Subject:
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Re: Nature of rights? (was: Did animals have rights before we invented rights?)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Mon, 2 Jul 2001 20:31:31 GMT
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Viewed:
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714 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Christopher L. Weeks writes:
> In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Larry Pieniazek writes:
>
> > My point is that rights
> > don't conflict, and that animals do not use a system of rights in working
> > things out. They are amoral. Like I said to Dan, if you disagree, your
> > understanding of rights, in my opinion, is suspect. By extension,
> > anything you say ABOUT rights is therefore suspect as well, in
> > my opinion.
> It sounds like you're were going somewhere good and have given up Larry.
Well, yes and no.
If you know or can establish that the person you are debating has a
fundamentally different view of a basic principle, and has a track record of
never changing their mind, it may be that the "best" you can do is get that
difference described as accurately as possible so that it is clear exactly
what it is to all concerned, and then let it go. All you can hope for is
that the observers will make up their own minds, armed with a clearer
understanding of the distinction.
But to the point I made... if the premise is flawed, then the conclusion is
suspect as well. Hence I don't, for example, trust anything anyone who is an
adherent of Marxism says about protecting my rights because they have flawed
(according to me) premises in the area of rights, they view my labor and
capital output as their common property to do with as they see fit.
> I assume (hope!) your goal in all this was not to get to the point where you
> could just tell folks that they don't understand rights. I think there
> must be
> common elements of what makes a 'right' in all of our understandings. Dan,
> Scott, Kirby, and Ross seem to be agreeing to some kind of 'natural rights'
> that mean something entirely different than what I (and I think you) mean by
> the word.
>
> If I could hear from them what it is that makes something a natural right,
> maybe that would clear things up a little. The only potential objection that >I
> have at the outset of this, is that it seemed sometimes that people were
> defining these natural rights simply as the ability to act a way. If 'natural
> right' and 'ability' are synonyms, then what's the point in using a more
> complicated phrase to discuss it? There must, it seems, be something that
> distinguishes between these rights and abilities.
Yes! That's the crux of the issue. A right is not conferred merely by the
ability to carry out an action. I know you take issue with the catch phrase
"might makes right"... and I agree that it's sloppy, and that it may not
make complete sense when applied to amoral creatures, but it still does
capture the shorthand essense of my issue with right==ability. A mugger does
not have the right to mug me just because he can get away with it.
> And I think I don't just agree with you (Larry) on rights either. Correct me
> if I'm wrong, but you seem to believe that rights are immutible or
> not based on
> the context of culture. I think they clearly are.
Yes, we disagree here. I think there are indeed some fundamental rights that
are immutable. Briefly, if there are no immutable rights then we seem to be
into a "whatever the culture decides your rights can be, they are" sort of
scenario. I see that as a slippery slope that quickly leads to "might makes
right", because if you disagree when the culture votes that you get put to
death for not rubbing blue mud in your belly button, all you can do is fight
back when they come to try to rub you out.
Maybe I'm seeing it wrong, maybe there's something there in non immutable
rights that doesn't end up in that scenario.
I freely admit that when I've dug into this before (this does come up
periodically) I was unable to provide a firm axiom to justify the notion of
natural rights (as I define them) and did get rather wrapped around the axle
on how to tell which rights were natural and which were cultural...
++Lar
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