Danny, yes, that's a good way to put it.

Regarding "volition" I took it to mean a capacity to make choices consciously not just to make choices. I actually quickly checked google define: volition for that and it seems to fit.

But regardless yes I think we're understanding each other.

Thank you

Ok good. That view seems right to me.

The next thing to notice is that the reason the view gives for caring about coercion is that coercion is inimical to people’s abilities to lead prosperous, happy lives according to their own plans and ideals. In other words, people need liberty in order to flourish. And it seems to me that it’s because we care about people flourishing that we think liberty is important, and not that liberty is simply good for its own sake independent from its role in people’s lives. Does that seem plausible to you?

[Edit: Just to be clear, I'm not intending to argue for some kind of utilitarianism. To say it another way: It's because of how important liberty is to people's lives that it's wrong to do things to them that constrain their liberty. Is that any better?]

Well I view rights as inherent so I would actually say that liberty is an objective good in terms that it is a necessary condition for someone to remain by all means human. It's sort of like we know that a wooden tree needs wood to be a wooden tree. It's not about the preference of a tree to be wooden, but it's simply how it must be for it to be what it is.

That said, we do care as well, but that's a subjective preference overlapping an objective moral. Someone could conceivably prefer someone to be coerced, but that wouldn't deny the objective immorality of coercion.

Also worth pointing out is that the primary caring is of an individual caring for his own right not to be coerced. Caring that others not be coerced as well stems from this primary care for self, evident in the principle of "do unto others as you would others do onto you". I think people tend to empathize with other people with regards to coercion exactly because they themselves do not want to be coerced. It is reciprocal.

And it's also why I think voluntaryism is a valid philosophy. Anyone can adopt it once honestly evaluating the questions: "Do you support coercion against yourself? Do you then support coercion against others?". I think every honest person, by virtue of being human, would answer no to both.

Regards

Woah woah woah. Slow down.

You agreed that the difference between people and grass that makes us care about the requirements for humanity and not the requirements for grasshood had to do with the fact that humans can plan and live their lives according to their own desires and goals. And it’s because liberty is necessary for planning and living one’s own life that we care about it. You still agree to that, right?

If so, then my next point was that we care about planning and living life according to one’s own desires and goals because those are the conditions for human flourishing, and we care about human flourishing. If human flourishing had nothing to do with one’s ability to plan and live one’s own separate life, then we wouldn’t care about the latter consideration. Does that make sense or no?

(Also, the old reptoid was getting old. I am once more thoroughly amused.)

Let me try to approach this from a different way.

The structure of your argument appears to be this:

1) Liberty is objectively required for individuals to be fully human.
2) It is immoral to deprive a person of what is required for her to be fully human.
3) Therefore, it is immoral to deprive individuals of liberty.

My objection is based on what’s called the Principle of Formal Equality. Formal equality requires, basically, that you treat like cases alike. That is, in order to treat two cases as being morally different, you need to provide a morally relevant distinction between them that can support the difference in treatment. So I can’t, for example, say that killing people is usually wrong, but that it’s okay for me to kill people in the park on Tuesday at 1:00, because that’s totally different. Being me, being in a park, and it being 1:00 on Tuesday, are not morally relevant features of a situation, and cannot support the distinction that I’m trying to make.

On the other hand, I might be able to justify saying that killing is usually wrong, but that it’s okay for me to kill people in self-defense when they’re trying to rape me. The facts that someone is trying to rape me, and that I’m killing in order to defend myself, seem like morally significant differences between the normal case and the rape case that can justify the distinction. And critically, we have to recognize that it might have been the case that at 1:00 in the park on Tuesday, someone was trying to rape me. Hence, it’s important when we phrase our moral claims that we identify the proper grounding for those claims. It may be true that I was justified in killing in the park at 1:00 on Tuesday, but not because I was in the park at 1:00 on Tuesday.

This becomes important for your argument at Premise 2. The structure of Premise 2 is “It is immoral to deprive an X of what is required for it to be fully X.” But not all things that could be plugged in for X would make the statement true. Earlier, I brought up the example of grass, since the statement, “It is immoral do deprive a grass of what is required for it to be fully grass” is, I think, clearly false. Accordingly, we can say that depriving an X of what it needs to be fully X is not necessarily immoral (just like being me in the park at 1:00 on Tuesday cannot justify killing).

Therefore, you need to defend yourself against the claim of arbitrariness – that is, you need to show why you don’t violate the Principle of Formal Equality. This means that you need to provide a morally relevant distinction between grass (and other X’s that don’t deserve moral concern) and humans that will justify the difference in the way you’re treating them. You pointed out that humans could choose, but then agreed that a better way to put this might be to say that humans can plan and live their lives according to their own desires and goals. The latter consideration does seem morally relevant, and does distinguish humans from the sorts of things that don’t deserve moral concern. So, then, we might rephrase your argument to say:

1a) Liberty is required for individuals to plan and live their lives according to their own desires and goals.
2a) It is immoral to deprive a person of what is required for her to plan and live her life according to her own desires and goals.
3a) Therefore, it is immoral to deprive a person of liberty.

Premise 2a is now invulnerable to charges of arbitrariness. It says, “It is immoral to deprive an X of what is required for the X to plan and live its life according to its own desires and goals.” And this seems true no matter what you plug in for X (assuming that plugging something in for X would not result in a category error). Do you see why it was important to do this?

I see, but the reason why I still see the former structure would still work is that the ability to "plan and live their lives according to their own desires and goals" is uniquely human - it is a part of what makes a human into a human.

So saying "It is immoral to deprive a person of what is required for her to be fully human." is actually exactly akin to saying "It is immoral to deprive a person of what is required for her to plan and live her life according to her own desires and goals".

They're equivalent.

A simplistic conclusion is that grass doesn't morally require liberty because grass isn't human. The reason for the distinction is exactly in the definition of human.

Regards

Yes, but membership in a species is not a morally relevant consideration. Imagine that you found out that on some distant planet, there were a species of highly intelligent space weasel that could plan and live its life according to its own desires and goals. It seems like we would want to extend our moral consideration to these space weasels, even though they are not human. Therefore, the mere fact that something is human cannot be the feature distinguishing it from things that do not warrant moral consideration.

It's not about membership, yes, but on this planet and for all we know this entire solar system that characteristic uniquely defines a human. But I agree that if the same characteristic applies to other species they'd deserve the same liberty.

I do carry a default assumption that all sentient life has a right to life, liberty and property. So if aliens were to visit Earth and express the capacity of sentience (volition or "capacity to plan and live according to their own desires and goals") I would find it reasonable to treat them as if they have these rights until I learn of a trait of their nature which may somehow override that in their mutual interactions (which I actually doubt since universe appears fundamentally wired with reciprocity, thus sentiences must probably reciprocate between each other).

Regards

One quibble: sentient does not mean what you seem to think it does. It means the ability to feel or perceive. If all sentient beings have the right to life, liberty, and property, then you're in quite a bit of trouble, as pretty much everything you've ever done has been built upon a long, bloody history of dispossessing animals of their land, stepping on anthills and slapping mosquitoes, etc.

What you appear to mean is "intelligent, rational beings capable of planning and living lives according to their desires and goals." Is there a reason why you're so resistant to accepting this point? I promise that you won't become a socialist if you accept that the reason we ought to respect people's liberty is that people need liberty to live well!

Oh.. checked wikipedia you're right about sentience. Looks like I've been brainwashed by Star Trek (where sentience is used to mean exactly what I meant it above, and it apparently stuck with me).

I don't think we disagree, just speaking of the same thing in semantically different terms, but what the hell.. yes, you're right, we're right.

Regards