This is why I so frequently resort to ‘the Constitution as a Contract’ in arguments. Do I believe the Constitution is the source of rights? No. I believe it is the consensual contract reached between a lot of different individuals who over many generations have elected to join an alliance to protect the rights that they each claim. If that seems like a distinction without a difference to anybody out there, fire away.

I still don’t see why you hit a wall – I’m walking right through. What is wrong with using ‘agreement’ as the only solution capable of defining ‘aggression’?

This thread is making my head hurt

Laird, take two aspirin and comment in the morning. That usually works for me. Or if you want to use Alisa’s pharmaceutical of choice, Advil. That might make her obsession with cannibalism a little less unsettling.

“oughts”- don’t apply to individuals, they apply to interactions between individuals.

Hold up here. I don’t disagree, it seems reasonable enough. But I don’t see a provenance for the distinction. If ‘oughts’ exist at all, why should they adhere to what are subjective boundaries between individuals. Doesn’t the statement require as a starting premise that the boundary between individuals is an ‘is’. I suppose it depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is. Sorry, I couldn’t resist. How could I not appreciate a philosopher like Billy Jeff? Let me count the ways.

B is passive in this situation, whereas A is active.

This is a place where I have a problem, defining ‘passive’ and ‘active’. Even these words are subjective. Using the Muslim case again, in their reality, we are actively infringing ‘God’ by rejecting him. Where is the foot hold to define the boundary at which the division occurs? ‘Rejecting’ is a first act when somebody believes that it is the ‘rejector’ who is trying to change the status quo. I can’t even figure out how to philosophically support defining ‘a fist in the face’ as aggressively transiting an ‘is’ boundary and can’t even imagine trying to support ‘trespassing a real estate title’ as aggressively transiting an ‘is’.

It seems to me that this process requires a presumption of where the boundaries between individuals lies (something I think you touched on way up the thread) and answering that, well, the devil is in the details.

Which doesn’t solve the problem of when B thinks his junk is part of his agency, and A doesn’t…

Which sounds like you hit the same wall I did.

But if we can agree what an agent (a “person”) is, we can derive from nature the principle of, er, “non-imposition”, at least.

That is a magnificently huge ‘if’ considering we are dealing with collectivists who define the agent, the ‘life’ as being in the society, not the individual. Defining the boundaries between ‘agents’ is where I’ve always hit the wall and had to use ‘agreement’ as the only solution capable of defining ‘aggression’.

Which doesn’t solve the problem of when B thinks his junk is part of his agency, and A doesn’t…

How is it different from B thinking, for example, that A should be delighted to have his junk grabbed by B, while A thinks such an idea preposterous? IOW, yes, ‘people will have to define agency by personal preference’. ‘Interaction’ (I really liked your specific point about it) will therefore have to be defined by personal preference as well.

BTW and apropos both the above and Laird’s point on the fluidity of social agreements: we can actually see it happening over the course of the past couple of decades by observing the sexual-harassment issue: the moral code on this issue has been changing right before our eyes, for better or for worse.

This thread is making my head hurt; I don’t think I have anything more to contribute (if, in fact, any of the foregoing could actually be considered a “contribution”!). But I think the issue has some similarity to the question addressed by Randy Barnett in his book “Restoring the Lost Consitution”, in which he discusses how the current citizens of the US can legitimately be subject to a two-century-old Constitution to which none of us ever formally agreed. Interesting book; worth a read.

Regarding non-aggression. My derivation comes to what libertarians call the non-aggression principle, but it’s not couched in terms of “aggression”. I agree that aggression as a concept is, heh, subjective.

What I’m getting at is this: Consider two parties A and B. Each has a moral value system, and they differ. We are (I think) agreed that from Hume, neither A nor B may assert that their value system is superior. It is subjective and personal.

Now suppose that A does something which imposes his value system on B. A is now impliclity asserting that his value system takes precedence over B’s value system. This is incompatible with our nature-derived principle that neither value system is superior. I will use a crude (literally) example from that previous lively thread about the TSA-

A grabs B’s junk. In doing so, A is implicitly asserting that his value system, in which it is okay to grab junk, is of greater precedence than B’s value system, in which it is not okay to have his junk grabbed.

Now I think the point here is that ethical systems- “oughts”- don’t apply to individuals, they apply to interactions between individuals. So let us teleport an ethical judge into the situation. A and B ask J, “ought A to grab B’s junk, or not”. J replies that each value system is subjective, and so cannot choose between them.

But.

B is passive in this situation, whereas A is active. B does not need to assert his value system on A, until A has asserted his value system on B. J, as representative of the “ethical court”, can never authorise first contact. So A is restrained in enacting his value, and so is B, but B does not need to so long as A does not. They are both nulled, and that nulling is identical to the non-aggression principle, without stating it in the word “aggression”.

In pragmatic terms, it resolves to; “you must gain consent before interacting”, since non-consensual interaction is an assertion of one value system on another.

This is why the “Agency Problem” becomes important, because what we haven’t done is prove whether or not B’s agency extends over his junk or not. Body parts may seem obvious, but things get a lot more nebulous when we turn to non-bodily property of various kinds. The best I can come up with, and it may be the best there is, is what we’ve been talking about in terms of social agreements. People will have to define agency by personal preference.

Which doesn’t solve the problem of when B thinks his junk is part of his agency, and A doesn’t…

But if we can agree what an agent (a “person”) is, we can derive from nature the principle of, er, “non-imposition”, at least.

And agreed, I think, on the nature of agreements. My disappointment when I realized what Rousseau had in mind for his contract was pretty strong. Not really a contract after all, was it?