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

[Leontiskos]

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.

Yet, I am not conceited enough to say that my opinions are objective facts.

My point is quite simple. If someone says that they have a morality or a theory of rights, but doesn't think their theories establish any norms for general human behavior, then they don't actually have a theory of morality or rights. In that case they are just using words incorrectly.

You don't have to claim that your theory of rights is an objective fact or that it is infallible, but you do have to hold it as something that applies to and governs people other than yourself. If you are only concerned with your own behavior then you have no need to talk about rights. So now we have two conditions for rights, one from my last post and one from this post:

A. Rights-claims cannot be made on the basis of things like fiat, power, majority, opinion, or mere belief. Rights are the sort of things that exist independent of such considerations, and must be grounded in something deeper, such as justice or equity.

B. Rights-claims must be normative for people other than yourself.

[Leontiskos]

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.

Right, which is why your construction of "thinking" fails in that case.

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.

Nope. In the same way that holding an object is a form of possession which transcends mere thought, having the combination to a safe is also a form of possession which transcends mere thought. Or a key, a fence, a title, etc.

[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.

Right, which is why your construction of "thinking" fails in that case.

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.

Nope. In the same way that holding an object is a form of possession which transcends mere thought, having the combination to a safe is also a form of possession which transcends mere thought. Or a key, a fence, a title, etc.

There's a sense of "possession" which amounts to "having something in your physical grasp" or "having something attached to you," and regardless of whether anyone is thinking about anything that way, it's going to be a fact that someone has something in their physical grasp or has something attached to them, right?

Now, what's the (conventional) sense of "possession" where regardless of whether anyone is thinking about anything in a particular way, it's a fact that a person has a particular relationship with something like a safe or a fence or whatever?

[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.

Yet, I am not conceited enough to say that my opinions are objective facts.

My point is quite simple. If someone says that they have a morality or a theory of rights, but doesn't think their theories establish any norms for general human behavior, then they don't actually have a theory of morality or rights. In that case they are just using words incorrectly.

You don't have to claim that your theory of rights is an objective fact or that it is infallible, but you do have to hold it as something that applies to and governs people other than yourself. If you are only concerned with your own behavior then you have no need to talk about rights. So now we have two conditions for rights, one from my last post and one from this post:

A. Rights-claims cannot be made on the basis of things like fiat, power, majority, opinion, or mere belief. Rights are the sort of things that exist independent of such considerations, and must be grounded in something deeper, such as justice or equity.

B. Rights-claims must be normative for people other than yourself.

I agree with what you just said. I am stumbling over the wording that rights *exist*. I took that to mean they are waiting to be discovered in the way Newton discovered some law of physics. It's not as if they exist in a certain form that would have been discovered by someone else if I had not stumbled upon them, in the way that Newton's discoveries were just waiting to be found.

Yes, they must be grounded in some notion like justice if I am going to say they should be a right. But, they are still not objective and unchanging facts that we discover. We need to argue for them and fight to protect them.

[GE Morton]

Why are you arguing? You are simply restating what I averred -- that many "rights" are in conflict with many other "rights".

No, that is not the case, and not what I stated. You missed the point. There is no conflict between, say, my right to travel and your property right --- because my right to travel does not extend to traveling on someone else's property. "My right to swing my arm ends where your nose begins."

The scope of all rights is limited by others' rights. Hence there are no conflicts among rights, and never any need to prioritize rights.

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?

US copyright law, generally speaking, only restricts capitalizing on others' copyrighted work. In general, non-commercial and educational uses are considered "fair uses." The aim of copyright law is to prevent others from diverting revenue that would otherwise go to the author of the work.

https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/more-info.html

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?

Sounds like a case that might be ripe for litigation. The school should hire a copyright lawyer to look into it.

In addition, if "rights" are so natural, why did the U.S. find it necessary to codify them in the Bill of Rights?

Methinks you don't understand what is a "natural right."

One has a right to anything of which he is the first possessor, or acquired via a chain of consent from the first possessor. One may become a first possessor in three ways:

1. By creating the thing claimed, e.g., building a house, fashioning a spear, writing a novel.
2. By discovering something previously unknown to others (and from which they therefore derived no benefits), such as finding a mineral deposit or discovering a cheaper or more efficient method of refining the ore.
3. Bringing it with you into the world, such as your life, your body and its parts, your native talents and abilities, i.e., your natural possessions. These latter are the "natural rights." ("Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness").

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").

All rights are vulnerable to violation, and governments historically have been the most brazen, prolific, and destructive violators. Being natural doesn't entail being inviolable or invulnerable.

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.

The libel exception, and truth as a defense against it in common law, long precedes that case. But that principle was abandoned in a "star chamber" proceeding in England in the early 17th century, and re-instated by Parliament in 1843. The Zenger case set a precedent for American interpretations of the common law on that subject.

[Leontiskos]

My point is quite simple. If someone says that they have a morality or a theory of rights, but doesn't think their theories establish any norms for general human behavior, then they don't actually have a theory of morality or rights. In that case they are just using words incorrectly.

You don't have to claim that your theory of rights is an objective fact or that it is infallible, but you do have to hold it as something that applies to and governs people other than yourself. If you are only concerned with your own behavior then you have no need to talk about rights. So now we have two conditions for rights, one from my last post and one from this post:

A. Rights-claims cannot be made on the basis of things like fiat, power, majority, opinion, or mere belief. Rights are the sort of things that exist independent of such considerations, and must be grounded in something deeper, such as justice or equity.

B. Rights-claims must be normative for people other than yourself.

I agree with what you just said. I am stumbling over the wording that rights *exist*. I took that to mean they are waiting to be discovered in the way Newton discovered some law of physics. It's not as if they exist in a certain form that would have been discovered by someone else if I had not stumbled upon them, in the way that Newton's discoveries were just waiting to be found.

Yes, they must be grounded in some notion like justice if I am going to say they should be a right. But, they are still not objective and unchanging facts that we discover. We need to argue for them and fight to protect them.

Okay, fair enough. I think they must have independent existence in some sense. If they didn't then they would collapse back into contingent personal whim.

I am personally comfortable with the Newtonian parallel. For example, slavery really is unjust, movement from slave-holding societies to societies which prohibit slavery was objective progress, and it really was inevitable that we would eventually come to understand the injustice of slavery. At least in those limited ways justice and physics are parallel.

We need to argue for them and fight to protect them.

True, but I think this is because justice can be contrary to human interests in a way that physics is not. That said, there are cases where science and ideology compete. Evolution is a good contemporary example, but there are other examples, such as the dialectical materialism of the Marxists which was essentially a metaphysical program grounded in ideology that had an enormous influence on the sciences.

In any case, I think you are right. Rights are things that need to be guarded over time. But as Kant pointed out, even those who would like to steal another person's car simultaneously affirm the right that prevents others from stealing their car. In many such cases there is a mentality of, "Rights for me, but not for thee," rather than a full-scale assault on rights.

[Leontiskos]

Nope. In the same way that holding an object is a form of possession which transcends mere thought, having the combination to a safe is also a form of possession which transcends mere thought. Or a key, a fence, a title, etc.

There's a sense of "possession" which amounts to "having something in your physical grasp" or "having something attached to you," and regardless of whether anyone is thinking about anything that way, it's going to be a fact that someone has something in their physical grasp or has something attached to them, right?

Now, what's the (conventional) sense of "possession" where regardless of whether anyone is thinking about anything in a particular way, it's a fact that a person has a particular relationship with something like a safe or a fence or whatever?

They have a particular relationship to the contents of the safe because they possess a unique ability to access the safe, namely via the combination.

[GE Morton]

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

No one will die of thirst because of my discovery and possession of the lake. If they are dying it will be because they had no other source of water, even before I discovered the lake. Had I not discovered it they would continue to die. But now, due to my discovery, they have a means to avoid dying, i.e., by paying me for 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.

Well, sure. We could also "decide" that everybody has "rights" to a new Escalade, a summer home in the idyllic location of their choice, and free air travel to anywhere they wish to go. I.e., we can re-define the word "rights" to mean "wishes."

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.

Yup. Governments can and regularly do conjure fiat "rights" from thin air and enforce them. But as I've said, such "frights" have no moral basis and usually violate real rights.

[Ecurb]

Why are you arguing? You are simply restating what I averred -- that many "rights" are in conflict with many other "rights".

No, that is not the case, and not what I stated. You missed the point. There is no conflict between, say, my right to travel and your property right --- because my right to travel does not extend to traveling on someone else's property. "My right to swing my arm ends where your nose begins."

The scope of all rights is limited by others' rights. Hence there are no conflicts among rights, and never any need to prioritize rights.

I give up. Now you are simply dissembling. "The scope of all rights is limited by others' rights" and "many rights are in conflict with other rights" is a distinction without a difference.

[Terrapin Station]

Nope. In the same way that holding an object is a form of possession which transcends mere thought, having the combination to a safe is also a form of possession which transcends mere thought. Or a key, a fence, a title, etc.

There's a sense of "possession" which amounts to "having something in your physical grasp" or "having something attached to you," and regardless of whether anyone is thinking about anything that way, it's going to be a fact that someone has something in their physical grasp or has something attached to them, right?

Now, what's the (conventional) sense of "possession" where regardless of whether anyone is thinking about anything in a particular way, it's a fact that a person has a particular relationship with something like a safe or a fence or whatever?

They have a particular relationship to the contents of the safe because they possess a unique ability to access the safe, namely via the combination.

Right, and completely independently of any thought about it, if only one person has the combination to a safe, then they must be the owner / possessor of the safe (and not, for example, someone who stole the combination prior to someone obtaining the combination, who, via thought, people would consider the owner) because ________?

What goes in the blank there?

[GE Morton]

So anything a man can take and hold is his?

Provided he didn't take it from anyone else, yes.

Did you want to tack 'might makes right' onto the end of this manifesto?

Well, no. What makes the taking morally right is the fact that he inflicted no loss or injury on others with his taking. "Might makes right" arguments are those which attempt to justify takings which do inflict losses or injuries on others.

[GE Morton]

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.

Broadening the class of entities who have rights does not constitute a change in the meaning of "rights." That meaning hasn't changed in a very long time. The expansion of the rights-holding class to include Africans, women, and even some animals turns on our evolved understanding of what constitutes a moral agent. If we someday encounter Betelgeusians who we decide qualify as moral agents then they will have rights too, and the word will mean the same thing.

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).

I agree. The notion of rights is certainly a human invention. So are the rules of baseball and relativity theory. But whether a right exists or not is an objective matter, just as is whether a fly ball in baseball is fair or foul, or whether mass increases with velocity.

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.

True. One can always "re-conceptualize" --- i.e., propose some idiosyncratic meaning for --- any word. That tends to make communication difficult. Those with new ideas should coin new words to denote them. And, of course, "rights" as classically understood have a clear and palpable moral basis. Most of the "re-conceptualizations" which have been proffered are attempts to rationalize violating that moral constraint.

Natural Rights have no special status above any other notion of rights.

That's true. A "natural right" is simply one's right to one's natural possessions --- one's life, one's body, one's native talents, etc. But they have the same basis and the same moral status as other ("common") rights.

If we want to philosophically ground Rights, or a particular Right, in Morality, then we have to make a moral case . . .

Indeed we do. The moral precept upon which the classical conception of rights rests is that one ought not inflict losses or injuries on other moral agents. But of course, many --- robbers, thieves, murderers, rapists, fraudsters, plunderers and pillagers, conquerors, and most governments --- reject that precept.

[GE Morton]

I give up. Now you are simply dissembling. "The scope of all rights is limited by others' rights" and "many rights are in conflict with other rights" is a distinction without a difference.

I'm amazed you can't see that difference. Perhaps an example will help. I own a house on a lot with fixed boundaries. My property right extends to those boundaries and no further. My neighbor has a similar house on a similar lot. His property rights, similarly, extend to my property line and no further. There is no conflict between his property rights and mine. Or if there is, what is it?

Rights are constrained at the point where their exercise would inflict loss or injuries on other people. Hence I can't enlarge my vegetable garden by extending it beyond my property line, since I then inflict loss or injury on my neighbor.

You seem to imagine that rights are, or must be, unlimited, i.e., if I have a property right, then I own the entire earth. No right has ever been so understood.

[Leontiskos]

Nope. In the same way that holding an object is a form of possession which transcends mere thought, having the combination to a safe is also a form of possession which transcends mere thought. Or a key, a fence, a title, etc.

There's a sense of "possession" which amounts to "having something in your physical grasp" or "having something attached to you," and regardless of whether anyone is thinking about anything that way, it's going to be a fact that someone has something in their physical grasp or has something attached to them, right?

Now, what's the (conventional) sense of "possession" where regardless of whether anyone is thinking about anything in a particular way, it's a fact that a person has a particular relationship with something like a safe or a fence or whatever?

They have a particular relationship to the contents of the safe because they possess a unique ability to access the safe, namely via the combination.

Right, and completely independently of any thought about it, if only one person has the combination to a safe, then they must be the owner / possessor of the safe (and not, for example, someone who stole the combination prior to someone obtaining the combination, who, via thought, people would consider the owner) because ________?

What goes in the blank there?

You asked what the "sense of possession" was. I told you. There is a cultural institution whereby the property in safes that we do not have access to is not ours.

As to your larger question, it was addressed in my first post to you, which you no doubt failed to read (link).

[mystery]

Gentlemen, and ladies,

Never forget that Stalin was, in fact, a Socialist. Furthermore, Stalin believed is socialism so strongly that he was willing to imprison / exterminate 18-million people that he thought MIGHT disagree with him, in order to force his pathological belief on them.

No, Stalin presided over a corrupted version of communism with a caste system and dictatorial powers added. Real socialists are found in the countries where people report that they are the happiest in the world. These reports are not due to censorship, as when Stalin or Putin gets 98% of the vote in a 'free and fair' election.

Why are they relatively happier than the rest of us? It is because they have the best of both worlds. They are free to speak their minds and pursue happiness in their own way. Yet, they are also free of the worry that a mistake or misfortune might take everything from them. They don't face bankruptcy (or even preventable death!) if they get sick. They have opportunities for education, health care and housing that are not always available to all of us here in the U.S.

Tax and spend is not a virtual gulag for them. Rather it is the best possible combination of freedom and security.

Interesting... I wonder why more of the world's enlightened people aren't clamoring to get into Finland, Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland, Norway...

Do you have a theory on why?