Natural Rights

[Agathon]

There seems to be some strange sort of opacity here. Some posters have claimed that the fact that people desire certain things means that they have a right to them or some sort of moral claim upon others.

The problem with this is that it involves a fallacy. You cannot infer from:

1) Everyone has a desire for freedom and well being.

to

2) Everyone ought to take other peoples’ desires for freedom and well being into account when determining their own actions.

The fallacy is moving from a statement of fact (an “is” statement) to a moral prescription (an “ought” statement). This is not a valid argument unless you include the conditional, “If everyone has a desire for freedom and well being, then they ought to take other peoples’ desires for freedom and well being into account when determining their own actions”.

But what reason do we have for thinking that conditional is true?

Moreover, the question of whether morality is objective or has any binding logical force on rational agents who refuse to accept moral reasons is completely separate from the question of whether these reasons are to be understood in the form of rights claims.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Azazel
Because GePap didn't clarify well enough that he's not a libertarian. I knew that he is not a libertarian, that's why that baffled ( and scared ) me.

Ah, but Azazel, that is my ability to argue all sides, even those I am totally opposed to personally, coming to fore.

[David Floyd]

Agathon,

Uhoh, we've already had this discussion, and as I recall I won the debate. Round 2, then?

Take the simple case where there is a stark decision between killing one person in order to save 100 others from being killed by someone else.

Killing one person does not "save" 100 others. Their life and/or death is not your responsibility, and is not under your control. Only the person who would ordinarily kill them can save them.

1) Allow that the killing of one person in this case is morally justifiable because 100 violations of the right to life are worse than only one.

But this ignores the point that moral behavior governs individual actions - morality is not a math problem. Murder is immoral in every case - it's wrong for you to murder one person, and it's wrong for someone else to murder 100.

2) Allow the 100 people to be killed since rights based theories prohibit each individual from performing certain actions no matter what the consequences. In other words, what matters is that I don't break the rule, what other people do is their own business.

No, what other people do is not "their business", if that action is mass murder. If someone kills 100 people, then they should obviously be punished. And if I kill 1 person, I should be punished, as well.

Libertarians don't like (1) since, among other things, when applied to property it justifies welfare and more generally it justifies the sacrifice of individuals for a common good (in this case that = the sum total of rights violations prevented by a lesser number of violations).

No, Libertarians don't like that option because it involves committing murder.

But disagreeing with (1) is stupid since you are effectively saying that 100 murders are better than one, as long as you don't do any of them.

No, by not choosing to commit murder, you aren't making a statement that 100 murders are OK. You are making the statement that murder is wrong, and because murder is wrong, you will NOT commit murder. If someone else commits murder, that is also wrong, but you aren't responsible for their actions.

That would be enough for most people to reject (1) as hopelessly evil. Nevertheless, Libertarians are nothing if not pig headed so more is required.

It's pigheaded and evil NOT to commit murder?

[/quote]This can be achieved by posing a simple question. What's makes violating the right to life bad?
Is it the effect on the victim or something about the person who does it?[/quote]

Murder is wrong because of what it does to the victim.

It's obvious that (1) chooses the former and (2) the latter (with the proviso that the offender is me - I don't have to care about others or I would be back to an aggregation view).

That's not correct at all.

So for (2) the effects on the victims are completely irrelevant, the only thing of moral import is that I don't break the rule.

Not at all. Moral behavior is something that you can control only as it relates to your own behavior. You can't prevent someone from committing murder, except by physically acting against that person. If you kill 1 person because he says that if you don't, he'll kill 100, you haven't prevented the murder of 100, you've simply murdered one person. Only HE can prevent himself from murdering 100 people, UNLESS you can take action against HIM.

This is so selfish that it can hardly be called "morality" - it basically asserts that my moral purity matters more than the suffering of others.

Again, not at all. Moral behavior NEVER causes suffering. Immoral behavior certainly does, but as long as you are behaving morally you are not contributing to immorality.

It's also senseless. What's the point of obeying the rule if it isn't to prevent suffering?

I still fail to see why commiting murder prevents anything. There are really two separate acts taking place - your murder of 1, and someone else's murder of 100. Neither of these actions have any bearing on each other, as only the two potential murderers (you and the other guy) can make the final decision about whether or not to commit murder. If you want to prevent suffering, then obviously you won't commit murder.

[David Floyd]

But what reason do we have for thinking that conditional is true?

So you're telling me you think it's false?

[Az]

Originally posted by GePap


Ah, but Azazel, that is my ability to argue all sides, even those I am totally opposed to personally, coming to fore.

I love doing it myself, sometimes.

[Kidicious]

Take the example of gun ownership. Say that you could successfully argue that gun ownership is a natural right, but that society has passed a law to make it illegal. So what if it is an individual's natural right to own a gun? As a society we have decided that individuals should not own guns. You could say that society is immoral, but who really gives a ****?

[David Floyd]

You could say that society is immoral, but who really gives a ****?

And eventually, when society also decides that ALL property should be banned, well, maybe THAT'S immoral too, but who cares, right?

[GePap]

Originally posted by David Floyd
So you're telling me you think it's false?

No, he is saying you can not prove the Ought simply by proving there is the is. He is saying you have to prove the ought independently, with another arguement.

[David Floyd]

I know, I'm just trying to call him out on actual beliefs

[Kidicious]

Originally posted by David Floyd
And eventually, when society also decides that ALL property should be banned, well, maybe THAT'S immoral too, but who cares, right?

Sure. Society has made a rational choice to benefit itself. Who cares about individuals natural rights if the individuals are better off?

[Japher]

I think the answer does lie in the subjectivity of morals.

Yet, rights indicate laws, and laws indicate a society. Thus, a the majorities morals will dictate the rights, natural or not. I still feel, however, that the idea of "natural rights" is something to be addressed on an individual basis, as these are based on personal desires.

Yet, if desires are removed from the equation the only natural "rights" some has are those abilities that they are born with... to attempt to breathe, to attempt to grow, and die... nothing more.

Even the US yields the right to persue such things, adding in success and happiness. Yet, only the right to persue, not to obtain.

[David Floyd]

Who cares about individuals natural rights if the individuals are better off?

So individuals are better off without any of their property? And what if a society decides that slavery is OK? It may be immoral, but who cares, right?

[Lorizael]

Originally posted by Kidicious


Sure. Society has made a rational choice to benefit itself. Who cares about individuals natural rights if the individuals are better off?

The point is that if natural rights were to exist, then if every person were granted those rights, there couldn't be a better situation.

If natural rights are derived from human desires, then in order for you to be granted your natural rights you must possess all that you desire. If this were the case, then there couldn't be a better system for society.

A society that works to grant people their natural rights would be the best possible society.

[The Templar]

Originally posted by Berzerker
Templar -

No trip is necessary, rights - moral claims - are expressions of universal desires.

Certainly a highly disputed position. Most Christians I know (left and right wing) would argue that moral claims are based on the will of God and desires, universal or otherwise, be damned! Thus your position must be defended as 'rights' and 'universal desires' are not definitionally connected.

Oh I see,

A right is nothing more than a moral claim of ownership, and universal desires help illustrate "ownership". If any act is moral, it is an act based on a universal desire since we all agree on the desire. The reason we run into problems discerning what is or is not moral is because the act is not based on a universal desire.

You're using an idiosyncratic definition of 'right' - ergo you are not talking about the same thing everyone else is.

Seriously though, if you pack property into the definition of right the you are not making an argument, you are merely explicating your idiosyncratic definition. The more usual definition of a 'right' is that a right to x trumps any countervailing claims on the part of others with respect to x.

For example, the right to free speach trumps any other interest in restraining you speach. So that even if Andrea Dworkin or Billy Graham think your speach is pornographic, and therefore morally wrong, your right to pornographic speach trumps even their moral claims. Thus a right can even give you the right to do something morally objectionable on the grounds that it would be more morally objectionable to interfere with your rights. Even rights like the right to health care (a less contentious right in other countries) can be expressed as your right to it trumps any reason (lack of money, spite, etc.) a provider might give to not provide healthcare.

Rights, then, are conceptually distinct from desires or ownership. Now you might seek to ground rights in universal desires or in ownership (certainly an ownership foundation is big among the libertarian set) but that means you must argue from rights to desire.

A universal desire to be happy doesn't equal a universal desire to play video games. However, you certainly have the right to play video games as long as you don't infringe upon the right of others to be left out of your pursuit of happiness.

If universal desire not to be murdered entails a right not to be murdered, then a universal desire not to be murdered entails a right not to be shot to death. One may reason from general to specific.

Now, if a universal desire to be happy entails a right to be happy, and if my happiness is dependent on having an Xbox, then I have a right to an X-box, even if I can't afford one.

I take it, Berz, that you don't mean to create entitlements to possessions through your argument. Noentheless your argument allows for it. So send me my free Xbox!

Whose life is it anyway? If your life is yours - a right - then your labor is yours as well. If you expend your labor building a home, you have a right to that home - an extension of your labor and life. If "society" - a group of people - take away your home, they've taken the labor you spent building the home and that means they've taken away part of your life. Now, does anyone want someone else taking away the house they've spent years acquiring? No, hence a universal desire to life, labor, and the property built with that labor...

Again, you jump the gun and make unfounded conclusions. Life and labor are separable. A community can guarantee my right to life yet fully determine my labor. Even in the US labor is regulated. I cannot, for instance, sell or produce illicit drugs. But OK, maybe you want to say the drug prohibition is immoral (as i would).

Again, imagine that x, a great sculptor, is given a chunk of gold which x uses to create a wonderful statue. Now suppose, unbeknownst to x, the gold was stolen from y - who claims ownership by right of labor in extracting and smelting the ore. Here's the question - who owns the statue. While y owns the gold - y cannot own the statue as y contributed no labor. Moreover, x's labor created the statute - but the statue depends on the gold which x has no entitlement to. So who owns the statue? As you can see, labor is an insufficient principle from which to determine the ownership of the products of labor.

You needed that spelled out? Thanks for identifying a flaw. Oh wait, I did spell that out in my opening post when I made a distinction between humans and animals...

Actually, what I need spelled out is the grounds on which you justify separating humans and other animals into distinct moral categories. I don't even detect an attempt on your part to employ fuzzy categories - i.e. plants and sea-sponges (things very much not like us) have no moral status, but chimps (being very much like us) have near equal status. Come on then, when I think universal I think everything. Why only people? How do you justify that distinction?

The "logic" used by racists is similiar to the logic used by those who say rights are given (or taken) by "society". Slavery usually occured when a majority - "society" - decided a minority shouldn't have rights.

Exactly my point. You are saying humans may take animals for food and labor as they see fit. How speciest of you!

I've spelled that out too. Rights involve human interaction, not interactions between humans and animals. And rights exist within the context of the natural world, i.e., animals eat other life forms to survive. And a right to live is not an immunity from disease or being eaten by animals. But good luck enslaving a cat, if anything, they enslave us.

Dude! You haven't spelled out jack ****! You've merely stated rights involve human interaction. I disagree, and most people who believe in any sort of animal rights disagree. People have been known to eat each other when things get desperate. Also, most animals won't eat their own kind unless they are desperate. Not that eating each other is relevant to rights - you are confusing is with ought here - the naturalistic fallacy.

Granted enslaving a cat is a futile effort, btu I'm sure they would not appreciate being forced to pull a sled if you hooked a bunch of cats up to one.

Come on, Berz! Setting up your own idiosyncratic defintions of terms and then making analytical arguments is boring. Use the same definitions as the rest of us and make an argument!

[Agathon]

Originally posted by David Floyd
Agathon,

Uhoh, we've already had this discussion, and as I recall I won the debate. Round 2, then?

You floundered around for a couple of hundred posts and the debate ended, mainly because I couldn't be bothered with it. It ended at precisely this issue.

Anyway, let's cut to the chase.

Quote:

This can be achieved by posing a simple question. What's makes violating the right to life bad? Is it the effect on the victim or something about the person who does it?

Murder is wrong because of what it does to the victim.

Then, if you say that it doesn't matter who does it. And it also loses you the argument since if what it does to the victim is what really matters then we should prevent that happening as much as possible - in other words we should lower the overall number of rights violations. Sometimes this may involve murdering people ourselves to prevent a greater evil.

If you say that the wrongfulness resides in what it does to the victim then the only way out for you is to hold that 1 murder is the moral equivalent of 100. And that is just stupid.

Not at all. Moral behavior is something that you can control only as it relates to your own behavior. You can't prevent someone from committing murder, except by physically acting against that person.

You can also in my scenario prevent them killing 100 people by killing one, if he gives you the choice. People give other people the power to decide all the time, there's nothing weird about it.

If you kill 1 person because he says that if you don't, he'll kill 100, you haven't prevented the murder of 100, you've simply murdered one person. Only HE can prevent himself from murdering 100 people, UNLESS you can take action against HIM.

Lies. In my case you can stop him doing it.

Again, not at all. Moral behavior NEVER causes suffering.

This is simply false. If you don't kill someone in my scenario 100 people suffer. Of course you didn't cause this, but you had the power to intervene. But if you really cared about the suffering and not your own feelings you would murder the one.

I still fail to see why commiting murder prevents anything. There are really two separate acts taking place - your murder of 1, and someone else's murder of 100. Neither of these actions have any bearing on each other, as only the two potential murderers (you and the other guy) can make the final decision about whether or not to commit murder.

You are changing the case. If he says that he will kill 100 and you have good reason to believe that he will carry out his threat (and we have good reasons for predicting other peoples' actions all the time) then if you really care about there being less overall evil in the world you will commit the one murder.

You can't get out of this by saying that the actions have no bearing on each other because in this case (and thousands of others where people force decisions on us by promising to do things) that claim is simply false.

The real question is, do you think 100 murders are worse than one? And if you believe that, it is wholly irrational to settle for more if you really believe that what's bad is what it does to the victim.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by GePap


No, he is saying you can not prove the Ought simply by proving there is the is. He is saying you have to prove the ought independently, with another arguement.

Exactly.

[Agathon]

*Applauds the Templar*

[David Floyd]

You floundered around for a couple of hundred posts and the debate ended, mainly because I couldn't be bothered with it.

Yeah, OK

Then, if you say that it doesn't matter who does it.

Sure it does. If I commit murder, I'm acting immorally. If someone else commits murder, they are acting immorally.

And it also loses you the argument since if what it does to the victim is what really matters then we should prevent that happening as much as possible - in other words we should lower the overall number of rights violations.

Obviously we should undertake every moral means to prevent murder - and NOT committing murder is a very moral and very easy way to start behaving morally.

Sometimes this may involve murdering people ourselves to prevent a greater evil.

Murdering 1 person because someone who holds a the power of life and death over 100 tells you to is NOT preventing a greater evil. It's simply committing murder because someone told you to.

You can also in my scenario prevent them killing 100 people by killing one, if he gives you the choice.

Oh, well, if he gives me the choice, then I will choose the option that he should not kill 100 people, and that I should not (will not) kill one person. But the decision of whether or not to kill 100 people ultimately lies with him. I can tell him not to do it, but he ultimately decides - it's his responsibility.

In my case you can stop him doing it.

Funny, I didn't see the option in your scenario where I could physically take action against the murderer, or the option where I knew his name and location and could call the police.

This is simply false. If you don't kill someone in my scenario 100 people suffer.

Sure, but that's a result of someone else's immoral behavior, not your moral behavior. Surely you won't argue that my decision NOT to commit murder was responsible for someone else deciding TO commit murder.

Of course you didn't cause this, but you had the power to intervene.

The only "power to intervene" would be taking action against the murderer, to restrain him. I guess I could also intervene in the life of the one innocent person I am being asked to kill, but that is a different and unrelated situation.

You are changing the case. If he says that he will kill 100 and you have good reason to believe that he will carry out his threat (and we have good reasons for predicting other peoples' actions all the time) then if you really care about there being less overall evil in the world you will commit the one murder.

I don't believe that morality is a math equation. Morality governs each individuals behavior. Someone may very well carry out a threat to commit mass murder, but that act ultimately isn't predicated on my decision to commit murder, but rather on the decision of another person to kill 100 people. He will decide "yes" or "no".

You can't get out of this by saying that the actions have no bearing on each other because in this case (and thousands of others where people force decisions on us by promising to do things) that claim is simply false.

Just because the mass murderer is trying to shift blame away from himself and onto me doesn't change the fact that we are responsible for our own actions. Are you trying to make the argument that I am responsible for the deaths of 100 should I choose not to commit murder? THAT is clearly preposterous - I had nothing to do with those 100 people, and most likely don't even know who they are.

If someone calls me on the phone and tells me that he has 100 people, and will kill all of them unless I kill the next person I see, then I hang up and call the police. I don't go out and commit murder hoping to influence someone else not to commit murder. That's stupid.

The real question is, do you think 100 murders are worse than one? And if you believe that, it is wholly irrational to settle for more if you really believe that what's bad is what it does to the victim.

Murder is wrong no matter how many people you kill. It's wrong for me to murder 1 person, and it's wrong for someone else to murder 100 people. Murder is ALWAYS wrong.

[GePap]

quote:
If you kill 1 person because he says that if you don't, he'll kill 100, you haven't prevented the murder of 100, you've simply murdered one person. Only HE can prevent himself from murdering 100 people, UNLESS you can take action against HIM.

I agree with DF on this, but this is just a function of this particualr example. More important is an exmaple were you KNOW that if you kill one, then you will stop him from killing 100, since the possibility of "lies" has been neutralized. In that instance, you have a moral choice of which wrong is the lesser wrong: you commiting a murder (whether is is justifiable murder is an open question) or whether by refusing to commit a violation of rights yourself, you did the better things than by not stopping the violation of the rights of 100 times as many people. Now, the person most at guilt remaisn the one planning to kill 100, since it is his choice that sets of the chain of events, but even if the whole scenerio stems from the choice of that one individual, you are still given a choice, even if a rather imperfect one.

[GePap]

Another issue for Berz:

You idosyncraticaly define murder as "unjustified killing of an innocent", and you went so far as to say that killing a murderer would not be murder (I must assume becuase he is not innocent).

The question is whether one can possibly ever forfeit Natural rights. You say rights come from our creation (which gives us a moral sense, according to Berz) and universal desires. The thing is, you seem to think that if you violate the right of another, all of a sudden your existence (the result of your creation) and your universal desires (certainly the murderer des not whish to be murdered) no longer matters. The question is why? What can posibly deny you your Natural rights simply becuase you chose to ignore your moral sense?

[David Floyd]

More important is an exmaple were you KNOW that if you kill one, then you will stop him from killing 100, since the possibility of "lies" has been neutralized. In that instance, you have a moral choice of which wrong is the lesser wrong: you commiting a murder (whether is is justifiable murder is an open question) or whether by refusing to commit a violation of rights yourself, you did the better things than by not stopping the violation of the rights of 100 times as many people. Now, the person most at guilt remaisn the one planning to kill 100, since it is his choice that sets of the chain of events, but even if the whole scenerio stems from the choice of that one individual, you are still given a choice, even if a rather imperfect one.

Actually yes, this is a much better example. If you are acting with complete information, it would be appropriate to restrain the person. By "complete information", I don't mean that God came down and told you - I mean provable information.

For example, if you were to overhear someone bragging in a bar about how he had 100 hostages, and it was obvious he was serious, it would probably be appropriate to restrain him until the police arrived and let them sort it out. Obviously, if the guy told you what his plans were in an attempt to get you involved, it would certainly be appropriate to restrain him. But it's hard for me to imagine a realistic scenario where you have complete information.

As to killing the person, it would be appropriate only if you witnessed him about to kill those 100 people (or however many), the same as any other case of defending another.

[David Floyd]

Note that even if you don't act to restrain the would-be murderer, I don't think you are responsible for those murders. Again, you are responsible for your own actions.

[Kidicious]

Originally posted by David Floyd
So individuals are better off without any of their property? And what if a society decides that slavery is OK? It may be immoral, but who cares, right?

The fact that you say that it's better to own private property as opposed to the community owning community property has absolutely nothing to do with your idea that private ownership is a natural right. You're just saying that people would want private property more. Where's the connection with the idea of natural rights. What if they prefer community property? Then what do you have to say about natural rights?

[Kidicious]

Originally posted by Lorizael
The point is that if natural rights were to exist, then if every person were granted those rights, there couldn't be a better situation.

If you think so then you should make that argument, but just saying that people should have rights, because otherwise the universe would be upset is pointless. What really matters is that people have the rights which will benefit them.

[GePap]

Originally posted by David Floyd
Note that even if you don't act to restrain the would-be murderer, I don't think you are responsible for those murders. Again, you are responsible for your own actions.

Not doing something has just as many consequences as doing somehting: different set, but consequences nonetheless, including moral ones.

[David Floyd]

You're just saying that people would want private property more. Where's the connection with the idea of natural rights. What if they prefer community property? Then what do you have to say about natural rights?

If 100% of them want communal property, that's fine, but when any single person wants his or her property back, that person has a right to it.

[David Floyd]

Not doing something has just as many consequences as doing somehting: different set, but consequences nonetheless, including moral ones.

I didn't say that you aren't responsible for ANYTHING, just not responsible for the act of murder committed by the other person.

[Kidicious]

Originally posted by David Floyd
If 100% of them want communal property, that's fine, but when any single person wants his or her property back, that person has a right to it.

Not if the govt takes that right away.

[loinburger]

Originally posted by GePap
You can not know the exact mechanism of why your cat may chnage behavior: perheps the thinking is "enough to satisfy my hunger" vs. "not enough to do it".

It doesn't really matter what you call the concept, the fact remains that my cat clearly has some concept for "more" and "less" (or "enough" and "not-enough" or whatever else you want to call it) that exists independently of human language.

And I do question your use of "mathematics" in this sense. No, I do not think that a cat's possible understanding of quentity differences equates to "mathematics"

Why? And what would you prefer that it be called?

It does not behoove you to prove anything, if there is no judge.

Who said anything about proof? I needn't prove to anybody (except perhaps myself) that somebody acted with malicious premeditation in order for me to alter my treatment of that person accordingly.

The very concept of murder can not exist free of the concepts of law, or at least norms, morality, guilt and innoncence, justice and judgement.

1. The concept of "premeditation" exists independently of that which you have listed. The concept of "malice" exists independently of that which you have listed. Both of these terms have legal definitions, yet both also have non-legal definitions which are still applicable. There's your pre-societal concept of murder.
2. Why would it matter if a concept of "murder" cannot exists without a concept of "morality"?

Actually, language is, given all the different languages that exist, an arbitrary creation of man.

Language is not "created by chance, whim, or impulse, and not by necessity, reason, or principle." Societies don't just randomly invent words and insert them into the lexicon, nor do they randomly invent grammatical structures etc. In other words, language is not arbitrary.

...there is no UNIVERSAL language that all humans use...

Not all human languages are the same, but all human languages have common elements.

If different groups can have different languages, they can have different systems of justice.

And if different groups have languages that share common elements, then they will have concepts of justice that share common elements (and thus systems of justice that share common elements, assuming that they maintain internal consistency).

You know there is A word for it, even if you don;t kow it.

You believe that there is a word for it. However, there is not always a word for it. In that case, you'll often invent one. (Bootylicious. Funktified. Phantasmagoric. Etc.)

The question is, can you know of a concept knowing there IS njo word for it, no word for it YOU could know.

No word you could know? Of course there's no such thing -- when a concept arises that does not have a word associated with it, then we simply assign a word for it (assuming that the concept is worth integrating into our lexicon).

Exaclty my point! ICould we not then assume that prior to the existence of the word for it, the concept of it also did not exist?

Of course not! If I describe a "sort of furry two-ton heavy thing that makes bleu cheese," and for the sake of simplicity I start calling it a "spunkilator," then are you claiming that the word "spunkilator" spontaneously came into existence with my first describing the "sort of furry two-ton heavy thing that makes bleu cheese"?

At best you can show me that al mammals have an innate sense of "more", "less", so forth and so on.

Well then, there's your concept-without-language.

(birds call to each other to communicate: is this langauge?).

Language: "Any means of conveying or communicating ideas." In other words, if the birds are calling to each other in order to communicate, then by definition they are using language.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by GePap

I agree with DF on this, but this is just a function of this particualr example. More important is an exmaple were you KNOW that if you kill one, then you will stop him from killing 100, since the possibility of "lies" has been neutralized. In that instance, you have a moral choice of which wrong is the lesser wrong: you commiting a murder (whether is is justifiable murder is an open question) or whether by refusing to commit a violation of rights yourself, you did the better things than by not stopping the violation of the rights of 100 times as many people. Now, the person most at guilt remaisn the one planning to kill 100, since it is his choice that sets of the chain of events, but even if the whole scenerio stems from the choice of that one individual, you are still given a choice, even if a rather imperfect one.

That's my example. You have good reason to believe he will go through on his threat. It doesn't absolve him of responsibility at all.