Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[mystery]

many ppl I see have a double standard about rights. or hypocrisy.

If the person likes something to be a particular way then OFTEN some sort of right is connected to that as justification for the desire.

If the person does not like something, often we hear something like "you don't have the right.."

As a group, we agree on rights, and membership in the group requires compliance with those agreements. Often poor management is the culprit of issues. It is easy to all agree that a person has a right to a home so as to not be homeless. Most do not agree to share any part of their own home to achieve this. In general, rights can not be demanded, only given. It is like respect, it can not be demanded but only given. Exactly the same concept.

Shame is a powerful force that is used to gain status and power. Example: tell others that they should give or they are bad. tell others that they have the right to receive or the others are bad. the ones that give will vote for such a leader out of fear of shame, the receivers will vote for the same out of greed and laziness.

Unless we support slavery no human has a right to another human or the human's production and efforts unless an agreement is made.

Another double standard would be:

side 1: you shall not live in this community unless you are willing to provide something for the homeless.
side 2: you shall not live in this community unless you are willing to earn a home.

Do we only pick equality as a goal when it fits our agenda? As a person without a home can not provide for the homeless that is not equal treatment. The sooner we learn that equality is not possible we can then move on to making workable programs based on truth.

[chewybrian]

I just gave you the objective basis for determining whether a claimed right exists. If you disagree that P has a right to X when those conditions are satisfied, then you simply misunderstand or are mis-using the term "rights."

I assume you mean this...

P has a right to X IFF
1. P is the first possessor of X, or
2. P acquired X via a chain of consent from the first possessor.

So, if I discovered a lake in the desert and planted a flag and claimed it as my own, then I have the "right" to withhold the water unless people pay me whatever I want for it?

Yep. But it depends upon the size of the lake. If it is small enough that you can exercise effective supervision and control over all of it, then it is all yours; you have a right to it.

So, others can just die of thirst so that you can have your 'right' to the only source of water?

Your claim boils down to might makes right. It may seem like an objective right (the right to property) because we have agreed to it and defended it for so long. But, in the end, it is just an opinion, no matter how widely held. We could just as easily decide that water is a human right, and that nobody gets to claim ownership of any body of water, even if we allow ownership of some other things. When enough of us feel that way, we will make it law and find the power to enforce the law. Then, we will have the 'right' to come and take your water from you.

I do have strong opinions about what should be rights, and they do overlap with what many others believe. Yet, I am not conceited enough to say that my opinions are objective facts. The ways in which we have agreed to work together in the past are not the only possible alternatives. We've developed better ways as time passed, and there is no reason to think we will not improve on today's methods in the future. We might even become enlightened enough to share and work for the common good without all the Ayn Rand crap that tries to make selfishness a virtue.

[chewybrian]

You are misapplying the word "right." If someone thinks morality doesn't exist they wouldn't go on to make claims on the basis of morality. If you don't think rights exist then you shouldn't simultaneously go on to make claims on the basis of rights, or to arbitrarily re-define "I want X" as "I have a right to X," at least if you're honest.

I do believe in morality and I do believe in rights. But, I am only admitting that my beliefs are just beliefs. Other people have different notions of morality, like being able to treat women as virtual slaves instead of equals. Other people have different notions of rights, like the right to possibly infect others with deadly disease because they choose not to get a vaccination or wear a mask.

Morality and rights are not given to us on a stone tablet from God. Neither are they out there, waiting to be discovered, like math or science. They are worked out over time through our individual and collective opinions and our ability and willingness to protect our opinions.

[Pattern-chaser]

I just gave you the objective basis for determining whether a claimed right exists. If you disagree that P has a right to X when those conditions are satisfied, then you simply misunderstand or are mis-using the term "rights."

I assume you mean this...

P has a right to X IFF
1. P is the first possessor of X, or
2. P acquired X via a chain of consent from the first possessor.

So, if I discovered a lake in the desert and planted a flag and claimed it as my own, then I have the "right" to withhold the water unless people pay me whatever I want for it?

Yep. But it depends upon the size of the lake. If it is small enough that you can exercise effective supervision and control over all of it, then it is all yours; you have a right to it.

So anything a man can take and hold is his? Did you want to tack 'might makes right' onto the end of this manifesto?

[Terrapin Station]

This is quite an artificial way to think about it. You rightly note that your construction fails

lol. I said no such thing. I merely pointed out that the only way to construe something like the normal connotation of "possession" where it wouldn't merely be a way that people think about such things is if we're talking about something that someone is grasping/holding onto, or that's attached to their body, say.

titles, fences, locks, borders, keys, security systems, safety deposits, IDs.

In no way can any of those things amount to anything like "possession" without people thinking about those things in a particular sort of way. They have no meaning on their own. And on their own (that is, aside from thinking about them in particular ways) they have no relationship to anyone that would resemble anything like a normal "possession" connotation.

[GE Morton]

Unless we support slavery no human has a right to another human or the human's production and efforts unless an agreement is made.

It's scary that not everyone agrees with that morally obvious point.

[GE Morton]

The first possessor the crosswalk is the government of the city in which it is located, and the citizens of that city. As the owner of the street and the crosswalk, the city may impose any conditions it wishes on their use, as may the owner of any other property. The pedestrian's right-of-way in a crosswalk was transferred to him by the owner, just as a tenant's right to occupy a rental apartment was conveyed to him by the landlord (in consideration for rent paid).

Yes, the right-of-way in your example is a real right. That is is codified in law is irrelevant; if a similar right was granted to pedestrians by the owner of a private roadway it would not not be a law, but still a real right.

This seems at odds with another statement you wrote:

And, no, societies are not "mutual pacts of cooperation." They are no such thing. That is the "organic fallacy." Modern, civilized societies are not tribes, "teams," giant co-ops, or "big happy families." They are not collectives of any kind. They are randomly-assembled groups of unrelated, independent, autonomous individuals who happen, by accident of birth, to occupy a common territory. They have no natural bonds, no shared personal histories, no common interests, no overriding concern with one another's welfare, and no a priori obligations to one another. Nor have they entered into any sort of pact or contract. Before you can consider these issues productively you have to discard that ubiquitous social myth.

If modern societies are not "collectives", how can they "possess" something collectively?

Modern societies are not collectives, but there are many collectives --- thousands --- within them, e.g., baseball teams, jazz bands, garden clubs, owners, managers, employees of a business, the Sierra Club and ACLU, etc. I take a "collective" to be any group of people working cooperatively at a common task or in pursuit of a common interest or goal. That is clearly not the case with modern societies. But even if a group of people are not a collective per that definition, they may collectively own something, a park, building, street, etc., if they've all (presumably) paid taxes to develop and maintain that thing.

In addition, "owners" cannot (and by right should not) impose any conditions they wish on the use of property. For example, if you own a house, you cannot impose the condition that if anyone walks in your yard without permission he is subject to being shot. If you shoot him, you will be guilty of murder.

Correct. The owner may impose any conditions he wishes, but not one that violates others' rights or imposes risks on third parties. That constraint applies to the exercise of all rights.

IN addition, your claim (to someone else) that forcing people to work for someone else is a form of slavery is incorrect. The street which was built by the city (on which the crosswalk is located) was built with taxes that were forcibly collected (which amounts to forcing someone to work for someone else). Are you saying that imposing right-of-way rules on the crosswalk is akin to slavery?

If the person forced to pay taxes does not use the streets, or receive any indirect benefit from them (such as being able to receive mail, deliveries, visitors) then forcing him to pay for them is indeed slavery. If he does benefit from them, then he has an obligation to help pay for them.

When we say we believe in a "right to health care" we are saying we feel obliged to help pay for other people's health care. Perhaps you don't want to be obligated to help your ill fellow citizens, but such an obligation is no more like slavery than the obligation to avoid driving someone else's car. Both are simply culturally constituted obligations, which, seen from the flip side of the coin, are called "rights".

Heh. That is analogous to an argument made by G.A Cohen, among others. But the difference between taking another's property and refusing to give someone your property is quite obvious and morally decisive: the former inflicts a loss or injury on another moral agent; the latter does not. And, of course, I've never before heard anyone claim that prohibiting stealing constitutes slavery. Who is enslaved --- the would-be thief? Forcing someone to work for another's benefit clearly does.

[GE Morton]

P.S.:

When we say we believe in a "right to health care" we are saying we feel obliged to help pay for other people's health care.

Anyone who uses the noun "right" with that meaning in mind is mis-using the term. Rights have nothing to do with anyone's feelings.

[Gertie]

Unless we support slavery no human has a right to another human or the human's production and efforts unless an agreement is made.

It's scary that not everyone agrees with that morally obvious point.

Nearly everybody now agrees human slavery is wrong. A couple of hundred years ago the numbers would've been different, and it probably wouldn't have been a morally obvious point to you and I if we'd lived then. In the dominant western societies most people (women and black people) then had a legal status akin to property. Now we've extended our notion of who has what rights, even to some other species, and in areas beyond property ownership.

We could do this because Rights aren't a fixed thing, they don't exist independantly of humans 'out there' somewhere for us to discover, and once we've found them that's settled. People invented the concept of Rights, and a very good concept it is too. Because it offers a notion of certain entitlements and protections no matter what the person/s in charge thinks (including in democracies where the 'tyranny of the majority' is an issue).

That some peeps at some point came up with the concept of 'Natural Rights' and defined it such n such a way, doesn't mean that's the only way which Rights can be conceptualised, and it isn't. Natural Rights have no special status above any other notion of rights. And so it's possible to have a concept of human rights which covers issues like slavery or homelessness. On the basis we agree it ought to be a Human Right, not on the basis that we can discover its objective truth, reality or justification 'out there'.

If we want to philosophically ground Rights, or a particular Right, in Morality, then we have to make a moral case, and again run into the problem of Morality being a human made concept not discoverable 'out there'.

[AverageBozo]

P.S.:

When we say we believe in a "right to health care" we are saying we feel obliged to help pay for other people's health care.

Anyone who uses the noun "right" with that meaning in mind is mis-using the term. Rights have nothing to do with anyone's feelings.

GE,

Try reading the sentence with “are” substituted for “feel”. I don’t want to speak for Bruce, but I believe he would be OK with my edit.

[Ecurb]

Correct. The owner may impose any conditions he wishes, but not one that violates others' rights or imposes risks on third parties. That constraint applies to the exercise of all rights.

Many "rights' violate others' rights or impose risks on third paries. Because rights are nothing more than obligations (on the part of others), those obliged are constrained. For example the owner of land may violate someone else's right to freedom of movement. The owner of a copyright may violate someone else's freedom of speech.


L wrote:

Now the obvious answer is that there is such a thing as private property which is recognized by human beings and instantiated in their civilizations. Presumably you think that it is merely a matter of subjective thought with no correlate to reality (such as the ontological fact of scarcity). That's an ..interesting idea. I'll stick with the commonsensical notion that a rational, tool-using species appropriates and recognizes property.

The reality is that notions of private property are culturally constituted and far from universal. In many societies (for example) it was thought natural to "own" other humans, and (some would probably have argued) if the state freed your slaves that was itself akin to slavery (the state would be eliminating your property). In most hunting / gathering cultures, private property is practically unknown. The Vikings thought one's property was what one built with his own hands and could not be transfered: hence the funeral pyre involving a buning ship. Perhaps you have heard of Communism, in which private property does not exist.

So much for the notion that property is a natural feature of human culture. None of this, of course, suggests that property rights (or other rights) are merely a matter of subjective whim. When (for example) Courts consider whether rights have been violated they look to legal precedents, standard moral tenets, and the intellectual history of the development of those rights -- as they should.

[GE Morton]

P.S.:

When we say we believe in a "right to health care" we are saying we feel obliged to help pay for other people's health care.

Anyone who uses the noun "right" with that meaning in mind is mis-using the term. Rights have nothing to do with anyone's feelings.

GE,

Try reading the sentence with “are” substituted for “feel”. I don’t want to speak for Bruce, but I believe he would be OK with my edit.

Well, that would transform the sentence into a very different proposition. If you wish to argue that someone is obligated to do something, you're obliged to show the source of that obligation, to present a moral argument. Feelings, of course, require no such justification.

I'm pretty sure Ecurb meant what he said, but he can answer that for himself.

[Ecurb]

Well, that would transform the sentence into a very different proposition. If you wish to argue that someone is obligated to do something, you're obliged to show the source of that obligation, to present a moral argument. Feelings, of course, require no such justification.

I'm pretty sure Ecurb meant what he said, but he can answer that for himself.

Yes, I did mean what I wrote.

Here's one definition of "feel" in my dictionary: "to have as an intellectual conviction or opinion". Is that the sense in which you object to my use of "feel"? Or were you ignorant of that standard definition?

[GE Morton]

Many "rights' violate others' rights or impose risks on third parties. Because rights are nothing more than obligations (on the part of others), those obliged are constrained. For example the owner of land may violate someone else's right to freedom of movement. The owner of a copyright may violate someone else's freedom of speech.

That is question-begging. That freedom of movement --- which is the right to travel as one wishes --- is itself constrained by others' rights. There is no right to travel on others' property, any more than there is a right to move your fist into another's nose.

The same for freedom of speech. It doesn't embrace speech which entails theft of another's property. The test is always the same --- you have rights to things you've acquired, or to do things you wish to do, as long as you inflict no losses or injuries on other moral agents.

The reality is that notions of private property are culturally constituted and far from universal. In many societies (for example) it was thought natural to "own" other humans, and (some would probably have argued) if the state freed your slaves that was itself akin to slavery (the state would be eliminating your property).

When the British abolished slavery throughout the empire in 1833 Parliament appropriated £20,000,000 --- a massive sum at the time --- to compensate slave owners.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_A ... n_Act_1833

Yes, what may be counted as private property differs from place to place and from time to time, due to differences in the economies or differing views of human nature, but ALL cultures recognize private property in at least some goods. And whatever may be counted in a particular culture, ownership is virtually always determined by the first possession rule.

[Ecurb]

That is question-begging. That freedom of movement --- which is the right to travel as one wishes --- is itself constrained by others' rights. There is no right to travel on others' property, any more than there is a right to move your fist into another's nose.

The same for freedom of speech. It doesn't embrace speech which entails theft of another's property. The test is always the same --- you have rights to things you've acquired, or to do things you wish to do, as long as you inflict no losses or injuries on other moral agents.

The reality is that notions of private property are culturally constituted and far from universal. In many societies (for example) it was thought natural to "own" other humans, and (some would probably have argued) if the state freed your slaves that was itself akin to slavery (the state would be eliminating your property).

When the British abolished slavery throughout the empire in 1833 Parliament appropriated £20,000,000 --- a massive sum at the time --- to compensate slave owners.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_A ... n_Act_1833

Yes, what may be counted as private property differs from place to place and from time to time, due to differences in the economies or differing views of human nature, but ALL cultures recognize private property in at least some goods. And whatever may be counted in a particular culture, ownership is virtually always determined by the first possession rule.

Why are you arguing? You are simply restating what I averred -- that many "rights" are in conflict with many other "rights". This is obvious and inarguable. What is arguable is the extent to which one supposed "right" should take precedent over another. Which is more important, the right to freedom of movement, or the property rights of land owners? Which should rule, the right to freedom of speech or copyright ownership of certain kinds of speech? These are complex issues that sometimes confront the courts. Should JK Rowling be allowed to prevent writers of "fan fiction" from writing stories about characters she invented? Or should (as I would argue) copyrights apply only to attempts to make money from copyrighted material?

One of my friends directs high school plays. Did you know that high schools (none of which are making money from their dramatic performances) must pay royalties to perform a copyrighted play, even when the author has been dead for 40 or 50 years? Isn't this an abridgement of freedom of speech?

In addition, if "rights" are so natural, why did the U.S. find it necessary to codify them in the Bill of Rights? Needless (I hope) to say, governments often established religions and persecuted those practicing other religions; freedom of speech has often been abridged, and criticizing the church or the government has often been prosecuted; the supposed "right" to bear arms has been limited in most civilized nations around the world. This would seem to cast doubt on the notion that "rights' are somehow natural, God given, or universal, and to support my notion that they are culturally constituted (although not "subjective").

Here's a link to information on the John Zenger case. https://www.ushistory.org/us/7c.asp

Zenger was a newspaper publisher n Boston, who criticized the royal governor. Back in those days, any criticism of the Crown was illegal and thought to be libel. Zinger was defended by Andrew Hamilton, who argued that a person could not be libelled if the charges against him were true -- an important victory for Free Speech, and further evidence that "rights' change through the centuries.