[ExI] Nolopsism

Stefano Vaj stefano.vaj at gmail.com
Mon Feb 8 10:48:16 UTC 2010


On 6 February 2010 23:41, The Avantguardian <avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Being an attorney however, I am sure you are aware of the legal can of worms nolipsism opens up. Human rights are tied to identity. If "I" don't exist, then stealing my stuff or even murdering me is a victimless crime. Doesn't make for a happy outcome in my opinion, especially for libertarians. Probably why the authors back-pedalled from their claims in the conclusion.

Besides the fact that victimless crimes do exist in positive law, you
cannot steal from a legal entity, and yet we are well aware of the
conventional nature of concepts such as its identity, will, good
faith, responsibility, etc.

Moreover, we do *not* consider victimless crimes those affecting
unconscious human beings.

Why should it be necessary to take a stance as to some metaphysical
quality of the consciousness of human beings to regulate social life
so that harming them out of the circumstances provided for in law is a
crime?

But you are right on a point: the POV according to which only an
"essentialist humanist polipsism" can be the ground for granting us a
personhood status would be an argument to keep out other different,
albeit  persuasively exhibiting similar behaviours, entities. Say, the
great apes, or computers passing the Turing test or uploaded humans.

-- 
Stefano Vaj



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