As noted below, I got an email from Vic about my Carrot Juice is Murder post. Vic writes:
As Shakespeare might say, me thinks that the lady doth protest too much. As Shakespeare also might say, there is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so. "natural rights"? If humans and all of the rest of life are the result of millions of years of Darwinian evolution; and thus, if humans have come out of the jungle; from where, during that lengthy and complex transition, did "natural rights" come? Are there "natural rights" in the jungle?
Abortion kills, which prevents the continuation of life. Contraception prevents the continuation of the life of eggs and sperm. Abstinence prevents the continuation of the life of eggs and sperm. "crackpot notions"? "natural rights"? Nay, Shakespeare was right when he had Hamlet say that there is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.
I'll leave it to my Darwinian colleague Prof. Blanchard to discuss Darwinian natural right if he so chooses, or one can consult Larry Arnhart on the subject (see also Arnhart's blog). Blanchard and Arnhart actually do tease out a natural rights teaching from Darwin, but I am not well versed enough in the argument to attempt to reproduce it here. So let's leave it at "it can be done."
Vic buys into Cartesian dualism sprinkled with a healthy dose of Nietzsche. Regarding dualism, Vic abstracts the mind from the body, assuming that because he thinks, therefore he is. His mind is the the "real" Vic. Let me suggest, briefly, that my body is part of who I am, not merely a carrier for the "real me." To violate my body is to violate me. Simply notice how the state of your body effects the state of your mind.
Vic also elucidates a kind of Nietzschean "will to power," that a thing is true simply because I will it to be so. I suggest that Vic step off a cliff and will a bridge to appear. That may suggest the limits of this manner of thinking.
Let me make a brief, and therefore incomplete, defense of natural rights. As a human being I have natural desires for self-preservation and to provide for myself. I recognize in others a similar natural desire. If we all act as the beasts Vic proclaims us to be, then none of us get much security or commodious living. So I recognize for me to attain security I must recognize that others deserve what I want for myself. Demanding the preservation of myself, I take on the duty to recognize that same claim in others. That is one origin of the right to life, and it is derived from natural wants and desires. We then institute government to protect that right. This is some of the thinking behind the Declaration of Independence (for further discussion, see Michael Zuchart's fine Natural Rights Republic).
Vic also lowers humans to the level of animals, assuming that the "law of the jungle" is also the law of man (and even the Law of the Jungle may be more civilized than Vic). One could point out that, unlike the lower animals, humans have the capacity for reason. This gives them a dignity that lower animals do not have. We are not brutes, but rational thinking creatures capable of cultivation by civilization. We can reason from this that man's purpose is precisely to think and improve himself both materially and intellectually. The cow's purpose is to be eaten; Vic's purpose is to think. We can extrapolate from this a kind of natural right: it is not man's nature to be used as a thing by others as is the cow's nature.
Or we can go to Christianity and notice that man alone is created in God's image. God has given us the capacity to know transcendental truths, a knowledge he has kept from lower animals. This gives human life an inherent dignity that the beasts are denied. That might be one reason why God condemns murder.
Vic brings Shakespeare's Hamlet to his aid. But Hamlet was not knows for his perspicaciousness. Let me suggest that another Shakespearean character is a better guide. When one rejects natural right one gets Lady Macbeth:
I have given suck, and know
How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me:
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums,
And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done to this.
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