Natural Rights

[Agathon]

Originally posted by GePap


The fact that social beings like early homonids created social strcutures does not equate with rights. Without a formal ladership, who or what would have the power to "define" rights?

As for the second part: I agree that the immense change from semi nomadic hunter gatherers to setted agriculturalists necessitated an immense change in the social strcutures of man, specailly the fact that 1)surplus allowed for porfessions beyond those necessary fpor base survival, and 2) land became a commodity as it had never been before.This to a certain extent demands the creation of an authority to sort out the new porblems that the new opportunities created. As for the 18th century: I think that the changes begun earlier, in the 17th century, at least philosophicaly. I think it was a shift in economies: as professions other than agriculture begin to take precedent, new systsmes are needed to manague society. NOw, farmers may remain the core of the population till the late 19th century but they were no longer the most important economic nor political sector, and thus a change in the rights regime was possible.

The whole Lockean notion of natural rights was essentially devised as a set of rights for white, property-owning males. It continues to retain this deficiency.

[gunkulator]

Originally posted by Agathon


The whole Lockean notion of natural rights was essentially devised as a set of rights for white, property-owning males. It continues to retain this deficiency.

Indeed. It's pretty rare to find someone proposing a set of laws or government that would significantly reduce that person's wealth.

[Imran Siddiqui]

I'll join the first page chorus of there are no natural rights, only man-made rights... because nature doesn't give a damn if you live or die . Like Sava said... ask the Velociraptor (though I think you may be safe from velociraptors nowadays ).

[Garth Vader]

I agree that the concept of "rights" are social constructs, yet they do stem from human "desire". One would confuse human rights with the general consensus of desires.


To add to that, people have a natural instinct for survival. As society evolved into communities the shared instinct for survival became rights.

I think all "rights" are just society's way of making our natural instinct for survival easier.

[st_swithin]

(edited immediately after realising error)
My bad, dude.


BERSERKER:

If you ever run for a political or public policy position, consider me one of your loyal supporters.

I believe that was the BEST proof of the 'I think, therefore I am' equation.

Quod erat demonstrandom, que no?

[Maniac]

Jack_www only wrote one sentence in this thread.
***
Anyway, just for the record, I of course belong to the "no-natural-rights" crowd.

[Berzerker]

Daveout -

There is at least one intrinsic natural right : the right to die. Whatever are the causes of the suffering of living beings, they are entitled to enjoy their ends by dying, sooner or later, and nobody and nothing can prevent it.

While it is true we all will die, the desire to die is not universal, therefore it fails the universality test. However, since the right to life is valid and with it, sovereignty, a right to die could be said to emanate from this soveignty.

Jack -

Are you trying to say natural rights come form a creator or what?? This made little sense to me when I read it.

Yes, but the identity of this "creator" is not important, only what we can see in creation - that life exists, therefore life is a "gift" from this creator.

Bebro -

I´d say modern views of rights can be rooted in older concepts of natural rights, but aren´t the same. IMO rights are not given by nature, however, rights are constructed by humans in a certain way due to the nature of human beings....

But rights aren't recognised in all cultures even though the universality of certain desires does exist in all cultures. Rights are not given by nature, but by nature's creator.

Spencer -

Shouldn't the first question be, Do natural rights exist?

My post deals with whether or not they exist by explaining their origin.

As I see it, 'rights' are the codification of the rules of a society.

Then a society that allows for slavery and genocide cannot be condemned as immoral since the victims of such policies have no rights - no moral claims to be free from slavery and murder.

There is nothing natural about them except that they originate from biological organisms. Therefore, there are no 'natural rights' and defining them is meaningless.

Life is natural, the desire to live is natural, and the desire to resist or avoid being murdered is natural.

Sava -

But the notion of "natural" rights is silly. Nature has not defined or set aside any rights to any living thing. Assuming there is a creator, we were given brains to decide and define our own rights.

Why do you keep claiming that these rights were created by nature? I've repeatedly said rights come from that which created the universe and life. Nature is a by-product of creation just as these rights are.

st within -

If you ever run for a political or public policy position, consider me one of your loyal supporters.

Well, that's 2 votes.

Garth Vader -

To add to that, people have a natural instinct for survival. As society evolved into communities the shared instinct for survival became rights.

I think all "rights" are just society's way of making our natural instinct for survival easier.

But if rights codify this desire to live, they didn't originate with society, but with the desire.

Imran -

Like Sava said... ask the Velociraptor (though I think you may be safe from velociraptors nowadays

Rights are moral claims to distinguish between right and wrong conduct between humans, not animals and humans.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Rights are moral claims to distinguish between right and wrong conduct between humans, not animals and humans.

Then how are they 'natural'? Aren't animals also in nature? Why are humans singled out for 'rights'?

[GePap]

3) Natural rights are limited to human interaction, not interactions with other life forms.
3a) If a lion eats you, we don't say the lion has deprived you of your natural right to life.

4) They come from existence, i.e., by virtue of your existence, you have natural rights given by that which created the universe and life. In other words, the only evidence we have of this creator's "will" or "design" is what we can see in nature, and since we don't see chains around us leading to those self-appointed "leaders" of our destiny, they have no moral claim to make our decisions about how we live.

If rights simply come from our existence, then you have to explain to us what makes human existence special and different from that of animals, given that you deny that animals, even if they have existence and universal desires, have no rights.

[Berzerker]

Gunkulator -

But morality is surely manmade. Nature has no morals. If you believe rights stem from moral claims, then one need only adjust morality to adjust rights.

But one cannot adjust universalities which are the basis for rights - moral claims. As for morality being man-made, I'd say man has the intelligence to recognise morality which separates us, at least to a degree, from other life forms. Is the desire to live man-made or hard wired - intrinsic - to our being?

The act of creation/evolution requires no morality whatsoever therefore nothing further can be said about rights wrt creation.

Evolution may just be a mechanism for life to adjust to conditions, but we don't know what created life. But this much is clear, whatever did create you didn't place a chain around your neck and hand other people the end of the chain.

Actually, we all come into this world literally "chained" to our mothers. Yes we cut the chain, but human reliance upon others is as natural you can get.

That isn't a chain, it is a means of supplying nutrients. Slave chains are the opposite, a man-made means to supply "nutrients" to the slaveowner. Now, it is true we interact with others to enhance our lives, but one can exist without other people. But for that person, rights are no longer relevant since rights involve human interaction.

And as an interesting note, almost all societies at some point have engaged in slavery. What does this say about the "nature" of human beings?

That some people would rather force others to labor for them than labor for themselves. But enslaving others is not a universality and the practice does violate universalities like the desire to be free from slavery.

Completely untrue. Children are brought into this world completely subordinate to their parents.

Then that would only be evidence that parenthood is a natural right and that children don't share the same rights as adults. Btw, there is no chain from you to your parents and that does not contradict what I said.

We dominate and overrule our children on a daily basis and not a soul in the world believes this constitutes a rights issue. Children simply would not survive otherwise.

Parental rights are a very important issue, but this discussion is about adults and their rights.

Again, creation != morality.

Sort of, recognition of creation's design = morality.

You are confusing rights with instincts. We all have an instinct to live. This does not mean we have a right to live.

I didn't bring up bodily functions, I was merely responding to someone who did. But yes, an instinct does become a right when it is universal. And those instincts are hard wired desires from the creator.

Time to invoke Godwin's Law? Yes the Nazi's victims had rights. The Nazis disagreed and tried to revoke rights once granted to their victims. This caused a major upheavel in the world since most societies can't absorb so rapid a change, especially one brought about by violence. Heck, there's still a sizable population in the US South today that thinks granting rights to blacks was a bad idea. Had the issue not been deciding with bloodshed, the group would not be so large.

Does that mean you agree the victims of the Nazis had rights even if German "society" revoked them? I agree, and that's why rights exist beyond what "society" says. Now, if you say the Nazis had the "right" - as a "society" - to revoke the rights of their individual victims, then there is a big flaw with the argument that rights come from "society".

[The Templar]

Re: Natural Rights

Originally posted by Berzerker
What are they and from where did they originate?

1) Natural rights are expressions of shared, universal desires.
1a) Not wanting to be enslaved and murdered are universal desires.

How do you get from universal desires to rights?
(1) People universally desire happiness.
(2) An X-box would make me happy.
(3) I have a right to an X-box predicated on my desire?

2) Natural rights are moral claims of ownership beginning with oneself and his labor, but moral claims consistent with universal desires.
2a) If you "own" yourself, then you own your labor.

How do you go from rights to ownership? Going from a right to a property scheme is, to say the least, odd. And even if (2) made sense, why would you own the products of you labor. We might say you "own" your labor insofar as we cannot compel your labor and you may direct it as you see fit. But, to use an example from the last thread in which we argued this, how does owning your labor translate into owning the spear made with your labor?

3) Natural rights are limited to human interaction, not interactions with other life forms.
3a) If a lion eats you, we don't say the lion has deprived you of your natural right to life.

So much for rights being universal. Oh, I get it, universal among humans! Of course, this was the same logic as racists - universal rights, univerasal among whites! So Berz, do you have a good, non-ad hoc reason for drawing the line as you do?

4) They come from existence, i.e., by virtue of your existence, you have natural rights given by that which created the universe and life. In other words, the only evidence we have of this creator's "will" or "design" is what we can see in nature, and since we don't see chains around us leading to those self-appointed "leaders" of our destiny, they have no moral claim to make our decisions about how we live.

I'll walk with you a moment on this "creator" business. But only to say - didn't the creator also make animals? So why don't cats have equal rights? (As far as I can tell, cats don't want to be murdered or enslaved.)

If you see a flaw, please post it so I can fine tune my philosophy. Just make sure the flaw is not negated by one of the other criterion.

Your main flaw is that you make a series of conclusions with no arguments. Again, my main complaint - how do desires (even universal ones) translate into rights? You assume that, you don't tell me how or why.

[Berzerker]

loinburger -

We'll say that I was first on the land for the sake of simplicity, though there's still the question as to whether things like inheritance are natural.

You inherit genes.

There's also the problem that the original inhabitants of nearly every parcel of land have been driven off or have died off by this point (there are exceptions, e.g. Antarctica), so that raises the additional question of whether it's even possible for anybody to have a natural claim to any given piece of land (or any other form of property) at this time even if we assume that it may have been possible in the past.

I thought you wanted to keep it simple? This problem you identify doesn't change the fact the first inhabitants to a plot of land have the moral claim - right - to that land.

If my father steals a million dollars, and then gives me that money (perhaps in his inheritance), then do I have a moral claim to that money?

Nope.

So it's simply a matter of claiming land that nobody else has claimed? Are there any limits as to what quantity may be claimed ("As much as you can fence in" or "4 square miles" or "As much as you want" or whatever)?

Limits? Sure, given man's nature, we limit ourselves to what is familiar for obvious reasons.

Do you "de-settle" land if you're away from it for, say, five years, or fifty years, or whatever, thus making the land fair game once again?

If you go off and live on other land, then any claim you have to the previous land becomes tenuous. If you went away and lived elsewhere, and came back 10 years later and found people settled on the land you once occupied, you'd understand that their competing claim has at least some validity. Freedom is one these natural rights and with it, the freedom to make choices. If you choose to move away from your land, then trying to reclaim the now occupied land you gave up adds complexity to a simple question: do you have a moral claim to land you didn't leave?

You'll have to define what you mean by "settled" -- that could clear quite a few things up. If you don't mean "settle" to mean "improve the land" ("No level [of improvement] is needed"), then what does it mean?

To live on. Most people will make improvements on their land, but you could just sit there and do nothing without negating your moral claim to the land.

[Whaleboy]

The problem with rights is that they are fundamentally human constructs. Now whether you would say that something that is fundamentally semantic, is natural, in the sense of natural philosophy (science), I don't know, and there are people better qualified to talk about that.

However, if I take natural rights to mean something absolute, something that is scientifically determinable, I dont believe they exist.

However, as many will know, I am a libertarian, and believe in maximum liberty, which requires a corresponding notions of rights. The two may seem to contradict, however, look at it like this:

Humanity has always strived towards more liberty. Each of us define a right to be the ability or privilage or whatever to take a certain action, an entitlement to something, be that physical, mental etc etc. You might describe it as phenomena.

Does the fact that they dont exist affect the way we associate rights with society and individuals? Of course not, its just our way of putting discrete, semantic terms onto a more abstract part of the sociology required to make society work in a certain way. In other words, as a society, rights are important, but philosophically or scientifically, they dont really exist.

I believe its important to disassociate rights with liberty (another construct). Rights are synonamous with liberty, up to a point. If you grant rights beyond that point "net liberty", were such a thing to be perceivable, would decrease. As a libertarian, I desire the point where x rights = max liberty, others may want a certain lesser level of liberty for various reasons, so would choose x rights to go along with it.

[Sava]

Why do you keep claiming that these rights were created by nature? I've repeatedly said rights come from that which created the universe and life. Nature is a by-product of creation just as these rights are.

natural = being in accordance with or determined by nature

[GePap]

Don't use Definitions Sava: they don;t work with berz.