[ExI] Libertarianism wins again...

[Stefano Vaj]

On 22 July 2011 22:12, Kelly Anderson <kellycoinguy at gmail.com> wrote:

> Call it what you will, morality is separate from law.
>

"Crime" is a legal, not a moral, concept. In any society, era and legal
system, there are behaviours which are widely considered as illegal, yet are
not punished as crimes. Conversely, there are crimes which are not
considered as especially immoral, unless perhaps because they breach the
law.

Moreover, morals are equally plural, and variable with time and cultures.


> Why is this important to the future? Because what kind of future we
> will have as transhumanists may be very much affected by rules laid
> down by the state. And we have an interest in having those rules be as
> friendly towards transhumanism as is possible. We don't want to lose
> our rights as individuals simply because our physical form changes
> over time. Only states can pass laws that will inhibit our future
> freedom to reach our individual full potential!
>

This is a crucial point, not to mention the most important for the topic of
this list. Now, I contend that defending the freedom of societies to give
themselves the rules they like best (as in "self-determination" and in
"popular sovereignty" and in "diversity"), rather than the idea that some
kind of a "natural" law would exist that, as an avatar of the Will of God
under a thin secular veneer, should simply be obeyed by everybody, is much
better bet. Both in order to avoid puttin all eggs in one nest, as we say in
Italy, *and* because Darwinian competition between different civilisational
models, as opposed to globalisation, keeps *all* of them as little
neoluddite and primitivist and conservative as possible, for obvious
reasons.

-- 
Stefano Vaj
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