Natural Rights

[The Templar]

Originally posted by David Floyd


If 100% of them want communal property, that's fine, but when any single person wants his or her property back, that person has a right to it.

Presumably, from a legal standpoint, once someone surrenders their property to the community, their entitlement interest is extinguished. So that, if I donate my property to the collective, I cannot later demand a return of that property if I quit the collective. Then I would be taking another entity's (i.e. the collective's) property and infringing its property rights.

Then again, if we have all agreed on a communal property system to begin with, then any attempt to create private property would be theft.

I guess however, you want to talk on a moral - not a legal - level. Property is purely a legal construct. If you want to talk ona moral level you'll need to talk about some sort of pre-legal entitlement to material (and intellectual) things. And by the way, given that the Locke
's labor theory is bunk (see mypost above above, and previous thread where I won the argument), you'll need some other basis for pre-legal entitlement. Good luck!

[Agathon]

Originally posted by David Floyd

Yeah, OK

Seriously, you did. Not as bad as Berz though.

Murdering 1 person because someone who holds a the power of life and death over 100 tells you to is NOT preventing a greater evil. It's simply committing murder because someone told you to.

In this case it is also preventing 100 other murders.

Oh, well, if he gives me the choice, then I will choose the option that he should not kill 100 people, and that I should not (will not) kill one person. But the decision of whether or not to kill 100 people ultimately lies with him. I can tell him not to do it, but he ultimately decides - it's his responsibility.

No one said that the decision didn't lie with him. But if you have good reason to think he'll go through with it then the choice you mentioned isn't available - you have good reason to believe that either 1 or 100 people will die.

Funny, I didn't see the option in your scenario where I could physically take action against the murderer, or the option where I knew his name and location and could call the police.

That's a general point. In this case you can't. But There may be other options.

Sure, but that's a result of someone else's immoral behavior, not your moral behavior. Surely you won't argue that my decision NOT to commit murder was responsible for someone else deciding TO commit murder.

No. All I am saying is that you can make a difference. So do you want to make things worse or better.

The only "power to intervene" would be taking action against the murderer, to restrain him. I guess I could also intervene in the life of the one innocent person I am being asked to kill, but that is a different and unrelated situation.

No, in the case described you have the power to ensure that 1 or 100 people die.

Just because the mass murderer is trying to shift blame away from himself and onto me doesn't change the fact that we are responsible for our own actions.

I never said he would be blameless. Blame isn't an all or nothing property.

Are you trying to make the argument that I am responsible for the deaths of 100 should I choose not to commit murder? THAT is clearly preposterous - I had nothing to do with those 100 people, and most likely don't even know who they are.

It doesn't matter. What matters is that you acted or did not act to make the best of a bad situation.

If someone calls me on the phone and tells me that he has 100 people, and will kill all of them unless I kill the next person I see, then I hang up and call the police. I don't go out and commit murder hoping to influence someone else not to commit murder. That's stupid.

Because you are changing the case. The proviso in this case is that you have good reason to believe that he will carry through his threat.

Murder is wrong no matter how many people you kill. It's wrong for me to murder 1 person, and it's wrong for someone else to murder 100 people. Murder is ALWAYS wrong.

I didn't say it wasn't. But aren't 100 murders worse than one?

[Imran Siddiqui]

If 100% of them want communal property, that's fine, but when any single person wants his or her property back, that person has a right to it.

That's silly David. You've given your property to the community (if 100% agree, then that is so). So now it is the community's property. If you try to take 'back' your land then you are stealing from the community.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

If 100% of them want communal property, that's fine, but when any single person wants his or her property back, that person has a right to it.

That's silly David. You've given your property to the community (if 100% agree, then that is so). So now it is the community's property. If you try to take 'back' your land then you are stealing from the community.

Don't they have some proviso where only individuals or voluntary organisations can hold property? Communities don't seem to fit the bill.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Don't they have some proviso where only individuals or voluntary organisations can hold property? Communities don't seem to fit the bill.

Communities can be an organization... however, that doesn't matter. What he is speaking of is theoretically if an entire population decided communal property is the way to go. If there were laws against it, I'm sure they'd be quickly changed.

[Giant_Squid]

Ugh that was dealt with, but telling you to go look it up is like asking you to find that needle I hid in a haystack. Oh wait, Gepap and I debated that in another thread, so here goes: suicide isn't murder, even if I can convince someone to help me die. Murder implies a victim who doesn't want to die. I should add that the universal desires I'm talking about exist with all things being equal (is that a valid phrase here?), so creating caveats that make death more preferable to a life of immense suffering doesn't mean the person hurting wants to die, much less be murdered, just that a more peaceful and sooner death is the better option. Remove the suffering and you remove the desire to end the suffering via death. Like the conjoined twins (not exactly suicide) who decided to take a huge risk with their lives rather than continue on in that situation...

The necessity of making a victim who doesn't want to die makes this a tautology. You're saying "There is a universal desire among people who don't want to be killed to not be killed." I see this as a pretty big flaw - the only way to make it meaningful and noncircular is to change "murder" to "kill", which would collapse your argument on the suicide point. There *are* no really universal desires - think of Jesus' "If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to him the other as well" or "If someone steals your coat, offer him your cloak also." Obviously Jesus and theoretically other Christians don't have desires like not to be hit or not to be stolen from. Buddhists who have undergone rigorous training supposedly have no desires at all. For you to say that taking something belonging to a person who doesn't desire to keep it isn't really stealing is to make this entire argument meaningless. The best you can do is say "There's a universal desire not to have things done to me that I don't want to have done to me." This doesn't serve as a decent basis for rights, however, because one can similarly say "There's a universal desire to have things done to me that I want done to me."

But a right is not a guarantee you will fulfill your desire, only a moral claim against others using force or fraud to keep you from pursuing your happiness.

This seems to me to be a much better way of putting it than your original argument. But it has nothing to do with universal desires whatsoever. If I desire to ride a purple zebra naked in circles in my backyard, that's far from universal but by the common definition of rights I still have a moral claim against anyone using force or fraud to keep me from pursuing it. I get the feeling that it is generally agreed by rights-supporters that you have a moral claim against others using force or fraud to prevent you from doing something no matter whether it's universal or not (as long as it doesn't use force or fraud).

Health care isn't free, someone pays - and I doubt you'd find universal agreement on taxing Peter to enrich Paul.

Uh oh...this fuzzies it a lot. You're now saying not only does the thing we're discussing have to be a universal desire, but there also has to be a universal desire to accept its consequences in a universal sense. (ie health care may be a universal desire, but there wouldn't be a universal desire when everyone has to deal with the consequences of universal free health care). But this can be applied to anything else - even if we accept to not be stolen from to be a universal desire, it might not be a universal desire to deal with the consequences of a generalized no-stealing society. If you define taxation as stealing, then I would not want to deal with the consequences of having a society without taxation, and therefore your argument against stealing collapses on the same grounds on which my argument supporting free health care did.

To continue from my last response, your desire to interfere (conflicting desires) is not universal. The desire not to be murdered is universal.

I still think the universal desire thing is hokey. If everyone in the world decided they DID want to murder you, does that mean it's morally okay for us to do so? And if one person somewhere in China decided he didn't mind being tortured after all, does that mean we suddenly have the right to torture? It just doesn't make sense.

You had me up until that leap into ideology. Utilitarianism isn't concerned with what makes you happy, it's concerned with increasing the happiness of some people at the expense of the happiness of others as long as the outcome is ostensibly a net gain in happiness (or somethink like that).

Your definition of a right as "a moral claim against others preventing you from happiness" clears up that dilemma, although I do think you fail to give any justification for this definition other than the flimsy and necessarily theistic one in 4.

If no one else owned the wood [that you make a table out of], no one but you can have a moral claim to it.

I agree, I just don't see why you would have a moral claim to it either. Your labor didn't make the wood, and I don't see why you should be able to claim it. You'd have to add a postulate like "If no one else claims something, and you want it, it's yours", which I see no reason to do other than reasons of convenience. And I won't accept Locke's argument that you get it by virtue of your labor being mixed with it, because it must have become yours *before* you started making it into a table, or else you'd have no justification for going and making a table out of it as if you owned it.

No, just using universality to avoid subjectivity. If we all agree on the line, we have a moral principle to work with.

Not really, we just have something we all agree on (and not even, to be technical, the same thing, since not wanting to be murdered only implies something about murder if we accept the Golden Rule). The fact that no one wants to be murdered in no way implies that murder is objectively wrong than the fact that everyone would be happy if gold started raining down from the skies means that that's going to happen. It's simply a universal preference - something that only counts toward morality if you accept that morality is essentially just conventional and based on what people want it to be.

This assumes God allows behavior or has the power or desire to stop it. But I've been waiting for someone to make this argument, very good (not that I see it as a flaw since I'm dealing with universality and morality).

I'm not assuming that; you're assuming that when you say that God's gave us all life and a desire not to be murdered. You're saying God has the desire to keep us from murdering one another, and as for power, I should certainly HOPE He has the power, since He's God. I suppose arguing from a Deist point of view could clear up that objection, but it would raise others. (God also gave animals the power and desire not to be murdered, therefore they have the same rights)

Thx Squid, that was one of the better posts.

Thank *you*. I wish everyone would try and present their arguments in a logical fashion and open them up to discussion.

[Odin]

I wish the Libertarians would quit pulling this stuff out of thier @sses.

There is no such thing as natural rights because it cannot be proven what rights are natural, just like each religion views it's dieties as the "true" God(s) and other religions deities as "evil idols". Most people who believe in "natural rights either have an ideology behind it, are religious nutheads, or have been duped by one or both.

Today, for example, we would think of infaticide as immoral, but before agriculture it was nessasary to keep the population low enough to be fed. After the invention of agriculture the more kids you had the better, so society began to think of population control as evil and repulsive.

For the record I would kill 1 than let 100 die. Floyd, you are such a sicko to not prevent the death of 100. Libertarians...

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Odin

For the record I would kill 1 than let 100 die. Floyd, you are such a sicko to not prevent the death of 100. Libertarians...

Yes he is a sicko, isn't he.

[GePap]

As "fun" as the little sidebar has been loin, I whish to end it decisevely, so here I go.

On the issues of math and language: if you define something broadly enough, everything fits in it. No, i do not think that the abiity of animals to differentiate between different masses, sizes, or distances count as Mathematics. Vocabulary is pretty arbitrary most of the time, and if not, please explain why spam has its new web meaning (that seems arbitrary to me). Now, yes, all human languages share basic componenets, but that does not make them the same, anymore than I and a chimp are the same for sharing most basc components.


Now on to "murder": first of all, the imcomplete definition you give me (this will be ellaborated on soon enough) is not even anywehre near Bezerkers, which he defined in another thread as "unjustifiable killing of an innocent". From what I am about to post, it will be clear that this is a very idosyncratic definition, speically his addition of "innocent", which is almost utterly out of place.

now, what do i plane to do? Thankfuly my family has lots of dictionaries, and lots of them are for English, so here follows five different definitions of murder, from four different publishers, and from different times. (emphasis is mine, and I will exclude word histories)


mur'der: kill human being unlawfully and on the basis of a plan; kill cruelly.
(The Universal Webster, Langenscheidt, New York. pg. 230)

murder: The unlawful ad malicious or premeditated killing of a person. v.t 1. to kill unlawfully and with malice 2.to botch, as in performance.
(Webster's New World Dictionary, The world Publishing Company, Cleveland & NY, 1967, pg. 283)

murder: 1. The unlawful and malicious or premeditated killing of one human being by another, also, any kiling done while committing some other felony, as rape or roberry. 2 [colloq.] Somehting very hard, unsafe, or disagreeable to do or deal with-vt. 1. To kill (a person) unlawfully and with malice 2. to kill inhumanely or barbarously, as in warfare 3 to spoil, mar, etc., as in performance. vi to commit murder.
(Webster's New World Dictionary, third college edition, Webster's New World, Cleveland & NY, 1988, pg. 893)

murder: 1. The unlawful killing of one human being by another, esp. when premeditated. 2slang Something that is very uncomfortable, difficult, or hazardous-v-dered, -de-ring, -ders -tr1. to kill (another human being) unlawfully 2. to kill brutaly or inhumanely 3 to put and end to, destroy 4 to spoil by ineptness; mutilate 5slang to defeat, decisively trounce. -intr. To commit murder.
(The American Heritage College Dictionary, Houghton MIfflin Company, Boston, New York, 1993, pg. 898)

murder: v.t To kill (a human being) with premeditated malice 2 to kill in a barbarous or inhuman manner; slaughter 3 to spoil by bad performance, etc.; mangle, butcher. See synonims under KILL-n The unlawful and intentional killing of one human being by another.
(New Illustrated Webster's Dictionary, Pamco Publishing Company Inc., New York, NY, 1992, pg643)

Five different definitions, from five different editors, of different lengths and with different emphasis. The only things all five universally agree with is that murder involves the killing of one human being by another, and the one adjective all five definitons use is not premeditated, nor malicious, but unlawful. Now, I will make the leap to say that these five distinct dictionaries are a sample group big enough for me to claim that if you looked at the vast majority of English dcitionaries there are, unlawful will remain the universal connection as far as the definition of murder is concerned. And hence, to make my point yet again: the concept of murder can NOT be separated rom the concept of LAW.

[loinburger]

Oh for pity's sake, Gepap. If by "end decisively" you meant "obtusely ignore everything that has been said up until this point," you have indeed succeeded.

1. Murder is unlawful. You win the "no shit, Sherlock" award for continuing to point this out, despite the fact that I never once said anything amounting to "murder is legal" or whatever have you. Any definition of murder that failed to include this simple fact would be incomplete.
2. Every one of your definitions mentions premeditation (though this may not be apparent with the first definition, but I read "on the basis of a plan" to amount to "premeditation"). Your claim that "unlawful" is the only common element between the definitions is incorrect.
3. Every one of your definitions mentions malice (though the first substitutes "cruelly," and the fourth substitutes "brutally or inhumanely"). Again, your claim that "unlawful" is the only common element is incorrect. You've got a lot of dictionaries lying around, so try using a thesaurus while you're at it.
4. "Unlawful" may be a common element between the definitions, but this element alone is insufficient as a definition -- for example, "involuntary manslaughter" is also "unlawful killing," yet it is not "murder." On this basis, the "unlawful" element is arguably the least relevant.
5. The point all along has been that it is possible to define murder without incorporating the term "unlawful" -- the point has not been that the contemporary definition of "murder" is defined independently of the term "law." If anything, you've merely helped to prove my point with your big stack of dictionaries, seeing as how they all agree with the legally independent "killing with premeditated malice" definition.
6. Furthermore, the point all along has been that it is possible for a concept to exist without its first having to be incorporated into language. You've admitted that animals are capable of understanding concepts ("more" or "less" or "enough" or "not-enough" or whatever you want to call it), but have done your best to muddle this by arguing about what these concepts ought to be called (without ever stating a firm position on the matter, I might add). This is evidenced by the fact that you've continued to harp on my use of the term "mathematics," all the while ignoring the rest of my post in which I point out that the actual name of the concept is irrelevant.
7. Vocabulary itself is fairly arbitrary. It is the underlying concepts behind this vocabulary that are non-arbitrary. I don't change the meaning of my post by typing it in red instead of black, so the color of my post is arbitrary. It doesn't matter if I call somebody "obtuse" or "thick" or "uncomprehending," since the underlying concept remains unchanged. Language is actually defined to be "communication of thoughts and feelings through a system of arbitrary signals" -- the symbols are arbitrary, the thoughts and feelings are not. This is why language cannot be arbitrarily redefined -- thoughts and feelings cannot be eradicated by simply erasing the terms describing said thoughts/feelings from the dictionary.

[Berzerker]

Bebro -

I think Berz has done a great job with this thread. First, all were against him, now all arguing against eachother....

I agree that a government cannot simply define moral per law. But it can make up laws in certain cases (eg. totalitarian states) as it wish.

That means government can at best make laws to reflect morality, a morality that exists outside of government, true?
And rights are moral claims to act, so, certain rights - "natural" rights also exist outside of government and at best can be acknowledged and protected by governments.

However, I´d ask what do you mean exactly by "universal moral code". Do you think there is a set of values which is universal? Or even a concept of rights?

Yes, and these universal values are the basis for identifying natural rights.

Or do you think like Berz, that there are primarily "universal desires" (like not being killed)

That too, these universal desires form the basis for a moral code better than other systems prone to arbitrariness and subjectivity. If a desire is universal, then by definiiton, we all agree on it.

Spencer -

Explaining where pixies come from doesnt prove they exist (I've had to use other methods for that).

Are you equating discernable universal desires with "pixies"?

That's correct. Many societies throughout history, and some that still exist today, dont view slavery as unnatural (or wrong). The definition of murder changes from place to place and person to person so I cant see it's basis on any 'natural rights' that are common to all.

First, then claiming "society" is the origin of our rights has a flaw that cannot be overcome. Second, the definition of murder changes only when people wanting to commit murder and maintain the illusion of being moral re-define the word for self-serving reasons.

So suicide is unnatural then?

Murder is not suicide, but no, suicide is natural. It is natural for a person who is suffering to seek to end that suffering, and suicide
is a valid option since the act doesn't violate the natural rights of others.

Lorizael -

This isn't really my argument, so I'm not gonna say anything more than, "This isn't really my argument."

Then your argument to which I was responding isn't really an argument.

First of all, don't make any assumptions about my assumptions. I was careful to say Creator and not God, unlike some others in this thread.

Then why are you asking me to prove a creator exists if you doubt a creator exists (which is evident from your question)?

Your problem seems to be that you think there must be some purpose or intent to the universe.

Maybe, maybe not. I make no assumptions about who or what created the universe or what purpose was served, all I can do is observe our little corner of the universe and reach conclusions consistent with what I see.

You say that in creation, there was a design (is that creation with a lower case c, btw, or is that the Bible's Creation?).

Is there a design in an atom? Of course there is a design to the universe just as there is a design to evolution. And you tell me not to make assumptions about your argument when you now ask me if I'm talking about a biblical creation? You've just shown my assumption to be accurate.

This is not a logical premise. It has no basis whatsoever. It's something you want to be true because you believe that there must be a creator in order for the universe to exist, and that, even if there is a creator, that creator didn't just expel the universe from his ass after a rather large portion of heavenly beans.

Not much point in debating if you can't even acknowledge that someone or something created the universe.

The universe was not created. Currently, science seems to indicate that it has always existed, and therefore it does not need an origin.

I didn't know science had proven the universe has always existed, but feel free to explain how this can be true given the universe is expanding and has been for eons. But religious folk say "God" has always existed too, so maybe the universe is the creator.

[Berzerker]

Gepap -

Oh Berz: you say people have a universdal desire not to be murdered: fine, so whata bout being killed unjustifiably when guilty?

Huh? If you're guilty, how is killing you unjustified?

What about being killed justifiably when innocent?

Huh? How can you be justifiably killed when you're innocent?

What about being killed justifiably when guilty?

What about it?

Do people mind those?

Some do, some don't. If I murder you, killing me is justifiable. You're confusing murder with justifiable homicide.

And another thing: all human beings have a universal desire not to strave, one that is even backed by a powerfull physiological mechanism known as Hunger. Given our creation and hence 9according to you our moral code), would you not say all human beings have a right NOT to starve, just as they have a right NOT to be murdered?

Yup, we have the right to consume food.

Or does the fact that you can starve without another person starving you make it all OK? BUt what aout thoese people with the power to have someone NOT starve? What is the morality of them NOT doing something to fulfill the fundamental universal desires of man?

Are you posting this from a land of starving people where you're preventing their deaths? Maybe you should ask yourself that question, but you've made the illogical jump from a universal desire to consume food to your desire to threaten others with violence to compel them to feed the starving (that is where you're going with this). Your desire is not universal...

Now, a natural right to life is a moral claim against others killing you - and a natural right to consume food is not a moral claim to force others to feed you. You're trying to manufacture a right to use force to get what you want from others when murderers also use force to get what they want. See? So the question becomes: is robbing people to prevent starvation a universal desire? Nope.

Btw, that was a pretty decent explanation of my argument you gave to Kid.

Imran -

Something created the universe, but how or why did that 'thing' grant us rights?

Rights are moral claims to act based on universal desires. We don't need a written document from this creator to serve as a "grant" of rights, just the recognition of an inherent design to creation and these universal desires are the best proof for this design.

And whoever said anything about animals rights not to be eaten? If, as GePap said, you are saying that species have no rights in regard to other species that doesn't matter (though one wonders why that should be the case). What should be a problem is that interspecies animals do not seem to have these rights that humanity does. If rights are natural, this doesn't seem satisfactory.

This again? Animals may or may not have the intelligence to understand morality, much less recognise universal desires, so what's the point?

Ouch... that was a good one . If natural rights ARE our universal desires, then Berz you open up a can of worms. No one wants to starve, no one wants to be without shelter.

I said natural rights are based upon universal desires meaning we can use universal desires to understand which rights are consistent with creation. Now, does the fact no one wants to starve (ignoring political protestors on hunger strikes) translate into a universal desire to rob people? Of course not. You guys keep losing track of what universal desires are...

Azazel -

Yes, I do, and I fully agree with him, except of the notion that all that people want is to NOT be threatened, NOT be attacked, NOT be robbed, etc. I think that people want to be happy, and liberty is only sometimes parallel to happiness.

Those were just examples, in no way am I suggesting these are the only universal desires we have. But since happiness means different things to people, we'd get bogged down with all the different values people have wrt happiness. Happiness may very well be a universal desire, but methods of achieving this happiness may not be universal. If murdering people makes me happy, is my happiness universal? No. Of course I'm sure you weren't talking about murdering people as a valid endeavor, but that problem does arise once we go down the road of subjectivity.

[Berzerker]

Templar -

Certainly a highly disputed position. Most Christians I know (left and right wing) would argue that moral claims are based on the will of God and desires, universal or otherwise, be damned! Thus your position must be defended as 'rights' and 'universal desires' are not definitionally connected.

The Golden Rule - treat others as you would have others treat you - IS an expression of universal desires, so I can't say much about what these Christians you know think if they don't accept what Jesus said. Btw, neither Christianity or religion are universal desires.

You're using an idiosyncratic definition of 'right' - ergo you are not talking about the same thing everyone else is.

I started the thread and defined the word "right", so if they are here using a different definition, that has little bearing on my position.

Seriously though, if you pack property into the definition of right the you are not making an argument, you are merely explicating your idiosyncratic definition.

Actually, I'm using the broader definition of "right" found in dictionaries - a just claim to act.

The more usual definition of a 'right' is that a right to x trumps any countervailing claims on the part of others with respect to x.

That's the definition I'm using.

For example, the right to free speach trumps any other interest in restraining you speach. So that even if Andrea Dworkin or Billy Graham think your speach is pornographic, and therefore morally wrong, your right to pornographic speach trumps even their moral claims.

Their claims aren't moral, but yes, a moral claim to act - a right - trumps the subjective perceptions of morality others would forcibly impose upon you.

Thus a right can even give you the right to do something morally objectionable on the grounds that it would be more morally objectionable to interfere with your rights.

I said otherwise?

Even rights like the right to health care (a less contentious right in other countries) can be expressed as your right to it trumps any reason (lack of money, spite, etc.) a provider might give to not provide healthcare.

Now you've gone from a right to be left alone to a "right" to rob people.

Rights, then, are conceptually distinct from desires or ownership.

Nothing you said proves that.

Now you might seek to ground rights in universal desires or in ownership (certainly an ownership foundation is big among the libertarian set) but that means you must argue from rights to desire.

Universal desires, which is the key. I may have a desire to commit murder but that desire isn't universal. My desire to not be murdered doesn't create a right to murder everyone else so that I can't be murdered.

If universal desire not to be murdered entails a right not to be murdered, then a universal desire not to be murdered entails a right not to be shot to death. One may reason from general to specific.

Yes, as long as the specific doesn't contradict the general.

Now, if a universal desire to be happy entails a right to be happy, and if my happiness is dependent on having an Xbox, then I have a right to an X-box, even if I can't afford one.

Your specific contradicts the general if you need to rob someone to buy the X-Box.

I take it, Berz, that you don't mean to create entitlements to possessions through your argument. Noentheless your argument allows for it. So send me my free Xbox!

A desire to be happy may be universal, but all methods of achieving happiness are not universal. That was a good post up until that one, Temp.

Again, you jump the gun and make unfounded conclusions. Life and labor are separable.

No they aren't. If you spend 10 years of your life laboring to buy a home, that's 10 years of your life.

A community can guarantee my right to life yet fully determine my labor. Even in the US labor is regulated. I cannot, for instance, sell or produce illicit drugs. But OK, maybe you want to say the drug prohibition is immoral (as i would).

If "government" enters the picture to take away part of your labor (the fruits thereof), then it has taken away part of your life. The fact governments interfere in our lives doesn't mean they can morally (as you point out).

Again, imagine that x, a great sculptor, is given a chunk of gold which x uses to create a wonderful statue. Now suppose, unbeknownst to x, the gold was stolen from y - who claims ownership by right of labor in extracting and smelting the ore. Here's the question - who owns the statue. While y owns the gold - y cannot own the statue as y contributed no labor. Moreover, x's labor created the statute - but the statue depends on the gold which x has no entitlement to. So who owns the statue? As you can see, labor is an insufficient principle from which to determine the ownership of the products of labor.

Changing what I said isn't very nice . If I said driving a car was fun would you say I was wrong because you can think up a nasty scenario where I'm killed in an accident? I didn't say we had a right to add our labor to stolen goods and keep the product of our labor. In your example, if the two cannot reach some accomodation, then the ore would have to be returned to it's owner, but since the sculptor never owned the ore, his labor will go un-owned too. The labor and ownership are still tied together...

Actually, what I need spelled out is the grounds on which you justify separating humans and other animals into distinct moral categories.

The ability of the former to recognise morality.

I don't even detect an attempt on your part to employ fuzzy categories - i.e. plants and sea-sponges (things very much not like us) have no moral status, but chimps (being very much like us) have near equal status. Come on then, when I think universal I think everything. Why only people? How do you justify that distinction?

How many times do I have to say it? Rights involve human interaction.

Exactly my point. You are saying humans may take animals for food and labor as they see fit. How speciest of you!

And animals can take us for food without violating our rights, getting that yet?

Dude! You haven't spelled out jack ****! You've merely stated rights involve human interaction.

Try reading a dictionary, Jack.

I disagree, and most people who believe in any sort of animal rights disagree.

Then get the people who publish dictionaries to change the defintion and maybe after a few decades your defintion will become valid. But let me know how your life goes when you can't eat anything because all other life forms have rights too. Oh, you won't give these rights to plants? How speciest of you...

People have been known to eat each other when things get desperate.

After their "meals" were dead.

Also, most animals won't eat their own kind unless they are desperate. Not that eating each other is relevant to rights - you are confusing is with ought here - the naturalistic fallacy.

If it isn't relevant, why introduce this irrelevancy and announce how it refutes my position?

Granted enslaving a cat is a futile effort, btu I'm sure they would not appreciate being forced to pull a sled if you hooked a bunch of cats up to one.

I'd love to see that happen, how will you explain to them their task is to pull?

Come on, Berz! Setting up your own idiosyncratic defintions of terms and then making analytical arguments is boring. Use the same definitions as the rest of us and make an argument!

You haven't shown my definition of rights to be idiosyncratic, on the contrary...

Gepap -

You idosyncraticaly

How original.

define murder as "unjustified killing of an innocent", and you went so far as to say that killing a murderer would not be murder (I must assume becuase he is not innocent).

Didn't Loin and some of the other posters explain to you that the definition of murder is broader than the more limited definition you insist on using? You said I was the ONLY one using the broader definition and even insulted me for doing so. Then others chimed in to correct you and now here we are again. Sorry, no thanks...

The question is whether one can possibly ever forfeit Natural rights.

The answer is yes.

You say rights come from our creation (which gives us a moral sense, according to Berz) and universal desires. The thing is, you seem to think that if you violate the right of another, all of a sudden your existence (the result of your creation) and your universal desires (certainly the murderer des not whish to be murdered) no longer matters.

The murderer isn't being murdered because he isn't innocent.

The question is why? What can posibly deny you your Natural rights simply becuase you chose to ignore your moral sense?

Because a murderer deprived their victim of their natural rights.

[Berzerker]

Gepap -

As "fun" as the little sidebar has been loin, I whish to end it decisevely, so here I go.

Now on to "murder": first of all, the imcomplete definition you give me (this will be ellaborated on soon enough) is not even anywehre near Bezerkers, which he defined in another thread as "unjustifiable killing of an innocent". From what I am about to post, it will be clear that this is a very idosyncratic definition, speically his addition of "innocent", which is almost utterly out of place.

Innocence is implied, it isn't murder to kill someone who is trying to murder you. And obviously the justifiablity of taking another's life matters in the definition. That's why the dictionary refers to "unlawful" - a presumtion that an injustice is involved.

Now, how did you miss these definitions in your post?

2. to kill inhumanely or barbarously, as in warfare

2. to kill brutaly or inhumanely

2 to kill in a barbarous or inhuman manner

This notion of yours that no murder ever occured until government invented it is silly. If no government ever existed, would it be possible to kill someone? Yes. Brutaly? Yes. Unjustifiably? Yes.

Case closed...

[Berzerker]

Squid -

The necessity of making a victim who doesn't want to die makes this a tautology. You're saying "There is a universal desire among people who don't want to be killed to not be killed." I see this as a pretty big flaw - the only way to make it meaningful and noncircular is to change "murder" to "kill", which would collapse your argument on the suicide point.

"Kill" is only different in this context from "murder" in that one can kill without committing murder, as in accidental deaths. But suicide is a case where the person dying wants to die and takes steps toward that goal, so I don't know what you're saying there.

There *are* no really universal desires - think of Jesus' "If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to him the other as well" or "If someone steals your coat, offer him your cloak also." Obviously Jesus and theoretically other Christians don't have desires like not to be hit or not to be stolen from.

He just had a philosophy about retaliation that differs from others, including many Christians. Btw, I think he said, "if someone asks for your coat".

Buddhists who have undergone rigorous training supposedly have no desires at all.

Wasn't the training and it's purpose a desire? Nirvana is a desire too...

For you to say that taking something belonging to a person who doesn't desire to keep it isn't really stealing is to make this entire argument meaningless.

If you have their permission, it isn't stealing.

The best you can do is say "There's a universal desire not to have things done to me that I don't want to have done to me."

That would be accurate, and once we discern whether or not some of these things - like murder - are agreed upon by all, they become universal.

This doesn't serve as a decent basis for rights, however, because one can similarly say "There's a universal desire to have things done to me that I want done to me."

But that would require others to devote part (or even all) of their existence to doing your bidding which violates the universal desire to be left alone. Rights cannot conflict, and as Templar said, there is a hierarchy of moral claims so the higher the moral claim, the more weight it carries. For example, many people may believe drinking booze and gambling are immoral, but even if they are right, these activities aren't as immoral as threatening someone with violence to get them to stop.

This seems to me to be a much better way of putting it than your original argument.

I'll have to think about that.

But it has nothing to do with universal desires whatsoever. If I desire to ride a purple zebra naked in circles in my backyard, that's far from universal but by the common definition of rights I still have a moral claim against anyone using force or fraud to keep me from pursuing it.

But that would be covered by the universal desire to be free. While I see your point, I'm trying to introduce "universality" into the equation because I think people can relate to it better because they can understand the desire not to be murdered. Besides, my position was also designed to show both why and from where natural rights derive and why that is a more consistent position. IF there is any valid moral system, it would be the one based on universality, not subjectivity.

I get the feeling that it is generally agreed by rights-supporters that you have a moral claim against others using force or fraud to prevent you from doing something no matter whether it's universal or not (as long as it doesn't use force or fraud).

If these people are really rights supporters, true, but we see multitudes of people who claim to believe in rights only to support a plethora of laws to remove those rights. Not that I think my argument will convince them...but it did convince me so who knows...

Uh oh...this fuzzies it a lot. You're now saying not only does the thing we're discussing have to be a universal desire, but there also has to be a universal desire to accept its consequences in a universal sense. (ie health care may be a universal desire, but there wouldn't be a universal desire when everyone has to deal with the consequences of universal free health care).

If a desire for happiness is universal, that can't mean we get to do whatever we want to achieve happiness. Our pursuit must be consistent with other universal desires and rights.

But this can be applied to anything else - even if we accept to not be stolen from to be a universal desire, it might not be a universal desire to deal with the consequences of a generalized no-stealing society. If you define taxation as stealing, then I would not want to deal with the consequences of having a society without taxation, and therefore your argument against stealing collapses on the same grounds on which my argument supporting free health care did.

If I don't want to deal with the consequences of an over-populated world, would that create for me a right to kill off
%50 of the people?

I still think the universal desire thing is hokey. If everyone in the world decided they DID want to murder you, does that mean it's morally okay for us to do so?

Only if I wanted to be "murdered" - I have to agree for it to be universal.

And if one person somewhere in China decided he didn't mind being tortured after all, does that mean we suddenly have the right to torture? It just doesn't make sense.

If we all agree, yes. I know that's sounds kind of weird, but mainly because it would never happen.

Your definition of a right as "a moral claim against others preventing you from happiness" clears up that dilemma, although I do think you fail to give any justification for this definition other than the flimsy and necessarily theistic one in 4.

True, but I think it's important to think of the universe and who or what created it and what conclusions we can logically reach by observing creation. If for nothing else, just to answer the question: is there a purpose to our existence? Obviously that sounds like theology to some, but not to me.

I agree, I just don't see why you would have a moral claim to it either. Your labor didn't make the wood, and I don't see why you should be able to claim it. You'd have to add a postulate like "If no one else claims something, and you want it, it's yours", which I see no reason to do other than reasons of convenience. And I won't accept Locke's argument that you get it by virtue of your labor being mixed with it, because it must have become yours *before* you started making it into a table, or else you'd have no justification for going and making a table out of it as if you owned it.

Nature's design requires life forms to consume, so it seems logical to me that a moral system which humans can discern would include moral claims to resources if for no other reason to reduce conflict.

Not really, we just have something we all agree on (and not even, to be technical, the same thing, since not wanting to be murdered only implies something about murder if we accept the Golden Rule). The fact that no one wants to be murdered in no way implies that murder is objectively wrong than the fact that everyone would be happy if gold started raining down from the skies means that that's going to happen. It's simply a universal preference - something that only counts toward morality if you accept that morality is essentially just conventional and based on what people want it to be.

Which is better? A moral system based on universal desires or one based on the subjectivity of those with the most might, be it guns or numbers?

I'm not assuming that; you're assuming that when you say that God's gave us all life and a desire not to be murdered.

If "God" equals that which gave us life, then I feel safe in my assumption that this "God" also gave us the desire to not be murdered.

You're saying God has the desire to keep us from murdering one another, and as for power, I should certainly HOPE He has the power, since He's God.

I don't know if "God" has this desire, "he" may be an absent landlord for all I know.

(God also gave animals the power and desire not to be murdered, therefore they have the same rights)

But animals don't appear to have the sentience to understand this, so "rights" among animals wont be recognised. We might recognise them as some people do now, but that won't change the fact we need to consume other life forms to survive too.

Thank *you*. I wish everyone would try and present their arguments in a logical fashion and open them up to discussion.

And without trying to be insulting, Agathon could learn from you.