fromtheright

NialScorva,

Thanks for an outside perspective on my exchange with Ender. Perhaps I was a little sarcastic myself, but I do think that Ender started out hostile (e.g., "inane question"--I thought the question was rather simple and my own purpose stated quite honestly, to better gauge the atheist perspective, quite content generally to sit back and "listen", which shouldn't be provocative to anyone).

Honestly, it doesn't matter to me whether he so accepts my question as I'm not responsible for his willing misperception of it, since my purpose was so clearly stated early on. I'm not unable to see other possible answers (though perhaps my understanding of them may be limited); indeed, that was the purpose of the thread.

Thanks for the perspective, and I do appreciate a few of the points he made, in particular his answer to rights from God and natural law and his perspective that they come from a desire to dominate, as well as his statement about convictions. But in answer to his point, yes, delivery also matters and I'd rather not waste my time with someone who seemed so hostile to such a simple question.

[ April 15, 2002: Message edited by: fromtheright ]</p>

abe smith

"Rights" do not "come from" nor are they "given". Like LIBERTY, another variant of the same thing, "RIGHTS" can only be TAKEN, by force, if necessary, or by interpersonal or um intergroup contract. Forget about any deity as "giver"; deities are human fictions, like everything else verbal. Abe

doodad

In Alonzo's example the person B had the property
(and the right to it) before he lost it to A. This isn't the same as what you speak of in the slave example where the person didn't have the property to begin with. The right to own property is not universal in your example, which is apparently what your last sentence is trying to say.

Blake

I found Alasdair MacIntyre's account of the origin of rights convincing when I read it in After Virtue, though it has been too long for me to recollect it in detail. The best I can remember is that he considers & rejects a number of possibilities before settling on rights being decided by a community operating within a particular tradition. (And he's a Catholic!)

Blake

Alonzo Fyfe

Again, in all rights theories, rights themselves can not be taken away. Liberty may be taken, but not the right to liberty; property may be taken, but not the right to that property.

(A person may voluntarily relinquish rights -- by taking an oath and, thus, giving up certain liberty or by handing property over to another. But without a voluntary transfer, the right remains. One of the significant flaws in rights theory, however, is what to do after a few generations/centuries/millenia have passed since a forced transfer? Rights theory tends to hold that the right -- to land, to the products of slave labor -- remains with the original owner, whoever that may be, indefinitely.)

[ April 15, 2002: Message edited by: Alonzo Fyfe ]</p>

jpbrooks

Well, to be more precise, societies are (voluntary) associations of individuals distinguishable from one another by their particular aims or standards of living or conduct.

But even "Social Contract Theory", by definition:

... (apparently) holds that some rights already exist prior to the formation of a "society".

(I'll be back later.)

[ April 15, 2002: Message edited by: jpbrooks ]</p>

Jayhawker Soule

I'm not at all sure that Hobbs would concur with the concept of pre-exiting, specific rights, as opposed to 'the right to anything' as discussed below.

&lt;from <a href="http://www.thoemmes.com/encyclopedia/hobbes.htm" target="_blank">Thomas Hobbs</a> &gt;

Adrian Selby

jp

"why would the mere fact that different societies arrive at different sets of "rights" automatically rule out the existence of a set of rights that apply universally to human individuals (or societies) as a whole?"

I would argue that its because outside of any given society, in the wild for example, it doesn't seem to make sense to say rights exist there. If there are two savages and one piece of meat, the only way it could be said that one or the other had a right to it, or neither, would be if they themselves decided a system of rights that would 'arbitrate' in this case. People from within societies would look upon the savages in a state of nature and say that they think savage A or savage B should have the meat, or neither or both, but that is from within the system they adhere to, which would be used in this case to find some solution to the dilemma that possibly didn't involve violence, or some other non discursive solution. For that reason I don't think it would make sense to say that there could be a set of rights outside of all societies, I think a society invents its rights, for whatever valuable, useful, prudent reasons, and so perhaps part of the concept of rights for me is that any right must be within a society.

"social contract theory

Belief that political structures and the legitimacy of the state derive from an (explicit or implicit) agreement by individual human beings to surrender (some or all of) their private rights in order to secure the protection and stability of an effective social organization or government. Distinct versions of social contract theory were proposed by Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Rawls,

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

... (apparently) holds that some rights already exist prior to the formation of a "society"."

I would question only the use of the word 'rights' in the quote. Where it says that people give up private rights, I would say that people rather give up the freedom to do anything, they don't have a right to that freedom, but in a state of nature they are free to do anything to anyone, that is what they are giving up, so I'd hesitate to call that 'private rights'.


Al
"Rights exist regardless of what a society believes those rights to be"

With regard to the savages example, show me where their rights are? Do they have rights like they have arms and legs, i.e. what is the compelling evidence that rights for them must exist. I would rather say that were they to join any given society they would be given rights that the society feels it should give its citizens. An example might be the right to property. You might say that everyone has the right to property. Why might you believe this, if rights exist per se, is it as compelling to think this as to accept that people must eat? I contend that you have a value structure in place that informs the view that people have a right to property (again, an example of a right). Or, I contend that people do not have a right to property. How am I wrong? Are you suggesting its an a priori certainty that rights exist for everyone, acceded to or denied? Sorry if this sounds like a straw man, I'm just trying to pick an example of a right that is commonly supposed to exist outside of a particular society, a basic right if you will.

Adrian

snatchbalance

I don't know if "loyalty" can be considered to be a right in the same sense as that of some sort of writen code.

It seems that in most primate, and some other(marine mammal, elephant, etc.), social groups, once one is accepted as a member of the group, that individual can expect the support of the rest of the group. While I don't have the studies in front of me, I believe that such "loyal" behavior has been frequently documented.

For example, a group of baboons will defend one of it's members from a leopard. It would seem that all members of the group have a right to such mutual aid. (Except when the member is antisocial to an uacceptable degree, or if the member simply gets to old.)

I would think that such a right to mutual aid would exist in all human societies, to one degree or another. This may be part of the adaptive process that makes human society possible. People rely on each other for all sorts of things.

The key seems to lie in being a member of a particular group. Members have a right to loyalty, non-members don't.

Snatchbalance

DRFseven

Adrian Selby, I completely agree with everything you said, and what's more, you have a wonderful way of explaining. It's very hard for me to even believe that many think people automatically "come with" rights; where on earth would those rights be?