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From: janw@inmet.UUCP
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: Population control & Freedom
Message-ID: <117400042@inmet>
Date: Thu, 25-Sep-86 23:34:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: inmet.117400042
Posted: Thu Sep 25 23:34:00 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 11-Oct-86 07:12:25 EDT
References: <980@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu>
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Nf-ID: #R:cit-vax.Caltech.Edu:-98000:inmet:117400042:000:3435
Nf-From: inmet.UUCP!janw    Sep 25 23:34:00 1986


[rat@tybalt.caltech.edu.Caltech.Edu ]
>>Procreation rights follow simply from one's right to  dispose  of
>>one's  own body. 

>Tsk tsk.  This, after Jan gives us a lecture on the need to define
>rights clearly.  Surely Jan does not believe in a right to do
>whatever one wants to one's body regardless of the impact on others.

Surely I do. No problems arise unless it collides (as is  unlike-
ly)  with another right as basic as itself. I don't think clarity
gains by attempts to list recipes for every  contingency.   Basic
principles ought to be clear; ramifications are inevitably tangled.

>Surely he will not say that I have a right, for example, to take a
>drug which induces homicidal paranoia while walking a busy city
>street.

Comes the unlikely collision... Hard cases make bad law but  good
logical  entertainment. This can be unraveled in several ways.
E.g.:
(1) *Taking* the drug is a right. Going there under its influence
may  or  may  not  be a right. Homicide is certainly a crime. You
therefore act imprudently by taking the drug, criminally afterwards.
(The case is analogous to drinking, then driving, then killing someone).

(2) An attack justifies self-defense. Preparations for it,  inno-
cent  in themselves, become part of it, and justify self-defense.
E.g., asking someone for five bucks is O.K., but not if it is the
initial  stage of a mugging. Let us assume that the verdict in
the Goetz case is Not Guilty. The basic right of free speech (in-
volved  in  asking  for the five bucks) is not abrogated by this.
Speech was not reacted to as such, but as a symptom  of  imminent
action.  The  basic  right to self-defense wins, in this case. So
your berserker drug-taker is in an initial stage of an attack  on
others'  bodies,  not  his own, and they can restrain him. If ba-
bies were *really* ticking bombs, isolating pregnant women  would
be justified.

You objected to my assertion that disposing of one's body is  a
basic  right. Let me ask a counter question: do *you* know of any
basic rights? If yes, I bet they are liable to the same  kind  of
casuistic conundrum. If no... well, then I'd ask  what  you  fill
the  vacuum  with - expediency, or a system of duties, not rights,
or a live oracle (like the Supreme Court), or what?

>Richard Carnes asserts that procreation has negative effects on 
>others.  Jan replies that not all negative effects count as possible
>grounds for restricting an activity.  

But without conceding the negative effects.

>Well -- speaking of defining rights clearly -- *which* ones don't
>count,  and  why  not?  (Especially why not -- you'll have a hard
>time convincing me on that score.) Back to square one.

Write these four words in the  square:  rights  count,  interests
don't. Violating another's rights may justify restraint; damaging
another's interests may not, unless it  violates  rights.  Why?

Well, making *all* interests count would leave *no* right  to  do
anything, as each action affects someone's interests. Restrict-
ing an activity would be always justified, and this  makes  abso-
lute  the  authority of those who decide what to restrict in each
case, and how. Counting only *some* interests would  eliminate
this unsatisfactory conclusion - provided they were finite
interests with clear boundaries - so that *some* activity could
go on without affecting them. We are close now to reintroducing
the concept of a *right*.

		Jan Wasilewsky