I don’t believe such rights are inherent in human nature, we made them up out of whole cloth. Nature did not bequeth us anything but a brutal set of limitations and the means to overcome them. I believe such rights exist, but even if they didn’t, why should that stop us? When you and I were born, there were no footprints on the Moon, but now there are. Because we have not been, we cannot become?
Rights-based moral theory holds that certain universal rights are held by all people simply in virtue of their being persons. The arguments to support this view usually claim something like that logical consistency requires that one respect other agents in certain ways in order to coherently view oneself as an agent. Modern views of this sort tend to fall into various neo-Kantian camps. I can provide more detail if you like, but I’ll have to brush up on the subject a bit. Been a long time since I dropped out of grad school. There are also various natural rights theories, but they tend to be mostly just assertions that various natural rights exist, typically claiming that the existence of such rights is self-evident, etc. Not a very compelling argument for anyone not inclined to believe the theory in the first place. The various developments of Kantian thought are much more difficult to dismiss.
Personally, I’m a consequentialist. My view is that insofar as rights exist at all, they’re merely a shorthand for describing some of the rules it turns out it’s best build society upon in order to maximize utility. Rights don’t really exist in and of themselves.
It’s an off-the-top-of-my-head-at-2a.m.-complete list. I feel comfortably adding to it if I need to, but for now it’ll do.
Well, his theory is that people tend to basic needs first then go onto other needs. At the bottom is the stuff of survival. I think everybody who exists in a society, if it’s worth calling a society, has the right to the bottom rung of the needs hierarchy. If your people can’t feed, clothe and shelter themselves, you’ll never have a society because if you reduce people to that very basic level, they aren’t really part of the society. And I realize that yes, this rules out an AWFUL lot of current governments and almost all government of the past, and so what? The history of mankind is one long abject failure where social justice is concerned, so far as I am concerned.
I do not grade on a curve where human rights are concerned.
If your theory of how “rights” are determined is correct, why shouldn’t I advance the Dating of Helen Hunt as a right for me? I REALLY REALLY would have wanted it.
I don’t understand your second sentence at all. I agree that not all obligations need to derive from rights, but the reverse is surely true under your theory: that all rights create obligations. Yes?
Well, that’s nice. But it’s not an argument. Look, in philosophy class you can assert anything you want, but if you want to be taken seriously you have to actually make a case for what you’re saying. You seem to be under the impression that because people disagree over what moral theory is correct, that all possible moral theories are somehow on an equal footing. That’s completely ridiculous.
The position you’ve actually been advancing in this thread entails that there is no such thing as a moral obligation, that anyone can do anything they please so long as they have the physical force to back it up. It’s a pure ‘might makes right’ view. This is in direct contradiction with the moral approbation you express in many other threads (just for example, you recently expressed a moral criticism of Foley and various GOP congresscritters over the page scandal). On what grounds can you say that what they did was wrong?
Yeah but before we colectively decided you couldn’t do “x” anymore, you could. So wasn’t it a right then?
I think people are free and should be free to do whatever they damned well please as long as it doens’t degrade the common good. For society to collectively decide you can’t do something the onus is on society to show that doing it endangers the society’s functioning.
Yeah, like the whole Goy Marriage thing.
OK, I grant that the Helen Hunt theory is not exactly buttressed with as strong support as other propositions here are.
But I believe I can equally strongly make the case that unborn children have a right to live. You cannot dismiss that argument by mere handwaving. Emperically, it is every bit as valid as the “everyone has a right to eat” business.
Well, I could point out that Foley violated the law, which IS a recognized source of agreed-upon moral authority.
You could make a case that cannot be dismissed by mere handwaving, true. A convincing argument would be required to dismiss it. But you haven’t produced a convincing argument against any of the moral propositions in this thread. You haven’t produced any argument at all. You’ve just waved your hand and demanded there be a coercive backup to any proposed right, without any argument to support your view.
Well, you could, but I could point out that your OP in that thread indicated that you didn’t know if Foley had violated the law, yet critisized him anyways, and that you were also critical of Hastert and others who have not violated any sort of law.
And the law is not a source of agreed-upon moral authority. It is merely a set of rules which is backed up by physical coercion. Various parts of that set of rules have some relation to consensus views on morality, but the vast majority is pretty much completely disconnected.
Yes, because I can see twelve moves ahead here, having had arguments like this since freshman year of college, if not before.
The “coercive backup” is the only objectively supportable definition of “right.” Everything else requires appeal to propositions that may, or may not, be shared and agreed upon by your audience. Now, there are certainly a variety of arguments that may be applied to various theories of “rights,” and I agree that not all are of equal strength. But they all share the flaw that they depend on your assertion and supporting argument, not an objective measurement.
Yes, I used the subjunctive because, as you intuit, I was willing to be critical of Foley based on a subjective moral stance: my own. But while I am willing to demand that my political party make an effort to mirror my subjective moral stance, can I actually make my subjective moral stance into public policy? I am constantly told the answer is no, at least when it comes to abortion, moments of silence in school, and similar issues. It seems faintly incongurous to call upon my moral approbation when they seem likely to support your cause du jour and summarily reject them as oppressive when you don’t like them.
And the law is not a source of agreed-upon moral authority. It is merely a set of rules which is backed up by physical coercion. Various parts of that set of rules have some relation to consensus views on morality, but the vast majority is pretty much completely disconnected.
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And this is what you consistently fail to see. What things have coercive backup is a matter of objective fact, but that such things are rights in any moral sense is a proposition every bit as subjective as any of those you are arguing against. You do not have a uniquely objective view here.
Well, I think we have two phenomena going on here. First, in your particular case your moral views are heavily based on Catholic doctrine, and there is a great deal of resistance to enshrining religious doctrine of any type into law. Second, I don’t think people who oppose enshrining your views in law do so because those views are your subjective moral views, but because your opponents think those views are wrong. They are, after all, attempting to enshrine their own moral views into law instead. It is perhaps unfortunate that the religious right in the US has succeeded so well in framing most of these debates as issues of morality vs. secularity. In fact they are issues of competing moral viewpoints.
To return to the subject of this thread, it is clear that the statement in the OP is not speaking of legal rights. It is blatantly obvious that the statement is making an appeal to morality. My point is and has been that it’s just silly to respond to such a statement by saying “oh, it’s not talking about a legal right and is hence meaningless.” To respond in such a way is to simply miss the point of the statement. It’s like if I issued a statement saying that it’s unsportsmanlike to run up the score in a high school football game, and you responded that there’s no rule against running up the score. That’s not a response to my statement. My statement had to do with sportsmanship, about which the rulebook has almost nothing to say. When someone says that people have a basic human right to food, they’re making a moral claim, not a legal claim. Pointing out that there’s no such legal right is hardly going to come as news to the person making the claim. The guy was saying, essentially, that us rich people have a moral obligation to feed the starving. Agree or disagree with that, but pointing out that there’s no such legal obligation is just missing the point.
Not so much missing the point as evading, as the matador evades the bull’s horns in a perfect veronica. Spiffy post, by the by. Pip pip.
Yes, but most people would agree that Helen Hunt has an equal, in fact, far superior human right, the Right Not To Date Bricker. What right would you advance to squelch the rights of starving, homeless children? The Right Not To Care?
Really? That’s not what I get from it. To me it carries a sense of moral obligation. We are morally compelled to generally help the kid keep from starving where we can, and to create a world where kids don’t starve. Kids may still starve, but it’s utterly and completely wrong that they starve, and anyone who stands in the way of their relief can safely be consigned to the legions of amoral brutes who walk among us pretending to be human.
OK, first of all… HEY! Granted, I may not have graced the pages of GQ magazine, but I truly believe that had Ms. Hunt simply gotten to know me, she’d have been very positive about a relationship.
But your point in the abstract is well-taken. I have acknowledged that the Date Helen Hunt thing was perhaps not the best example of the point I’m making.
I cannot argue with your view of our moral compulsion; I absolutely agree - personally - that it exists. And I agree that we are personally bound to create a world where kids don’t starve.
But you see what’s happened here? We’ve changed the focus: from saying the kids have a RIGHT not to starve, which is a useless sentiment – to saying that we who have the means have a moral obligation to see that they don’t. The onus is correctly placed on those that have the means to execute it.
No. It’s FRAMING the point in a useful fashion. I don’t think it’s either correct or useful to say that a person, starving or otherwise, has a moral claim on my food. On the other hand, it is absolutely correct, and useful, to say that I have a moral obligation to help a starving person if I can.
Do you see the distinction?
Not really. Isn’t any real distinction except that of circumstance. A starving person also has an obligation to help the starving, as his circumstances change. Similarly, a well-fed person has no right to forcibly take the food of a starving person and a starving person has no right to forcibly take the food from a well-fed person. But the first is reprehensible and the second entirely understandable. Situational, as always. Relative, as always. The search of absolutes only leads futher into the Fog.
Look, I agree, rights talk used in this way is useless at best, if for no other reason than that nobody much believes in positive rights. The guy would do far better to use a different sort of argument to try to establish the moral obligation to help the starving.
But what does that have to do with your dismissive attitude towards moral rights talk? You attempt to brush it off as meaningless, and yet it’s probably the single most prevalent way people think about moral theory outside of religiously based views. The general epistemelogical problems of moral theory affect all views of morality, including yours. They are not unique to moral rights views, and your views are not immune to them. Hiding behind the legal system is, as I explained above, completely missing the point. People talking about moral rights are trying to make points about moral theory, not about the law, and pointing out that the law doesn’t parallel their moral views is, as I’ve said, no more relevant than that the rules of a game don’t address all aspects of sportsmanship.
If you had come into this thread and said, “Look, this isn’t a useful way to argue for a moral obligation to feed the starving. Asserting moral rights implies x, y, and z, and yet the situation in question doesn’t display those characteristics, but is instead a, b, and c. Our moral obligation to feed the starving doesn’t derive from the right of the starving to food, but instead these other considerations, which I will elaborate upon,” then I wouldn’t have had a word to say against you. But that’s not what you did. You came into the thread, dismissed moral debate as useless, and said that all that matters is the law. Clearly you yourself do not really believe that moral matters are irrelevant. If we lived in a lawless anarchy, you’d still argue that I have a moral obligation not to kill you and rape your wife. I shouldn’t do those things, even if the state won’t punish me if I do. Enforceability has nothing to do with why I ought not do them. Your “right” (whether that be a natural right or some sort of derived “right” based on a consequentialist view like mine) to life is why I ought not do that.
So there’s really no reason to come into a thread debating moral theory and crap over the debate by insisting that moral debate is meaningless (when you yourself don’t believe that) and that we should restrict ourselves to only legal discussions.
But the concept of the human right has to exist for anyone to be interested in enforcing the legal right. So while it may be meaningless in practice to say “you have a human right to be treated as equal even if you are a woman” if you live in Saudi Arabia or “you have the right to practice your own religion” if you live in China, without the concept that the human right exists, there is no hope for change within the law.
(By the way, I don’t think food is one of those basic human rights. Basic human rights aren’t material - they are concepts like “freedom” and “liberty.” While I think we have an ethical obligation to do what is reasonable to feed the hungry, I do not think the right to be fed is a basic human right.)
I withdraw my earlier judgment - SD is not so bright.
The use of the word ‘moral’ makes me want to puke.
Personally I believe that animals have the right to free speech
(and I have the ‘right’ to swat anyone who denigrates such a stupid assertion)