Ought nature to be illegal? It might be a reasonable argument against the illegal status of cannabis, as opposed to (say) manufactured drugs such as methamphetamine or cocaine. On the other hand cyanide is all natural, and it's still good policy to at least advise people about the effects of its consumption.
Still, perhaps there ought to be a presumption of legality in the natural. Else we depend on masters, where once we could grow our own food.
The concept that human happiness needs to be legitimatized and allowed through some laws made by corrupt judges and co-lawyers, allows for the foundations of an interesting totalitarian society.
ReplyDeleteFishing has been licensed ever since it got tied into fishery and restocking programs, rain water collection has been regulated/banned in some places since the 19th century, milk rules also date from the 19th century--and it's only cannabis that was forbidden in the 20th century, along with a host of other substances.
ReplyDeleteThere's reasons for the things that are in the poster, mostly more complex than what soundbite/poster/bumpersticker type bon mots could ever express.
The pot sold through the dispensaries in San Diego comes in fat, manicured buds that are the product of careful hybridizing and growth, and are no more "natural" than a barrel of hexane.
ReplyDeleteValerie
Don't know where else to send it, Grim ...but this - Battle of the Nations, and we have a team there:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Za5tq-E7loo
That looks like a good time.
ReplyDeleteYour examples, Eric and Valerie, may be to the point though. Commercial fishing isn't natural in the same way as fishing with a net or a pole (or a spear, or your hands). The need to regulate it comes from the fact that it's unnaturally efficient.
ReplyDeleteCannabis I know very little about, but my understanding is that the modern stuff is quite different from the naturally-occurring stuff that people used to smoke in the 60s. Maybe we could get a handle on the problem by letting people who want to grow their own (like you can distill your own whiskey, but not sell it), but the naturally-occurring kind in the natural way.
Well, in a way it's kind of like saying that any thing that's been bred for some trait, I don't care what it is, dog, horse, corn, tomato is then "not natural".
ReplyDeleteBut then, 'survival of the fittest' is breeding for trait, isn't it?
Like I said, more is going on than is ever said in these internet memes.
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Murder is natural. So are rape, and incest, and theft and beating your kids (as opposed to spanking). Should we presume those things should be legal because they're natural?
ReplyDeleteLaws have little or nothing to do with whether things are natural or not, but a presumption of legality for natural things is pretty flawed on its face. Most laws are attempts to balance conflicting rights or duties, many of which are in themselves "natural".
Most modern laws seem to have the goal of using the State as a hammer to assault an economic or political adversary.
ReplyDeletePrinciples, Rights, Duties- those concepts are laughed at by our representatives and leaders.
Eric & Cass:
ReplyDeleteIt's a position generally sneered at in philosophy that I'm proposing for discussion: in fact, it's usually named a fallacy ("the naturalistic fallacy," although it's an informal fallacy -- that is, it isn't a strict logical error). But I think I'd like to explore it, because there's something important here in spite of the objections to it.
We started this country with a belief in natural rights. So when you say that murder is natural, in a way that's true; but it's also true that the right not to be murdered is natural. It's a right that arises from your nature as a mortal human being who can be destroyed in a particular way. Presumably angels don't have a natural right not to be murdered, because they cannot be.
So it's at least as right to say that murder is against nature. It's against nature because it destroys the opportunity to strive for one's individual, natural perfection. With this concept of natural law, many immoral actions can be banned. We may look to our nature as human beings to guide us in terms of what kinds of beings we are, but we look to it as a starting point from which to strive. What we are striving towards is also natural, because we find the directional arrow in our nature.
So I'm not worried about the moral problems you raise, Cass, because I think the old concept of natural law answers them pretty well. Natural law of this kind is at the foundation of the American project, and has an older and noble history beyond the Founding.
The problem that does concern me is whether that same answer trips over Eric's problems. Say we take the nature of cannibis as the starting point, and someone figures out ways to refine it. Isn't that striving toward the perfection of its nature?
One way we might address that is to ask whether it's fair to take these qualities as the perfection of the plant's own nature, as opposed to some accidental quality about the plant that we happen to like. If that were so -- if, for example, it made the plant less capable of surviving in nature as opposed to a lab -- you'd have a good reason to suggest that it wasn't "a perfection of nature" in the same sense that moral striving in human beings is.
All I want out of the distinction is a concept that there's a kind of natural order with which it is healthy to be in accord. I don't want to suggest that it is wrong to breed better tomatoes (or even necessarily stronger cannibis), just that it is different from eating blackberries found growing on canes. It's not necessarily wrong to fish with industrial means, but it's not the same kind of thing as taking a spear and standing in the river.
It seems that there is something beneficial to us of living in accord with our nature -- striving to perfect it, certainly. And if there is some kind of usual benefit to us, if it makes our lives more fulfilling and our bodies and minds stronger, then it ought ordinarily to be permitted. That's what I mean by a presumption of legality.
That's the naturalistic fallacy as it is usually formulated. What I guess I'm saying is that I don't quite see that it is a fallacy. It's certainly not an error in logic, and in fact it may not be an error at all. I think the adoption of the idea that this is a fallacy is a mistake made by modern philosophy. There is something good about nature, and natural law, and we ought usually to want to be in accord with it. There may be exceptions, but a presumption seems sustainable.
I'm not seeing exactly where Cass's list of crimes is 'natural' other than yes, they get done in nature, the same way all other events do.
ReplyDeleteAny one of those things has had consequences in pretty much any society you can cite, except possibly the example of beating your kids, which appears to be so widespread through history as to almost not merit comment.
Societies order themselves in some fashion, everywhere. You can't quite consider an individual by themselves anywhere at anytime, they don't exist in vacuums.
That's a good point: it's in our nature to punish these things, too.
ReplyDeleteI should probably mention that there is a formal version of the naturalistic fallacy. It's not going to be interesting to either of you, but it does exist in some forms of symbolic logic. It takes the form of "if P, then Necessarily Possibly P."
That actually works in S5 logic. Most logical systems won't let you get to the 'necessarily,' so you'd end up with "If P, then Possibly P." That seems right: if P is the case, then it must have been possible for P to come about. The dispute is over whether that possibility is necessary, and indeed over what it means for a possibility to be necessary.
There's a further leap to get from necessary possibility to the claim that it 'ought to be allowed.' I'm not really after any of these formal claims, as I don't find that mode of inquiry into human morality to be useful or even appropriate.