A commenter demands that I define torture. This is a little squishy, but here goes:
Would I be outraged if I heard about someone doing it to an American soldier?
I don't mean, "Would I feel bad?" I feel bad when people kill American soldiers, but I don't think that, say, all Japanese soldiers in World War II were irredeemably evil. That's war: you shoot at them, and they shoot back.
On the other hand, when I hear about the Bataan death march, I'm pretty sure it's evil, and should be forbidden by a legitimate state.
Some of the things the Geneva convention describes as inhumane don't strike me as torture--I wouldn't be outraged if I learned that American prisoners had been subjected to "insults and public curiosity", though I would if that "public curiosity" included "How do they look stacked up naked in a cheerleading pyramid?"
It still leaves open the boundary question, but I think that if most of us really tried to imagine how we'd feel if, say, the Syrian government held American soldiers--or American civilians incommunicado for two years while repeatedly waterboarding them, we're probably not, most of us, that far from agreement.
What difference does it make what country the soldier is from? A human being is a human being.
Jim,
I'm not Megan's biggest fan, but I think that's precisely her point.
I've had enough of this debate. No one here is going to change his mind, obviously. I will just add a little more. Ms. McArdle writes:
"...but I think that if most of us really tried to imagine how we'd feel if, say, the Syrian government held American soldiers--or American civilians incommunicado for two years while repeatedly waterboarding them, we're probably not, most of us, that far from agreement.
I would rather they didn't hold Americans at all, but that doesn't mean we should let all enemy soldiers or combatants go. The Golden Rule might be a fine principle for normal daily life, but it would be disastrous as a basis for foreign policy. I think most Americans understand that. Thankfully they have more sense than Megan and many others posting here.
The Golden Rule might be a fine principle for normal daily life, but it would be disastrous as a basis for foreign policy.
Wow. That is some enlightened philosophy there, isoc.
I hope someday you realize how wrong you are.
How about "the intentional, nonconsensual infliction of pain on someone who cannot resist" as a starting point definition of torture?
By Megan's definition Jose Padilla was very definitely tortured.
Bushpigs should all be very proud of what they have wrought.
isocrates, although Megan abjures the practical anti-torture argument in favor of the ethical one, I think there's a pretty strong practical argument to be made against torture. Many on the far left are like you and assume that American world dominance is the result of villainy, but I think that's a pretty un-nuanced view.
Aaron,
Most people will find that too broad - it would forbid taxation, for instance, as well as prison.
Isoc, you wrote:
That distorts what Megan said. She didn't invoke the golden rule. She didn't say we should do unto other as we would have them do unto us. She said that we should refrain from engaging in behavior toward foreign combatants that would outrage us if another power did it to our troops. You may not like it if, during an armed conflict, a foreign power captures and then holds some American troops. I don't like that thought, either. But it doesn't outrage me. In fact, it seems rather reasonable, just the sort of thing a foreign power should do when it captures enemy troops.
The wickedness of torture, I believe, has less to do with the infliction of pain than with the fact that it is designed to break a person's will, i.e., to put them into such a state (through drugs, pain, fear, etc.) that they lack the ability not to tell you what to hear. When it comes to particular techniques, however, Ms. McArdle's golden-rule type question, while not a strict definition of what constitutes torture, is probably a good rule of thumb.
Waterboarding, no. Wrapping a prisoner in the flag of a country the prisoner despises, who cares? When bombs are being exploded, and the bullets are flying, getting out of whack about being humiliated by offensive symbols demonstrates a pretty silly mindset. A soldier who is psychologically harmed by being wrapped in a flag needs to toughen up; are we to be outraged if the guards are rude? Or use sarcasm?
TWL-
I don't quite see how, unless you're being facetious.
Blackadder-
I was trying to get at that with the "cannot resist" part, but I agree, the really vile part of torture is the intent to break the victim - to deny him the ability to control his body or his mind, in fact to use them against himself.
Aaron -
You don't see how prison is the intentional, nonconsensual infliction of pain on someone who cannot resist?
Is prison unintentional, consensual, painless, or within a person's power to resist?
Aaron -
What your definition may be lacking is motive, and I don't think Blackadder's is enough. That is, infliction of pain in an attempt to coerce may be too narrow, as it would leave out infliction of pain just for the fun of it.
What's wrong the the dictionary definition? Merriam-Webster Online gives a definition of:
"the infliction of intense pain (as from burning, crushing, or wounding) to punish, coerce, or afford sadistic pleasure"
so long as "intense pain" is defined with a sufficiently low threshold?
We on the left have botched this torture issue.
There's very little need to draw out arguments for what exactly makes torture awful. That it's awful is obvious and granted on all sides. Indeed, the awfulness of torture is the only thing that explains why it's (sometimes) effective. If there wasn't anything particularly terrible about having your fingernails ripped out, we'd have no explanation why prisoners confess to crimes they've never committed just to avoid it.
So, I think it's granted on all sides that torture is awful. That's not the question. The question is: "Why are liberals so goddamn worried about awful things happening to terrorists?" And that's where we lose this particular debate.
The liberal is in a particularly weak argumentative position here. He has to argue that it's our moral responsibility to make sure that bad things don't happen to bad people, or at least that this particular bad thing doesn't happen to bad people. But bad things happening to bad people sounds like justice, doesn't it? So what's the problem? Even if torturing a terrorist is somehow an injustice, why's the liberal so concerned about a terrorist having to suffer a little unjustice? With all he's done, don't you think his got a little injustice coming to him?
The answer to this line of attack isn't to focus on what's awful about torture or how torturing isn't in line with our values - as if visiting punishment on those who deserve it is somehow anti-American - it's to turn the focus away from the torturing of terrorists. I don't give a hoot whether we torture terrorists. If you show me a government program that will torture terrorists, and only terrorists, I'd be all for it. But that's just the problem. I oppose legalizing torture, not because I have sympathy for terrorists or because I think that it somehow dirties our hands, but because allowing the government to torture will eventually and inevitably lead to the torture of the innocent, and torturing the innocent is morally abhorrent.
Our political structures are filled with similar restrictions. We insist on trial by jury not out of sympathy for the rightly accused but in defense of those accused falsely. We insist on habeus corpus not to protect those rightly jailed for crimes, but to protect those jailed for crimes they didn't commit. The restrictions we place on the government's relentless pursuit of lawbreakers are, in general, not motivated by a concern for the guilty, but out of concern for the innocent. And I see no reason why our attitude towards torture should be any different.
The problem with the dictionary definition of torture is that it is arbitrary. For something to be torture under the definition, it requires a certain threshold level of pain, as well as a particular motive. But there is no non-arbitrary point at which to draw a line between intense and non-intense pain, nor does it make much sense to say that it's wrong to inflict intense pain even if it saves thousands of lives, but that it wouldn't be wrong if you only inflicted slightly less pain. It's also not clear to me why it would be wrong to inflict intense pain for the purpose of punishment, but not for some other purpose (say, in a boxing match).
I think that it is possible to try and break a person's will just for fun, and that this is was happens in the case of sadistic torture. Even if I'm wrong about that, though, I don't think it matters much, as pretty much everyone would agree that sadistic torture is wrong.
Nate, you have made a truly fine argument, as well as brilliantly synopsizing why torture opponents have a hard time making out their case (BTW, I don't believe that torture is a left/right issue /per se/: a good Catholic, for example, would argue against torture because it's both instrumentalist and consequentialist, both big no-no's in Catholic doctrine).
In a way, that brings out an intriguing question: the left is (generally speaking!) more inclined to both instrumentalist and consequentialist arguments in other spheres (e.g., it's OK to have the government take away a few rich people's money if it helps the more numerous poor; or, it's OK for pregnant women to destroy their potential future child because, well, it's not really human until some undefined point fairly close to birth, and the mother's health and happiness are more important). So why is the left so unwilling to make those arguments here?
I ask these questions seriously, not in a "gotcha" sense; I hope this comes across as I intend it.
The major problem with rules against torture ( and the rest of the Geneva Convention) is that they are intended to get both sides to behave. When faced with a foe who will implacably ignore any and all standards because they are above them thanks to their guiding idology (be it Marx, Mao, or Muhammad) [sic, but it's a typo that's fairly apt], this all falls apart.
The Western powers behaved beastly to each other in both WWI and II, but even the Nazis were reasonably conscientious in abiding by Geneva and treating their prisoners well. Certainly it was far superior to be captured by the Nazis than it was to be a Soviet soldier captured in Afghanistan or an American grabbed in Afghanistan or Iraq (being captured by the Soviets was bad news in WWII, but being Soviet was bad news, and I'm not sure which was worse, though most of the commenters will now defend "Uncle Joe" as far superior to any American ever).
When morality brings no rewards but plenty of problems, the case for being moral starts to fall apart. Humans instinctly go for tit-for-tat behavior because it works to improve the bavior of others and if not, well at least your not being a chump. There's a reason why people venerate Saints - they're otherworldly and behave differently than many sigmas of the human population.
Leftists who try to restrain the behavior of civilised states to enable the success of barbarians are only indulging their nihilism and innate will to genocide. 100M wasn't enough, they're aiming for several billions, and if the jihadis are the tool, then so be it.
Hey says: "Leftists who try to restrain the behavior of civilised states to enable the success of barbarians are only indulging their nihilism and innate will to genocide."
Look, ma, another fascist with a thesaurus!
I especially like its use of "beastly" as it issues a thinly-veiled manifesto for torture.
Four legs good, two legs better!
And while I'm at it, Hey, what exactly are "sigmas of the human population"?
When you were at Faber College, did you room with Niedermeyer?
David,
First, thanks for the nice things you said about my previous comment, and I agree that the pro/anti torture distinction doesn't cut cleanly across political divides.
Second, I don't know that it's true that it's true to say that liberals aren't offering consequentialist justifications of their opposition to torture. Megan's original post on this matter was a response to the "torture doesn't work" school of thought, which has appeared all over the liberal blogosphere. On this argument, the objection to torture is that it doesn't get us anything. It isn't very good at producing actionable intelligence. What it is very good at is producing lots and lots of false confessions masquerading as actionable intelligence. Therefore, the consequences of legalizing torture is going to be lots of wasted time and resources following up on crappy information with very little to show for it at the end of the day. (Or something like that.) Megan doesn't think that's a very good argument, but it's definitely a consequentialist argument.
But to the extent that you are right and there is some reticence to offer consequentialist justifications for the banning of torture, it seems understandable. After all, the main argument in favor of torture - the ticking time bomb scenario - is consequentialist through and through. On this issue, consequentialist arguments have already been co-opted by the other side.
N.
TWL-
I'd say that prison (in theory) isn't causing physical or psychological pain. The prisoner's freedom is seriously constrained, but he's not suffering physical abuse and (setting aside prolonged periods of solitary confinement) isn't being pyschologically abused. In practice, of course, prisoners suffer all kinds of abuse, usually from other inmates, but that seems to me to be a failure of practice, not a failure of the idea of the prison per se.
The dictionary definition of torture doesn't seem to address the most significant fact of torture, which is the utter helplessness of the victim.
The prisoner's freedom is seriously constrained, but he's not suffering physical abuse and (setting aside prolonged periods of solitary confinement) isn't being pyschologically abused.
Yeah, I guess what you were getting at with "cannot resist" wasn't that you can't resist the actual treatment (e.g. imprisonment), but that when you're undergoing it you can't resist anything else. Civil disobedience can be practiced in humane prisons, but not really under waterboarding.
In a way, that brings out an intriguing question: the left is (generally speaking!) more inclined to both instrumentalist and consequentialist arguments in other spheres (e.g., it's OK to have the government take away a few rich people's money if it helps the more numerous poor; or, it's OK for pregnant women to destroy their potential future child because, well, it's not really human until some undefined point fairly close to birth, and the mother's health and happiness are more important). So why is the left so unwilling to make those arguments here?
It's a good question. I second Nate's point that a great number of arguments against torture are consequentialist. They are a sort of higher-consequentialism than the ticking-nuke scenario, in which we aren't just looking at how things turn out in one rare situation, but at how the effects of the policy in general on all situations we're likely to face. I think the myriad of arguments that things would become pragmatically worse one way or another if the government started (or continued) any formally authorized policy of torture are, collectively, extremely convincing. And if we ever learn the full truth about what has been happening in Guantanamo and CIA black sites, I predict confirmation.
But your point still holds--because even if all those arguments were wrong, I'd still oppose torture on non-consequentialist grounds, even though I support both wealth-redistribution and Plan B availability. (Potential future child is an awkward way to say it, since that includes every egg that a women hasn't yet managed to get fertilized, but I know what you mean.) And you'll notice that sort of thinking even in Rawls--the Maximin principle is constrained by universal civil liberties.
What's happening here is that we hold some things as absolutely intrinsic to the nature of persons and inviolable, and practice some form of consequentialism subject to these inviolable constraints. Torture annihilates the responsible, decision making essence of a person. It is worse than killing--you've annihilated the person's decision making essence while keeping their actual body, brain, and memory alive to pervert for your own purposes.
On the other hand, I don't consider property either absolute or intrinsic to the nature of people, nor do I think our DNA represents our intrinsic nature.
I don't think being stacked up in a naked pile of people is anything near torture, or more than just disrespectful. You should disrespect your enemy to a degree, or you can't pull the trigger.
Megan,
I don't have a source for this, but I believe that every one of our approved coercion techniques, including waterboarding, we use on American pilots in training (both Navy and AF) at that POW training camp they go through. Like I said, I've never seen anyone write about it, but I knew a bunch of pilots when I was in the Navy, and what they discussed (the ones that didn't refuse to talk about it) sounds exactly like the techniques I've read about.
Victoria writes: "I don't think being stacked up in a naked pile of people is anything near torture, or more than just disrespectful. You should disrespect your enemy to a degree, or you can't pull the trigger."
Thoughtless stupidity like this is why America is losing respect throughout the world.
The people "stacked" weren't necessarily "the enemy," dear child. Most of the Abu Ghraib prisoners were not combatants, and most have been released. You tell me what the ones who were abused and then released told their countrymen.
Of such pointless crap is an insurgency born. Not that many yahoos care.
So much for "liberating" Iraqis. I don't think I know more than 5 cons who actually give a damn about Iraq other than seeing it as a place to show "A-rabs" that "we're NUMBER ONE."
Also in reference to Victoria: There is a difference between shooting at your enemy on the battlefield and abusing/humiliating/torturing your enemy once he has surrendered and is firmly under your control in a prison. Compare what abused Abu Ghraib detainees doubtless told their fellow Iraqis to the stories I've heard of German WWII prisoners held in the United States who were treated decently enough that they wanted to emigrate to the U. S. after the war.
Megan,
I know you've washed your hands of this topic, but I thought I'd chime in anyway.
Your definition of torture - Would I be outraged if I heard about someone doing it to an American soldier? - captures the essence of the concept. Torture is outrageous treatment of a prisioner and should be strictly forbidden.
However, I'd add two important caveats: First, not ALL outrageous treatment is torture. Second, we shouldn't be bound by the "lowest common denominator" view of what is outrageous. Just as the uninitiated might find some aspects of military boot camp (or the fall camp of a football team) outrageous, some unfamiliar with interrogation techniques might be offended by things that are not offensive to those who work in the area. (I'm aware that some might argue that familiarity with something might cause someone to become desensitized -- to become less humane. That's NOT what I'm talking about. I'm referring to the common experiance of what's imagined being worse than the reality. For example, my uncle is a cattle rancher. When he ropes and ties a calf, he might appear cruel to an uninformed observer as he throws the calf down, pins it to the ground with his knee, and ties the calf's legs together. Actually, he's trying to quickly subdue the calf and immobilize it so the calf won't harm itself by struggling as he examines it's health, inoculates it against disease, etc. What appears cruel (even outrageous) to the unfamiliar is, in fact, not.)
So, while you might be outraged if a US soldier were waterboarded, I wouldn't. We do it to our own troops as part of their survival training. It was done to my father (as part of his training). He allowed it to be done to his son (my brother). Neither of them considered it torture nor were they outraged by it. Why should we substitute your view for theirs?
Pious outrage there, Moe?
"The people "stacked" weren't necessarily "the enemy," dear child. Most of the Abu Ghraib prisoners were not combatants, and most have been released. You tell me what the ones who were abused and then released told their countrymen."
Sounds more like a member of the Hate America brigade who is infused with the need to take another swipe at The Ugly American (after conveniently stretching the mess a bit). That said, Abu Ghraib was not a good thing, but people with reactions similar to yours does nothing but use a false outrage to make it seem oh, so much worse. In the real world, so much more worse than that happens, but your media friends worked overtime to inflate the terribleness of it for months and months afterwards.
Tell me that the mother of a daughter was was raped, tortured and shot by an al-Qaeda follower really thinks Abu Ghraib was anything, compared to the suffering she went through.
Oh, and Mike, I did go through the training you mention, and yes, waterboarding was used as much as an instructional aid as anything else. It was an awful feeling, but that, and other techniques were used for the instruction. It is only those who exaggerate that terribleness that makes what was considered very benign techniques, into what is euphemistically called, 'torture,' now.
People need to get some balance in life, and not be so bigoted, narrow-minded, and, yes, I'll say intolerant.
Megan and a number of commenters in this thread are failing to make an important distinction with regard to the Geneva Convention(s). Many of the things prohibited by the convention are ONLY prohibited if they are done to a "prisoner of war" (someone who was obeying the laws of war at the time of capture). Other things are prohibited without regard to a prisoner's status.
For example, the convention prohibits subjecting POWs to ridicule. The conventions also prohibit asking POWs for more than "name, rank, and serial number". The conventions require POWs be treated with the respect and courtesy due their rank. They are to be given food in quality and quality equivalent to what the captors feed their own troops. POWs are even required to be paid by the "host" nation.
The convention mandates this treatment to create two sets of important incentives. The first is frequently commented upon while the second, which may be more important than the first, is frequently ignored. The first set of incentives tries to ensure that each sides' prisoners will be treated well. (The convention even allows one country to retaliate against the prisoners it holds if the other country is known to be abusing POWs.) Thus, as people have said in this thread, it's hoped that by treating our POWs well, the other side will treat the Americans it captures with respect.
The second set of incentives encourages soldiers to fight within the bounds of the rules of war. (It's often said that "All's fair in love and war." That's not true with respect to either love or war.) If you are caught behind enemy lines out of uniform, you forfeit any of the benefits afforded POWs under the Geneva Convention. In such a case, the convention does NOT prohibit your being subject to ridicule nor does it prohibit your being subject to intense interrogation. (The convention still prohibits your being tortured, but that's about it.) Providing those we capture with all the benefits of POW status, despite their flouting of the rules of war -- hiding behind civilians, failing to wear uniforms, etc. -- rewards behaviors the Geneva Conventions were designed to eliminate.
So, in determining whether we should be outraged by the treatment of a hypothetical American soldier, we need to distinguish between soldiers who are entitled to POW protections and those who are not. Would I be outraged if a US soldier were waterboarded? Yes (assuming the soldier was following the rules of war at the time of capture), not because waterboading is so cruel it is torture but because the Geneva Convention prohibits asking for more than name, rank, and serial number.
The Germans had by far the worst WWII POW record. The vast majority of prisoners they took were Soviet, over 5 million. Less than 20% survived. The rate for Allied prisoners of the Japanese was something like 45%, though they treated their Chinese prisoners far worse.
not because waterboading is so cruel it is torture
Look. The US has ratified the Convention Against Torture. The Convention Against Torture defines torture as the use or threat of force or cruelty by an agent of the state against a captive to compel testimony, except for lawful sanctions associated with criminal punishment.
Waterboarding is so far inside those boundaries, it's ridiculous. Do you think we need to revoke the Convention Against Torture? Why?
Again, we can avoid the problems here by charging alleged terrorists as criminals. Why this is such an insurmountable problem for conservatives, given the stellar record of law enforcement in convicting terrorists when they've actually been treated as criminals from the moment of capture, is simply beyond me. It's as if the thing conservatives hate most is when the legal system actually works.
the use or threat of force or cruelty by an agent of the state against a captive to compel testimony
brooksfoe is right here. It's not that waterboarding is such an inherently painful process that it's beyond the pale of all imagined human suffering--it's the free-will destroying compulsion that's unacceptable, not the cruelty. Examples of people undergoing waterboarding in training exercises simply aren't relevant, because that's not the same kind of compulsion.
Nate W.: Good points, I had not considered the "we shouldn't torture because it doesn't work" as consequentialism (in part because I don't believe it's true), but of course that is a clear example.
Consumatopia: Also many good points. My pardon for the clumsy nomenclature, I was trying for a descriptive term that didn't contain any planted axioms and therefore wouldn't provoke a response intrinsically ("unborn child/products of conception", to serve up two opposed examples).
Just for the record, I'll mention that your view that "...we hold some things as absolutely intrinsic to the nature of persons and inviolable" is in fact Catholic doctrine: to paraphrase, the Catholic view is that man, being made in God's image, has an intrinsic and individual dignity which must be respected (I assuem I need hardly add that this doctrine is largely the basis for most rights-based moral arguments).
As to whether our DNA or our property constitute any part of this, there are two separate issues: (1) when does an unborn potential human become more than just a "clump of cells" to be disposed of as one wishes, and (2) what rights does a human possess intrinsically. I'll leave the first alone since there is little likelihood of agreement on the subject anytime soon.
The second question is, I think, worthy of your consideration: when the State taxes you, it involuntarily separates you from some portion of your effort, which (under most theories of property) you own (you own yourself: you therefore own the products of your labor, and you therefore also own those things for which you exchanged the products of your labor). If you refuse, the State compels you, with the ultimate threat being imprisonment or death (see: "Whiskey Rebellion"). So to argue that your property is not intrinsic to you is to argue, in essence, that the State may compel you either to involuntary servitude or death: or at least so it seems to me.
What is your view of this? Again, I ask in the spirit of respectful and humble inquiry.
The difference between prison and torture is, you don't go to prison until you've been convicted of a crime. Torture, at least how it's practiced at Gitmo, can be visited on people who were fingered by tribal rivals in Afghanistan in exchange for a reward.
Just for the record, I'll mention that your view that "...we hold some things as absolutely intrinsic to the nature of persons and inviolable" is in fact Catholic doctrine: to paraphrase, the Catholic view is that man, being made in God's image, has an intrinsic and individual dignity which must be respected (I assuem I need hardly add that this doctrine is largely the basis for most rights-based moral arguments).
But we seem to hold different things as intrinsic to the nature of persons. I define a person as a decision-maker capable of consciousness. The Catholic apparently defines a person in a strictly biological sense as a living homo sapiens. Not only does this have implications for who is considered a person, but also for what rights those persons have. In particular, Catholics and I consider each other in violation of the intrinsic nature of persons on the issue of assisted suicide.
The second question is, I think, worthy of your consideration: when the State taxes you, it involuntarily separates you from some portion of your effort, which (under most theories of property) you own (you own yourself: you therefore own the products of your labor, and you therefore also own those things for which you exchanged the products of your labor).
Well, I would deny that property in any absolute sense like that can exist--the product of your labor is usually the transformation of land into something else, and while you could exchange your labor to purchase land, the problem is that there's no way for anyone to ethically acquire sole ownership of land in the first place. Locke came up with that whole labor-mixing thing back when there was plenty of unexplored land and the value was near zero (not really as natives had already explored it but whatever). But as the supply of labor and capital multiplies, land becomes more valuable.
And while I wouldn't claim that the nation owns all the property of it's citizens, I would claim that residents agree to put their property under the terms of the state when they live here. So long as the residents are free to leave the country and shop around for a new one, the intrinsic nature of persons is preserved. Ultimately, property is a social concept--it requires everyone around you to recognize it.
If you refuse, the State compels you, with the ultimate threat being imprisonment or death (see: "Whiskey Rebellion"). So to argue that your property is not intrinsic to you is to argue, in essence, that the State may compel you either to involuntary servitude or death: or at least so it seems to me.
If a cop tries to give me a ticket for jay walking, I pull a gun, but the cop beats me to the draw, it would be plainly ridiculous for anyone to claim that the government is enforcing jay walking with the threat of death. The state has the right to meet arms with arms. I don't believe involuntary servitude is acceptable--taxation is not a chain gang, unless refusing to pay your taxes gets you sent to a chain gang, which I would oppose.
This particular line of argument just doesn't work at all--presumably you would want the state to stop me from taking someone else's property, therefore it's you who are arguing, in essence, for state servitude and death. Property is itself an act of coercion--forbidding everyone but you from utilizing a particular piece of the universe. Indeed, during extreme periods of deprivations slavish obedience to private property could indeed be unambiguously murderous.
Even if I accepted that taxation was equivalent to imprisonment, though I think I've amply explained why I would never accept that, it still makes sense to think about imprisonment in a consequentialist way while refusing that analysis for torture. Humane prisons, at least as an ideal, wouldn't dehumanize people in the same way that torture or rape do.
Consumatopia--Thanks again for that thoughtful response. Alas, we have clearly reached the point where we can no longer find a basis for agreement. Your views on property are very far from mine, I fear, and that makes any further attempt to reconcile our understandings somewhere between futile and unintelligible.
But it's nice to see that it's still possible for two people of good will to have a sensible discussion (at least, I find it to have been: I can only assume you agree).
I did find it fruitful--of course we can't convince each other to switch axioms, but at least we have to concede the other's internal consistency--even if your questions have perhaps hinted at a lack of parsimony in my own views, which I'll have to reflect on later.