filtherton

There seems to be a lot of inconsistency round these parts concerning what constitutes a right.

You have the ones in the constitution.

You have the ones that are apparently god given.

You have the ones that only exist in the sense that they haven't yet been prohibited by the law.

I'm just curious as to how folks go about defining for themselves what is and is not a right. I don't really care about specific rights, and i am preemptively labelling a douchebag anyone who make this thread about specific issues i.e. gun control or abortion.

I think that a right is nothing more than arbitrary priority placed on certain behaviors or activities. I don't think that there necessarily is a god, and this little tidbit isn't as important as the fact that i don't think a god would prescribe us specific rights - i don't believe in innate rights. The notion of certain rights being innate, to me, seems like more a way to lend an air of legitimacy to convictions which are essentially subjective. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Pssh, there's no way those rights are natural, or innate, or god given. They only exist in the constitution as a way of generalizing the founders' idea of how to go about creating a government as they saw fit.

How do you define a right? Do you think certain rights are owed? Why? Is it question of innate rights or a question of how to set the ground rules for a system of government? If you agree with me that a person's definition of rights are purely projections of personal philosophy, is there any way you can justify attempting to force others to conform to your notions of behavioral entitlement? In other words, why is claiming something as a right a valid basis for a perspective?

Willravel

This is inviting a diatribe of epic proportions. I'll only go so far as to say that a natural right is apparently quite subjective, and a legal right is something a bit more tangible. The former can be debated, the latter can be enforced.

archetypal fool

I don't think there's any real "right" which all humans have. Personally, I feel that a "right" is just a fancy word for "what you're allowed to do without being prosecuted." Furthermore, I think "rights", in the context of those given to us by our government, are also mailable and pertinent to contemporary society. Today it may not be my right to smoke pot (for example), but maybe in 50 years time, it will be. So what? Then we will have the "right", but if it is indeed a "right", then why not now? Why did we have to wait so long to give blacks the right to vote and integrate into society? Did we have to give them the "right"? Well, if a "right" has to be given, then that isn't a "right", is it?

With that said, I share the same views as filtherton.

For me, there is only one true universal right, which I think we can all agree on: You can do whatever you want, so long as you don't hurt anyone physically, mentally, or financially. That's it. All other "right" branch off from this true one. Or, at least they should; today they really aren't, which I think is sad. That's also why I think the word "right" gets thrown around for every little thing.

But, then again, that's just my personal philosophy, so I think filtherton hit the nail on the head.

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jorgelito

This is well said Will, simply stated. I agree.

Willravel

ty, I enjoyed your post as well.

FoolThemAll

Well, here's my own personal clumsy explanation:

Rights are things that people should be allowed to keep/do. I should be allowed to keep my body in my possession - kidnapping is wrong. I should be allowed to speak - duct taping my mouth is wrong.

None but the most ardent anarchists believe that these rights should be absolute. You know the old cliche: your right to swing your fist ends at my face.

My own view tends to be - I don't know that I'm wholly consistent in this - that rights are only justly violated when the purpose of the violation is to protect equal or greater rights.

I don't think it matters whether they come from God, from nature, or from our own minds. No matter the source, rights are good things. We should respect rights. We should be hesitant to disregard them, even when our motives appear to be pure.

Rights are the second-person perspective on personal morals. My personal morality says "I shouldn't do this", my personal rights say, "You shouldn't prevent me from doing this."


Or something like that.

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joshbaumgartner

Unfortunately, I think often the word 'right' is used in legal discussions to seize a certain ground in debate. There are all manner of debates we have over what can or can not be done and what should or should not be done. It doesn't matter the issue, or which end of the political spectrum is promoting the activity and which is for some restrictions, because almost universally, those promoting freedom to do the activity will bring out the word 'right' in one fashion or another, the idea being that therefore anyone advocating limitations is painted in the role of the tyrant, infringing on the others 'rights'.

While this may well be true in some situations (yes there are tyrants out there), since it is so universally used, it loses its 'sting' if you will, which is not good for those times when its appropriate. It's like calling anyone you disagree with a 'nazi' or 'commie'... loses the edge it would normally have if you reserved it for dealing with those who really were.

The problem, like with all terms, is not the term itself, but the pre-programmed reactions we have to it. Take the term genocide, and the gyrations we saw the government go through to determine whether or not Darfur would be called 'genocide'. It wasn't about whether they really cared about the label, but since the term had a defined legal reaction that had to happen if the label was applied, the gyrations were necessary not for the sake of the label but to determine whether the follow-up action would take place. If the supporters could get it labelled genocide, they could get the response they felt was needed, whereas those who avoided the term really were just trying to avoid being forced into a course of action they didn't want to be forced into.

The same thing with 'right'. We kind of have this automated response to the word 'right' that basically equates it to 'shall not be infringed'. Thus, if you can get a person to think of an activity as a 'right', they will be much more skeptical of arguments in favor of any restrictions on that activity. Thus why nearly every cause which supports freedom for some activity, from guns to abortion to dress codes to smoking to...whatever else you want to insert here... almost invariably seeks to have their activity painted as a 'right' to one degree or another.

Nimetic

The term "right" is misused.

I guess to me, it is helpful to define some "rights" that are fairly obvious to all. That is, they are taken to be axiomatic and can be used as the basis for subsequent decisions, laws and so on.

This is simply a convenience. Because we all have different philosophies/religions, it only works if the original "rights" are a very small set that we (mostly) agree on. Having said that, I think this is a good mechanism in that it means we don't get bogged down in the long discussion of why those rights exist.

Slightly off-post.... but.

There was a shooting in Melbourne last week. One guy is dead.

Shortly after, an opinion piece by a sub-editor (I think) appeared in the paper. It discussed the "Right to feel safe". The writer was serious.

filtherton

By all means, will. I enjoy your diatribes.


archetypal fool, i don't know if i agree with you that there is a true universal right. The definition of what it means to hurt someone physically, mentally or financially is really in the eye of the beholder, and as such, the idea that my rights begin where yours end is in many instances completely untenable, especially as a framework on which to hang a rigorously defined set or legal or personal rules. While it is fine to aspire to the golden rule, i don't think that it is necessarily universal or beneficial. The notion of universal rights also don't jibe with our(the u.s.'s) current system of criminal justice.

FoolThemAll
I see what you're saying, and it kind of reinforces my reasoning behind this thread. The idea that something is a right is often used to justify things when the person using it has no real rational means to justify it. This works so well because the prevailing opinion amongst most people(though perhaps not so much any more) is that rights are to be cherished and protected. What better way to claim moral high ground than to imply that all who oppose you are tyrants? The discussion then turns from a conflict between opposing- yet perhaps essentially valid- perspectives to a conflict between the noble patriot and the tyrannical forces of despotism. This isn't at all to accuse you of doing this, just that your perspective that rights are just externalized morality is in line with the subjective appeals to rights that often are made right here on this very forum.

FoolThemAll

Rational means only act as justification when there is a disagreement on observable reality. Once we've moved on to disagreements in theory - if this happens like this, is it wrong? - reason can't help justify, it can only help clarify. When we face two contradictory abstract beliefs, our emotions are the deciding factor.

Ah, I think I agree here. Like I said before, only the most ardent anarchist considers rights absolute. The rest of us are debating on where to draw the rationally arbitrary line. We don't want to get too close to tyranny, no, but anarchy's not an appealing neighbor either. It's not self-evident by any means that we should be closer to one or the other, nor that the dead center is inherently best. It's up to debate, debate that is clarified rationally but ultimately decided emotionally.

But as long as we avoid "you rights-hating nazi!", I don't see a problem with the language of 'rights'. It's just another useful way of talking about what we should and shouldn't do.

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I wonder if we're stuck in Rome.

Baraka_Guru

Excerpts from The International Bill of Human Rights
from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (United Nations):
I agree that the word right is often misapplied. Anything beyond these established rights might be getting too specific and could possibly infringe on them. I think the key, here, is the last section above. It aims to prevent "the destruction" of these rights. (i.e. you don't have the right to get in the way of other's specified international human rights.) I will withhold further comment until others have read and responded to this quotation.

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Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
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Daniel_

The problem of things like this is that they are culturally determined, and make the mistaken assumption that everyone thinkslike we do; or even that YOU think like I do.

Ideas of rights that we all think are immutable did not exist some time ago, and may not exist in future.

Some rights seem to be based on the natural feeling that "I do not want bad things to happen to me, and terefore we all have the right to not have those things to happen to us".

Killing people is therefore considered bad - people most often talk about the "right to life".

That however doesn't stop war.

It gets even more confusing when people with differing ideas of the same right come into conflict.

One person's understanding of "right to life" makes them think that abortion is wrong, another person's feeling about "the right to freedom of choice" makes them opose the first person.

Both insist that their version is correct, self evident, and maybe even god given, or prescribed by religeous or political creeds.

The simple fact is that there are very few clear rights that everyone agrees on.

Even the right to bodily freedom doesn't extend to everyone - otherwise prisons would be empty.

It turns out that almost all rights are limited by society; in countries with the death penalty this extends to not even having the right to live your natural term in certain circumstances.

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Overhead, the Albatross hangs motionless upon the air,
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Baraka_Guru

Some did, however, exist in some form as early as 539 BC.

It's true that war makes puts the idea of rights in a kind of limbo. Perhaps this would suggest that there is no such thing as a just war.

As far as incarceration is concerned, this is reserved for those who have infringed on others' rights. Prisoners, having been proven guilty, have done something to have certain rights revoked until they pay their debt to the society they have wronged. Once the time is served, their full rights will be restored (well, depending... and in theory...)

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

FoolThemAll

It's not necessarily a matter of not realizing that other people think differently.

It's often a matter of believing that other people think incorrectly, so incorrectly that one is willing to forcibly make those other people abide by some other kind of thinking.

Some times this is obviously a bad attitude, like when sodomy is punished by death. Other times this is obviously a good attitude, like when trying to end genocide in Darfur.

People may disagree over rights and what they entail. That doesn't mean that a single right answer is impossible. And it certainly doesn't mean that there are no wrong answers.

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I wonder if we're stuck in Rome.