Over these few years I’ll call a life I’ve heard the word “right” used a lot. And people have very divergent ideas on what their rights are - and others’ aren’t.
What are rights? I’m curious from a legal perspective, but I want to go deeper… what are they?
I’m not after an enumeration of rights - except that it drive the discussion on the definition and arriving at the likely source of our intuitions of fairness and “rights.”
Rights are a social contract. I compile a list of things that I want for myself. Then I imagine what would happen if everyone could demand the same things. Then I pare down the list to those things that I demand for myself that I am also happy for everyone in the world to also demand for themselves.
Then we call that list “human rights” or “civil rights” or what have you.
What if you demand a Wii, free pizza, and hot monkey sex with the TV star of your choice, and you’re happy for everyone else in the world to demand these things too? Could these things then be basic human rights?
I’ll go along with Thomas Jefferson in saying that the things we have a right to are the things that we have been given by our creator (i.e. by nature and/or by God). Not everything that is a want (like pizza) or even a need (like health care) is a right, because if I don’t have it, it’s not necessarily because someone is actively depriving me of it and it’s not clear who, if anyone, has an obligation to provide it for me.
Except there’s no creator, which makes your account somewhat problematic.
There’s an element of cooperative rationality about rights–it’s not just about what I and everyone else want; there is also a question about what it is feasible to provide everyone with. So not everything you want (and are happy with others wanting) is a right. Really, though, the social contract theory of rights is about the only way to get rights without spooky metaphysics.
Isn’t it possible that “rights” are a few things…
A social construction informed by an innate ideal of fairness. I think the forms of fairness vary from person to person - and culture to culture, to some degree. But I think there is an innate form of “fair” that we use even from an early age. It seems to start out a bit ego-centric, but it gradually gets more informed (No, that’s Tommy’s ball).
Those competing versions of fair - create some semi-stable social construct. Eminent Domain vs Good of the Republic, Safety net vs lower taxes, etc…
But if we feel we have a fair claim to something - don’t we tend to treat it as a right once it crosses say… a 85% threshold of certainty?
But I’m not happy if everyone else demands these things, because I don’t want to be on the hook for giving it too them. This is the key. I may want a free Wii, but I’ll be damned if I’m gonna pay to provide a free Wii for everyone. Getting a “free” Wii this way would cost me a hell of a lot more than just bying myself a Wii. So even though I want a free Wii, and you want a free Wii, you don’t want to have to buy me a Wii and I don’t want to buy you a Wii, and we’re better off deciding that if we want Wii’s we should buy them for ourselves. Same with free Pizza.
And the problem with free sex with anyone I like is the same, if I have the right to demand sex with anyone I like, and everyone has that right, then I’m obligated to provide sex for anyone who wants. Absolute sexual freedom for me demands absolute sexual slavery for everyone else. Therefore, granting the right to absolute sexual freedom for everyone is physically impossible.
I am willing to provide a lawyer at public expense to anyone accused of a crime, and we all agree, then that right exists, because we all argee it exists. You don’t have a right to a Wii, because we can’t agree that everyone should have a free Wii.
I vote “social construct” too. This is trivial to show by examining the many human societies that have had vastly different ideas about rights from the current model. If rights were inate somehow, how could they also be so varied?
Yet many claim it’s innate. I’ve never understood that - but I’ve even seen an atheist make that point. So… it seems an interesting (at least to me) question to pose - and it seemed it was getting a bit center stage in a different thread.
Because people might just not recognise what our true, innate rights are? Not that I believe we have any, but that people don’t agree on what they might be doesn’t mean one set can’t exist.
Anyway, I don’t believe we have any natural rights. In my book, a right or system or rights mean protections and obligations which you are free at any time to opt out of at risk of forcibly opting out.
Rights are a human invention. The only rights humans have are the ones they assert and are willing to defend by force (of law, generally.)
Social construct, but informed by what we think of as human nature. That’s why there is a lot of overlap in societies-- because we all have a rough sense of what it means to be human. And that’s why we think of them as being innate. We have evolved a set of morals that are, to a certain extent, universal-- what we think is fair or not fair. Most people think you don’t just kill whoever you don’t like or steal their property (at least as long as those people are part of your in-group). As societies get more complicated, we codify these into what we call rights.
Social construct. Purely.
Atheists can be wrong too. 
Social construct.
I know. It was just a guy who I respected (and respect) a lot. It was disorienting to hear him make that argument. Sometimes I wonder if I just missed what he was saying.
If it helps he was a Libertarian and min-archist. So that made him, to my thinking, a bit of an idealist. Even so… he could slay things with logic and reason (succintly too) unlike many. He was fun, too…
Anyhow.
It’s shaping up as no debate at all. I’d almost be tempted to take an opposing position, but I don’t think I have it in me…
I guess that while I would very much like to think that my rights are something natural and immutable, as an atheist I have no basis for that belief. So my general position is that one’s rights are simply those behaviors that do not directly deprive others of their life, health, liberty, or property, and as such are behaviors that no just government should be allowed to regulate. However, there are some regulations such as taxation that complicate my beliefs on the matter and make it difficult for me to define “rights” abstractly.
Pragmatically, however, I know that my inalienable rights are precisely those freedoms that I will fight to the death to defend, for by that resolve and action I guarantee that no man may take them from me in life.
True. I would argue (and have argued) that rights are entitlements we in society recognize to advance our mutual interests. And there is a lot of cross-cultural agreement on what our basic human interests are–Martha Nussbaum has done a good deal of empirical research confirming this point. So if you have a lot of agreement about what the basic human interests are, then it’s not surprising that you can get some rough consensus as to what our entitlements are.
Intending no offense, but I say that’s ridiculous.
I don’t care about our “mutual interest,” or any such nonsense. If I support a right, it’s because I think kit is morally right, and for no other reason. I don’t care about some mythical mutual interest. Hey, if I’d my druthers I’d like to become a viking warlord raiding and pillaging your wealth. But I don’t think it’s right. We have no mutual interest, because I don’t really care about you or your needs. If you dropped dead tommorow, I would neither notice nor care. But I will defend you to the death because it is morally right that I do so.
Beware couching your government solely in materialist terms of mutual interest or utility. For you will one day find men like me… but who do not believe in any morality, and recognize your law for what it is: power dedicated to your comfort. And you will tremble when they steal it from you, for seeing that law, they will take unto themselves. They will make slaves of you, by controlling your interest. And the only defense you shall have is men who do not care for "mutual interest - me.
Social construct. The idea of a birthright is ridiculous. Why would an American be born with a right and not a North Korean? Rights are created by the society a person lives in.
Are you going to conquer the world all by yourself? If not, then what binds together the individuals in your army?
Mutual interest.
Two points. First, what we regard as morally right evolved in large part because such rules enhanced our mutual well-being. So in fact, I think most moral rules are rules for our mutual benefit. Those that do not enhance our mutual benefit (like rules against homosexuality) should be tossed out the window precisely because they fail to advance our mutual interest.
Second, I acknowledge that there will be the occasional person who doesn’t care about the welfare of others, and so moral considerations will not appeal to him/her. If we are lucky, society is powerful enough to defeat this person. If not, then not. Whatever meta-ethical account of morality we give, there will always be people who don’t care about morality and who use their power to plunder and abuse (Mobutu Sese Seko, anyone?). I don’t think this fact has any bearing on which metaethical account is true.