Morality questions (from a slave's point of view)

[Windwalker]

1) If you are a slave, is it moral to kill your masters in order to escape?

2) Is it moral to kill your masters even when escape is not possible? Does this depend on the reason (let's say they consistently beat you and you do it to prevent future beatings, at least from that master vs. killing them out of revenge for making you a slave)?

3) Is it moral to kill the master's family, even if they did not directly contribute to your enslavement, in order to escape? (e.g. let's say little Billy sees you and is about to cry out, meaning you'll likely be caught, and the only way to stop him in time is to give him a nice kick in the throat that will likely kill him)


OK, bad hypothetical on the last one, but you get the drift. And by "is it moral", I am referring to your own personal moral values (and not those of Christianity or Bhuddism or whatever).

For #1, I'd say unequivocably yes. You are trying to regain your life, which someone has stolen from you. If the thief of your life does not relinquish it, you can take it from the thief by force.

For #2, I wouldn't know what to say. Your killing the master wouldn't accomplish anything useful. Yet they stole your life, and it is probably fair in the eyes of justice if you stole theirs. Don't think it's moral, though, since you're not doing something that's necessarily good for the world. However, if the master is a sadistic bastard that enjoys hurting people and will do so again, it is moral to spare future victims by killing him (and assuming you have no other options besides killing him). Also, if he treats you worse than the next master would (e.g. he tortures you every day), then murder would be moral, I think, since it would relieve somewhat the suffering of an innocent person (the slave), with the only harm done to the cause of the suffering.

For #3, I'm conflicted here. The family is part of the system keeping you enslaved; our hypothetical little Billy is one of your jailors. However, he is innocent of the initial crime, and it's not like he really chose to be one of your slavers; he was just born into it. However, I think I would take the tact of a war reasoning here; when you bomb Hitler's Germany, you're going to harm innocents, and still be right in doing so. Here, the whole institution is evil, so killing Billy as a part of that institution in order to free one's self would not be wrong (again, if you had no other option besides killing him).

Discuss, and flame away.

[Bear_Nenno]

1) Yes
2) Yes, but why not wait until you can benefit from it. If you kill the master and cannot escape, surely you will be hanged immediately.
3) I can't fathom a situation where little Billy would have to be killed in order to escape. Could he not be knocked out or incapacitated?

One can also look at these questions as if he were ever taken as a hostage. Would I kill a little innocent boy if it meant being free again or being captured and tortured for trying to escape? Hard to say. Depends on so many things. Not the least of which is the actual innocence of the little boy. Though it might not necessarily be his fault for the way he is, if he's an actual part of the holding party, then he's free game in my book. Youth does not equal innocence. 9 year olds can easily be enemy combatants. I didn't put them in that situation.

[Malacandra]

No in all cases. You are a slave presumably because it was an alternative to being killed. Having accepted slavery as the price of preserving your life, you are morally bound to uphold your end of the bargain. Welshing on it to the extent of escaping is understandable, but it doesn't excuse you for crimes you commit in the act of escape.

Interesting, I understand that Japanese PoWs in WW2 were the least inclined of all to attempt to escape; they held that, having once surrendered, they had no right to freedom. (Of course, getting them to surrender in the first place was something less than easy.)

[Bear_Nenno]

Interesting, I understand that Japanese PoWs in WW2 were the least inclined of all to attempt to escape; they held that, having once surrendered, they had no right to freedom. (Of course, getting them to surrender in the first place was something less than easy.)
What if a person is captured by overwhelming force as opposed to threat of force. What if they resisted and were taken away kicks and screaming the whole way. It is possible to be taken captive without ever having surrendered. You may have just been beaten. You lost that battle, but you don't necessarily have to lose the war. If you never surrender, you've never accepted or agreed to anything. Therefore you still have the right to fight.

[Alessan]

No in all cases. You are a slave presumably because it was an alternative to being killed. Having accepted slavery as the price of preserving your life, you are morally bound to uphold your end of the bargain. Welshing on it to the extent of escaping is understandable, but it doesn't excuse you for crimes you commit in the act of escape.



Only if you consider a deal made under threat of violence to be legally binding. If someone takes your watch after threatening you with a gun, is it now his watch? Is rape at knifepoint consentual sex?

Besides, even if you're correct, how does it apply to people born as slaves?

[Malacandra]

Personally I hold no brief whatever for slavery, as I hope you understand, but as long as I'm in the mode...

Unless there is some God of Abstract Justice to whom you can successfully appeal, there is no inherent "right" to freedom. A nation may choose to assert as an axiom that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; but the thing with axioms is that they are not provable, nor are they intended to be. They may be noble axioms; I may agree with them passionately; but that is beside the point.

If you found a nation upon certain axioms and do what is necessary to uphold them, then all well and good. If our hypothetical slave-holding nation is not founded upon such axioms, then what is the basis for arguing the moral rights of the slave?

From a purely practical viewpoint it can be readily seen that arguing for a system of morals that grants the slave licence to seek his freedom by violent means, and that excuses even the murder of innocents in so doing, must necessarily have serious negative consequences. If I, as your owner, have a clearly respected understanding that you, my slave, will not escape or murder me while I am asleep, then I need not chain you or kennel you while I sleep. In the absence of such, I must make your chains heavier in my own interests. You may be iniquitously fettered by the demands of my society, which you perceive as unjust; you would perhaps find literal fetters of iron considerably more iniquitous. Similar considerations apply to the cruel and unusual punishments that must surely be insituted to deter slaves from violent escape, and the reprisals that are sure to follow when a slave takes improper advantage of the merciful liberty that was extended to him or her.

And, frankly, being the slave, you are in no position to dictate terms as to what is and is not moral. If your society did not like the terms that mine has imposed upon you, it ought to have done a better job of protecting you. It did not, and you must take the consequences. This may or may not extend to the children of slaves to the nth generation. If you did not wish to father slaves, you ought not to have become one; or you ought not to have bred.

As long as we are having a civil discussion about a non-inflammatory topic such as slavery, I would prefer not to muddy the waters by dragging in rape. If we must, though, then I refer you to the rhetorical question above concerning the God of Abstract Justice. Our definition of what is and is not rape is what we are prepared to agree that it is, and work to uphold. It is possible to argue that any consent, whether obtained by threat of deadly force or not, invalidates a charge of rape. We may very well find this iniquitous - that, at bottom, a woman (or man, for that matter) might have to choose between death or violation - and I might cheer you to the echo for crying out on such a cruel standard. The point is that it is not written into the laws of the universe that this must be so.

::takes off the mask and looks in the mirror, rather relieved to be rid of it, at least for now::

[Evil Captor]

Purely as a matter of morality, a slave may kill his master at any time.

[Elendil's Heir]

Slavery is, IMHO, inherently immoral. While holding you in durance vile, your master, his flunkies and even his family have no right to expect moral behavior of you. I personally would try to escape at the earliest opportunity without killing anybody (and, if it were during the Civil War, would promptly enlist in the U.S. Colored Troops to help bring freedom to other slaves). But if, under the circumstances, there was absolutely no way to escape without killing my master, his overseer or even his young child, then I would reluctantly kill, and get the hell out of there as soon as possible.

Tough questions, though.

[Stonebow]

I have no qualms at all with the murder of anyone complicit in my enslavement. Of course, when I envision slavery, I'm thinking chattel slavery...I understand various systems of slavery are more and less harsh on the slave.
To that end:
1) yes
2) yes
3) assuming the master's family benefits from my enslavement, they are also my masters, and deserve the same. I'd never intentionally harm a child, but I doubt that I'd balk were i in a situation as described in the OP- because then it's my life against someone else's. So, a reluctant yes.

Also bear in mind, I conceive of slavery as an indefinite commitment; if it were a situation where I were indentured for a period due to POW status, debt, etc. and I saw a clear end to it, I'd likely persevere, assuming conditions were not terrible. Mostly this is because if the enslavers see slaves as more trouble than they are worth, they are more likely to execute POWs than to keep them as slaves for the duration of the war. That's not a decision I feel comfortable making for others.

[Menocchio]

Also bear in mind, I conceive of slavery as an indefinite commitment; if it were a situation where I were indentured for a period due to POW status, debt, etc. and I saw a clear end to it, I'd likely persevere, assuming conditions were not terrible. Mostly this is because if the enslavers see slaves as more trouble than they are worth, they are more likely to execute POWs than to keep them as slaves for the duration of the war. That's not a decision I feel comfortable making for others.

I was about to ask about this. I agree with the points made above about African slaves in the US, but what about other forms of involuntary confinement? If I'm wrongfully convicted of a crime, have I the moral right to murder a guard to escape? What if I'm justly convicted, but my sentence and the conditions are disproportionate with my crime? For example, if I shoplifted, got twenty years, and was frequently beaten? Hell, is freedom so precious that one is always justified in killing to preserve it, even if one is justly sentenced?

[BobLibDem]

I have to disagree with the majority. If I am a slave I am the victim of an unspeakable wrong. I have the right to attempt an escape. However, my status as a victim does not entitle me to commit a crime against my master. Crimes against criminals are still crimes. Thus I would limit my escape attempts to those in which nobody else suffers as a result of my actions. If that takes longer, so be it. I'd rather wait a few more years for my freedom than to always live with blood on my hands.

[Lemur866]

Purely as a matter of morality, a slave may kill his master at any time.

How about a situation that happened frequently in Roman times. An ambitious young Greek in an economic backwater would sell himself into slavery hoping to become a pedagogue or bureacrat of some sort, accumulate enough money to buy his freedom and retire? Happened all the time. Would it be moral for such a slave to kill his master?

I agree that most slaves in the Roman empire weren't voluntary slaves but rather capitives taken by military force. But surely the morality of resisting slavery doesn't rest on the fact of slavery, but rather that said slavery is enforced by threats of physical violence up to and including death. If someone threatens to kill you unless you work for free, then it is simple self defense to kill that person first. But in circumstances where there is no threat of violence, if you entered into a slave contract voluntarily, then deadly force would not be moral.

Or take another example. Suppose you were a slave in modern day america...someone captures you and forces you to work for them. However, in modern day America that slavery is illegal. All you have to do is escape and you are freed from slavery. You have the same right to self defense that anyone else does, but your right to self defense is not dependent on the fact that you are a slave, but rather that you are under the immanent threat of physical violence. If your master falls asleep and you have an opportunity to escape without killing your master you would be commiting a crime if you killed them, just like everyone else who is confronted with deadly force but has an opportunity to withdraw.

You have an obligation to retreat from deadly force, you can only match deadly force with deadly force if you have no opportunity to retreat. The same obligation applies to slaves.

[davenportavenger]

How about a situation that happened frequently in Roman times. An ambitious young Greek in an economic backwater would sell himself into slavery hoping to become a pedagogue or bureacrat of some sort, accumulate enough money to buy his freedom and retire? Happened all the time. Would it be moral for such a slave to kill his master?Many people would say that such a person would not be a slave, since they were paid, and since they could leave. It would be more of an indentured servitude kind of thing, or even just "having a crappy job." To me, the word "slave" implies "property," and it's because of this that I don't think it's wrong for a slave (in the American forced or born into slavery/no payment/no escape or buy out possible) to kill their master. If you don't have the rights of a human, you are not expected to act as one. Respect of life is a two-way street--if you're not fulfilling your part of the moral bargain I'm not under any obligation to fulfill mine. If someone treats you like an animal (or object), then there's nothing wrong with acting like one including killing (or grossly malfunctioning), unless you're trying to impress your captors by being "noble." And I've never heard of a slaveholder releasing his slaves because "they're such great people." They don't free animals for being domesticated.

I'm really kinda surprised that American slaves didn't organize a mass revolt. The ones on large plantations could have easily slaughtered their captors in the night and organized a mass coup, along the lines of the French Revolution. I guess Stockholm Syndrome (as well as the inability to form bonds among fellow slaves caused by family and friend splitting and communication problems caused by lack of the written word) counts for a lot.

[Hoodoo Ulove]

I'm really kinda surprised that American slaves didn't organize a mass revolt.They did (http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/DIASPORA/REBEL.HTM). Purely as a matter of morality, a slave may kill his master at any time.Given your name, is it wise to so stipulate?

[davenportavenger]

Yes, but those were only organized among slaves living in a particular town or ship. With effective mass communication and the ability to organize (two things denied slaves) a revolt on a mass scale involving slaves from every Southern state could have been organized. It would have worked even better if the slaves could have enlisted troops and resources from the outside, such as from poor whites (who should have been the natural allies of the slaves, but did not align with them due to their own lack of education and insight, which was also engineered by the rich landowners). But this is all part of a fantasy alternate history scenario, unfortunately.

If I'm wrongfully convicted of a crime, have I the moral right to murder a guard to escape? What if I'm justly convicted, but my sentence and the conditions are disproportionate with my crime? For example, if I shoplifted, got twenty years, and was frequently beaten? Hell, is freedom so precious that one is always justified in killing to preserve it, even if one is justly sentenced?In that case, I don't think it is justified to kill, since the captor wouldn't necessarily know that the accused was innocent, so they wouldn't know they were committing an injustice. As for the Les Miz scenario, that's a tough one. I don't think killing the guard is justified in that case either, though it might be if the guard was being unnecessarily cruel and knew for himself that it was not justified given the scope or kind of crime. Basically, if the captor/guard knows that what they're doing is wrong and does it anyway, that should be the deciding factor in whether or not it is ethical to react with force. Of course, it is hard to have that kind of insight into other people outside of the classic slavery situation (which everyone should know is wrong; if you can't realize that owning humans is unethical then you deserve to be killed for that).

[Liberal]

Unless there is some God of Abstract Justice to whom you can successfully appeal, there is no inherent "right" to freedom. A nation may choose to assert as an axiom that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; but the thing with axioms is that they are not provable, nor are they intended to be. They may be noble axioms; I may agree with them passionately; but that is beside the point.

If you found a nation upon certain axioms and do what is necessary to uphold them, then all well and good. If our hypothetical slave-holding nation is not founded upon such axioms, then what is the basis for arguing the moral rights of the slave?But you are positing the inherent "rights" of nations. Not only that, you are arguing that nations are sentient — that they "choose" and "assert".

[LonesomePolecat]

I'm really kinda surprised that American slaves didn't organize a mass revolt.
Perhaps because, bad though slavery was, most slaves were not treated as inhumanely as is generally believed, and a great many of them were actually content with their lot in life.

[msmith537]

No in all cases. You are a slave presumably because it was an alternative to being killed. Having accepted slavery as the price of preserving your life, you are morally bound to uphold your end of the bargain. Welshing on it to the extent of escaping is understandable, but it doesn't excuse you for crimes you commit in the act of escape.


Wrong. You are assuming that the slave owner (or the slave establishment) has some sort of legitimate right to take your life or otherwise inflict violence on you. If you believe they do not (and I can't imagine a situation where they would) then it is a form of extortion and you are under no moral obligation to uphold a bargain to extortionists beyond what is necessary to ensure your safety.

1) If you are a slave, is it moral to kill your masters in order to escape?

Yes...kill Whitey


2) Is it moral to kill your masters even when escape is not possible? Does this depend on the reason (let's say they consistently beat you and you do it to prevent future beatings, at least from that master vs. killing them out of revenge for making you a slave)?

Yes...kill Whitey...however as a practical matter you will still be a slave and will likely have to suffer the consequences of killing your master...which will be severe.


3) Is it moral to kill the master's family, even if they did not directly contribute to your enslavement, in order to escape? (e.g. let's say little Billy sees you and is about to cry out, meaning you'll likely be caught, and the only way to stop him in time is to give him a nice kick in the throat that will likely kill him)

Yes...kill little Whitey...if they are hindering your escape they are implicitly contributing to your enslavement. Whether you do this or not is something you will need to decide. Can you live with being free but having killed a child? Should you risk another oportunity?

I would say what's morally wrong is to kill your masters or other people if you can escape without bloodshed. But it might be nice to kill me some of them white devils before I go.

[davenportavenger]

Perhaps because, bad though slavery was, most slaves were not treated as inhumanely as is generally believed, and a great many of them were actually content with their lot in life.I'd rather have a horrible life and be free (to move around, to associate with others of my choosing, to own property) than be treated like a queen but be "owned" by another person. I think most slaves probably felt the same, as it's a very human feeling; any slave who claimed to be "content" probably had some major Stockholm Syndrome going on. It is not a part of human nature to be happy as someone else's property.

[Liberal]

I'd rather have a horrible life and be free (to move around, to associate with others of my choosing, to own property) than be treated like a queen but be "owned" by another person. I think most slaves probably felt the same, as it's a very human feeling; any slave who claimed to be "content" probably had some major Stockholm Syndrome going on. It is not a part of human nature to be happy as someone else's property.I think that's too broad a generalization. It is conceivable that there are some people who, for whatever reason, want to be owned by someone else. Perhaps they are hopelessly smitten with adoration. Perhaps they have low self-esteem. Perhaps it is a sexual kink. Perhaps they feel a debt. Perhaps their arrangement benefits their children or other loved one in some way.

[Lemur866]

The simple answer is that being forced into slavery does not change the ethical status of my actions. I do not recognize the morality or legality of my enslavement, my actions are therefore morally exactly the same as a free person's actions. I have the exact same natural rights as any other person, regardless of what the slaveholder or the slaveholder's society claims.

I should therefore treat the slaveholder, the slaveholder's agents, and the slaveholder's family just as I would any other person. That is, I can ethically only respond to their actions or threatened actions. I can't kill a baby just because the baby might grow up to be a slaveholder. I can't kill someone who doesn't threaten me with deadly force. In some slaveholding situations I can imagine that every adult member of the slaveholding class and every one of their agents is prepared to threaten me with deadly force at any time, in those cases it would be ethical to use deadly force in return. Under other slave regimes my use of deadly force would be justified in some particular cases and unjustified in other cases.

The fact that I am judged a slave by some people has no bearing on whether my actions are ethical or not. In most cases my ethical relationship to a person who calls himself my owner would be identical to my relationship with a mugger who holds me at gunpoint. I can use deadly force against a mugger in certain circumstances but not in others, the same circumstances would apply to a mugger who called himself my owner and imagined a more long-term mugging. I act to protect myself, if I can protect myself without deadly violence I have an obligation to do so. I also have a lesser obligation to prevent the mugger from mugging other people in the future, just as I have the right to protect myself I also have the right to protect others. But my use of force must be proportionate to the threat offered by the mugger.

Membership in a "class" of slaveholders is irrelevant. Such classes are human-created fictions. Every person is simply a person, their membership in a human-created class is irrelevant, what matters is their actions. If that person engages in unethical actions to you or others your responses to those actions change. But you are not allowed to kill someone merely because he pretends to be your owner, what makes your self-defense ethical or not is whether he threatens you with deadly force.

[davenportavenger]

I think that's too broad a generalization. It is conceivable that there are some people who, for whatever reason, want to be owned by someone else. Perhaps they are hopelessly smitten with adoration. Perhaps they have low self-esteem. Perhaps it is a sexual kink. Perhaps they feel a debt. Perhaps their arrangement benefits their children or other loved one in some way.I don't think a BDSM kink counts as real slavery. In any case, that person decided to enter into that relationship, which can't be said of American slaves. They're also free to leave whenever they want; their "slavery" isn't protected by law. As for the children, yeah someone might prefer slavery over something happening to their children, but they wouldn't choose it outright.

[Hoodoo Ulove]

The simple answer is ...you are not allowed to kill someone merely because he pretends to be your owner, what makes your self-defense ethical or not is whether he threatens you with deadly force.Thus, if you cannot escape without killing your captor, you are obligated to continue as his slave? Doesn't work for me.

[Liberal]

I don't think a BDSM kink counts as real slavery. In any case, that person decided to enter into that relationship, which can't be said of American slaves. They're also free to leave whenever they want; their "slavery" isn't protected by law. As for the children, yeah someone might prefer slavery over something happening to their children, but they wouldn't choose it outright.I agree with the points you're making now, which is why I said that your first point was too broadly made.

[Lemur866]

Thus, if you cannot escape without killing your captor, you are obligated to continue as his slave? Doesn't work for me.

Well, it depends on circumstances. If I can escape without killing my captor, I have an obligation to do so, unless I reasonably believe that puts other people at risk of his threats of deadly force. Same situation as a lunatic running around with a gun...if I reasonably believe other people are at risk I can ethically use deadly force to stop him even if I am not directly threatened other people are. However, if others are not threatened, and I am not threatened, I have no ethical right to use deadly force.

If I was in a situation where I could escape only through the use of deadly force I could only ethically do so under some circumstances. Take for instance if I were wrongfully convicted of a crime. I don't believe I could ethically use deadly force against a guard to escape even if that were the only way I could escape. Even further, I don't think I would have an ethical right to attempt to escape in most circumstances, since there are mechanisms where I could prove my innocence. Of course, under a totalitarian criminal justice system where I have no hope of proving my innocence then I could ethically attempt to escape.

Also, I don't have the right to kill innocent people even to save my life, that is a well established ethical principle. If I can't kill people to save my life, I certainly can't kill innocent people to escape from captivity. For instance, if I'm escaping from a maniac who believes he is my owner, I can't ethically kill little Timmy just because Timmy saw me escape and is likely to be forced to give information to the maniac. Timmy isn't threatening me with deadly force, I have no right to kill him even if it means I am recaptured or killed. However, if Timmy's older brother recognizes me as an escaped slave and threatens to use deadly force to recapture me on behalf of my owner, then I can ethically use deadly force against big Timmy.

I can ethically kill my owner even in his sleep if I reasonably believe that there is no other way I can escape his future use of deadly force against me. But that belief has to be reasonable, I have no right to use deadly force against him unless he represents some future threat, I can't ethically use deadly force against him just because he's an asshole. And my reasonable belief about his future deadly threat depends on circumstances. If I can call the cops and the cops can come and arrest him, then his future threat isn't great. If he is a member of an entrenched slaveholding aristocracy and I can reasonably believe that he will continue to threaten others slaves with deadly force even after I escape, then I can ethically use deadly force against him.

So in a situation similar to the antebellum south, I could ethically kill a slaveowner to escape if there was no other way to escape, since his holding me as a slave is backed by his continuing threat of deadly force unless I obey. If I could escape without killing him however, my use of deadly force would only be justified if it would reasonably save others from future threats of deadly force.

[Hoodoo Ulove]

So in a situation similar to the antebellum south, I could ethically kill a slaveowner to escape if there was no other way to escape, since his holding me as a slave is backed by his continuing threat of deadly force unless I obey. If I could escape without killing him however, my use of deadly force would only be justified if it would reasonably save others from future threats of deadly force.So let's take it a step further. A slaveholder beats a slave to death for disobedience. You are not his slave. He has broken no law. Would it be ethical for you to execute him?

[Lemur866]

I believe that "the proper authorities" who arrest, try, convict, and sometimes execute criminals are only doing so as our agents, it is we the people who have decided that is what should happen. In modern day America it is usually immoral to "take the law into your own hands" because our designated agents are usually much better at arriving at an equitable result...less prone to error, more transparency, results are arrived at publicly, laws are arrived at in advance, people accused of crimes have protection.

However, a cop who arrests a murderer, the prosecutor who tries him, the judge who presides over the case, the jury that convicts him, the guard who imprisons him, and the executioner who kills him are acting as our agents. Executing a murderer is only ethical if we are exercising our right to self defense against a reasonable threat of deadly force in the future.

So to answer your question, it would be ethical for me to kill someone I saw beating a slave to death only if I reasonably believed it would save someone else from being beaten to death in the future. If the slaveowner has lots of slaves, and routinely beats them and threatens them with deadly force, such a belief is reasonable.

If I can call the cops rather than killing it it would be better to do so, but only because the cops, courts and prisons are experts at that sort of thing, not because they have exclusive rights that the rest of us do not. If there are no cops, no courts and no prisons, then each of us is obligated to dispense our own brand of justice, pardner. The trouble comes when others don't agree with our brand of justice, so they attempt to enforce THEIR brand of justice, and we all have to rely on the protection of clans and we get blood feuds and on and on. If I truly believed that there was no better way to enforce justice than to do it myself, I'd do it myself. In 2005 America, instances like those are few and far between. In 1805 Mississippi there would be quite a few more. In 905 England there would be even more. In the 20,005 BCE mammoth steppes there would be no other choice than reliance on self and family. But even in 2005 America our criminal justice system derives its legitimacy from our individual rights to protect ourselves. We still have the right to enforce justice...it's just that for prudential reasons it is almost always better to delegate that right.

[Malacandra]

But you are positing the inherent "rights" of nations. Not only that, you are arguing that nations are sentient — that they "choose" and "assert".

Tiresome nitpickery, Liberal, and you know it. If I'm anthropomorphising "nations" then the reader is perfectly capable of parsing my statement as referring to "those founding fathers who determine the policies of the nations". And no, I don't believe I did posit the inherent "rights" of nations. I am under the impression you can do better than this. Please do so.

Wrong. You are assuming that the slave owner (or the slave establishment) has some sort of legitimate right to take your life or otherwise inflict violence on you. If you believe they do not (and I can't imagine a situation where they would) then it is a form of extortion and you are under no moral obligation to uphold a bargain to extortionists beyond what is necessary to ensure your safety.

::shrug:: I do not believe that, as a slave, you have recourse to any higher authority to arbitrate what is or is not the slave owner's right. In practical terms, the slave owner is in a position to impose less amenable conditions on the slave if whatever minor lenience is extended to the slave is taken advantage of. It is plain then that gratifying your desire to kill whitey, kill whitey, or kill little whitey, results ultimately in harm to your fellow slaves, and possibly even in no benefit to yourself. Your supposedly "moral" choice looks a little quixotic in the light of that.

[Liberal]

Tiresome nitpickery, Liberal, and you know it.That is a lie, and you know it.

If I'm anthropomorphising "nations" then the reader is perfectly capable of parsing my statement as referring to "those founding fathers who determine the policies of the nations".Then you are invoking the inherent rights of founding fathers. Or does my using your own words once again constitute "nitpickery"?

And no, I don't believe I did posit the inherent "rights" of nations.Sure you did. You said that a nation may choose to assert axiomatically whether people have rights. By what authority do nations — er, founders of nations — proscribe rights if that authority does not inhere to them? If people don't have inherent rights, then why should founding fathers have the right to say that other men don't have rights? Founding fathers are people, aren't they?

I am under the impression you can do better than this. Please do so.Lucky for me, I suppose, that I was under no such reciprocal impression.

[Bryan Ekers]

Well, I can readily conceive of a situation where little Billy knows too much and must be taken out and I can't see a problem with it, given a presumption of the slave's inalienable right to self-defense and self-determination.

Toss him down a well. Lassie'll save him eventually.

[Malacandra]

Tiresome nitpickery, Liberal, and you know it.
That is a lie, and you know it.
Let's see... "Nitpickery"... arguing the toss over whether nations can do anything, or only their component citizens. "Tiresome"... that's in the eye of the beholder, I guess, but trust me, I found it tiresome. "And you know it" - well, possibly you are genuinely unaware of being tiresome, but I don't think you should assume that I know this for a fact, and if I don't know for sure that you aren't aware of being tiresome, it is unnecessarily harsh to call me a liar.

If I'm anthropomorphising "nations" then the reader is perfectly capable of parsing my statement as referring to "those founding fathers who determine the policies of the nations".
Then you are invoking the inherent rights of founding fathers.
No, I'm not. I'm talking about what they can do and historically have done, without invoking any right they may have (had) to do so. This isn't hard, surely?

Or does my using your own words once again constitute "nitpickery"?
*laughs and passes over the logical fallacy without comment*

And no, I don't believe I did posit the inherent "rights" of nations.
Sure you did.
No, I didn't.

You said that a nation may choose to assert axiomatically whether people have rights. By what authority do nations — er, founders of nations
*laughs and passes over the cheap mockery without comment*

— proscribe rights if that authority does not inhere to them?
In practical terms, simply by the extent to which they, and those who go along with them, are prepared to safeguard some rights and deny others. We may say that might does not make right, but if no-one is prepared to guarantee my rights, I can go whistle for the same. I have no inherent right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, not as far as the universe is concerned; if I step off a tall building, the only right I have that matters at that particular time is the right to increase my vertical velocity in a downwards direction at 32 ft.sec-2, neglecting friction. Any other rights exist only because I am, or someone else is, prepared to work for them.

If people don't have inherent rights, then why should founding fathers have the right to say that other men don't have rights? Founding fathers are people, aren't they?
I did not say that they did; indeed, I only stated that nations (I'll carry on anthropomorphising, since everyone, including you, understands quite well what I mean) may choose to assert that rights do exist. They can do this; they have done this. Do they have the right to do so? How should I know? Where is the supreme arbiter of what right is? The laws under which communities govern themselves have yet to be framed by someone who stepped off a fiery mountain bearing a scroll declaring his right to draft such laws, as far as I'm aware. What are we left with? What some people are prepared to assert, and sufficient people are prepared to go along with.

I am under the impression you can do better than this. Please do so.
Lucky for me, I suppose, that I was under no such reciprocal impression.
Ah. I cast the bread of good manners upon the water, and when it returned to me it wasn't fit to eat. I think I can manage not to lose sleep over it.

[Liberal]

Let's see... "Nitpickery"... arguing the toss over whether nations can do anything, or only their component citizens.If it is a nitpick, why does it have its own word? You used it yourself — anthropomorphizing. In fact, there is another word — hypostatizing. Also, reifying. In other words, you committed a logical fallacy, the responsibility for which you are attempting to dodge and pass off to me.

"Tiresome"... that's in the eye of the beholder, I guess, but trust me, I found it tiresome.And now the nitpickery crier is examing each word and commenting on it. Rich, that.

"And you know it" - well, possibly you are genuinely unaware of being tiresome, but I don't think you should assume that I know this for a fact, and if I don't know for sure that you aren't aware of being tiresome, it is unnecessarily harsh to call me a liar.To remind you, it was you who first said that I knew I was nitpicking. If you can read minds, why can't others?

No, I'm not. I'm talking about what they can do and historically have done, without invoking any right they may have (had) to do so. This isn't hard, surely?Nor is it rights, surely. You have confused the usurpations of bullies with the dispensations of rights. Perhaps you would attribute to the man with the gun who chose not to kill you the title of savior.

*laughs and passes over the logical fallacy without comment*That wasn't a comment? What was it, random spots on the screen?

No, I didn't.Yes, you did.

*laughs and passes over the cheap mockery without comment*Passes over? You misspelled "imitates".

In practical terms, simply by the extent to which they, and those who go along with them, are prepared to safeguard some rights and deny others. We may say that might does not make right, but if no-one is prepared to guarantee my rights, I can go whistle for the same. I have no inherent right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, not as far as the universe is concerned; if I step off a tall building, the only right I have that matters at that particular time is the right to increase my vertical velocity in a downwards direction at 32 ft.sec-2, neglecting friction. Any other rights exist only because I am, or someone else is, prepared to work for them.Nonsense. You are saying that a man was not born with a nose just because someone cut it off his face.

I did not say that they did; indeed, I only stated that nations (I'll carry on anthropomorphising, since everyone, including you, understands quite well what I mean) may choose to assert that rights do exist. They can do this; they have done this. Do they have the right to do so? How should I know? Where is the supreme arbiter of what right is? The laws under which communities govern themselves have yet to be framed by someone who stepped off a fiery mountain bearing a scroll declaring his right to draft such laws, as far as I'm aware. What are we left with? What some people are prepared to assert, and sufficient people are prepared to go along with.What do rights have to do with law? You are born with your body, and therefore have a right to life. You are born with your mind, and therefore have a right to give or withhold consent. You are born as a subjective reference frame, and therefore have a right to liberty. You seem to view rights as some sort of permissions.

Ah. I cast the bread of good manners upon the water, and when it returned to me it wasn't fit to eat. I think I can manage not to lose sleep over it.Good manners? You smugly dismiss my point as "tiresome nitpickery", and you fancy yourself to be Miss Manners? I believe you know that a small clique of off-boarders has attempted to pin a label of "nitpicker" on me, and that you took advantage of what you perceived as a weakness in order to give a legitimacy to your argument that it otherwise did not merit. If you wish to debate honestly, then address the points made with counterpoints, rather than mocking them with meaningless slogans. In fact, if you wish to continue your hijack, I ask you politely to take it to the Pit. That is the place for smear campaigns.

[MrDibble]

1) If you are a slave, is it moral to kill your masters in order to escape?

2) Is it moral to kill your masters even when escape is not possible? Does this depend on the reason (let's say they consistently beat you and you do it to prevent future beatings, at least from that master vs. killing them out of revenge for making you a slave)?

3) Is it moral to kill the master's family, even if they did not directly contribute to your enslavement, in order to escape? (e.g. let's say little Billy sees you and is about to cry out, meaning you'll likely be caught, and the only way to stop him in time is to give him a nice kick in the throat that will likely kill him)

Descendant of former slaves checking in here.

My answer is "Yes" on all counts, with a "f- this in order to escape caveat" on the last one.

By being slaveholders (I assume we're talking lifelong hard labour here, as practiced in the US and here in South Africa, not indentured servitude), they've become fair game. That includes ground glass in their porridge, poison in the entire family's coffee, a date with a pickax handle for little Billy if he can't keep his trap shut. It'd be a one-man war of liberation. "By any means necessary".

Assuming I was the kind of man who could do it, of course. I'm not sure I'd have the personal courage to, but if someone else does, I say no moral blame attaches to him.

[SentientMeat]

Force is, ultimately, the basis of all property. The only way monopolistic use of the thing I own is ensured is by providing negative consequences for others who try to use it.

The slaver asserts "I own you", and you may not use yourself, and sets forth consequences such as death for attempting to do so.

The slave says "I own myself", and will counter the slaver's consequences with consequences of my own.

Swallow that, little Billy. Your father, ultimately, killed you.

[Liberal]

Force is, ultimately, the basis of all property.But not all force is coercive. Libertarians do not oppose force.

[SentientMeat]

But not all force is coercive.Agreed. You and I differ on when property ownership becomes coercion.

[Malacandra]

Strangely, Liberal, I do manage to formulate some opinions of my own without needing to be in lock-step with some off-board clique of which I am not part and only vaguely aware. Your troubles with people pinning labels on me are no concern of mine, and when I call you for picking nits it is because I consider that you are picking nits, not because I have resolved to hang the dog that has been given a bad name.

I observe that you have not only been Pitted recently on your own account but have manfully stepped into another's Pitting for an extra dose. I don't see the sense in going that route when I have nothing to add.

If you tell me what earthly difference it makes whether we say "a nation resolves to do so and so" or "a group of persons defining policy for a nation resolves to do so and so", then we can maybe put the nitpickery question to bed once and for all. Don't just call it "anthropomorphizing", "hypostatizing" or "reifying" - explain why it matters. Otherwise I'll continue to believe that you are being obtuse for its own sake. That doesn't invalidate everything you have to say, and I didn't claim it did.

Now the question as to whether or not someone is born with a nose is easily resolved by examining his physiognomy. The question of whether or not he is born with rights is less obvious. You are born with a body and therefore have a right to life? On a personal level, I agree. The advocatus diaboli however demands a sterner test and says: "Really? And this right to life guarantees what, exactly? Will it defend the newborn against disease, want, neglect or abuse? Then what is it good for? Ditto your right to give or withhold consent and your right to liberty. Will any of them accomplish anything but a nice warm feeling unless steps are taken to guarantee those rights?"

Can we take just one of those points: "You are born with a body, therefore you have a right to life" and demonstrate that you have not begged the question? (The syllogism is missing its major term, which I infer from context to be "All that is born with a body has a right to life". I am open to correction.)

You seem to view rights as some sort of permissions.
Yes, that's one way to look at it. Members of the community opt to extend permissions to one another, normally on an understanding that they will be given permissions in their own turn. Steps are taken to punish those who do not fulfil their end of the bargain. We argue that some permissions ought to be universally available and not contingent upon merit, and we call them "rights"; but "rights" are nothing more or less than what we have agreed them to be.

[Malacandra]

:smack: "pinning labels on you"

[Liberal]

Although the epistemic emptiness of your Pit observations is somewhat dubious, I am willing to put the matter of your ad hominem behind us if you are so inclined. Meanwhile...

If you tell me what earthly difference it makes whether we say "a nation resolves to do so and so" or "a group of persons defining policy for a nation resolves to do so and so", then we can maybe put the nitpickery question to bed once and for all. Don't just call it "anthropomorphizing", "hypostatizing" or "reifying" - explain why it matters. Otherwise I'll continue to believe that you are being obtuse for its own sake. That doesn't invalidate everything you have to say, and I didn't claim it did.Hypostatization makes a difference for the same reason that affirmation of the consequent makes a difference. Or denial of the antecedant. It is a logical fallacy, and therefore robs an argument of its validity. As Ludwig von Mises put it, "The worst enemy of clear thinking is the propensity to hypostatize, i.e., to ascribe substance or real existence to mental constructs or concepts... Hypostatization is not merely an epistemological fallacy and not only misleads the search for knowledge. In the so-called social sciences it more often than not serves definite political aspirations in claiming for the collective as such a higher dignity than for the individual or even ascribing real existence only to the collective and denying the existence of the individual, calling it a mere abstraction." (The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science , "On Some Popular Errors Concerning the Scope and Method of Economics, The Pitfalls of Hypostatization".

You may argue that a nation has gone to war, for example, but you may not argue that a nation has killed ten thousand soldiers. A nation is an abstraction, and does not do what concrete entities do. It does not make choices or decisions. Brains are required for those, and nations have no brains. Collectivist allegory is valid only when the collective is identifiable in the capacity as itself. A nation at war is a whole nation at war; i.e., its enemy sees every element of the set as an enemy. But a nation thinking and choosing and writing out laws is misleading, lending an authority to an argument that it does not merit and making a claim that is unassailable. If my nation is proscribing rights, then what am I, chopped liver? I am ostensibly part of the nation, and I am not writing any laws or proscribing any rights; nor have I given my free and willful consent for these to be done on my behalf. If you are allowed to establish that a nation acts as a human being, then I am by fiat stripped of the ability to offer a counter-example. If the premise that the nation has spoken on the matter is accepted, then my own voice cannot contradict it if I, too, am part of the nation. I would violate the rule of noncontradiction if I spoke out. That's why, at its root, it is a logical fallacy.

Now the question as to whether or not someone is born with a nose is easily resolved by examining his physiognomy. The question of whether or not he is born with rights is less obvious. You are born with a body and therefore have a right to life? On a personal level, I agree. The advocatus diaboli however demands a sterner test and says: "Really? And this right to life guarantees what, exactly? Will it defend the newborn against disease, want, neglect or abuse? Then what is it good for? Ditto your right to give or withhold consent and your right to liberty. Will any of them accomplish anything but a nice warm feeling unless steps are taken to guarantee those rights?"Why the prerequisite that a right must guarantee anything? Rights are not metaphysical entities, but ethical ones. There is nothing to guarantee that you are right when someone steals your wallet and they are wrong. It is simply a premise of ethics that no one has any business stealing your property. Rights are principles, not permissions. They are attributes of property ownership. You own your body and your mind; therefore, you have rights with respect to them. Rights accrue to propriety.

Can we take just one of those points: "You are born with a body, therefore you have a right to life" and demonstrate that you have not begged the question? (The syllogism is missing its major term, which I infer from context to be "All that is born with a body has a right to life". I am open to correction.)I think that the above explanation should clear that up.

Yes, that's one way to look at it. Members of the community opt to extend permissions to one another, normally on an understanding that they will be given permissions in their own turn. Steps are taken to punish those who do not fulfil their end of the bargain. We argue that some permissions ought to be universally available and not contingent upon merit, and we call them "rights"; but "rights" are nothing more or less than what we have agreed them to be.Unless I am part of your "we" — and I am not — you are mistaken.

[Hoodoo Ulove]

As Ludwig von Mises put it, "The worst enemy of clear thinking is the propensity to hypostatize, i.e., to ascribe substance or real existence to mental constructs or concepts ... Such as "essence"?

[Liberal]

No. Essence is not a concrete entity; it is a metaphysical abstraction, much like existence.

[Askia]

No. Essence is not a concrete entity; it is a metaphysical abstraction, much like existence. Bwah ha ha ha ha!

[Hoodoo Ulove]

Essence is not a concrete entity; it is a metaphysical abstraction, much like existence.
Do you mean?"Essence" is not a concrete entity; it is a metaphysical abstraction, much like "existence".

[Liberal]

No, I do not. I meant what I wrote. What, exactly, is your problem? No one has said that essence makes choices or writes laws or is purple or weighs eight pounds.

[Evil Captor]

How about a situation that happened frequently in Roman times. An ambitious young Greek in an economic backwater would sell himself into slavery hoping to become a pedagogue or bureacrat of some sort, accumulate enough money to buy his freedom and retire? Happened all the time. Would it be moral for such a slave to kill his master?

You're conflating consensual "slavery" with nonconsensual slavery. No one is maintaining that all the slavegirls and slaveboys who populate the BDSM universe have a right to kill their masters/mistresses, because when they say, "I'm tired of being a slave" that's the end of it.

But what if your hypothetical Roman owner took a dislike to his self-enslaved Greek and then sold him to a salt mine before he could buy his freedom? Wouldn't he then have a right to kill his master, to preserve the chance at freedom his master would deny him?

I agree that most slaves in the Roman empire weren't voluntary slaves but rather capitives taken by military force. But surely the morality of resisting slavery doesn't rest on the fact of slavery, but rather that said slavery is enforced by threats of physical violence up to and including death. If someone threatens to kill you unless you work for free, then it is simple self defense to kill that person first. But in circumstances where there is no threat of violence, if you entered into a slave contract voluntarily, then deadly force would not be moral.

The morality of resisting slavery rests on its nonconsensual nature. Basically, you are depriving a person of their life, in the sense that they no longer get to make choices about where they live, how they live, or even if they live at all. The Greek pedagogue may have been looking forward to a good life as a slave, but for most slaves life was mostly hard labor and not much food. I think it's fair to subject people who would impose such lives on others to the death penalty.

It's the nonconsensuality of the thing that bothers me. Take the case of one of those guys in Texas who got sentenced to twenty years in prison for a half-ounce baggie of pot by the government in ol' coke snortin' Dubya's state. He has truly been shat upon by our society. If he decides to escape the deprivation of twenty years of his life for what is truly unjust cause, and he kills a guard or three while doing so, I'd understand it as a tragedy. My anger on behalf of the guards would be levelled, not at the perp, but at the damn fools who put him in prison for no good reason.

Or take another example. Suppose you were a slave in modern day america...someone captures you and forces you to work for them. However, in modern day America that slavery is illegal. All you have to do is escape and you are freed from slavery. You have the same right to self defense that anyone else does, but your right to self defense is not dependent on the fact that you are a slave, but rather that you are under the immanent threat of physical violence. If your master falls asleep and you have an opportunity to escape without killing your master you would be commiting a crime if you killed them, just like everyone else who is confronted with deadly force but has an opportunity to withdraw.

You have an obligation to retreat from deadly force, you can only match deadly force with deadly force if you have no opportunity to retreat. The same obligation applies to slaves.[/QUOTE]

[Hoodoo Ulove]

No, I do not. I meant what I wrote. What, exactly, is your problem? No one has said that essence makes choices or writes laws or is purple or weighs eight pounds.Correct me, but I thought I read somewhere that some particular essence could cause its own existence.

[Scott Plaid]

If being killed, against one's will, was not a concept separate from concrete reality, then no one could argue with you. However, since there are some things that do not go away, no matter your world view, then it seems comical and odd to claim that existence is an abstraction. That is, in my opinion, why people are laughing.

[Hoodoo Ulove]

I should perhaps more properly have said "the essence of some particular thing could cause the existence of that thing." And Scott, I'm not laughing.

[Scott Plaid]

<snip> And Scott, I'm not laughing.I know, but Bwah ha ha ha ha!

[Lemur866]

But here's the thing, Lib. You propose some axiomatic rights. But those rights will only supported by the rest of us if we agree to your axioms. And it turns out that most of the time we do, or at least we agree to axioms close enough to your axioms that our assertions don't conflict with your assertions.

But what happens when we don't? Suppose it's 20,005 BCE and we're on what will become the Ukrainian steppes? Your rights to property are pretty much meaningless unless you convince the rest of us hunter-gatherers to agree to your conception of rights. You assert that whether we agree to your rights or not, your rights still exist even as they are being violated. And I'm fine with you believing that. But whether your rights exist but won't be enforced unless we agree, or whether your rights exist because everyone agrees that your rights exist, we still must have agreement on what those rights are or we get nowhere.

MUST we have agreement on the source of our rights before we can have a fruitful discussion on what those rights should be? Sure, a discussion on the source of our rights could be fun...but suppose we're sitting down in 1789 trying to draft a constitution...do we require unanimous assent to identical fundamental ethical axioms before we can do such a thing, or is it enough that everyone agrees with the end product? If we require unanimous agreement on the source of our rights, then surely you recognize then that government is impossible and we are thrown back to the war of all against all.

Even if you wish that everyone would agree with your premises, and even as you attempt to convince the rest of us to agree with your premises, surely you won't begrudge the rest of us our attempt to lay out some sort of imperfect social order in the meantime? I agree not to punch you and Malacandra in the face in return for you and Malacandra not punching me in the face. You argue in the meantime that your right not to be punched in the face doesn't depend on me and Malacandra agreeing not to punch you in the face, but for now isn't it good enough that we agree not to punch you in the face?

Personally, I believe that ethics are created by human beings. You believe differently (or so I imagine). But will all our discussions on ethics be sterile until we agree on the source of ethics?

[Hoodoo Ulove]

Scott, Askia ain't people. And is he laughin', or cryin', or laughin' just to keep from cryin'?

[Liberal]

Correct me, but I thought I read somewhere that some particular essence could cause its own existence.Perhaps you were distracted at the time. Goodness — as an aesthetic, not as an ethic — compels the existence of God because the essence of goodness is edification. It is a matter of cause, not of volition, just as when we speak of the attraction of gravity, we do not mean it is handsome. Moreover, in an objective context, God and Its attributes are all that are real. The universe is an abstraction, specifically, a probability distribution.

[Askia]

I laughed at the idea that "existence is an abstraction," and I laughed 'cuz it's funny. It sounds like you're one of those people who are convinced that YOU'RE real but the rest of everything outside yourself is an intricate hallucination you're experiencing.

I know some mathematicians and a couple of physicists far cleverer than me who'd have a field day with Liberal's notions of a 'probablity distribution.'

[Liberal]

But here's the thing, Lib. You propose some axiomatic rights. But those rights will only supported by the rest of us if we agree to your axioms. And it turns out that most of the time we do, or at least we agree to axioms close enough to your axioms that our assertions don't conflict with your assertions.

But what happens when we don't? Suppose it's 20,005 BCE and we're on what will become the Ukrainian steppes? Your rights to property are pretty much meaningless unless you convince the rest of us hunter-gatherers to agree to your conception of rights. You assert that whether we agree to your rights or not, your rights still exist even as they are being violated. And I'm fine with you believing that. But whether your rights exist but won't be enforced unless we agree, or whether your rights exist because everyone agrees that your rights exist, we still must have agreement on what those rights are or we get nowhere.

MUST we have agreement on the source of our rights before we can have a fruitful discussion on what those rights should be? Sure, a discussion on the source of our rights could be fun...but suppose we're sitting down in 1789 trying to draft a constitution...do we require unanimous assent to identical fundamental ethical axioms before we can do such a thing, or is it enough that everyone agrees with the end product? If we require unanimous agreement on the source of our rights, then surely you recognize then that government is impossible and we are thrown back to the war of all against all.

Even if you wish that everyone would agree with your premises, and even as you attempt to convince the rest of us to agree with your premises, surely you won't begrudge the rest of us our attempt to lay out some sort of imperfect social order in the meantime? I agree not to punch you and Malacandra in the face in return for you and Malacandra not punching me in the face. You argue in the meantime that your right not to be punched in the face doesn't depend on me and Malacandra agreeing not to punch you in the face, but for now isn't it good enough that we agree not to punch you in the face?

Personally, I believe that ethics are created by human beings. You believe differently (or so I imagine). But will all our discussions on ethics be sterile until we agree on the source of ethics?I don't think it's a matter of axioms in my discussions with Malacandra; rather, it is a matter of definition. We cannot agree on axioms because we cannot agree on what rights are. He seems to define them as some sort of license — i.e., governments allow you to do this or that, thereby proscribing what he calls rights. That is probably why he attaches a need to defend rights to what rights are essentially to him. In other words, if you cannot hold onto your rights, then they are not intrinsic to you. But I define rights differently. What he calls a right, I call a permission. I define rights as the authority that accrues to propriety. In other words, you have a right to liberty even if you are a slave. The fact that a man has kidnapped you and holds a gun to your head does not transfer your rights to him. I say that you are still a rights bearing entity, and that the slaver is a usurper, nothing more.

[Hoodoo Ulove]

Sorry for the hijack, guys. Lib, thanks for clearing that up for me.

[Liberal]

You're welcome.

[Lemur866]

The morality of resisting slavery rests on its nonconsensual nature. Basically, you are depriving a person of their life, in the sense that they no longer get to make choices about where they live, how they live, or even if they live at all. The Greek pedagogue may have been looking forward to a good life as a slave, but for most slaves life was mostly hard labor and not much food. I think it's fair to subject people who would impose such lives on others to the death penalty.

It's the nonconsensuality of the thing that bothers me.

But surely what gives the slave the right to use deadly force isn't that the master-slave relationship is nonconsensual, but rather that the master enforces the relationship through the threat of deadly force. If I rob your house while you are away, I took your property without your consent. But that doesn't give you the right to kill me. If I point a gun at you and demand your property, THEN you have a right to use deadly force against me.

We can call that pointing of a gun mugging, or slaveowning, or whatever, but the nub of what gives the slave the right to use deadly force against his so-called owner is the initial threat from the owner. This is why I brought up different forms of slavery. Of course chattel slavery as usually practiced in the American south would be grounds for a slave to use deadly force. But it isn't because it was named "slavery", or that the person was designated a "slave", but rather that there was someone with a whip and a shotgun willing to enforce that designation. Without the whip and shotgun threatening the slave, or reasonably threatening the slave (or other slaves) in the future, then the right to deadly force goes away.





Take the case of one of those guys in Texas who got sentenced to twenty years in prison for a half-ounce baggie of pot by the government in ol' coke snortin' Dubya's state. He has truly been shat upon by our society. If he decides to escape the deprivation of twenty years of his life for what is truly unjust cause, and he kills a guard or three while doing so, I'd understand it as a tragedy. My anger on behalf of the guards would be levelled, not at the perp, but at the damn fools who put him in prison for no good reason.
.
Of course I'll agree that 99% of the time "master" and "slave" are relationships backed by the threat of deadly force. In those cases the slave is entitled to use deadly force. But in the rare cases where no threat of deadly force exists, then a slave is not justified in using deadly force. Of course we could have an argument that absent that deadly threat, said person is not really a slave. Could be, but surely there are people like those greek pedagogue slaves or ottoman jannisaries who were "really" slaves, but weren't "really" under such a threat.

Of course, this brings in military conscripts and prisoners. Do draftees have the right to use deadly force against their drill seargeant, their draft board, or the MPs? Do prisoners have the right to use deadly force against the guards? Of course in some situations prisoners absolutely do have the right to deadly force against the guards. Prisoners still retain their human rights even though they have lost their civil rights.

But you don't always have the right to use deadly force to save your life or your freedom. You don't have the right to kill guards to escape unless they are directly threatening your life. If you are faced with the choice of being recaptured, or killing a guard, ethically you cannot kill the guard, you must allow yourself to be recaptured. If the only way to save your life is a heart transplant, you can't grab a random person off the street, cut out their heart, and take the heart to the doctors for transplant. You'd be arrested for murder, and rightly so. Killing an innocent person to escape from slavery or unjust incarceration is strictly analgous.

[Lemur866]

I don't think it's a matter of axioms in my discussions with Malacandra; rather, it is a matter of definition. We cannot agree on axioms because we cannot agree on what rights are. He seems to define them as some sort of license — i.e., governments allow you to do this or that, thereby proscribing what he calls rights. That is probably why he attaches a need to defend rights to what rights are essentially to him. In other words, if you cannot hold onto your rights, then they are not intrinsic to you. But I define rights differently. What he calls a right, I call a permission. I define rights as the authority that accrues to propriety. In other words, you have a right to liberty even if you are a slave. The fact that a man has kidnapped you and holds a gun to your head does not transfer your rights to him. I say that you are still a rights bearing entity, and that the slaver is a usurper, nothing more.

Sure, that's what I understood you to believe. But how important is this discussion about whether your rights still exist even if no one agrees they exist? I can't speak for Malacandra, but I imagine he might disagree with you about whether you have "natural rights", but he might argue that whether you have natural rights or not is irrelevant except as a method for convincing other people to help you enforce those rights.

Sure, the slaveholder is a usurper. You still have your rights even though the slaveholder calls you a slave. But what makes those rights important is that the rest of use are willing to recognize your rights for various reasons which don't have to be the same as your reasons, and are willing to use force against the person who pretends to be your owner in order to free you.

If we aren't willing to free you, and you aren't able to free yourself, then your reserved rights are moot, you'll remain a slave to the end of your days, just as so many others remained slaves. The point is that protection of human rights requires enforcement by human beings, it doesn't drop down from heaven. Whether we are enforcing pre-existing rights or enforcing rights created by human beings might be an interesting discussion, but it is less important than actually enforcing the exercise of those rights. I don't think we have to agree as to where rights come from before we exercize those rights.

[Liberal]

Whether or not you help the slave become free, he still has the right to freedom. Both a free man and a slave have exactly that same right. They merely have a different status. Therefore, my comments are not moot. Your rescue of the slave has no bearing on his ethical rights, but only on his metaphysical status. In other words, I'm not condemning force to secure rights — in fact, that is exactly what I, as a liberal, advocate. I'm just saying that rights inhere to you whether they're secured or not. And it certainly makes a big difference if we are to discuss the role of government in the security of rights. It matters whether it is protecting something it gave you because whatever it has given, it may take away. It is possible for slavery to be legal, but it can never be ethical.

[Malacandra]

Hi. I see the debate's not been standing still, but I got here as quick as I could, and I'll post what I've written for now. Btw Lib I should add that I'm enjoying the discussion very much. A good argument sharpens the wits, and I'm sure you'll not deny that I can use the exercise. :)

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Lib, I don’t believe I did perpetrate an ad hominem argument. I said only that I found an argument of yours to be tiresome nitpickery. You, on the other hand, implied that I was incapable of a high-quality intellectual argument. Perhaps that is not an ad hom but only an insult pure and simple. Still, I’m fairly clear on what an ad hom is; and had I said “I choose to ignore your argument, as it has been advanced by a pretentious fathead”, you’d have a case. (Of course, I would also be in violation of the rules of this forum; you have the right not to be called a pretentious fathead in GD, as you do not in the Pit – thanks not to anything accruing to propriety but to how the keepers of order hereabouts mandate that the place shall be run.) You can easily look back and see that I did nothing of the sort.

I disagree with your intepretation of the location of the line between where a nation may be considered an active agent and where it may not. Would you respond to Isaiah’s famous prophecy “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation” by harrumphing crustily and saying “What nonsense! A nation cannot lift up a sword nor have one lifted up against it. The logical fallacy makes a mockery of the whole statement”? I doubt it. (Though if you would, you are at least consistent.) But I think that when you say If my nation is proscribing rights, then what am I, chopped liver? I am ostensibly part of the nation, and I am not writing any laws or proscribing any rights; nor have I given my free and willful consent for these to be done on my behalf. If you are allowed to establish that a nation acts as a human being, then I am by fiat stripped of the ability to offer a counter-example. If the premise that the nation has spoken on the matter is accepted, then my own voice cannot contradict it if I, too, am part of the nation. I would violate the rule of noncontradiction if I spoke out. That's why, at its root, it is a logical fallacy. you are arguing from consequences.

Pace von Mises, if “The worst enemy of clear thinking is the propensity to hypostatize”, I should say it had a close contender in the propensity to drag in over-analysis of simple and rather incidental points. As long as I was discussing the consequences of certain aspects of human rights either being framed or not being framed in the laws of a nation, we might as well have passed over the angel-on-a-pinhead point about whether the nation, or only the nation’s [/I]lawmakers[/I], were responsible for the law. This is what I find tiresome and why I protest.


Why the prerequisite that a right must guarantee anything?


Judith: Here! Why don’t we agree that he can’t have babies, not having a womb, which is nobody’s fault, not even the Romans’, but that he can have the right to have babies?
Reg: What’s the point?
Judith: It’s symbolic of our struggle against oppression!
Reg: It’s symbolic of his struggle against reality…

Thus for a right that guarantees nothing.

And as to property, we’re agreed that I have the right to enjoy possession of and title to my wristwatch, and he who takes it from me is a common thief. Or a duly authorised bailiff seizing it from me in payment of debt. Or an agent of the rightful owner restoring it to him after I have (let us hope, in good faith) purchased stolen property. Or a warder relieving me of my personal possessions on my admission to gaol. The rights that accrue to propriety do not trump the right of the State to deprive me of my property under certain circumstances defined by the proper legislative bodies; and the State is also able to do some things with my body, without my leave or even against my will.

It seems to me therefore that we have decided what kind of girl we are, and we’re only arguing about the price (or possibly about what kind of girl we *should* have been).

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A couple of convivial beers with a good neighbour precludes further cogitation for now...

[Liberal]

Hi. I see the debate's not been standing still, but I got here as quick as I could, and I'll post what I've written for now. Btw Lib I should add that I'm enjoying the discussion very much. A good argument sharpens the wits, and I'm sure you'll not deny that I can use the exercise. :)Your modesty is charming, but I do not believe you are stupid.

Lib, I don’t believe I did perpetrate an ad hominem argument. I said only that I found an argument of yours to be tiresome nitpickery. You, on the other hand, implied that I was incapable of a high-quality intellectual argument. Perhaps that is not an ad hom but only an insult pure and simple. Still, I’m fairly clear on what an ad hom is; and had I said “I choose to ignore your argument, as it has been advanced by a pretentious fathead”, you’d have a case. (Of course, I would also be in violation of the rules of this forum; you have the right not to be called a pretentious fathead in GD, as you do not in the Pit – thanks not to anything accruing to propriety but to how the keepers of order hereabouts mandate that the place shall be run.) You can easily look back and see that I did nothing of the sort.As I said already, I am willing to drop the matter.

I disagree with your intepretation of the location of the line between where a nation may be considered an active agent and where it may not. Would you respond to Isaiah’s famous prophecy “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation” by harrumphing crustily and saying “What nonsense! A nation cannot lift up a sword nor have one lifted up against it. The logical fallacy makes a mockery of the whole statement”? I doubt it. (Though if you would, you are at least consistent.) But I think that when you say you are arguing from consequences.But a metaphor is not an argument. Hypostatization invalidates a logical inference, not a poem.

Pace von Mises, if “The worst enemy of clear thinking is the propensity to hypostatize”, I should say it had a close contender in the propensity to drag in over-analysis of simple and rather incidental points. As long as I was discussing the consequences of certain aspects of human rights either being framed or not being framed in the laws of a nation, we might as well have passed over the angel-on-a-pinhead point about whether the nation, or only the nation’s [/I]lawmakers[/I], were responsible for the law. This is what I find tiresome and why I protest.And I protest being overlooked as an individual. Your individuality might not be important to you, but I value mine. Nevertheless, since you insist on framing it in ethical, rather than epistemological terms, I don't see why I should have to be a part of your nation if I cannot speak for it any more than you can. I mean, why you and not I? Why can I not declare the premises, while you sit quietly and listen? I propose instead that we assign the responsibility for engaging in human praxes to, well, humans.

Thus for a right that guarantees nothing.But that doesn't explain why rights ought to guarantee anything. It is a deontic question. I mean, why not thus for a coffee cup that guarantees nothing? Or thus for a sore knee that guarantees nothing?

And as to property, we’re agreed that I have the right to enjoy possession of and title to my wristwatch, and he who takes it from me is a common thief. Or a duly authorised bailiff seizing it from me in payment of debt. Or an agent of the rightful owner restoring it to him after I have (let us hope, in good faith) purchased stolen property. Or a warder relieving me of my personal possessions on my admission to gaol. The rights that accrue to propriety do not trump the right of the State to deprive me of my property under certain circumstances defined by the proper legislative bodies; and the State is also able to do some things with my body, without my leave or even against my will.But not every seizure of property (rights) is theft. Only initial force or deception is coercive. Responsive and defensive force and fraud are not coercive. You have the right to take back your trinket if you are its owner. Just because a thief has hidden it in his closet does not make him the owner. But if you have coerced another man, then you have in that coercion waived your rights. By usurping his, you have signaled that you have more interest in his than in your own. Therefore, you freely and volitionaly devalue yours.

It seems to me therefore that we have decided what kind of girl we are, and we’re only arguing about the price (or possibly about what kind of girl we *should* have been).I do not follow that analogy.

[Napier]

>You are a slave presumably because it was an alternative to being killed. Having accepted slavery as the price of preserving your life, you are morally bound to uphold your end of the bargain.

What?!? Jesus, can you mean this? Any legal system will recognize that an agreed-upon "bargain" has to be reasonably fair and not coerced, and mass enslavements or being born into slavery cannot be reasonably considered "acceptance".