The Non-Aggression Principle Is a Flawed Moral Position

Because Pro has opted for the "shotgun method" of attacking our ethical intuitions from every possible angle, I won't be able to address each of his points as fully as I would like to. However, this method has also made the bulk of his case vulnerable to the same sort of of critique. Consequently, most of Pro's points will be answered in my own affirmative case, as well as in response to his first and second contentions. === Con Case === 1. Justification for the non-aggression principle Whether or not one has any rights, and if so which ones, can only be decided by argumentative appeal. Moreover, in order to participate in ethical discourse, the right to exclusive ownership and control over one's person must be presupposed. To negate this would result in a performative contradiction, which occurs when the propositional content of a statement contradicts the non-contingent presuppositions that make the speech act possible.[1] For this reason, no one can ever coherently affirm slavery: at best you might convince me to perform uncompensated labor for you, but insofar as I agreed to be your slave, I wouldn't really be a slave at all. 2. Problems with ethical intuitionism Pro is just relying on our ethical intuitions to try to "disprove" the NAP. But just because we have ethical intuitions doesn't mean that they allow us to reliably ascertain objective moral truth. The results we get from using such intuition pumps are often contradictory and are largely contingent on the way the thought experiment is framed. For example, Robert Nozick's slave allegory makes any ethical system other than libertarianism look positively barbaric.[1] === Pro Case === 1. The Utilitarian Critique A) Circular reasoning This is not really a critique at all. Pro's argument is basically "utilitarianism is utilitarian" and "deontology is not utilitarian," but this is circular reasoning. Why should we adopt utilitarianism in the first place? Pro is just begging the question. B) Utilitarianism is praxeologically unstable. There are two basic forms of utilitarianism: act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism. The former thesis is that the right action is that which maximizes happiness for the greatest number of people. The obvious problem with act utilitarianism is that it would permit things like gang rape, murder, or torturing innocent people for fun as long as the rapist/murderer/torturer derives more positive utility from the act than than the victim derives negative utility. To "solve" the problem, some philosophers have turned to rule utilitarianism, which is the thesis that actions are moral if and only if they conform to the rules that bring about the greatest good for the greatest number of people. For example, imagine that one healthy person walks into a clinic with five dying patients. If we kill the healthy person and harvest his organs, we could save the other five. An act utilitarian would consider this morally permissible. By contrast, a rule utilitarian would likely hold that it's immoral on the grounds that nobody would want to live in a world in which we might at any moment be sacrificed for the "greater good." But wait, this is just an isolated event. What if we do it secretly and make it look like the healthy person's death was an accident? The problem is, if everyone thinks this way rule utilitarianism just collapses back into act utilitarianism and we are again faced with the same problems. It seems as if in order to be truly utilitarian, we have to view individual rights not as instrumentally useful, but as good in and of themselves. But at this point we cease being utilitarians altogether. C) Utility monster Imagine that we can make interpersonal comparisons of utility (without which, utilitarianism is even more doomed). Suppose a certain entity derives exponentially more utility for each unit of resources it consumes than any other being in existence. Under utilitarianism, we would be compelled then, to allocate as many resources as possible to this "utility monster" at the expense of everyone else, starving children be damned! 2. The Appeal to Basic Necessities A) Appeal to consequence There is no metaphysical law written in the sky that says ethical rules have to have rosy outcomes. Pro's argument here essentially reduces to "but what if I don't like ethics?" Unless we accept Pro's utilitarian framework, this is just a fallacious appeal to consequence. B) Improper framing of the question Pro mistakenly believes that libertarianism is an moral guide to good behavior. This is incorrect. The non-aggression principle deals strictly with the justified use of force with respect to property rights. The issue at hand is not whether or not one ought to break into someone's house to save himself or his family from starvation, but whether or not the homeowner would be justified in using force to prevent anyone from doing so. The answer, of course, is yes. This follows from the estoppel principle, which essentially states that you forfeit your own rights to the same extent that you violate the rights of others. C) Paradox of rights In order to maintain that the father of the dying girl has the right to aggress against the passing lifeguard, he will also have to maintain that the lifeguard has no right to resist. After all, as Jan Narveson points out, "the prevention of infractions of that right is precisely what one has a right to when one has a right at all." If this is the case, then the right to self-ownership is null. But this very idea is logically incoherent as I argued in C1 of my affirmative case. TURN - Utilitarianism may yield satisfactory answers in the extreme situations Pro brings up, but these special exigencies are far more common than you might think. At this very moment, tens of thousands of people in third world countries are dying from treatable diseases and malnutrition. Every single user on this site who enjoys an above-average standard of living is a horrible person directly responsible for their suffering. If Pro takes his own critique seriously, he'll sell everything he has, including the computer he is using to access this site, and donate it to the poor. Pro won't be able to post his next three rounds and I'll win the debate by default. 3. The Unjust Society I agree with Pro here. The legal institutions of entail and primogeniture are largely responsible for the concentration of wealth in relatively few hands that existed under feudalism, privileges that are totally illegitimate under libertarian law.[2] Moreover, the vast majority of feudal landowners had no legitimate right to their estates, having neither homesteaded it themselves nor acquired it through trade. If my opponent wants to make the argument that capitalism inevitably leads to the concentration of wealth, I'll address it in the latter rounds. 4. Suicide and accidents. Pro's reasoning here is essentially the same as in Contention 2. Cross-apply my rebuttal. 5. What is aggression? Aggression includes the initiation of force, the threat of force, and fraud. There is no ambiguity in the definition of aggression libertarians use. Regardless of which ethical rules we follow, there will always be some difficulty in determining who the actual rulebreakers are. This is not necessarily an argument against the rules qua the rules. Conclusion: Most of Pro's hypotheticals are highly implausible, particularly those involing economic sanctions, and I think both he and the readers realize this. I could address each problem in detail, but I lack sufficient space. Moreover, to do so misses the bigger picture: Pro hasn't actually justified his own moral framework, while I have. He's just pumping our intuitions. This approach is flawed, as I have already pointed out, and in many cases Pro's arguments actually conflict with each other. 1. Nozick, Robert. Anarchy, State, and Utopia, pp. 290-292. 2. Rothbard, Murray. For a New Liberty, pg. 6.