A key disagreement is the one size fits all solution edict from the "wisest" people in the society i.e. the mandate.

It seems you are arguing for a free society with unfree mandates. (and by free I mean Liberty as in rightful freedom, not freedom to murder (initiate force)etc.)

In an Objectivist system, ownership specifies many specific rights be it the landlord/tenant agreement, roads, doggie parks etc.

The requirements you mention (landlord or road usage) should exist based to agreement and specifically enforced on those participate.

The issues may also be related to the question of: How much of you is or should be owned/controlled in society.

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2 hours ago, Doug Morris said:

Guilt and innocence here lie not in carrying versus not carrying but in wrongly increasing risk versus not doing so.

I use it metaphorically to illustrate the "harmer" vs. "non harmer".

Let's say so and so just got tested and he is negative.

Or he does not go out and gets delivery only.

Or he is a hermit and does not interact with society, but lives in the US.

Or the person who got all the variants and it did not effect them as in the case of children.

You see, the government does have a right to impose force on people, on criminals or potential criminals.

That is what I meant by the innocent.

 

But I would like to go back to the person who increases the collective risk (or seems to).

Kind of like background radiation.

  • a smoker.
  • a polluter.
  • a racist.
  • a follower of Islam.

Again, the issue of implementing "requirement" via (one size fits all) prior restraint vs. after the fact liability comes up.

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15 hours ago, Easy Truth said:
18 hours ago, Doug Morris said:

Would you agree that a fundamental disagreement is in implementing "requirement" via (one size fits all) prior restraint vs. after the fact liability?

The disagreement is in where to draw the line between these two.

15 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

A key disagreement is the one size fits all solution edict from the "wisest" people in the society i.e. the mandate.

We have to have a constitutional system to determine what laws will be passed.  The current constitution has room for improvement by the amendment process.  Simply being wisest does not entitle anyone, morally or constitutionally, to issue mandates.  Morally, no one has the right to issue mandates in disregard of the moral principles involved.  Constitutionally, no one has the right to issue mandates in disregard of the constitution.

15 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

It seems you are arguing for a free society with unfree mandates. (and by free I mean Liberty as in rightful freedom, not freedom to murder (initiate force)etc.)

The questions are, what exactly constitutes an initiation of physical force and how exactly should any given initiation of physical force be handled.  I have been expressing definite views on the first question.  The second question raises technical issues.

 

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15 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

I use it metaphorically to illustrate the "harmer" vs. "non harmer".

We must also consider creating risk of harm.

15 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

a smoker.

If secondhand smoke is as dangerous as they say, a smoker's smoke can amount to physical force against a person exposed to it.  It is probably possible to handle this by a combination of after the fact liability and property rights rather than by criminal law.

15 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

a polluter.

When pollution physically harms or endangers a person or their property, that is physical force.  How to deal with this is a more complicated issue than with smoking.

15 hours ago, Easy Truth said:
  • a racist.
  • a follower of Islam.

Simply being a racist, sexist, ageist, or whatever or a follower of Islam, Christianity, or whatever does not constitute physical force.  We need to deal appropriately with people who actually commit, assist, or incite the initiation of physical force, even if they claim to be upholding Objectivism. 

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2 hours ago, Doug Morris said:
17 hours ago, Easy Truth said:
  • a racist.
  • a follower of Islam.

Simply being a racist, sexist, ageist, or whatever or a follower of Islam, Christianity, or whatever does not constitute physical force.  We need to deal appropriately with people who actually commit, assist, or incite the initiation of physical force, even if they claim to be upholding Objectivism. 

I hope this may clarify some of the disagreement.

It is specifically around "increasing risk is initiating force".

In the case of Covid, it would be equating a 2 percent risk of death, as situation giving government emergency powers.

This is the favored argument for an authoritarian power grab. Any dictator would take power because there are elements in the population increasing risk.

  • Any religious person will increase "the risk" because of there reliance on faith.
  • A person that believes in using deadly force to support the supernatural is an increased risk.
  • A person who believes that a racial component makes a person hateful/worthless is a risk.
  • A person who does not tie his shoes increases risk.
  • If disparity of income causes jealousy, a rich or poor person may increase "the risk".
  • Immigrants increase risk due to culture clash

These people increase risk. Why not have a mandate against them? I'm wondering if you have to modify your statement to include the amount and quality of risk. Maybe a very high risk like "people who increase the risk 92.367 percent" would justify an emergency situation. (and then you would have to make a case that this is an emergency situation)

But either way, there is a moral argument. Risk has to be dealt with in person to person sense. Not via a collective risk. Person A is a high risk to person B is a risk to their life and well being. There is an objective value judgement. Person A is a risk to society is a metaphor. A society is not a living entity that can die or has values.

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I should have made clear that acting physically in a way that increases physical risk constitutes physical force.

Holding views that may lead a person to use force does not itself constitute force.

A person who does or is something that may provoke someone else to initiate physical force against them is not engaging in force.

The increased risk from not tying shoes can be handled by a combination of after the fact liability and property rights rather than by criminal law, if it needs to be handled at all.

1 hour ago, Easy Truth said:

Risk has to be dealt with in person to person sense.

Failure to mask or to vaccinate increases risk for individual people.  It is these individual risks that make it force, not some collectivist nonsense such as you suggest. 

 

Edited by Doug Morris
Correct typo
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46 minutes ago, Doug Morris said:
1 hour ago, Easy Truth said:

Risk has to be dealt with in person to person sense.

Failure to mask or to vaccinate increases risk for individual people.  It is these individual risks that make it force, not some collectivist nonsense such as you suggest. 

 

I would argue: That is a false statement.

Some individuals are not a risk, and some individuals are not harmed, and some individuals aren't carriers. Meaning zero risk for and by some "individuals".

The inappropriateness of the argument is in lumping them all into one collective. As in the risk of the group is the risk of the individual.

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29 minutes ago, Easy Truth said:

Some individuals are not a risk, and some individuals are not harmed,

We don't know ahead of time which, so everyone is at risk.  Even if we can prove ahead of time that some people are not at risk, we still have physical force against those that are.

31 minutes ago, Easy Truth said:

some individuals aren't carriers.

Anyone can become a carrier at any time. 

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"I better not leave my house because some stranger unknown to me may not know if I'm a risk" is literally what they think and how they expect you to live your life. They are often enraged when encountering someone who doesn't. The proper response is telling them "I simply no longer care if I or anyone else gets covid."

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1 hour ago, Doug Morris said:

so everyone is at risk

Bottom line this is the impasse.

The conflict between the ideas of: "not everyone is at risk" vs. "everyone is at risk".

It seems obvious. Obviously not every individual person is at risk. I have a 75 year old aunt that got Covid which meant some sniffles and she was mowing her lawn while she had it.

That was one "individual" at least that was not at risk.

You may say I am being literal about it. And yes, I am. That is why I'm saying you are being metaphorical about it.

I, in fact, can suffer, but "we" will not, because an entity called "we" can't. It's an abstraction.

Ultimately I think your argument is trying to appeal to self interest. As in, it is to your interest to eliminate the virus in the whole population. But the question is how. Is it to my interest to give a government unlimited powers to keep me safe?

1 hour ago, Doug Morris said:

Anyone can become a carrier at any time. 

Meaning "things might change". "We don't know". The word risk already accounts for this.

Similarly:

Once a government has that kind of power, the Government at worst could make the sick be killed and burnt because of the risk to all of us.

That's a risk too.

After all, things could change. We don't know. It's a risk to everyone therefore it's a risk to each individual. I should add … physical risk to be clear.

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On 9/5/2021 at 4:22 PM, Doug Morris said:

Suppose someone is smuggling sarin nerve gas, ebola virus, or ingredients which make a high explosive when combined, and they do it by putting the material into balloons which they swallow.  They are both endangering people during the carrying phase and taking part in a very serious physical aggression.  No excuse if they don't want to know how it will be used.  I maintain they do not have the right to put those loaded balloons into their bodies.

A strained analogy. One must be held responsible for 'swallowing' a virus and for passing it on to endanger someone, equally responsible, who then swallows it too.

You "maintain they do not have the right to put those loaded [viruses] into their bodies". (!)

Well, that takes care of the question of natural immunity. You won't allow it.

"Natural", meaning that whatever one does, the reality is a virus will very likely come one's way by happenstance. The 99.9 % who survive the encounter will be immunized, naturally. (Much better and more durably, than a vaccination, one may discover from later reports).

This all began with the dangerous metaphor - taken literally - of 'defeating' and controlling this virus, "the enemy". But one can't see and touch a virus, nor grapple with it and capture it.

What we CAN do is defeat - control - the visible and tangible humans who might be, or are, carrying it. Therefore, the 'war' against Covid has been turned into a war waged by people on other people by illogical thinking and metaphysical misidentification. Remove the freedoms of citizens and bring discord to capture a virus. That's what I think you're promoting. (Anyhow, the effects are what are evident around us).

 

 

Edited by whYNOT
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16 hours ago, 2046 said:

"I better not leave my house because some stranger unknown to me may not know if I'm a risk" is literally what they think and how they expect you to live your life. They are often enraged when encountering someone who doesn't. The proper response is telling them "I simply no longer care if I or anyone else gets covid."

I would prefer telling such a person "You're grossly overreacting, and I don't care how outraged you are." 

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15 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

I have a 75 year old aunt that got Covid which meant some sniffles and she was mowing her lawn while she had it.

She was at risk until she survived COVID-19, and even now is at a little bit of risk.

15 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

I, in fact, can suffer, but "we" will not, because an entity called "we" can't. It's an abstraction.

I have never said that "we" can suffer.  I have said that each individual is at risk.

15 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

Is it to my interest to give a government unlimited powers to keep me safe?

I have never advocated giving government unlimited powers.

17 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

some individuals aren't carriers.

I was trying to explain why this statement is irrelevant.

15 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

the Government at worst could make the sick be killed and burnt because of the risk to all of us.

We need to be rational about how to react to any given situation.  Your scenario might be an appropriate reaction to a zombie apocalypse, if we read "sick" as "zombified", but would be a gross overreaction to COVID-19.

I would prefer the word "each", not "all".

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2 hours ago, whYNOT said:

A strained analogy. One must be held responsible for 'swallowing' a virus and for passing it on to endanger someone, equally responsible, who then swallows it too.

You "maintain they do not have the right to put those loaded [viruses] into their bodies". (!)

You misrepresent what I said.  I was not making an analogy between the smuggling and infection.  I was making the point that there is a limit to our right to control what we put in our bodies.

2 hours ago, whYNOT said:

one may discover from later reports

Those reports do not provide as clear-cut a picture as you claim.

2 hours ago, whYNOT said:

This all began with the dangerous metaphor - taken literally - of 'defeating' and controlling this virus, "the enemy".

I have never spoken of "defeating" the virus or of the virus as an "enemy".  I have spoken of limiting risk and of the virus as a physical danger.

2 hours ago, whYNOT said:

a war waged by people on other people

What I advocate does not amount to making war on anyone.

2 hours ago, whYNOT said:

bring discord to capture a virus

The discord was already present in our society.  The virus was just a new topic for it to spread to.

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18 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

, the Government at worst could make the sick be killed and burnt because of the risk to all of us.

Killing someone for being sick with COVID-19 would be murder.  Any government employee or official involved should be fired or removed from office and put on trial for murder.  They should have no immunity.

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4 hours ago, Doug Morris said:

have never advocated giving government unlimited powers.

A threat of incarceration isn't an invitation to a social club.

If a (2 percent) statistical likelihood description of "each" of us can be used to describe a specific person, anything can happen.

Doug, if Covid had a .0001 percent likelihood of causing death, would you still advocate forced vaccination. (I think you may argue that you have never used the word forced vaccination, then let's go with Mandate).

Also, is there any place for voluntary behavior?

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4 hours ago, Doug Morris said:
20 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

I, in fact, can suffer, but "we" will not, because an entity called "we" can't. It's an abstraction.

I have never said that "we" can suffer.  I have said that each individual is at risk.

 

4 hours ago, Doug Morris said:

I would prefer the word "each", not "all".

In this case, "each" is based on "all". The crux is the word "risk".

It is a risk to each based on statistic from all.

And we will treat each based on all.

Some humans commit crimes.

Not all.

Each (and all) humans will wear ankle bracelets to counter the risk.

All will have to do this to deal with the risk to each of us.

This is to help us all.

To help each of us.
This is a small price to pay for the security it creates.
In this case, the ankle bracelet will not kill you.
But if you don't wear it, the police will kill you.
This is not unlimited power.
We are here to protect you and promote law and order.

Because we each deserve it.

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