Below is an excerpt from a paper on an idea that's been bothering me for a while. Comments, criticism, and "shut-the-hell-up-you-nerd" are all welcome
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sounds good so far, except for the disturbing use of commas in place of semicolons
your argument thus far seems to be that N. should go the whole hog and give up his army and police force as well (complete anarchy), rather than be almost anarchist with these two exceptions are you going to add something about how it's unreasonable to think that food, shelter, and education would naturally be fairly/evenly distributed on the basis of abilities and free actions?
Disturbing lack of semicolons duly noted and wondered about. I guess I never proof-read this paper.
Your question is addressed in the rest of my paper, which I can post if you'd like. However, I think that the implication of this small section is unsettling. Do "property rights" as such not exist?
well...there're cultures (e.g., many American Indian tribes) that don't believe in land possession but Daisy says that Communists don't share toothbrushes, so
i thought the whole point was that Nozick is a wacko?
Well, that is sort of the point. But I also want to know whether or not I actually believe that property rights don't exist. Bah. Humbug. Also, I love "communists don't share toothbrushes"
Re: Nozick ideasath8naSeptember 19 2004, 16:56:05 UTC
You make an excellent point about whether logical consistency is really the end-all of political discussion. It's not - clearly if it was, we'd never get anywhere, becaue we haven't found a completely consistent political philosophy yet.
However, I think that in the case of this very basic, crucial question of entitlement theory, it's important to answer the question "on what basis do people deserve things"? If Nozick is inconsistent in his answer to that question it's a problem, because he uses it as the framework for the rest of his theory of justice, which I'm trying to discredit in the rest of the paper.
Also, as I told Diana, I'm trying to figure out whether I believe what I was arguing. What do you think? No property rights?
Re: Nozick ideasath8naSeptember 21 2004, 13:21:26 UTC
Right, but he's trying to create a moral justification for not adding a qualification like, say, "In order to build some measure of sanity and stability, we should prevent people from starving."
His logic is inconsistent in that his moral justification doesn't differentiate between his qualification and mine. Also, I think the argument you attribute to him is better than his actual arguments, which insists that property rights are morally justified, not just necessary in a utilitarian sense. Perhaps I'm not reading him charitably enough - in the past, TAs have certainly called me on overly uncharitable interpretations of texts I disagree with.
Comments 13
your argument thus far seems to be that N. should go the whole hog and give up his army and police force as well (complete anarchy), rather than be almost anarchist with these two exceptions
are you going to add something about how it's unreasonable to think that food, shelter, and education would naturally be fairly/evenly distributed on the basis of abilities and free actions?
Reply
Your question is addressed in the rest of my paper, which I can post if you'd like. However, I think that the implication of this small section is unsettling. Do "property rights" as such not exist?
Reply
but Daisy says that Communists don't share toothbrushes, so
i thought the whole point was that Nozick is a wacko?
Reply
Reply
Reply
However, I think that in the case of this very basic, crucial question of entitlement theory, it's important to answer the question "on what basis do people deserve things"? If Nozick is inconsistent in his answer to that question it's a problem, because he uses it as the framework for the rest of his theory of justice, which I'm trying to discredit in the rest of the paper.
Also, as I told Diana, I'm trying to figure out whether I believe what I was arguing. What do you think? No property rights?
Reply
Reply
His logic is inconsistent in that his moral justification doesn't differentiate between his qualification and mine. Also, I think the argument you attribute to him is better than his actual arguments, which insists that property rights are morally justified, not just necessary in a utilitarian sense. Perhaps I'm not reading him charitably enough - in the past, TAs have certainly called me on overly uncharitable interpretations of texts I disagree with.
Reply
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