Clutch

The topic is whether rights are socially determined. You attempt to refute only a thesis that rights are legally determined. If you intend your remarks to be relevant, you conflate the legal and the social. (If you do not intend your remarks to be relevant, of course, then there is no conflation but merely a change of topic.) How much simpler could this be?Done, already, repeatedly and comprehensively. Like all things objectively true, your failure to notice is irrelevant to their obtaining.

yguy

For starters, you could tell me whether I am conflating the legal and the social, as you started out saying, or separating them, as you did in the post before this.

For the life of me, I can't figure out what the hell your objection is - and believe me, I'm not gonna waste a whole lot more time trying to figure it out.

Clutch

Not simple enough, apparently.

Did you read what you just quoted? My six year-old could understand it.

When the topic is A but you discuss B, then either you intend B to be relevant, in which case you are conflating A and B, or you do not intend B to be relevant and you are a waste of time. That's as simple as I can make it; if you are simpler still, we'll just have to fail to communicate here.

True enough, I suppose.

mhc

I'd really just like to hear a clear and simple explanation of
how rights are conferred by society, if not through law.
Maybe then I could see the point of the dispute.

yguy

Hey, I'd ask your six year old to explain it, but I don't think it's worth my time or his; so I believe failure to communicate is indeed the best option.

Ciao, baby.

Clutch

It's long been clear that you believe this the best option.

cobrashock

After looking this thread over I wonder out loud if this same argument wasn't made by our founding fathers over 300 years ago. Imagine over 100 type "A" folks in the same room debating this subject and still being charged with setting a foundation for a new untried government.
Of course "rights" are given by one man to another, or by the group to the one, or by the one to the group. To put it to paper formalizes it and makes it law.
When the constitution was drafted there was no mention of the whys, where's, the theys/its, or the counter arguments. Just the basic "Indelible Rights" of man. Don't you guys see the wisdom of this?
They had the outright genius to limit all of that in the Bill Of Rights saying in effect that nobody, NOBODY, including a majority electorate has the right to take away certain rights. Then they went about making provisions to change that very thinking!

What you guys are missing is a common, mutually agreed on starting point. Over 300 years have past us by and we are doomed to make the same mistakes?
If this is what this forum is about, well I'm going to check out of it. Quit acting like children!
Cobrashock

Keith Russell

I'm coming to this conversation a bit late in the game, but are we trying to figure out whether rights are intrinsic to human beings, or simply a subjective social construct?

Those aren't the only options. There is a third alternative.

I believe that the concept of 'rights' is a conclusion, a concept derived from certain other facts about human beings. In this sense, 'rights' as such don't exist in nature, but we realize that human beings should be treated in specific ways (which we term, 'rights') because human beings are independent, self-aware, volitional creatures, capable of reason.

The idea of 'rights' is thus not intrinsic, but not subjective, either.

Often, the type of derived conclusion I've described is confused with an 'intrinsic' thing. It isn't. The intrinsic is not objective, but the derived conclusion can be.

K

Clutch

There is a rather vague suggestion in the OP: that rights are socially determined.

One poster attempted to reply to this by attacking a very different thesis.

I pointed out this equivocation.

Much hilarity ensued.

I agree that it's not been very interesting trying to explain the meanings of words like "equivocation", "social", "legal" and "conflate" to someone determined to feign -- or not to feign -- obtuseness.

But I don't see where "we" are doomed to anything, except the frustration of periodically encountering trolls. One tries to educate them, perhaps successfully, perhaps not. The topic in question, the social determination of rights, is still very much up in the air. Why not say something useful about it, rather than flouncing off?

Clutch

Keith, would you mind saying a bit more about your idea? It sounds interesting, but I'm not really following the distinction between intrinsic and concluded-about.