The purpose of this post is to have some fun intellectually and use our deductive prowess (Yes, all true Austrians are part of the Aristotle bloodline somehow). In any way, I am not trying to demonstrate the pitfalls of the natural rights theory as any other theory including positive rights is inept at providing a satisfactory answer to the case I have listed below. Without further ado, I present all ye happy Austrians, an extreme case that libertarianism must deal with.
Case: Conjoined Twins. Abigail and Britanny Hensel have two separate heads that share the same body. Each head controls the relative side of the body, e.g. the left head controls the left arm and left leg while the right head controls the right arm and right leg. Other notable features include two stomachs, two spines, two hearts, and one set of reproductive organs.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abigail_and_Brittany_Hensel
Questions:
1. Is it possible for one head to aggress against the other? Since each head controls one side of the body, what if one side decided to punch/kick the other? Would it be defined as aggression. Does each side of the head each have ownership of the body, yet would a tragedy of the commons, or in this case, a tragedy of the two wills trapped in one body ensue as if one head wanted to do something, but the other refused. Alienation of one of the others will, or both wills seems to be a major problem to overcome.
2. Is it possible for them to get married separately? Assuming, one head wants to bear a child, yet they share a common set of reproductive organ, the will of the other becomes alienated. Would there be any other problems with contractual obligations if one or the other entered into a marriage or other contract?
3. If the body could only sustain one head in the future, which one ought to be chosen for removal? Please share your thoughts as I will be pondering this for the next couple days.
Reason is the guiding light that shines through the veil of ignorance.
One of the nice things about natural law (as opposed to positive law) is that it does not have to have an answer in vacuum of any question. My first answer to your question is to punt: we don't need to answer this question now. Any specific answer can be developed based on the circumstances and facts. We can handle this by managing it as an exception.
Herein lies the beauty of natural rights/natural law. To the extent your questions relate to contractual or voluntary arrangements (question 2), they could be dealt with by the parties actually involved. Under the positive law, as developed in the US, they should probably not be allowed to be married because it would/should be considered bigamy. Under voluntary agreement in the natural law tradition, one or more husbands could enter into a relationship with one or more of them. However, the shared portions of the body should probably be considered to be property in common with unanimous consent to any use. Therefore, consummating the marriage would require consent by both. Same goes for birthing.
As for the acts of aggression, there seems to be no good reason to assume that the right side hitting the left side would not be wrong.
As far as decisions about the future, in the event that such unfortunate events should transpire, any decision should be made by the two of them together (unless a guardian has control over them). There is no good answer to this question. However, it would seem that natural rights would allow them to make a decision including a decision to die together or enter into a game of chance or skill to determine who will be able to continue on. The best opportunity that they have to not have to make this decision would be provided by a free market.
As a side note, I am not sure what you mean by natural rights. Do you mean Rothbard's theory based on property rights or something based on Locke? I think it would be interesting to create a wiki based "Law for a Free State." The Law would be based on one or more fundamental principles and could then be carried to conclusions through examples provided by contributors. Get it inserted as the basis for a few contracts and we could have a revolution on our hands.
wuzacon: . . .Get it inserted as the basis for a few contracts and we could have a revolution on our hands.
. . .Get it inserted as the basis for a few contracts and we could have a revolution on our hands.
You think like an agorist. :3
Pro Christo et Libertate integre!
Each brain should have soverignty over the organs it controls, and each should have veto power over anything done to shared organs.
scineram:In their place I would kill myself.
Natural Rights Theory would say that you don't have the authority to do so.
MacFall
Thanks for enlightening me! I will take your comment as a complement, unless otherwise clarified.
It seems to me that it sort of depends on what kind of natural rights view you take. Personally, I think that rights reflect the respect to which we are due as individuals. On that understanding, I do think that Abigail could act to violate Brittney's rights (and vice versa), in the sense that she could do something to her which we think that Brittney would be entitled to not have done to her. But I agree that determining exactly what each is entitled to is particularly difficult in this case. Your second question reveals a good example of the difficulty: if Brittney wanted to have a child, would Abigail have a right against Brittney doing so without her consent? I don't think that the answer is completely clear.
But to directly answer your second question, if Brittney did have a child, and Abigail didn't participate in Brittney's decision (in a way that would make Abigail responsible for the decision), I don't see how any obligation could reside with Abigail regarding the fate of the child, or anything else. But as I noted earlier, it's not clear that Brittney has the right to have the child in the first place. If not, then subsequent obligations on Abigail would simply reflect the agreement through which Brittney got the green light to have the child (or to get married, etc.).
On question 3, I'm not sure how the conjoined case is different than a normal lifeboat situation.
Hopefully that helps.
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