debate on, natural rights, the existence of!

[SkyPanda]

So i'm studying up about bills of rights for this test and I suddenly realise that the section on rights in my textbook written by John Willmott, BA (Hons) Dip.Ed(UWA), CM, is all about natural rights.

Screw that. There's no such thing as natural rights, except in the minds of fanciful spiritualists. Natural rights is just the collective term for basic legal rights that we currently desire, they may seem 'fundamental' at the moment, but in the future, who knows?
Right?

[SlappyMcGee]

Natural rights are fucking bullshit. They're more like cultural rights, dependent on whatever country who wrote them's societal norms.

[Tunco]

Natural rights are fucking bullshit. They're more like cultural rights, dependent on whatever country who wrote them's societal norms.

They're things that people can't live without them. That sounds weird.

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

Every country believes that its own citizens have an inalienable right to their lives. As it extends to citizens of other countries, however, it's more like a privilege which can be revoked whenever it's inconvenient.

[SkyPanda]

Natural rights are fucking bullshit.

Is it cool if I quote you in my essay? :D :D :D

[SlappyMcGee]

Natural rights are fucking bullshit.

Is it cool if I quote you in my essay? :D :D :D

Obviously.

[blue_tetris]

Natural rights, as in, what a government should not curtail? I believe that people should be entitled a basic series of rights and no nation should curtail those. But to call them "natural", as if they are somehow inherent, brings some amount of psuedoscience into politics. Like... who enforces a natural right? Nature? Jesus. And governments are supposed to obey.

And, of course, natural rights are provably false if they ever break the basic tradition of TANSTAAFL, from this anarchocapitalist's POV.



On a related note, I've assessed the golden rule of "Do unto others" and figured that a more applicable maxim to every member of society, living in any nation, should be "Live and let live". Altruism is a lofty goal, but passive isolationism is attainable.

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

On a related note, I've assessed the golden rule of "Do unto others" and figured that a more applicable maxim to every member of society, living in any nation, should be "Live and let live". Altruism is a lofty goal, but passive isolationism is attainable.

Isn't that somewhat opposed to any establishment of a criminal justice system?
And what about coming to the aid of strangers?

[Tanner]

On a related note, I've assessed the golden rule of "Do unto others" and figured that a more applicable maxim to every member of society, living in any nation, should be "Live and let live". Altruism is a lofty goal, but passive isolationism is attainable.

Isn't that somewhat opposed to any establishment of a criminal justice system?
And what about coming to the aid of strangers?

Those things are too hard. Apathy is easy.

[blue_tetris]

I don't agree with laws that oblige you to come to the aid of strangers. I don't think governments should be formed under such principles. I do agree that people who take it upon themselves to help others--going above and beyond the call of "don't fuck wit' me, I won't fuck wit' you"--should be protected legally if their help isn't helpful enough. As it is, chipping in can lead to lawsuits from people who don't think you helped correctly.

And a criminal justice system exists because someone in the community said "Live and let live isn't good enough. I'm angry and I wanna kill some dude (or otherwise cause him harm and discomfort)." Certainly, such a person has violated the basic principle of "live and let live". He chose to live and prevent others from doing so. So, prosecute him. The idea of law is to intervene (removing the typical rights of the individual) when someone infringed upon someone else's rights in a way that the community dislikes or distrusts. In way that, short of legal corrections to prevent further crimes, an entity should never curtail.

Certainly, some over-the-top anarchist movements call for the "live and let live" treatment of even criminals. The individual who says "live and let die" is given every right to go around killing people and cash in on the blaxploitation era of film-making. Seriously, stack that shit up against any other Bond film and it doesn't make any sense. It breaks every formula and offends every audience with this belief that it's being mildly tongue-in-cheek about its humor. In the end, it falls short of delivering a different product from blaxploitation films as a whole and just comes off as a distilled stereotypical work in the genre. Falling short of hyperbole at every turn, the audience is left with raised eyebrows and not laughter at a campy spy-take of the depeche mode. 2 out of 5.

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

Oh, so you were talking about "live and let live" as a basis for a legal system. I thought you were talking about it as a general moral approach to life.

[yungerkid]

You all have blasted me before when I posted that morality was unnecessary and that we should all dispense with it, so I'm surprised to see this thread. There is no such thing as natural rights. Not for humans, no less for plants; we are rearrangements of atoms.

[Lachesis]

Natural Rights exist, yet one doesn't have to follow them...

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

You all have blasted me before when I posted that morality was unnecessary and that we should all dispense with it, so I'm surprised to see this thread. There is no such thing as natural rights. Not for humans, no less for plants; we are rearrangements of atoms.

I see as much reason in this line of thinking as "computers are just fancy arrangements of electrons, therefore these things called 'operating systems' don't exist and it's pointless to talk about them."
Obsessing about the lower levels of human abstractions does not contribute to this conversation.

The subject is morality, as it's understood by humans in the context of every day human interaction. Try again.

[SkyPanda]

Natural rights through social compact, an argument between myself and the textbook, paragraph split into sentences:

"People are naturally free."
Yes. Well, true in that for the purposes of this debate we can define the base state of a person as 'not part of a social contract' (free). That's fine, unless there's some spiritual bullshit going on here.

"Individuals are citizens who are tied to the nation by free agreement through a social contract."
All good so far.

"As equal citizens people have equal rights to 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' that are not subject to the will of governments."
Does not follow (and is a dickish presentation of American values in a bloody Australian textbook). Citizens ARE subject to the will of government, that is the nature of the contract.
Citizens may certainly negotiate areas that the government cannot legislate on or against (eg those defined in a Bill of Rights), but that does not make the rights 'natural' or different at all, since they can be surrendered, changed and held same as any other rights. The only difference is that they are relatively simple, and are /currently/ valued.

If I surrender the right to life to my government, then my life is subject to the will of that government. If I surrender the right to cheese to my government, then my cheese is subject to the will of that government. How is the right to life more 'natural' than the right to cheese?


To call a right 'universal' is to ignore the multitude of different social contracts that exist in various countries and cultures. To call a right 'natural' is a meaningless misrepresentation of the fact that a person not entered into a social contract has infinite rights (or no rights depending on how you look at it). To call a right 'inalienable' is naive.

[yungerkid]

"computers are just fancy arrangements of electrons, therefore these things called 'operating systems' don't exist and it's pointless to talk about them."

It's more like "computers are just fancy rearrangements of electrons, therefore they do not have the inherent right, merely by virtue of the fact that they are computers, to escape being kicked and abused by humans". I was merely saying that natural rights do not exist merely because we are humans. The subject was not morality, it was our rights. We do not have rights because there is nothing in what we are to give us rights.

[The_Juggler]

Natural rights are fucking bullshit. They're more like cultural rights, dependent on whatever country who wrote them's societal norms.

Yeah these are more of a societal right - but at the same time there are certain desires that are inherent to human nature.

Humans - being a more complex organism - have a variety of wants in addition to their basic biological needs. Animals - being a less complex organism - have much more simple wants, or none at all.

Have a look at Maslow Hierarchy of Needs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_h ... y_of_needs
Might this sort of thing better define one's natural wants?

[otters~1]

Natural rights are fucking bullshit.

No, Slappy. I'm not sure what you mean by that, but natural, "inalienable" rights definitely exist, and they are definitely not bullshit. They may be considered bullshit in some countries, and they may not be enforced in those countries, but natural rights still exist there. Jefferson had it right.

If we're arguing at cross-purposes, just tell me.

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

"computers are just fancy arrangements of electrons, therefore these things called 'operating systems' don't exist and it's pointless to talk about them."

It's more like "computers are just fancy rearrangements of electrons, therefore they do not have the inherent right, merely by virtue of the fact that they are computers, to escape being kicked and abused by humans". I was merely saying that natural rights do not exist merely because we are humans. The subject was not morality, it was our rights. We do not have rights because there is nothing in what we are to give us rights.

The existential circumstances of humans is an extension of the specific way the matter we call us is configured; using our chemical makeup to justify any point at this scope is meaningless. To make the analogy more accurate, it's like saying that the concept of "file permissions," which are impositions we more or less place on ourselves in our use of computers, is meaningless. It's saying that files don't inherently have access restrictions simply by their nature, with the reason being that they're defined at their lowest level by not even matter, but energy states. That's not a good reason for saying that files don't inherently have access restrictions, nor is it a good reason for any sort of statement about files that involves as many levels of abstraction.
"Natural rights" are a human concept, understood in the context of human consciousness. It is not a concept in the study of physics. Saying that natural rights don't exist because they can't be addressed in a scope that's not meant to address them does not contribute meaningfully to the conversation.

"People are naturally free."
Yes. Well, true in that for the purposes of this debate we can define the base state of a person as 'not part of a social contract' (free). That's fine, unless there's some spiritual bullshit going on here.

"Individuals are citizens who are tied to the nation by free agreement through a social contract."
All good so far.

"As equal citizens people have equal rights to 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' that are not subject to the will of governments."
Does not follow (and is a dickish presentation of American values in a bloody Australian textbook). Citizens ARE subject to the will of government, that is the nature of the contract.
Citizens may certainly negotiate areas that the government cannot legislate on or against (eg those defined in a Bill of Rights), but that does not make the rights 'natural' or different at all, since they can be surrendered, changed and held same as any other rights. The only difference is that they are relatively simple, and are /currently/ valued.

If I surrender the right to life to my government, then my life is subject to the will of that government. If I surrender the right to cheese to my government, then my cheese is subject to the will of that government. How is the right to life more 'natural' than the right to cheese?

I think I agree with you on all counts, there.
Seems to me that Americans' "inalienable" right to life and liberty are regularly taken away from them by our criminal justice system. I'm not saying that that's necessarily a bad thing, because I do approve of bad people leaving my society, but that the contract of citizenship clearly involves making this right a privilege, if it's a right to begin with. Heck, I was required to register for the draft when I graduated high school, and if that doesn't turn liberty into a privilege, I don't know what does.

[blue_tetris]

The forum is just a complicated series of galaxynumbers transmogrified for "human" (and I use the term loosely) trampolizing. Why you all insist on turning meatlightning into keystrokes and plaguing the forums with them is beyond my grand and all-inclusive understanding. On a cosmic scale, it's all meaningless. Stop talking about it.

[SlappyMcGee]

Natural rights are fucking bullshit.

No, Slappy. I'm not sure what you mean by that, but natural, "inalienable" rights definitely exist, and they are definitely not bullshit. They may be considered bullshit in some countries, and they may not be enforced in those countries, but natural rights still exist there. Jefferson had it right.

If we're arguing at cross-purposes, just tell me.

Is it then, say, a natural inalienable right to live freely? Because that's the only thing I thing you could argue as an inherent natural right to all of humanity, and I'm not even sure I agree. There are certainly some rights I think people should be entitled to, but to define those rights as "natural" is simply wrong. If people have the right to live freely, then this right is being largely ignored.

Jefferson, who you mentioned, believed the natural rights were limited to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Let's look at those for a second:

1) Life: In our culture, the concept held with the highest value and the most important thing in the world. Without life, there are no experiences. Other cultures, on the other hand, do not view life as important as we do. While your sense of western morality may dictate to you that all people deserve life, certainly there are cultures and there have been more historically that have disagreed with this concept. I would say that defining these as natural rights is overbearing. A country's dictated morality should be contained to it's citizens; to say that the rights you define in your country are natural rights is to give you an excuse to interfere in other cultures.

Ex: Let's say country X murdered children who were born with mutations. A tragedy, but does this give the United States or the UN reason to invade, threaten or attack this country? You might say that that is absolutely enough of a reason to dictate their rights:

2) Liberty. Which would be completely ignored in lieu of the first "natural rights". If this is how a country is run and this is generally deemed acceptable by them, then it is the country's autonomous right to do so. And that each individual be granted liberty? This isn't held to be true by any country in the world. Taxes fund the wars which are ultimately rooted in differing senses of morals; prisons hold the nutjobs who hold different moral standards to the countries they were born in.

3) Pursuit of Happiness: I don't feel like I need to address this one because it's a preposterous addition to life and liberty. The original mindset was life, liberty and property, but Jefferson added a spin by throwing in this word which essentially is implied by liberty; It is inherent that if you are free to do what you want, you will pursue to do what will make you the most happy.

So, rather than having inalienable, natural rights, which sound great in concept, we have largely broken rights that have been assigned to us by a document. And don't get me wrong; I love the concept of politically assigned rights and regulations. I think that this is the way every country should work. And I also think that you would be fooling yourself if you believed that life and liberty were natural rights. In fact, the very question of why you would want to have natural rights in the first place is puzzling to me UNLESS you wanted to assign your morality to other countries as a end-all absolutely correct thing. I mean, right? Your country protects you from breaches of life and liberty because that's the way your society is and that's what it does. (Well, okay, it doesn't do either, but you get the point.) In any other country, you would see that they have different values, and that morality isn't a common fact that people know, but rather an opinion that varies vastly that everybody in the world has.