Subject:
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Re: Is this sexism?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Sun, 1 Jul 2001 19:37:25 GMT
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Viewed:
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497 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Larry Pieniazek writes:
> I'm afraid I am still "stuck" on rights. (and I've been stuck on them
> before) What are rights? How do you know if you have them?
I think that the notion of rights is wholly a construct of man. You know you
have a right when the other humans around you generally agree that you do and
respect that right. The rights of people are not innate and they have been and
will continue to change over time. The US enumerates a few rights that we're
'supposed' to agree on, but in reality modern America agrees on a different set
of rights than those in the constitution (with some overlap).
> Let's talk about organisms other than man for a bit.
> How do you determine what rights are?
We can agree to grant rights to other entities. It seems, for instance, that
corporations have rights. It would be a ludicrous, but we could grant rights
to bacteria. I would prefer to grant animals (but not bacteria, at least not
generally) protected statuses rather than rights. I think that rights require
reciprocation.
> You could argue that they have the right to *try* to live,
> but in an ecosystem, other organisms tend to fight back if they are disease
> causing bacteria and that tends to "infringe" on their right to live and
> reproduce.
I don't think that's actually a sound reason for refusing to call it a right.
That seems to be like saying that you don't have the right to free speach
simply because a house robber has taped your mouth shut. You still have a
right, even if it's being infringed temporarily. Bacteria don't have rights
because we don't think they should.
> Rights seem like they ought to be absolutes.
You wrote this on the tail end of the coyote eating bunnies example, but I'm
not sure I know what you mean by absolute here. Do you mean only that (implied
below) if you have a right, it can not conflict with someone else's right(s)?
> Further, rights seem like something that only
> thinking reasoning moral creatures can even *have* in the first place.
Must you understand a right in order to have one? Understand it how well?
What about children and people with severe brain deficiencies? If you think a
human who is dumb as a hare can bear rights, why not the hare?
I still think that these rights are just compacts, and as such you don't really
have to understand them. In fact, I think they can be applied to you when you
don't want them and disagree that they should exist. When a substantial
majority have granted/taken a right, it applies to everyone, and those who
infringe on that right are subject to punishment from society. (In case it's
not clear, I think this is an ugly picture...it's just the only one I see.)
> Tying it back to people, if we agree that rights have to
> be absolute, there seems to be a contradiction in assigning
> anyone an unfettered, right to reproduce. Assigning someone
> that right seems likely to cause infringment on the rights
> of others
Who/how?
My main problem with a right to reproduce is that I think it should go _a right
to try to reproduce_. If you want to sire children, and you can't find a woman
who is game to help out, do you have a right of some kind? I think not.
Chris
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Is this sexism?
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| (...) Sorry if I wasn't being clear enough. I agree that rights aren't "what you are capable of enforcing". That's too amoral. Rights derive from fundamentals about people (and other reasoning moral beings should some be constructed or discovered in (...) (23 years ago, 1-Jul-01, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Is this sexism?
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| (...) <snipped all the rest because I'm not disagreeing with it> I'm afraid I am still "stuck" on rights. (and I've been stuck on them before) What are rights? How do you know if you have them? Let's talk about organisms other than man for a bit. (...) (23 years ago, 1-Jul-01, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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