Theme: Responsibility

–“Q: Curt: Is Duty a via Positiva?”–

Good Question. And good opportunity to explain irreducibility in natural law.

The confusion occurs when we try to apply the concept positiva (justification of a preference, want, or good) and negativa (falsification of a statement or claim of truth or reciprocity, or good.) This over-application of ideas is common when we are learning a new subject and aren’t quite sure of the definitions.

So we want to conflate, positiva, true, and good, but that’s comparing apples and oranges. We just had this conversation with someone yesterday who couldn’t comprehend that you can’t combine True and Good. They measure two different things. The testifiability of words, and the result in changes in demonstrated interests.

What you learn in natural law is that we work by satisfying checklists (like we do in courts), instead of trying to make judgments that are ‘good or bad’, which is how most of humanity is (unfortunately) habituated, trained and indoctrinated, and it’s even worse in philosophy and theology.

We find the same problem with people trying to bring mathematics, set logic, and computational logic to the law, by trying to create logical ANDs ORs. You can’t. You can only satisfy the checklists. 😉 IN other words, they’re irreducible. The best you can say is the checklist satisfies the criteria and therefore the question is permissible or impermissible.

As for Duty, here is the constructive proof:
Given:
The Natural Law of Self Determination,
Producing Maximum Cooperation and Minimum Conflict,
By Insuring Sovereignty in Demonstrated Interests
By Requiring Reciprocity in Display, Word, and Deed,
For Both The Private and The Common
Resulting in Necessary Rights, Obligations, Inalienations,
Where:
Duty, Truth, Excellence, and Beauty
Are Inalienable Obligations.
(Though it takes a bit to explain Excellence-Beauty as requiring our full effort with no shortcuts, in the performance of those duties.)

For the individual, Duty is an obligation (cost) and Rights are a benefit (gain) and Inalienation prevents the abandonment(self) or deprivation(others) of either.

For the Polity, Duty is not a via-positiva or via-negativa, it is a resource (neutral) like force, for enforcing via-positivas (truths, goods) and preventing via-negativas (falshoods, bads).

I hope this helps.

Cheers

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