They either come from the Divine or from http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/index.html
I am not sure i understand?
Depending on how evil and messed up i am, i can take away your right to free speech
I could have your tongue cut out, your mouth sewn shut and your lips fused together.
If you take to writing, i can have your hands cut off
If you take to thinking, i can have a spike punched through your eye socket and shred your brain.
I have taken away your right to freely speak write or even think
Yes, i’d have to be such a monster that i’d give even Hitler nightmares, but still.
It would seem if you are inhuman enough you can take away anyone’s right to do anything if you are willing to get your hands dirty and bloody enough
Maybe i am not getting your meaning properly?
Some are, and some aren’t. The police and fire departments are real. “Beauty” isn’t.
So, for example, the class of beings with severe downs syndrome or severe Alzheimer’s are not rational beings (lacking the capability to reason) and thus do not have the right to life.
Many folks today would disagree with such a formulation. (though it may have been one argument for euthanasia at one time)
If , say, Trump suffers from a moment of irrationality one night at 3am, does he lose any of his rights ? What then of inalienable ?
(Example not meant for political infighting or sidetracking for illustration only, replace with my name if so taken)
I am sorry, I don’t see how “rights apply to rational beings” is on a firm foundation.
“Privileges can be taken away. Rights can only be infringed.”
I still don’t get the practical difference between a privilege taken away from an infringed right.
What I’m saying that any meaning attributed to human existence exists only with the context of the programming of the human brain. Look at the analogy of a video game–a character displayed on the screen of a video game is defined by a series of calculations that tell a GPU how to color a set of pixels on a display. That set of calculations makes sense only when passed along to the GPU that it was written for. Take code from a XBox 1 and pass it through the GPU of a Nintendo Wii and you will get nothing but gibberish. Similarly, the concepts of “rights”, and “fairness”, and “beauty”, and “love”, etc. are only relevant inside of the physical network structure of the human brain. Those concepts are “real” in the sense that they can be defined as “the specific output code that runs within a human brain when given input x”, but to expect that same code to have any meaning whatsoever outside of a human brain is no more reasonable than expecting XBox code to be meaningful on Wii.
Alien scientists are secretly studying Earth and taking samples of the various species. This in a conversation that they will never have while studying the screen of their examine-o-scope:
Alien 1: It seems that all of the animals on this planet are heterotrophs. They have obligate aerobic metabolisms, their genetic material is DNA, and their main structural component is long chains of left-handed amino acids.
Alien 2: What about the dominant life form, these “hooo-manz?” Are they of the same composition?
A1: Yes, in most aspects. But with one additional feature.
(Alien 1 twirls a few dials with his secondary manipulatory tendrils. Both aliens focus their eyestalks on the readout.)
A1: See this? Right here in the cerebral cortex? We call this particularly active area “rights.”
A2: “Rights?” And do other animals on this planet have this “rights?”
A1: Nope. Just the hooo-manz.
Since no one has argued that, why do you bring it up? The human species is made up of rational beings, even with a handful of exceptions. Those exceptions do not negate the fact of human rationality.
This kind of pedantry does not advance the discourse. It’s like Diogenes throwing the plucked chicken into Plato’s academy. It demonstrates nothing.
That’s just handwaving.
The argument is that somehow humans intrinsically get rights, just by being humans. Other animals don’t. Humble thinker brought up rational tinking as the criterium for magically getting these rights.
Again, no one said that this applies in every single case. Convicted felons in prison lose a lot of their rights. The people you described – people with very severe cognitive dysfunction – lose their right to vote or to carry firearms.
There are exceptions, but they do not undermine the principle: we have rights because we have the rational ability to formulate and comprehend them. We have the ability to conceive of “you and I” and how one person’s rights co-exist with the rights of others. Cattle and horses don’t have this ability, and therefore (?) don’t have many of the rights humans have.
(Is “therefore” the right word? The animal-rights movement is fascinating in this regard. Most of us agree that it is wrong to torture animals – thus laws against dog-fights – but do the animals in question actually have the “right” not to be tortured, or is this simply a protection we, as humans, grant them? Is it true that “meat is murder?” Or is killing a beef-steer for steaks permissible, as the steer does not have “rights” as we understand the term? Does the fact that the steer cannot comprehend the concept of rights serve to alienate it from actual rights?)
What you are describing sounds more like empathy to me.
Which we get from being social animals. A lot of other animals also have social rules.
I have never thought that rights had jack shit to do with being human. Rights come from existing, or from existing as social creatures. I think antelope and spruce trees have rights.
In my pragmatic moral philosophy “rights” are the strongest and most immediate derivatives of the underlying philosophical “axioms”.
I have found no perfect philosophical axioms, none that stand perfect and alone, without exception or contradiction with other axioms I refuse to abandon, so there are no perfect axioms and no rights without exception, just “axioms” and “rights”.
As an example: I think Freedom of expression should be a foundation for any moral philosophy, but I also think society should punish shouting “Fire” in a crowded theatre. Thus Freedom of expression is a “right”, not a right.
Agreed. A great deal of what we call “good and evil” come from this empathy and from our heritage as social animals.
One problem comes when we speak of such abstract rights as the right to enter into a contract, or the right to own property. The antelope and spruce cannot exercise these rights.
Much as I wish it weren’t so, many years of getting pissed off at the world have led me to the conclusion that this is the correct answer.
A few notes:
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If you say “rights are given or allowed,” you are wrong. The definition of “rights” is that they are there regardless of the authority.
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from the above…here in the US, we have a government structure, which was designed from the beginning to be under the direction of The People at all times, with certain exceptions. Those exceptions are our “rights.” It is important in understanding the AMERICAN approach to the idea of “rights,” is that they are not ALLOWED, or GIVEN by the government, they are instead designations of what is entirely OUTSIDE THE ABILITY OF THE GOVERNMENT TO CHANGE OR AFFECT. That is important, because it means that we have declared in advance, that certain things are outside the ability of the majority to decide to change.
Another way to say it, is that Rights serve to limit majority rule in specific ways.
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no matter how rights are described or defined, it happens that they are nevertheless abridged in error by the government at times. We have defined them such that even during those times, until the Constitution is officially overthrown, they continue to exist.
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Many Americans don’t realize that The Declaration of Independence has NEVER BEEN A LEGAL DOCUMENT OF THE UNITED STATES. It was written, signed, and published, when we were still colonies of Britain. That means in particular, that NONE OF THE RIGHTS LISTED IN THE DECLARATION ARE RECOGNIZED AS LEGALLY EXISTING IN THE UNITED STATES. You do NOT have a “right” to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, based on that document.
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There is an important difference between actual legal rights, and the arguments or justifications that people make regarding them. The reason why Jefferson declared in the Declaration that we are " endowed by the creator with certain inalienable rights," was specifically in order to counter the claim that a king was “endowed by the creator” to abridge them, and not the initiation of a process to set up a Theism based government. It’s ONE of the reasons why the Declaration has never been passed into law in the US.
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Similarly, because most people in the US at least partly understand that the American use of the concept of “rights” is that the majority cannot overrule them, it is common to find people (erroneously) claiming that additional “rights” exist.
The challenge to cooler heads, when such arguments and conflicts arise, is to overrule such mistakes carefully and accurately, so that we don’t abridge real rights, as part of an effort to defeat the “fake” ones.
Oh. Another important note to add:
In the US, NO “rights,” including those listed in the Constitution, are unlimited and unlimitable.
That is, there is no unlimited right to free speech. Or to keep and bear arms. Or to live according to your own chosen religion. Or to “peaceably assemble.” And so on.
ALL rights have limits, of necessity. Figuring out what those limits are, will always be a contentious concern.
That is not an universally agreed-upon definition. Many of us here quite strongly disagree, and reject that as a flawed definition.
Many of us hold that rights are, in fact, given, bestowed, or made up by our society and civilization, and do not exist outside of that context. They are not “there” regardless of the authority.
You’ve misunderstood me entirely.
I entirely agree that rights do not exist, independent of the structures that people create.
What I am pointing out, is that THE STRUCTURE OF RIGHTS that we have created, is based on the idea that once created, they are not subject to authorities. That is why we call them “rights.”
What do you mean by “subject to authorities”.
Rights can be taken away by authorities, not easily, but it happens.
F.i. Samurai are no longer permitted to wear swords, while that certainly used to be their right.
On a similar point, samurai had the “right” to kill any peasant who happened to offend them. (And the samurai could pretty much invent an excuse, especially if they had a shiny new sword that you wanted to test.)
(Note the lack of the “right” for the peasant to not be sliced, diced, and julienned.)
Wouldn’t be the first time, alas, and I apologize for missing the point.
I’m still not sure I agree. Yes, the U.S. Constitution refers to rights “retained by the people” and “reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” So, yes, we have a legal model of inherent rights. But if this were really the functional model, Roe vs. Wade would have been settled on 9th and 10th amendment grounds: the constitution does not grant the government the right to forbid abortions. Instead, the Justices had to squirrel around with penumbras. Why? Because the “inherent rights” and “reserved rights” doctrines aren’t functionally part of our legal model.
Yes, inherent rights is a view that many hold, but many don’t hold it too, and so the consensus is so weak, I don’t think it qualifies as a “definition.”
I may very well still be missing your point. Apologies and I owe ya a beer.