Re: in a quandry

[Don Smith <dasmith at rotse2_physics.lsa.umich.edu>]

Hi,

Wes wrote:
> I think you guys are taking this "natural law" thing to too philosophical a level 

I agree with John: natural law is a specific term.  According to the Internet
Dictionary of Philosophy:

> The term 'natural law' is ambiguous. It refers to a type of moral theory, as
> well as to a type of legal theory, despite the fact that the core claims of
> the two kinds of theory are logically independent. According to natural law
> ethical theory, the moral standards that govern human behavior are, in some
> sense, objectively derived from the nature of human beings. According to
> natural law legal theory, the authority of at least some legal standards
> necessarily derives, at least in part, from considerations having to do with
> the moral merit of those standards. There are a number of different kinds of
> natural law theories of law, differing from each other with respect to the
> role that morality plays in determining the authority of legal norms.

http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/n/natlaw.htm

I'm still not buying your definition, though, at least as you're implicitly
defining it through your examples.  If natural law is basically "things people
would do anyway", then *all* law is meaningless, since there is no need to
legislate away behavior that people don't do.  (Of course, this hasn't stopped
congress on various occasions.)  By your definition, murder should be legal,
because it's certainly something that people do anyway.  Speed limits are
*definitely* out.  You're describing tendencies, not law.  If "law" is to mean
anything useful, it has to be distinct from tendencies.  It's a natural law
that if you fall off a cliff, you're going to accelerate at about 9.8 m/s/s
toward the ground.  It's not a natural law that if you have a CD, you're going
to copy it.

Yours,
-- 
Don Smith                           Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment
donaldas at umich_edu                                http://www.rotse.net/dasmith/

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