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Subject: 
Re: Is this sexism?
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.off-topic.debate
Date: 
Sun, 1 Jul 2001 20:38:26 GMT
Viewed: 
505 times
  
In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Christopher L. Weeks writes:
In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Larry Pieniazek writes:

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.

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 the future). My point is that bacteria can't
have rights in and of themselves until someone or something able to reason
morally is able to discover and assign them, and in the purely wild state,
they are amoral and thus there are no rights.

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.

I agree completely with this. This is the outcome I am trying to get to.
Maybe I'm going down the wrong path...

++Lar



Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Is this sexism?
 
(...) 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 (...) (23 years ago, 1-Jul-01, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)

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