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A comment on The Meaning of Liberalism (1938). Parent comment

Re:The Meaning of Liberalism (1938) by crabrangoon on Sunday September 17, 2023 @11:57AM (#37546444)
In the context of liberalism and rights, you can certainly establish a system of natural law based on reason instead of the existence of God. Whether or not 'reason' comes from God is an interesting ontological question, but irrelevant to political philosophy. The point is that we can derive ethics from observations on the natural world. It is an apple's nature to fall to the ground, and based on observation of cause and effect, we have described a set of laws for this phenomenon. There is nothing particularly mystical or religious about gravity.

When a government passes a law that prohibits transgender people from obtaining healthcare to treat their condition, that is a violation of their natural right to live.

There is no shortage of genocides and pogroms committed by religious groups, were they being 'nihilistic'?.

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Re:The Meaning of Liberalism (1938) by bad_user on Sunday September 17, 2023 @12:31PM (#37546825)
Right. Well, we can agree to disagree that we can derive ethics from observations of the natural world. We might be able to do that, if we were more enlightened or had greater resources at disposal, but we are far from being there. Human beings are pretty fallible and irrational, which is why we still need tradition, even if tradition needs to be questioned periodically.

For instance, I think that the most heinous, most damaging ideas tend to come from rationalist philosophers, because with the right set of first principles you can justify anything. In fairness, you mentioned empiricism (observations), however, how are you going to conduct studies on what's "murder"? All kinds of social experiments ended in disaster, we can't even do good studies on nutrition without spending a lot of resources, and studies that can knowingly hurt individuals are deemed as immoral and thus forbidden.

In general, I think that at this point, "secular ethics based on observations" is a pipe dream. At least until we'll be able to simulate society somehow, and in the meantime, mathematical models are bullshit with a really poor prediction rate.

I also have this opinion that ALL people are religious, and by religion I mean beliefs that are non-falsifiable, or close to being non-falsifiable, and in this definition religion does not require the existence of a God.

> When a government passes a law that prohibits transgender people from obtaining healthcare to treat their condition, that is a violation of their natural right to live.

Again, I'm all for transgender people having all the healthcare they need. However, access to healthcare is not a natural right for the simple fact that somebody else has to pay for it. Consider how free universal healthcare is only possible in affluent countries with a high GDP. "Taxing the rich" is also only a solution in countries that have enough rich people to tax. The public budget is never limited and there are always priorities.

Countries like the US could provide free universal healthcare, no doubt about it. It is also my impression that US's healthcare is corrupt, and they could probably do it without increasing current spending, if the corruption was dealt with. But if the public spending goes up (big if), then it's the taxpayers that have to agree with it, and they do that by voting. Which is a sad state of affairs, as all would benefit from universal healthcare, but it underlines the fact that free healthcare is a privilege.

Note that I'm saying this as an asthmatic, a chronic condition for which I need medication, without which I'd be unable to live. I do have access to it, but I don't consider it a right, but rather a blessing to live in a century in which I can have access to it. I might have been born 30 years earlier.

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