Clutch

One of our inexhaustible stock of posters who fails to grasp the meaning of argumentum ad hominem. Saying that it is you, and not the topic, that is simple is not an ad hominem. It can be (in this case, is) a straightforward observation of fact.

It would be the a.h. fallacy if I said, "Ted is a dolt; therefore his argument doesn't work."

But the following is not a fallacy: "Ted's argument is dreadful; therefore Ted is a dolt." Indeed, depending on how dreadful Ted's argument is, this can be a quite dispassionate appraisal.

Now, back to the matter at hand. The thesis of the OP was, "our society creates morals and rights". That's what is under discussion.

You have left morals to one side, focussed on rights, and argued against the thesis that rights are purely legal constructs. I have explained a couple of times now that this is a red herring, failing to engage any of the theses that might be characterized as "Society creates rights".

Now, you can of course say that the legal/social distinction itself is the real red herring. You can say anything at all. But that doesn't make it any less of a dodge. 'Legal' does not mean 'social'; law is not society; do I really need to argue this for anyone not trying desperately to make a non-sequitur stick?If you already know that there's a difference, graspable by a child, between 'legal' and 'social', why do you keep muddling the two and pretending you're not?

yguy

Indeed you have explained THAT you think it's a red herring, but you have failed to explain WHY, wherefore I feel quite justified in maintaining that it is not.

If you mean I'm not addressing your point, of course I'm not, because your point is of no value to the discussion, in my view.

You are drawing a distinction which is purely semantic; in the real world, law is no more separable from society than morals are from the individual. The fact that they are obviously different things hardly negates their interrelatedness.

Clutch

Who ever denied their "interrelatedness"? The question is simple: does one refute the idea that rights are socially determined by attacking the idea that rights are legally determined?

Answer: Obviously, no. That's just changing the topic, as one could be expected to do, lacking a genuine argument against the actual claim.

The distinction is transparent, and has been made for you already. To expand: Assume that a group of authoritarian and repressive legislators revokes the legal right to privacy in a manner fully consistent with the laws of the land. In this situation it is perfectly coherent for people to say: "The government is violating our right to privacy." They obviously would not mean their legal right, that having been removed ex hypothesi. What could they be talking about, then?

They could be talking about... what this thread is about. A socially determined right, hence supervening on many, many more things than merely the conventional actions of a legislature.

Or, more directly: When someone claims that X is F, it is a pointless blunder to reply by attacking the claim that X is G.

yguy

That depends on which people we're talking about. If the majority of the populace by acquiescence approves of the actions of the authoritarian legislators, then the more accurate statement by the remaining minority would be, "Society has taken away that which it gave us." Now, if you contend that society has no right to do that, you would be contradicting the premise that rights are granted by society, it appears.

Or they could be talking about an inherent right.

Clutch

Certainly that's one way of describing such an outcome, though it has no clear advantages over describing the situation as: the minority forms a distinct society -- one whose rights are being legally suppressed by the society in whose midst they live.

More importantly, you again conflate society with a majority vote. Why equate social factors, in all their manifestations, with a particular casting of ballots on one occasion?

Again, I am not purporting to define what the social determination of rights amounts to. You would, I believe, have a genuine critique of the OP were you simply to point out that no such definition is given there. My point is simply that, whatever one might mean by going out of one's way to say "Society determines rights", what one certainly would not mean is: We hold a referendum vote, once; or, Congress has a vote, once; or, the Supreme Court has a vote, once...

For better or worse, society is a big, sprawling notion. Characterizing the social determination thesis in such hopelessly simplistic terms is just a way of failing to engage it.

yguy

While it is obvious why you would find such a representation advantageous, I see no particular reason to believe it gives us a more accurate picture of reality, since our hypothetical minority is at least as culturally and economically tied to the rest of the country as the Jews were to Nazi Germany.

And how have we determined that I have represented them as being more conflated than they already are?

Again, I don't equate them, I merely observe that the casting of such ballots is an expression of the will of society.

As I see it, generalities are inescapable in questions like these, and there is no way in hell I'm about to get bogged down in endless nitpicking. To do so would be a failure to engage the issue, because it would inevitably lead to more and more verbiage about issues of less and less substance.

Clutch

Generalities perhaps. Talking about single specific political votes instead of society tout court is not a way of generalizing, however, but a way of changing the topic.

You are, of course, free to talk about something else. Just don't be surprised when this equivocation is pointed out.

yguy

"Instead of" implies that I have been discussing the first exclusive of the second, which seems rather incongruous considering your earlier claim that I am conflating the two.

By all means, bring it on.

Dune

To slightly bring it away from legalities...

Do we, as humans, have inherint rights?
No. Of course not. Outiside of society if we are thrown into nature, we have no right to life.. nature and whatever is hungry will consume us. We cannot demand of the planet that we live. When an infant dies of disease- we cannot scream at the disease about what it did to the child since it has every right to live?
Our rights are carved out of nature by us and earned by those who have created and protect our societal structure. In reality- might gives us rights and only through might do we keep them.

yguy

Therefore, since children have no might, they have no rights.

Right?