Natural Rights

[GePap]

Originally posted by Kidicious


But rights can be changed. They can be taken away and granted. You can say that unnatural rights aren't valid, but what does that matter unless you have the political power to deny them?

Ah, but Kid, by saying this you implicitly come out against natural rights, sicne according to Berz, rights can not be changed: how could you take away natural rights? What possible authority would you have to do so?

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by GePap
Ah, but Kid, by saying this you implicitly come out against natural rights, sicne according to Berz, rights can not be changed: how could you take away natural rights? What possible authority would you have to do so?

Whether natural rights are good or bad is subjective. Why couldn't I be against them, or at least against some of them and for others? Why do I have to believe that natural rights are automatically good just because they are natural?

[DAVOUT]

Originally posted by Kidicious


Whether natural rights are good or bad is subjective. Why couldn't I be against them, or at least against some of them and for others? Why do I have to believe that natural rights are automatically good just because they are natural?

Natural rights are exclusive of freedom. One or the other, not both.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by DAVOUT


Natural rights are exclusive of freedom. One or the other, not both.

Huh? Can someone please spell this out for me? I'm really not getting it and it's suppose to be important.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Kidicious


Whether natural rights are good or bad is subjective. Why couldn't I be against them, or at least against some of them and for others? Why do I have to believe that natural rights are automatically good just because they are natural?

Kid: be definiton (Berz) natural rights are good, since they come from n absolute moral codes intrinsic to all human beings. You can not be agianst them, since that wuld make you immoral, since you would be trying to userp an absolute universal morality legitimized by our very existence with ont that is subjective, with nothing to legitimice it (according to Berz or DF) but your opinions.

Just accet that you do not accept the notion of natural rights as Liberterians define them, OK?

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by GePap
Just accet that you do not accept the notion of natural rights as Liberterians define them, OK?

Ok, thanx. I still don't see the point of natural rights though. People should have rights that are good for themselves and society. If a right isn't natural but it makes us happier then I don't see why it's bad.

[Az]

be definiton (Berz) natural rights are good, since they come from n absolute moral codes intrinsic to all human beings

???

[Kidlicious]

Why are they good (subjective) because they are intrinsic? That's subjective, and there can be no evidence to show that it is true.

[Kidlicious]

I see things like this

The natural rights debate leads us down a false road. The energy spent in arguing which rules exist should better be spent deciding which rules we should make. The "perfect freedom" Locke described "to order their actions and dispose of their possessions and persons as they see fit... without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other man", does not dictate the existence of rights; instead it leaves us perfectly free to legislate them.

I prefer this freedom, which seems to me simple and clear: we are all at a table together, deciding which rules to adopt, free from any vague constraints, half-remembered myths, anonymous patriarchal texts and murky concepts of nature. If I propose something you do not like, tell me why it is not practical, or harms somebody, or is counter to some other useful rule; but don't tell me it offends the universe.

[loinburger]

Originally posted by GePap
A cats ability to recognize between more and less does not mean the cat recognizes even arithmatic. Can you cat add? subtract?

You're still hung up on this idea that arithmetic is the simplest form of mathematics. My cat can clearly add and subtract in an ordinal system: if my cat adds things to her food bowl, then she understands that she has "more" in her dish (and alters her behavior accordingly). If she takes things out of her food bowl, then she understands that she has "less" (and alters her behavior accordingly). Whether or not she understands the concept of "removing exactly one paperclip from my food dish in order to have three paperclips therein instead of four" is not relevant, since my cat could not communicate such an equation to me even if she did understand it (and since you have absolutely no way of providing evidence that she doesn't understand this equation) -- you're begging the question by defining the standard of proof such that the only possible way to prove that mathematics is not a human creation is through another species using human language.

Without some authority to judge the act, the term of murder is meanigless: might as well just stick to kill.

Authority is completely unnecessary to simply apply a definition -- it is only necessary to apply a law. If you were to accidentally kill somebody, then I would alter my treatment of you differently than if you were to kill somebody with premeditated malice (e.g. in the former case I would be less prone to trusting you to handle heavy machinery or whatever, while in the latter case I would be less prone to trusting you in any way shape or form). This idea that the term is meaningless simply because I lack the authority to punish you for your crime is hogwash -- it behooves me to make the distinction between accidental killing and killing with premeditated malice, independently of any benefits that society as a whole may gain from making this distinction. You can certainly come up with a plethora of contrived examples in which it is not possible for me to correctly apply my pre-societal definitions of the term, but this simply limits their usefulness -- it does not negate their usefulness.

...since no one individual has the legitimacy and authority to declare any specific act of killing as just that, murder

See above. There are additional benefits to be gleaned by being capable of distinguishing between "murder" and "homicide" than just the ability to punish murderers. While it may be the case that no single individual has the legitimacy/authority to punish a murderer, everybody has the ability to e.g. distance himself from a murderer so as to avoid becoming the murderer's next victim.

It is not flippancy: you are substituting the symbol for the thing as is: just becuase it can be modelled mathematicaly does not make it mathematics.

I certainly hope that it's flippancy, unless of course you're capable of providing evidence that my cat does not understand simple arithmetic. (Unless you're simply holding me to a higher standard of proof than that to which you hold yourself.)

My point was that if "justice" can be redefined arbitrarilly by different groups

The concept of justice cannot be "arbitrarily" redefined by different groups. Language is not something that can be arbitrarily redefined to fit the whims of an individual or group. This is the point I've been making -- this isn't the world of 1984, and even Ingsoc (a group, not an individual) was finding that it was impossible to arbitrarily redefine a language.

You have to explain how "inferior" justice is not still "justice", and thus able to justify something: after you explain how one arbitrary system of justice can be better than another.

First off, you're mixing an arbitrary system of justice with an arbitrary concept of justice. The two are quite different -- a system of justice can be arbitrarily redefined by the ruling class, but a concept of justice is highly dependant on language (and hence cannot be arbitrarily redefined).

This should clear up the reasoning behind how one system of justice can be inferior to another: if one system deviates more from the concept than another system, then the deviant system is inferior. For example, the concept of justice involves equity/fairness, therefore if the US system of justice were to be arbitrarily redefined so as to be grossly unequal (or "more unequal" than it is at present) then that new system of justice would be inferior to the present system.

Ah, but from the beginning you know there IS a word for it: the problem here is not recaling a word that exists in your memory, just not being recalled at the moment.

Sometimes there are "false hits" to the meta-retrieval process, e.g. when you hit the buzzer thinking that you know the answer but then find that you do not actually know the answer. In this case you do not know the word, yet you still know "of" the concept and may even be capable of describing the concept using a conglomeration of words that you do know.

Is this thing you point out the same as "knowing" the concept and knowing there IS no word for it?

You're asking the impossible -- concepts that do not have words associated with them almost invariably acquire words by which to identify them (and/or they can be described by the conglomeration of other words). This is like saying "Name a concept that you can't name" -- how the hell am I supposed to name something that doesn't have a name?

Anyway, another example of a concept-without-word is that of simple ordinal mathematics performed by extremely young children. The basic experiment involves showing a baby a small puppet stage with a number of puppets visible. The curtains are then drawn on the stage, and re-opened -- sometimes puppets have been added or removed, other times the number of puppets remains the same. The baby shows considerable agitation in the cases when the number of puppets has changed, and shows no agitation when the number of puppets has not changed -- the baby is capable of understanding concepts such as "more" and "less," "equal" and "unequal." This experiment was originally performed with toddlers (who, it might be argued, had sufficient language knowledge to understand the words "more" and "less"), but since then it has been successfully performed on children as young as three days old (and the burden of proof rests firmly on the guy saying that a three-day-old has any understanding of language).

[GePap]

Originally posted by loinburger

You're still hung up on this idea that arithmetic is the simplest form of mathematics. My cat can clearly add and subtract in an ordinal system: if my cat adds things to her food bowl, then she understands that she has "more" in her dish (and alters her behavior accordingly). If she takes things out of her food bowl, then she understands that she has "less" (and alters her behavior accordingly). Whether or not she understands the concept of "removing exactly one paperclip from my food dish in order to have three paperclips therein instead of four" is not relevant, since my cat could not communicate such an equation to me even if she did understand it (and since you have absolutely no way of providing evidence that she doesn't understand this equation) -- you're begging the question by defining the standard of proof such that the only possible way to prove that mathematics is not a human creation is through another species using human language.

You can not know the exact mechanism of why your cat may chnage behavior: perheps the thinking is "enough to satisfy my hunger" vs. "not enough to do it". And I do question your use of "mathematics" in this sense. No, I do not think that a cat's possible understanding of quentity differences equates to "mathematics"

Authority is completely unnecessary to simply apply a definition -- it is only necessary to apply a law. If you were to accidentally kill somebody, then I would alter my treatment of you differently than if you were to kill somebody with premeditated malice (e.g. in the former case I would be less prone to trusting you to handle heavy machinery or whatever, while in the latter case I would be less prone to trusting you in any way shape or form). This idea that the term is meaningless simply because I lack the authority to punish you for your crime is hogwash -- it behooves me to make the distinction between accidental killing and killing with premeditated malice, independently of any benefits that society as a whole may gain from making this distinction. You can certainly come up with a plethora of contrived examples in which it is not possible for me to correctly apply my pre-societal definitions of the term, but this simply limits their usefulness -- it does not negate their usefulness.

It does not behoove you to prove anything, if there is no judge. The very concepts of guilt and innocnes require a method by which to judge them: a judge as it were. And it does your arguement no good to bring up examples of anything contemporary, or "real life", sicne you live in a world of laws, that is what the contemporary world is, and to use it for example is to use its assumptions, ones based on law. So thought examples are the only things we can use to test out the theory without interference from modern prejudices.
One does not need law to exist at oine time to define a lwa clerc: but without a concept of law, and courts, and thier function, there i no possiblity of the concept coming into being, which is the point! The very concept of murder can not exist free of the concepts of law, or at least norms, morality, guilt and innoncence, justice and judgement. You mayb e able to define it without those words, but as a concept it can not exist independent of them.

The concept of justice cannot be "arbitrarily" redefined by different groups. Language is not something that can be arbitrarily redefined to fit the whims of an individual or group. This is the point I've been making -- this isn't the world of 1984, and even Ingsoc (a group, not an individual) was finding that it was impossible to arbitrarily redefine a language.

Actually, language is, given all the different languages that exist, an arbitrary creation of man. There is a reason many languages borrow certain temrs, and that is ebcuase not all languages provide words for all terms that have come to the mid of man (like the singularity of Schadenfreude). But you still iss the point: the point is not than any indidivusal may be able to singularly redefine the languge they speak and other speak, but that there is no UNIVERSAL language that all humans use, just as there is no UNIVERSAL code of justice all humans use.

First off, you're mixing an arbitrary system of justice with an arbitrary concept of justice. The two are quite different -- a system of justice can be arbitrarily redefined by the ruling class, but a concept of justice is highly dependant on language (and hence cannot be arbitrarily redefined).

If different groups can have different languages, they can have different systems of justice.

This should clear up the reasoning behind how one system of justice can be inferior to another: if one system deviates more from the concept than another system, then the deviant system is inferior. For example, the concept of justice involves equity/fairness, therefore if the US system of justice were to be arbitrarily redefined so as to be grossly unequal (or "more unequal" than it is at present) then that new system of justice would be inferior to the present system.

You speak of internal consistency: any language without internal consistency is not as good as one with it: but if two languages have internal consistency, they are equaly valid.

Sometimes there are "false hits" to the meta-retrieval process, e.g. when you hit the buzzer thinking that you know the answer but then find that you do not actually know the answer. In this case you do not know the word, yet you still know "of" the concept and may even be capable of describing the concept using a conglomeration of words that you do know.

You know there is A word for it, even if you don;t kow it. The question is, can you know of a concept knowing there IS njo word for it, no word for it YOU could know.

You're asking the impossible -- concepts that do not have words associated with them almost invariably acquire words by which to identify them (and/or they can be described by the conglomeration of other words). This is like saying "Name a concept that you can't name" -- how the hell am I supposed to name something that doesn't have a name?

Exaclty my point! ICould we not then assume that prior to the existence of the word for it, the concept of it also did not exist?

Anyway, another example of a concept-without-word is that of simple ordinal mathematics performed by extremely young children. The basic experiment involves showing a baby a small puppet stage with a number of puppets visible. The curtains are then drawn on the stage, and re-opened -- sometimes puppets have been added or removed, other times the number of puppets remains the same. The baby shows considerable agitation in the cases when the number of puppets has changed, and shows no agitation when the number of puppets has not changed -- the baby is capable of understanding concepts such as "more" and "less," "equal" and "unequal." This experiment was originally performed with toddlers (who, it might be argued, had sufficient language knowledge to understand the words "more" and "less"), but since then it has been successfully performed on children as young as three days old (and the burden of proof rests firmly on the guy saying that a three-day-old has any understanding of language).

At best you can show me that al mammals have an innate sense of "more", "less", so forth and so on. I already said that I question how you call this "mathematics" (birds call to each other to communicate: is this langauge?).

[GePap]

Originally posted by Azazel

be definiton (Berz) natural rights are good, since they come from n absolute moral codes intrinsic to all human beings

???

Do you think that is not what Berz means?

Why are they good (subjective) because they are intrinsic? That's subjective, and there can be no evidence to show that it is true.

Ah, but you stumbble upon another porblem with this notion of natural rights.

[Az]

Do you think that is not what Berz means?

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.

[Imran Siddiqui]

So why were you confused with GePap made that statement?

[Az]

Because GePap didn't clarify well enough that he's not a libertarian. I knew that he is not a libertarian, that's why that baffled ( and scared ) me.