Yeah, it’s not nice. And yeah it’s dodgy, cause it sounds like a poor excuse like many others spouted by those who don’t know how to make peace with the fact that they can’t support government and be against violence at the same time.

Cheers

Danijel, indeed, I don’t beleive it possible to logically deduce a globally functional “correct” social system. By extension, this can mean that society cannot function in a world as populous as ours if people can travel from one subsociety to the next in next to no time. This is dodgy argumentation, may be passed of as natural fallacy, etc, but, to me, it sounds more or less reasonable, even if it’s not nice.

On one hand you have people (like christians) saying how moral relativism is pure evil, because supposedly the god told them all of the morals and so the idea that individuals can come up with their own morals is an abomination.

On the other hand you have others saying how moral absolutism is pure evil because it leads to people deciding what is moral for other people.

But the more I think about these things the more I realize the sheer beauty of the non-coercion principle. It is NEITHER relativist nor absolutist or it is BOTH at the same time, so it probably just doesn’t matter. It is completely off the whole paradigm involving absolute and relative.

Its moral statement is: “You shall not INITIATE force on any other human”

Is it absolute? Not really because by its very definition it is impossible to apply it and impose it on everyone else at the same time.

Is it relative? Not really, because you are applying it through self defense when someone does initiate force on you (which is what you pointed out).

So it’s not really either. It is a moral that doesn’t actually fit the whole (and I must say rather tiresome) relative vs. absolute paradigm.

And it is about the most natural principle I have ever knew in my life.

If that makes moral relativism self contradictory then maybe it is. Either that or I am not really a moral relativist or I am but only to an extent, if that’s possible? I gotta say I’m not a big fan of relativism in general, but it’s just something that remains when you have no better answers and wish to acknowledge everybody’s right to come up with their own answers. Relativism is like saying “ok I’m just gonna take my best guess at what’s right or true until I have a better idea”. Aren’t all relativists kind of like that? They’re like scientists who don’t yet understand certain laws of physics and so they declare that they’re whatever they guess they are, whatever “feels” right at the moment.

If I were to be absolutely morally relativist I would have to say that initiating force can be right for one even while it’s not right for another, but that means that if the one who is “right” to initiate force initiates force on someone who believes it’s “wrong” you obviously have a conflict. The one who doesn’t believe in initiating force will defend himself from the one who does and they’d both be right and wrong at the same time, depending on from whose perspective you’re looking. If we pretend that there’s an objective viewpoint to that, and one of them gets killed we’d have to say that this killing was both morally right and morally wrong at the same time.

But, “fortunately” for relativism, it never has to consider an objective viewpoint because to a true relativist everything is subjective and so what to an objectivist is a total contradiction to a relativist it’s irrelevant. No further analysis required. It’s just the way it is, apparently.

But if I say I’m a moral absolutist then doesn’t that mean I essentially say I’d be right to force my moral on everybody else, whatever I decide that moral to be?

I guess the answer lies in NAP itself. If NAP is the absolute moral principle then there are no contradictions objectively. So I guess I’m an absolutist as far as the NAP is concerned and relativist as far as the other arbitrary moral judgments are concerned.

Thus if I considered masochistic sex (between consenting adults) as immoral because I’m an absolute moralist with regards to NAP (this I prioritize it over every other moral) I wouldn’t force people to not have such sex (nor seek governments to make laws coercively prohibiting it).

So either nothing except actions involving force can be considered actions on which we can apply morality or there are different kinds of morality, the primary (acts involving force or coercion) or secondary (acts not involving force or coercion).

What do you think?

Thank you for your interest in the theory, and the book, I hope that you enjoy part two — I just wanted to mention that the book is free to anyone who wants it, in audiobook and PDF format.

Best wishes!

Thanks! I’m listening and reading at the same time. I kinda like the combination. AFAIK it’s rare to have the author also be the speaker of the audio version.

@Dave Bockman

What methodology will you use to determine the truth or falsehood of the assertion, “UPB is valid”?

I’m not sure yet. I’ve read a critique by Danny Shahar today already and it’s quite a heavy read for me so I can probably hardly match their level of disection. I’m likely to just read the rest of the critiques (and Danny has a whole slew of articles on that here) and then eventually think it over for myself and see if the critiques make more sense than the actual theory.

In the end, it’s really up to each individual to decide for self whether something is worth adopting or not, but I doubt I will ever take a position so absolute that I wouldn’t be open to refutal. For instance I’m a voluntaryist and I hold to the non-initiation of force principle without a compromise, but I wouldn’t mind anyone putting up a challenge to it with some reasonable arguments. If it’s internally consistant it will hold and non-contradictory with presented evidence it will hold. Otherwise, it’s gonna be challenged.

I was challenged by an old friend Taco in a rather hostile debate which made me explore animal rights and then eventually led me to interest in relativism and choosing to read Stefan’s book. I remain convinced at voluntaryism (I’d say it wins out), but I’m equipped with far better understanding of some related issues (where do rights come from, what about animals, how relevant is relativism etc..).

Cheers

Same could be claimed for systems of social organization. All of them so far involved legitimization of coercion through a coercive monopoly known as “the government” and all of them arguably failed. State capitalism and democracy are collapsing as we speak and I would say they never worked to begin with because I don’t consider a system which relies on initiated violence to “work” as successful.

So I see coercion as the problem (the only fundamental common link between all these systems). And while I and other voluntaryists are being so daring (from the perspective of statists) perhaps we could identify a common problem with all of the moral science theories as well and attempt to resolve it.

I’m not as proficient in philosophy to be qualified for it, but this is why at least I remain open minded towards someone elses attempts. I know it’s too serious a matter though not to jump too quickly to adoption of any particular theory, except the default one, moral relativism coupled with the non-aggression principle.

The thing with morals is that they categorize into “good” and “bad”, while natural science tries to find truth on every subject. It’s easy to see that different people judge things very differently, AND that there has been a lot of change in this respect during history.

Yes, Stefan has actually made that distinction in Part 1. Physical science measures what “is” whereas moral science should measure what “should be” the way I understood it, based on what is the desired objective. Like, if you want to live you have to eat (thus eating is a prefered behavior). If you want to be on good terms with your neighbor, don’t aggress against him etc. A judgment of a choice (its morality) is dependent on your judgment of a consequence, but you can’t control a consequence, only choice, thus consequences cannot be moral or immoral, but choice of an act can.

There are a number of ways to try to prove/find morals. For example, you can define an ultimate goal (such as pleasure) and say that everything directed toward that goal is good (teleology).

Yes, but not everyone might share that goal or have the same definition of “pleasure”, “happiness” etc.

You can have a look at what has “always” been regarded as good, and assume that that has to be right, but that obviously doesn’t work, for example: “married women are to stay at home and take care of religion, family and food”. I think we (at least) can agree that that’s a load of tosh, but that’s what you get when you regard history. Natural fallacy.

Also agreed. Not only is that kind of collectivist (always regarded as good by whom? The majority norm?), but is like observing only the effect instead of both the cause and the effect, I think. It seems like an incomplete framework.

Here we have a simple problem: all natural science is based on observation. I hold it proven that observation is flawed here.

Well, I wouldn’t necessarily cop it out there. I’m still open to a possibility, perhaps partly due to UPB, that morality CAN be objectively observed like other natural behaviors. Stefan, for example, defines morals as “prefered behavior” which kinda makes it clearer what we’re talking about and I think it makes sense because when someone says “you should do this” it’s clearly an expression of prefered behavior. So the task is to observe how humans prefer to behave and seek which of those behaviors are universal to all humans, not just on mere chance (like at this point in time all humans happen to like this or that), but rather on basis of logic and evidence which cannot be refuted by any arbitrary decision…

What methodology will you use to determine the truth or falsehood of the assertion, “UPB is valid”?

Best wishes!

The thing with morals is that they categorize into “good” and “bad”, while natural science tries to find truth on every subject. It’s easy to see that different people judge things very differently, AND that there has been a lot of change in this respect during history.

There are a number of ways to try to prove/find morals. For example, you can define an ultimate goal (such as pleasure) and say that everything directed toward that goal is good (teleology).

You can have a look at what has “always” been regarded as good, and assume that that has to be right, but that obviously doesn’t work, for example: “married women are to stay at home and take care of religion, family and food”. I think we (at least) can agree that that’s a load of tosh, but that’s what you get when you regard history. Natural fallacy.

Here we have a simple problem: all natural science is based on observation. I hold it proven that observation is flawed here.