[ExI] Natural law/was Re: Libertarianism wins again...

[Dan]

The way you are using "criminal" below is different from the sense than in Will Steinberg's post from last week where he stated:
 
"Deregulation will let the biggest organized criminals of all--the corporations--go unchecked."
 
Don't you agree? He seemed to me to be using it in a different sense -- specifically, in an extra-legal sense, such as one where one might even judge actual laws to be criminal.
 
Also, this was the sense I was using it in response to you. One might make this more clear by stating that one type of criminal is merely legally defined -- or defined by specific laws of a specific legal authority (whether that legal authority is a state or not). The other type would not be so defined, but would be defined by an appeal to deeper principles -- whether you agree with those principles or not. Do you agree that these would be different meanings for the term? (This isn't to say the two must needs be different. My guess is most legal theorists who appeal to something other than just, "Hey, this is just what the rulers define as 'criminal,' so we must completely assent to their decrees, never questioning this ever," would argue that the idea is to bring the two into line with each other -- almost always to alter the law to conform with the deeper principles and not vice versa.*)
 
Back to Will's usage. My posts were more in line with responding to that usage. If you're going to merely use "criminal" to mean "breaking current laws, whether these laws are just or not," then sure the man who smokes pot and bothers no one else is as much a criminal as that guy in Oslo who went on a killing spree. But, then, by that usage, there's no reason to share Will's outrage at corporations being the "biggest organized criminals of all." They might be, but this might only mean they've violate arbitrarily set up rules and no more. (There would also be no difference between me waking up today and deciding, arbitrarily, "Will and Stefano are the biggest criminals of all" and similarly expressing my outrage -- save that I'm unlikely to persuade too many others about this... Thankfully so!:)
 
I can't read Italian well enough to read your book, but, no, natural law of the sort I'm talking about is not "judeo-christian tenet: the only law is the divine law." (I would not conflate natural law or the natural law tradition with either Abrahamic religions (any more than Newton's physics should be thought of as Christian physics) or with divine law. Actually, natural law theorists of old were making the distinction specifically because they believed the tenets were natural -- i.e., discoverable by reason and experience and not revealed by faith or scripture.) It's the tenet, rather, that there are objective laws that human made laws should conform to and these are based on the nature of humans. (And, presumably, this could be extended to any being in question, though my guess is many of the core precepts would be similar across a range of beings -- e.g., the notion of treating persons as ends-in-themselves should act as a side constraint even on
 posthumans and non-human sentients. In other words, true AI doesn't have the right to going on a killing spree simply because it's killing humans or what have you.)
 
Also, natural law in the libertarian sense and even before basically supported "self-determination, diversity and change" because it restrains human-made law from trampling personal autonomy. In fact, natural law has almost always been at odds with state law is because rulers tend to want to use people for their ends -- almost always thought of as being more noble than allowing individuals to determine for themselves what ends they'll choose.
 
This comes back, of course, to victimless crimes. The use of natural law or of any sort of critique of existing state laws would proceed, I trust, from appealing to everyone else's deeper views -- in the natural law case, to rights and justice. It wouldn't begin and end with "me no like" or such. If it does, just as a pragmatic matter, it's unlikely to move anyone.**
 
Regards,
 
Dan
 
* Even in conflicts where deeper principles change or seem to change, these are almost always framed in terms of appealing to even deeper principles. Even relativists seem to making just this appeal by appealing to deeper metanorms -- even if they claim to explicitly reject these.
 
** Of course, to disarm one criticism here, be sure to home in on "pragmatic matter" here. I don't mean that because one is more likely to succeed with such appeals as opposed to just shouting "me no like" while pounding one's chest isn't a justification. (Even so, one might ask why would this work? Some would argue because many already tacitly accept natural law concepts, but I wouldn't offer an argument from popularity here.)

From: Stefano Vaj <stefano.vaj at gmail.com>
To: Dan <dan_ust at yahoo.com>; ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Sent: Friday, July 22, 2011 11:50 AM
Subject: Re: [ExI] Libertarianism wins again...


2011/7/21 Dan <dan_ust at yahoo.com>

If you're going to define "criminal" with reference only to what the state dictates is criminal, then none of this really matters. Calling, e.g., private individuals or even other non-state groups criminal via this method ends up only telling us the state has labeled them so -- and there's no reason to accept this as more than merely an expression of the preferences of the state or of the ruling class.

Yes. States happen to have established a monopoly on legislation, at least in the west, so if a crime is what is prohibited and punished not by morals or aesthetics, but by the law, the positive law is essentially what has been legally enacted in the State concerned. This is an expression of the preference of the ruling class (or, ideally, of the specific Volksgeist and Zeitgeist concerned)? What else is new?

Sure, you can try and take over the state concerned and change the law.


If the state or if all states outlawed life extension and any research having to deal with Extropianism or transhumanism, would any of you say, "Well, we're criminals now -- just like Al Capone or Ted Bundy."?

I live in a country where reproductive human cloning is *already* a crime, and land you a sentence similar to that provided for manslaughter. I devote a significant part of my energies to changing and/or fighting such laws, but if I am operating a cloning clinic, I am technically into professional crime, exactly as a drug cartel lord. 

I may not care and take my chances, one may have very good reasons to infringe the law in many circumstances after all, but I am under no delusion that victimless crimes have already been abolished in my country.
 

This is via some form of law that transcends and is even presumed by state law. I think the natural law approach does this and is a means to judge even the actions of states. 

Yes, this is a judeo-christian tenet: the only law is the divine law, and human legislators are allowed at best to notarise and write down its universal and eternal content. I happen to have written a book on the subject, Indagine sui diritti dell'uomo. Genealogia di una morale which is available online at http://www.dirittidelluomo.org.

Personally, I am instead on the side of self-determination, diversity and change. And also maintain that those are the best bets for the future of transhumanism. Lest somebody comes up with the natural law forbidding abortion, biotechnologies, etc.

-- 
Stefano Vaj
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