What about cynicism? 
They’re just as concerned about Human Rights elsewhere in the world, I assure you… even in China. Except, there, they’re more concerned about how to keep the common man from excercising his rights.
Now, Jazz… THAT’S purely an American concept.
Just because some people were forcibly prevented from excercising their rights, that doesn’t mean the rights didn’t exist.
Philosophers have spent several centuries masturbating over this question without producing satisfactory or even terribly compelling answers. Like the author of this thread, they hope to come up with a compelling rationalization for the rights they want to have and not those they don’t want others to have.
Perhaps a starting point to assist in his understanding would be to distinguish between rights and freedoms, rights being the ability to require action. This doesn’t take us far in deciding appropriate content. My guess is that AynRandLover only likes the freedom part though.
I used to be a believer in the concept of natural rights but its really just a rationalization. The concept of rights without enforcement borders on sillyness. These days I take a far more utilitarian view closer to a social contract. Our rights and freedoms are whatever the populace negotiates with itself through the cumbersome political process.
People don’t like this view because no one gets to sign an agreement and it seems to diminish the importance of such rights. I won’t attempt to address the first argument, as anything I say will have holes, except to note that all citizens have a right to enter into the ongoing negotiations. I personally do not see the loss of importance, such rights are the basis for human advancement and are brought to us through thousands of years of experience. Moreover the constant negotiation process keeps rights alive and vital.
The content of rights is a decision to be based in values and pragmatism. We have a society that places great importance on the autonomy of the individual and our progress as a society has demonstrated the advantages of this emphasis. We did however need a certain level of advancement before this became viable. Had individualism been rampant at the dawn of man we wouldn’t be here right now. We would still be chasing mice and picking berries without a history of slavery and subjegation.
So, when we as a society learn from experience that meritocracies work better than aristocracies we promote equality of opportunity. Common sense tells us that an educated workforce is good for everyone. A right to a free education facilitates both of these goals so we establish it through the political process. I fail to see the problem.
Well, then by this definintion no one has any rights whatsoever. No one can require that I do anything.
How do you intend to make me do something which I don’t want to do? First you say, obliquely, no one has any rights, and now you say no one has any freedom.
So you consider rights being that which more than 50% of people in some arbitrarily defined geographical region decide they are? That just doesn’t make any sense. Why should my rights change when I step over an imaginary line, or decide to associate with a different group of people? If me and 14 others decide certain rights among ourselves, what gives 15 people the right to come along and declare our will null and void?
All you are advocating is tyranny of the majority, which always devolves into a tyranny of the plutocracy.
Why should I have to negotiate away any of my rights?
What does individualism have to do with anything? Are you saying I’m not an individual?
I think people have a right to be educated, but I don’t see how that right should negate other peoples right not to be coerced into educating them. (We might also point out that people do not have the right not to be educated in the U.S. – so implying it is a right is a mysnomer on both sides.) If some large percentage of people in some arbitrary geographical region decide they want to educate, they should go off and teach.
I didn’t suggest it was a terribly helpful distinction but it does seem to be where he is drawing the line.
I could simply capture you and enslave you. In the absense of an authority to prevent me from doing so your screaming about rights and freedoms is a waste of breath.
I did say our cumbersome political process which in the United States recognizes this factor by requiring super majorities to make constitutional changes. But lets look closer at the history of constitutional law. If I recall correctly it took over 100 years for a freedom of speech case to hit the courts. Other rights have historically been read consistent with majority views. I would contend that the law has followed majority opinion more than it has led. The reality of life is that your substantive rights are going to be pretty close to what the majority thinks they should be. You might not like it but thats the way it works.
Through human history your role in society and your family has been more important than your individual desires. You may not have decided what you did, who you married, where you lived because your wishes were not as important as the wishes and needs of the collective. Are you as free to act on your individual aspirations and whims when you are a member of the US military as a private citizen is?
I fail to see the coercion, the government is under an obligation to provide funding to hire teachers. You may be coerced to pay for it but there are no drafts of teachers yet as far as I have heard. I see no logic behind your assertion that the lack of a right in another country means there is no right in the united states. This only applies if you believe the only rights we have are somehow handed down by god. I have already rejected that assertion.
You could do no such thing. You can imprison me or kill me, but you certaintly can’t enslave me. My own authority prevents you from doing so. I still would object to attempts to coerce weaker people.
Rights are inherent to the individual. No one can take away those rights and no one can give you rights which you already inherently have.
People have free will in all these matters, and always have.
I’m not sure we are on the same wavelength here as I fail to comprehend your segue. People may of their own free will put themselves in situations where they are more subject to the coersion of others. So what?
OK, so you are coerced into providing services for free to those who teach if your participate in the economy and wish to stay out of prison. Is that a better assessment?
I didn’t say that. If anything, I don’t see the logic in your idea that the “lack of a right” anywhere negates basic human rights inherent everywhere.
jmull, you’ve said some important things for me.
I would like to mention that freedom from coercion is not a right, as I’ve come to think. It is impossible to maintain because actively maintaining it would be violating it. Sort of a right’s paradox, if you will.
BUT, freedom from specific types of coercion is in order, I think. For example, I find the idea of equal opportunity employment to be grand; indeed, that’s how I would run my business. Does this mean that everyone has a right to work? Sure. Does this mean that everyone will work? I don’t think so.
I can have freedom of speech without exercising that ability. I could be the most orthodix “Party” member and still have a right to free speech; I can have a right to an education. But I don’t feel that anyone is justified in, say, having a right to a provided education.
As Ned says, it is now a matter for the pragmatists. The conflict between rights is where this whole question comes from. Why is it reasonable for some to assume that a right to a provided education exists? Social contracts indeed…you are born, shall we say, into servitude once things are automatically provided.
Not to say that social contracts are avoidable either; I do not feel they are.
By and large, though, many people defend such systems because of the opportunities they provide. “We’ll give you a free education but you have to provide for others’ free education as well.” ; “But what if I don’t want a free education?” ; “As I said, you have to provide for others’ as well.”
Hmm. With friends like that who needs enemies?
Lovely sentiments from one who has grown up under the protection of a government. Are you saying black people were weak along with all the billions who have been enslaved in human history?
Lovely sentiment but entirely meaningless. You can bellow this all you want but it doesn’t establish it as a fact. Please prove this assertion.
You don’t seem to understand that your current attitudes are a result of growing up in a society that nurtured them. I brought up the military imply to illustrate what I meant by individualism. Had you grown up in a society in which individualism was not prized and all important decisions about your life were, as a a matter of course, made by others you would not be questioning it. That would be the way life was.
To say that “People have free will in all these matters, and always have” is a denial of reality. People did what they were told and exercised free will only to the extent their society allowed it. Women exercising free will in the middle east and India still get executed by their own families.
I suppose, the same as you are coerced to pay for roads or military forces. Thats the cost of living in a society.
Yes, I am sorry, I misread your statement, on clearer reading I still disagree but lets not get side tracked.
We have rights that our ancestors would not even have been able to comprehend because they would have been utterly meaningless in their lives. How does one limit the powers of search in a society with no concept of privacy? How can you possibly say such a right is inherent? What does freedom of movement or conscience mean to someone when seperation from the tribe is tantamount to a death sentence. I happen to think its a damn good idea to have these rights and I would like to see us have some more, but to think we can reach into god’s jam jar and pull out a list is just silly.
I think you mean physical coercion here and I am not sure where you get the idea that we have an absolute freedom in this regard. Hobbes had a rather nasty take on the issue with all people in the natural state having a perfect right to do whatever they wanted including using force against each other. Such a life would be nasty, brutish and short or words to that effect. In order to survive each person relinquishes all rights to use force to the government. Its as good an explanation as any I suppose.
As for opting out, well, I may not want a highway or an airport or a volvo plant but I can’t opt out of those either. I don’t see a significant difference because I am funding an entitlement rather than a capital project. The right to an education isn’t written in stone and maybe there are better ways to deal with it in an advanced society. Its open to you to participate in the negotiation and try to change things. You could even do so accepting that a right to education was a damn good idea in 1920 but there are better ways now. Thats the beauty of a pragmatic results oriented approach to rights.
If that is truly the case, it isn’t entirely my fault.
Slaves always have the free choice not to obey their masters. Are you saying people who are and were enslaved have some defect which makes them incapable of free choice?
Well, I might make an exception to say that a person who has been thoroughly brainwashed or has had wires implanted in their skulls might no longer have the luxury of a free conscious, but otherwise, I have a consciousness. It moves my musculature, and since as a general rule my consciousness is inviolatable, so are my actions. As such, I am free to do whatever I want to do.
People’s ignorance of their rights still don’t negate their universality.
Would you maintain that all slave revolts are due to something external, as no slave would ever question their subjegation? I don’t believe that is an unreasonable position, and this is a common enough belief.
If someone is ignorant that of their free will – and I don’t think there has ever been a system of subjegation so devised so as to eliminate all hints of this truth – that is their own fault. Someone who has figured out they have the freedom to decide how to hold their fork shouldn’t have too hard a time extrapolating that into realizing they have the freedom to decide who to marry.
Then those certain people are or were weak and we should pity them.
Not all societies require coercion.
I wouldn’t say people do have an inherent right not to have people look at their property. I look at other people’s property all the time.
But those people still had that freedom of movement. People have a right to prosper, as I said, but this doesn’t preclude wandering off into the desert where prosperity is scarce.
As I find silly the contention that others have the right (note you never said from where it derives) to limit my rights or force me to negotiate for them.
Um, we do have absolute freedom; excersizing this freedom is probably not a right, yeah?, because it is trumped, at least in modern society (and in any society I’ve ever heard of) by other rights, namely, freedom from specific or semi-abstract forms of coercion.
I’ve been thinking about this and I’ve sort of come up with something. Rights are defined by whatever tenuous hold each individual has on his philosophy. In light of interactional disputes, the government has its own set of rights which it enforces.
No, that is its flaw.
The choices you speak of are government endowed/ enforced/ actualized rights. Kenneth Arrow has demonstrated that in any sort of democratic process involving more than two choices it is likely that the “winner” cannot be determined by majority alone; rather, it must be a relative majority (say, 33 32 34, and 34 wins). Thus, the active participation you speak of turn rights into privileges. Though those privileges may indeed be granted to all citizens, the decision process itself used to generate this “right” has inherent flaws in it, and the people who receive such a “gift” did not want it in the first place, and especially do not want the responsibilities that come with it.
People are not, generally, persuaded by pragmatic arguments when it comes to their personal life.
JM, I would say we are at the point where further discussion is pointless. I view such rights as you describe to be no more than fictions. I would be curious to know how you feel the content or nature of these inate rights can be determined but it isn’t a matter subject to debate.
AynRandLover, you lost me on the first part. On the second I think practical experience demonstrates inumerable instances where substantive rights and freedoms are established slowly and in accordance with majority will. Constitutional rights themselves have grown with the assent of the majority. Freedom of speech meant squat in 1776, it has grown with increased social understanding of its value and desirability. Look at the abortion debate and how tenuously the Court made right hangs on as debate rages in society at large.
I am not suggesting that the majority can simply dictate rights, nor will rights always have majority support. I am saying that rights which do not enjoy the support of the majority will substantively diminish over time like the court’s ban on capital punishment.
It appears that we all agree that legal rights exist, and that they change when one crosses an international border.
As for the other sort of rights, which I’ll call Philosophical Rights, Ned claims that they are a sham, a null set. But without defining them, I really can’t tell whether they exist or not.
(Side point: I think sometimes jmullaney was talking about freedoms, not rights. I agree that there is an absolute core of freedom that the political prisoner retains in his cell, that being freedom of thought. Still, even this point is a matter of some controversy.)
Definitions
Universal Philosophical rights are freedoms that no government or individual can morally take away from another individual. To do so may be physically possible, but will always be immoral under any circumstance.
Nonuniversal philosophical rights are freedoms that a government or individual may not morally remove from another individual, within the context of a particular historical period or level of economic/social development.
Absolute rights are rights that brook no exception.
Nonabsolute rights are rights that a moral government or individual can give limited scope, due to conflicts with other rights (or for other reasons?) e.g. You can’t yell fire in a crowded movie theater if there is no fire: the government may morally enforce such a rule, though it encroaches upon freedom of speech.
Hypothesis: Owing to tradeoffs (among other factors) there are no philosophical rights that are both absolute and universal.
I challenge the board to find one or more exceptions that disprove my hypothesis. No takers? Then I’ll proceed to make stronger claims. Perhaps we’ll find that no philosophical rights exist…
Also: if you don’t like my definition, tell me why and suggest another.
Inalienable rights are a part of us like any of our body parts. Even if I’m incapable of understanding their function, or deprived of their use, or have them separated from the rest of my body the are still mine. Do we need a deep philosophical debate to determine if I should use my eyes? How about the use of my ears? I have a brain and it thinks and imagines and desires to communicate with other, share ideas and understand the world around it. That is build into each of us and are inalienable rights that we all share.
When we use the term ‘inalienable rights’ it should not mean that we couldn’t be locked up in some gulag with our lives hinging on the whims of some demagogue. It means that these things are a part of our nature and should not be taken away. I agree “Universal Philosophical rights are freedoms that no government or individual can morally take away from another individual.” It is how we recognize despotic governments and inferior social constructs, they all want to limit or reengineer human nature. The primary function of the American government is to protect and guarantee that our individual rights are upheld. Unless the exercise of my rights causes you bodily harm or prevents you from exercising you rights those rights should not be limited.
Those with socialist leanings want our needs to be rights, for example: My government gives me the right to own property and you may need an education, but you don’t have the right to take my property from me to gain that education. You may have need for healthcare, but you don’t have the right to take my property to supply healthcare to someone else. No more than your need to eat endows you with the right to steal from the grocery store.
flowbark
I assume you mean within a particular philosophy when you say “universal philisophical rights.” Or does the stronger statement you are about to make consist of an assertation about a universal philosophy? 
If we restrict our framework to a single philosophy, apply that philosophy universally, then I think we could, in fact, come up with rights that are both absolute and universal.
Now, perhaps you’ll find this a stretch, but none-the-less I will posit this for your brain to chew on.
The right to think what you want.
OK, now, I can conceive of a society in which this is not possible, though it is largely outside the scope of historical or present technology. However, I think it does fall within the scope of being both universal (within some philosophies) and unbroachable (is that a word!?) by current standards of technology.
DaddyMack
I think that the government picks up morality in the absence of an agreed upon philosophy; I think it would be tough to say convincingly that, at least democratic, governments are founded on some philosophy and the laws are in accordance with the tenets of said philosophy.
What the government recognizes as rights are not de facto rights, but societal conventions under the guise of what we are calling here as philosophical rights. Or that’s how I see it right now, anyway, until someone convincingly tells me otherwise.
Right. But you haven’t shown why an (absolute?) right to property, free speech or due process is part of our nature while a right to a decent education or life-saving medical care is not. I find it odd to say that traits that were absent from humanity for thousands of years are somehow part of their nature. The idea of human rights is a relatively recent one (it can be traced back to the European Enlightenment c. 1600s, 1700s).
With all due respect, your post appears to me to be long on assertion and short on substantiation. (But stick around anyway. 
)
:Chuckle: Actually, I was trying to draw a bright line between Legal rights, which are particular to a given jurisdiction, and those other sort of rights (intrinsic rights? moral rights?) that reflect certain moral philosophies.
I think this thread questions whether moral rights really have a solid basis or whether they are mere rhetoric. Jefferson appeared to ground them on an appeal to equity. Methinks that would be an interesting track to follow: I suspect that one would end up with a set of rights either much less or much more restrictive than the US bill of rights though. Another possible grounding was provided by the liberal philosopher John Rawls. But I suspect ARL doesn’t want to go there. DaddyM may or may not want to ground rights in our creator, but for that we would need to see some scriptural backing. (DaddyM: Please don’t provide scriptural backing. This thread is complicated enough as it is. 
)
Having utilitarian leanings, I’m inclined to talk about the observable advantages of legal rights. But Ned has already covered a stance compatible with that POV.
My definition was intended to give a general definition of philosophical rights (maybe I should have said moral rights), with a view to seeing whether it is the null set that Ned appears to think it is.
Now then, “The right to think what you want”, is somewhat unclear to me. If you mean that the government can’t reach into your mind and directly change your thoughts, then the right is both absolute and universal, but also trivial. It is classed with the right not to be transformed into a toad.
You don’t mean of course, “The right not to have your thoughts changed through persuasion”.
I think you are referring to a freedom (which is in a few senses absolute) rather than a right.
Jumping ahead
I think the problem will be finding a non-trivial moral right (as defined earlier) that is absolute. E.g. A right to life is limited by self-defense concerns.
Fine. The question then becomes whether there are any universal moral rights. E.g. can any government or individual operating under any conceivable circumstances, historical or otherwise be automatically condemned for restricting freedom of speech (setting aside hate speech, fighting words, words causing immediate panic)? If so, then we have a universal (though nonabsolute) moral right. (And yes, that moral right may not hold under all reasonable philosophical approaches.)
If not, then perhaps we could shift definitions to focus on a particular historical era.
Finally, if all we are left with is nonabsolute nonuniversal moral rights, then I would argue that the remaining framework isn’t particularly useful and that we would be better off discussing appropriate (or inappropriate) legal rights. I.e. we are in the land of Ned.
Your criticism is appreciated. My thoughts are that rights are just that something we humans must assert. There is no evidence that rights are anymore than a creation of the human mind, it is subject matter for philosophy the core of which is logic and metaphysics and as such there exist no empirical evidence for the existence of rights. There are people far wiser than I (some of you could very well be those people) who could philosophy at length about just what rights are. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy has an entry on rights http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/r/rights.htm as well as animal rights http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/a/animalri.htm.
I think freedom of speech and of expressions are the only natural rights we have that you have mentioned. These are human traits that are almost equivalent to drives. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights makes no distinction between natural rights and freedoms http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html. Article 25 covers health care and Article 26 covers education, I have a problem with the wording of both these articles.
Maybe I’m too wrapped up in the American idea that individuals have rights and that we should be the masters of our own fate. I cannot envision any prosperous, advance civilization existing either now or in the future without embodying the rights we have in this country. But then that’s just me.
If you think this separates us then you are incorrect. I can’t imagine it either. I am not some marxist spouting off about the cult of individualism as though it is a bad thing. I consider personal autonomy to be ONE of the primary values a society should seek to maximize.
To suggest it is the only value without also looking to the need for a social structure which maximizes the individual’s ability to pursue their aspirations is an empty Grizzly Adams sort of fantasy. In the past this sort of personal autonomy was a punishment, they called it banishment.
It’s late so I’ll make this quick: the founders of the U.S., who, after all, have the large claim to fame of founding a republic that has lasted 226 years so far, had the idea of inalienable rights as the underpinning of the system they founded. The theory was that you cede certain rights to the government, but the ceding of those rights doesn’t mean (as per jmullaney) that they don’t exist. Which is why the last article of the Bill of Rights, above, reads as it does. So if you’re a U.S. citizen you are living under a system that philosophically recognizes, in the Constitution itself, the idea of inalienable rights, and that some of these rights are ceded from the people to the government, not the other way around. So, flowbark, I don’t see how, if we go by this theory, which I happen to have a certain affection for, you could ever conclude that rights are some kind of merely legalistic fiction.
To sum up, you start from the idea of absolute rights, then modify this by cession of some portion of these rights to get to a government that will strike the right balance between freedom and domestic tranquility.
DaddyM:
Great link; I had not visited the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
I suppose it was foolish of me to try to reinvent the wheel before skimming some standard references. Here’s what I have gleaned from the above link, as well as the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (from my bookshelf).
“Most generally, a right is a special advantage that someone gains because of his or her particular status.” So if you’re human, you get human rights, if you’re a citizen you get civil rights and if you’re an animal you get animal rights (assuming for the moment that the latter exist).
Oh, and what I originally defined as “Philosophical rights” should have indeed been labeled, “Moral rights”.
Rights originated in Roman law and were extended into ethics via natural law theory. More recently, the natural law framework has fallen on hard times, as religious underpinnings have become less fashionable and doubts have arisen regarding the self-evidence of any area of ethics. In its place is a notion of human rights, “…that must be universal among human beings because they are possessed merely by virtue of one’s status as a human being”. (Emphasis in original.)
I’m not sure what that latter quote means, but I have to note that it appears pretty close to DaddyM’s reasoning.
Heck, pantom, pretty much everyone with a US secondary education has some affection for the idea of fundamental moral rights. I’m just uneasy about their ambiguous foundations. As ARL might put it, what bright line separates “rights” from any other service that a person wants the government to guarantee? At the same time, those with even a little exposure to philosophy will note that pretty much every abstraction that we take for granted can be found at least somewhat wanting (eg Plato’s Republic and justice).
I like the 10th amendment. It effectively rules out certain overly restrictive constitutional interpretations such as, “If the founding fathers wanted to give us a right to privacy/breathable air/etc. they would have been explicit about it.” Still, I think it can interpreted in fairly straightforward legal terms; note that it is as much about distributing rights between the Feds and the States as it is about the Federal/individual relationship. Indeed, my understanding is that the states only became expressly prohibited (at least on the Federal level) from trampling on individual rights after the Civil War. Put it another way, powers and privledges can be allocated between the Feds, states and individuals without asserting their original location.
Finally, I’d prefer to call human rights a legal innovation rather than a legalistic fiction. But that’s just labeling.
Ontology Aside, are positive economic rights invariably less important?
ARL: I’m not sure what you would make of this, but surely one of the most fundamental rights would be the right of newborn baby (sans umbilical cord) to the minimum sustenance necessary for life. In most cases, this can be enforced via parental care; if the parents die, this would put a moral demand on some broader institution, perhaps the government.
Interestingly, this is a positive economic right that is arguably pretty fundamental. To deny this economic right would essentially make the infant the parent’s property, that is a slave.