You’re being more than a little silly here. Above I pretty clearly said that if you don’t accept my initial premise as a starting point, then you won’t buy into my view. What is that, if not a clear statement that my position is ultimately derived from a subjectively-held truth?
To wit: I readily admit that “legitimacy derives from consent of the governed” is not a metaphysically existing truth. I don’t claim that God or nature or whatever ordains that this be the starting point in discussions about government. In short, I’m simply not making a pseudo-objective moral claim.
I think that most people will agree with that as a starting point (for whatever reason), and that we can reason accordingly from there onward, but that is not the same thing as claiming to have found a metaphysical truth.
You utterly miss my point. Above I pretty clearly said that I accepted your “first principle,” but that I don’t buy into your view. What is that, if not a clear statement that your position doesn’t follow from your “first principle” without some heavy lifting on the part of assumed normative premises?
To wit: I readily admit that “legitimacy derives from the consent of the governed” is not a pseudo-objective moral claim. However, to get from there to your particular views required a vast array of ancillary beliefs - what constitutes consent, how we ought to understand consent in the context of a group (i.e., if Bob and Joe consent to an orgy with Jill, but Jill doesn’t consent, and the orgy goes ahead, has the group of Bob, Joe, and Jill consented? Obviously not. So what does it mean when we say “consent of the governed?”), whether consent of the governed is a sufficient condition for legitimacy, or merely a necessary condition, etc. Some of these ancillary beliefs might be simple, uncontroversial, and possibly even self-evident. However, many of them will not be.
Hence, for you to claim that your particular stance on legal philosophy follows in some simplistic fashion from your “first principle” is assuming the objective validity of all those ancillary beliefs, which include among them numerous members of the same class as ‘Humans have natural rights.’ This is why I say that your view here is no more free from the taint of “pseudo-objective moral claims” than anyone else posting in this thread. The soundness of your arguments relies on “pseudo-objective moral claims” just as much as the arguments of your opponents in this thread. That you are neither explicit nor up-front about those implicit premises changes that not one whit. Indeed, I suspect that you don’t fully appreciate the extent to which your arguments do depend on such premises, which is why I am endeavouring to explain it to you.
Look, if you want to say “legitmacy from consent of the governed” depends on a bundle of other, equally-subjective premises, fine. I don’t have any objection to that. If you want to view my use of that phrase as a collective shorthand for that bundle of premises, that’s fine too. I readily admit that that premise – or bundle of premises, if you prefer – is wholly subjective, and if you don’t buy into it (or them) then you won’t buy the rest of my argument.
That is quite different from what Homebrew is saying. He’s saying that he has “rights” which exist independently of human thought – rights which exist in an objective sense, and which are discoverable rather than merely created.
How you can continue to assert that my argument relies on “pseudo-objective claims” when I’m telling you I readily admit that the starting premise (or premises, if you prefer) are subjective is quite a mystery. I simply am not cloaking myself in false objectivity. There’s nothing “pseudo” about my argument because I’m not making objective claims – you can’t say I’m claiming false objectivity if I’m not laying claim to objectivity at all (at least insofar as my starting assumptions go).
But again, this is really just a lot of navel-gazing. Most people, I think, when asked to describe what is meant by “legitimacy from the consent of the governed” would come up with pretty similar sets of ancillary premises and assumptions supporting that view. And I think that most people, if they honestly reason from those premises and assumptions, would come down on the side of judicial restraint. That many fail to do so is a testament to the ability of gut-level instinct to triumph over reason – of people to abandon principle based on whose ox is being gored.
Well, in this case I dismiss your entire judicial philosophy as being precisely as significant as you think Homebrew’s views on rights are. But you certainly seem passionate enough about your view, and seem intent on seeing it effected in the public realm. I fail to see any difference between how objectively true the two of you take your own positions to be.
And this is not “just a lot of navel-gazing,” unless thinking about how society ought to be structured is just that. Perhaps it is, but this debate is no more or less navel-gazing than is the more technical legal debate of which you are more fond. I don’t think your views on what self-governance is are supportable at all, and while I am inclined to agree with you on judicial restraint simply stated, I do not at all share your opinion of what constitutes judicial restraint. In any event, even if most people would share your views on the relevant ancillary premises (a point which I do not concede), that wouldn’t make them any more true.
Look, disagree with Homebrew all you want. Deny the existence of natural rights. Knock yourself out. But if you declare his views invalid on the basis of their being “pseudo-objective truth” then your own views are invalid to precisely the same degree. Your little song and dance about admitting the subjectivity of your own views doesn’t change this. Do you not understand the significance of that statement? It means your views are not true. Cannot be true, as there is no truth to the matter. That is what you are saying. You are saying that your own views are such that they cannot have a truth value. There is no correct or incorrect, only espoused or not espoused. In which case Homebrew’s take on the situation is every bit as legitimate as yours. Your view can be no more correct than his. That is what you are saying.
Did you stop reading my post at the phrase “navel gazing”? My point was that a lot of this higher-order philosophizing is simply unnecessary because in most discussions of this type there is broad agreement on governmental legitimacy deriving from the consent of the governed and the assumptions underlying that starting premise.
In a lawsuit, if both sides basically agree on a given fact that is part of the case, they stipulate to that fact and move on to the points of substantive dispute. That’s a good rule for discussions generally. It avoids wasting time. It’s great to point out that some of the underlying assumptions I’m implicitly relying on might themselves be disputed. But rarely in these types of discussions are they actually disputed. Indeed, most people claim fealty to those assumptions, then go out and contradict them when their gut says to do so – they try to have their cake and eat it at the same time.
You presume that some set of ancillary premises has the property of “truth.”
I did not declare Homebrew’s views invalid because he deemed them “pseudo-objective truth.” I declared them invalid on a whole host of other grounds. My pointing out that rights don’t preexist in any meaningful way was simply a ancillary point largely unrelated to my broader criticism of his position – certainly those criticisms remain valid even if we stipulate to the preexistence of rights.
I have long maintained on these boards that I make no claim to having capital-T Truth, and that those claiming their views equate to such metaphysical divination are foolish to do so. I’m not sure why you find this to be a stinging criticism.
Well, I’m not quite sure how to respond to this outside of a multi-page treatise on metaethics which no one will find interesting. It’s not a “stinging criticism” per se. Suffice it to say that the consequence of the sort of subjectivism you are espousing here is that your long and vehement disputes on judicial philosophy are meaningless - something which your vehemence belies. If there’s no truth to the matter, disputation of it is senseless. In short, I don’t believe you fully grasp the significance of all this subjectivity stuff.