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It's sometimes amusing to see the acrobatics that some people do in order to explain away the activities of this notorious institution.
If the US did not have operational control, then we may as well similarly consider every martial arts school a terrorist organization as they simlarly train folk for God knows what nefarious activities.
"Just puttin on the foil" - Jeff Hanson
“In a democracy, I realize you don’t need to talk to the top leader to know how the country feels. When I go to a dictatorship, I only have to talk to one person and that’s the dictator, because he speaks for all the people.” - Jimmy Carter
I make no bones about my moral support for [terrorist] organizations. - chegitz guevara
For those who aspire to live in a high cost, high tax, big government place, our nation and the world offers plenty of options. Vermont, Canada and Venezuela all offer you the opportunity to live in the socialist, big government paradise you long for. –Senator Rubio
If the US did not have operational control, then we may as well similarly consider every martial arts school a terrorist organization as they simlarly train folk for God knows what nefarious activities.
The old 'we didn't have operational control' defense. That doesn't always work in law you know.
I drank beer. I like beer. I still like beer. ... Do you like beer Senator?
- Justice Brett Kavanaugh
And this shared view of morality is the basis for natural rights.
Not necessarily for three reasons. The fact that it is shared does not entail that it is natural. Most human beings share the belief that people have visited the Moon, but that is not a naturally occurring belief. Secondly, it is the basis for natural rights theories on some accounts, but not others. Thirdly, it is not just the basis of natural rights theories, but of other theories as well.
Then since morality is the basis for rights, neither the state nor society creates rights cuz neither created morality. They can recognise and respect rights, but they cannot create them... That's why we read in both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution language that either overtly states or implies pre-existing of rights.
The state creates legal rights. For example, the right to profit from copyright is a legal right. Not even the Framers believed that ideas could be property in the same sense as land (and the courts have upheld the utilitarian understanding of copyright for over 200 years).
The question is not why, but from where morality derives. I'm not talking about the human psyche, I'm talking about what you touched on - those few fundamental principles. What is the logical basis for morality? Then we will understand the basis for rights.
There is no logical basis for morality. There are biological bases and perhaps cultural bases, but it isn't a matter of pure logic. We already do have a reasonable understanding of the basis of morality via evolutionary psychology. But that's besides the point – merely showing how our moral beliefs came about is not the same as justifying them. We could say the same of children's beliefs in fairies – there is an explanation for why they believe in them, but that is not a justification of that belief.
So, would you conclude morality is based on some shared sentiment? This is exactly what I've argued in the past. And given this origin of morality, rights also derive from this shared sentiment.
No. I would say that morality is based on common beliefs. I don't want to say any more than that because introducing things like sentiments complicates matters. It is enough to say that most people agree about morality.
However, it does not follow from this shared ground of belief that rights follow from it. Some conception of morality does follow from it, but it isn't clear that it is a rights based conception. Thus you need additional argument to prove the existence of natural rights, appealing to common sentiment or whatever is insufficient.
Then make that argument here and provide these counter-examples. I see no reason to invoke any deity to explain the origin of morality or the rights it creates...
If moral properties are objective in the way that things like weight and height are then we should be able to detect them by scientific means, but we can't, so they aren't.
If what matters about violating the right to life is the breaking of the rule by the perpetrator and not the effect on the victim then it is hard to see why we should believe in the right. If we accept that the effect is what makes the violation wrong then we fall into welfarism and that opens the door to non-absolutist understandings of rights. And we can understand what is bad about negative effects on welfare because we are welfare subjects. On the other hand, if the effect is wrong only because someone has broken a rule, then we can't appeal to welfare and we have no explanation other than a dogmatic appeal to explain why violating a right is bad. Appealing to the idea of a God who only cares about the quality of your decisions rather than their effects is one way of bashing some sense into this view. The notion of rights is senseless unless one can give a non question begging account of what makes violating them wrong.
That's the nature of fundamental principles, they are inflexible. But you said morality depends on these principles... I agree...
Not necessarily. Morality could be such that it cannot be captured by means of specific rules (the Stoic view), or it could be that the rules are too complex for creatures such as us to grasp. Moreover, even if morality does depend on absolute principles, it does not follow that these are rights as Libertarians understand them, or even rights at all. For example, the utilitarian principle could be the fundamental ground of morality.
If you believe rights are a social construct that depends on society or the state, then you have to defend societies and states that commit crimes against humanity. Why? Because according to you guys, the only rights we have are those granted by society or the state.
What's this got to do with me. I've never claimed that.
But you certainly won't buy into that argument, so we're back to the problem with your position - rights cannot derive from society or the state, they derive from elsewhere - morality - a shared sentiment - a ~universal sentiment.
That's not my position. I claim that morality derives from something like this, but I don't claim that rights do. My reasoning is that rights may be a way of understanding morality but they are not necessarily a cogent or coherent way of doing so.
Did they even speak of rights? I don't know who was first, but the Framers and their ideological or philosphical benefactors did speak of rights. But rights are tied into morality - a right depends on moral authority - who has it and who does not...
Rights are a recent conceptual innovation. Human beings entertained moral thoughts for millenia before someone thought of talking about it in terms of rights. That should be sufficient to prove that morality does not mean talking about rights and that rights are only one way of expressing moral beliefs or sentiments.
Why can't we look at the world objectively to see this goodness?
Because you can't. You can point to a chair and its colour, but you can't point to its goodness. You can describe an action's physical features, but its value is a matter of our evaluation of it. There would be no values if there were no people, because value is value to or for a thing.
The rule is, justified rule that is, based on the fact killing harms the individual. How did you conclude rights are based on rules that have no attachment to morality? It's just the opposite...
Because rights based theorists resist the idea of justifiable homicide to prevent more killings. They believe that you should never kill no matter what anyone else is going to do. Thus, they care more about the breaking of the rule than its effects.
It is the effect on the victim that matters...no deity is required...
If it is, then it is permissible to break the rule in order to prevent more violations of the rule by others. I said that something like a Christian account is required to make sense of deontological ethics if you do not value the action in terms of its consequences. But oif you have a consequentialist conception of rights, you are no longer a Libertarian because they believe in absolute rights and once consequences get into the picture, you have to start weighing them.
Like what?
Your favourite: the inability of villagers to forcibly requisition arms from the unwilling smith to prevent themselves all being killed by brigands. Your usual response to this is to change the case or introduce irrelevant, empirical objections. The thought experiment on its own is sufficient to show that they are an unreliable guide because the same principles ask us to put up with more violations of rights than less. Empirical concerns (such as whether or not the smith would submit willingly) are irrelevant, since a moral principle is meant to operate over all empirical possibilities (as we say in the trade).
But you guys believe rights are a grant from the state - a legality. I'm saying rights are based on morality, therefore they cannot be granted by the state since the state did not create morality.
No. And there is no reason why we should.
Justification is another matter, but I think you have already - shared sentiments. If we agree murder is immoral, then that is a shared sentiment. Even murderers know they wouldn't want to be murdered...
But we don't have to buy into a system of rights to understand this belief.
And rights are detached from personal welfare? Seems to me they are directly linked - a right to life, etc...
If you say that, you make welfare the good and rights merely an efficient means of securing it. But this makes rights no more essential to morality than the law is, since well designed laws aim to improve the general welfare. In fact rights are better understood as legal fictions on this account.
And so the Nazis decided the "moral" goal of ethnic purity justified ethnic cleansing. You open a can of worms when you start down the path of deciding which rights can be ignored and when because some rights aren't "primary" moral rights... But I explained why it was wrong for the Nazis to do what they did, and all I needed was to identify the rightful owner.
But that's a complete toilet of an explanation. One could point out all sorts of problems with ethnic cleansing, the most obvious being that it harms the victims, without appealing to a rights based conception of morality.
Ownership doesn't preclude "public" property, it merely requires a recognition that some forms of property - starting with the most basic, oneself, belong to the individual. Tribal societies have always recognised the existence of communal and individual property.
No they haven't. The Maori didn't.
Who owns you? That rhetorical question is as old as man... If I, as a member of the tribe, made a weapon for killing game, that weapon belonged to me.
No. This isn't true. Oftentimes weapons manufacturers regarded what they made as a contribution to the well being of the tribe rather than as their own property.
I may let you borrow it but if the chief walked up and said it was now his, we'd all react the same way - with resentment. That is a shared sentiment...
That's culture, not nature. We live in a capitalist society with a capitalist culture. In many cultures, if the chief did that, it would be regarded as right and proper. One only has to look at potlaches to realize that attitudes towards property vary significantly among cultures, whereas attitudes to things like murder do not.
And people we are But since when is a recognition of property a peculiar version of morality?
When it is not shared among the vast majority of human beings, as it is not.
Property IS the foundation of morality and the first piece of property anyone owns is themself followed by their labor or time...
The idea of a person owning themselves is a bizarre idea. What you are talking about is a particular theoretical conception of morality, not a universally shared sentiment.
Third in line is what we presumably want for ourselves - happiness.
Aristotle would put that first.
And there we have the 3 principle natural rights found in the Declaration of Independence - life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness... (property was originally the third but Jefferson substituted the pursuit of happiness, but property is found in the Constitution since he was not one of the authors of that document).
But this is a particular view of morality, not a universally shared belief or sentiment. You've spent ages typing away only to fail to realize that it is possible for someone to agree that morality is based on shared belief or sentiment and yet not agree to your peculiar conception of rights. That's so obvious that it goes without saying.
If you want this debate to go any further, just answer the last point, as that is all that matters.
In order to show that the US wasn't responsible. I don't care whether or not it was Spain or an engine accident; it's irrelevent. Spain being a terrorist state is not the question.
Just correcting you, it looked like you hadn't read a history book since Hearst was publishing yellow journalism.
I should have said "you can say they ought to have"; I'm sorry. I was not making a claim about what rights someone ought to have, I was demonstrating the difference between actually having a right and claiming that you ought to have that right.
But "ought" is a moral claim before it can ever become a legal claim. We all have a right to life regardless of whether or not we live in a society that rejects or respects a right to life. Why? Because a right to life means only that we have a moral claim to live. No state or society can "grant" us that right, they can only recognise and respect that right or violate it. The right itself comes from somewhere else - morality.
If what matters about violating the right to life is the breaking of the rule by the perpetrator and not the effect on the victim then it is hard to see why we should believe in the right. If we accept that the effect is what makes the violation wrong then we fall into welfarism and that opens the door to non-absolutist understandings of rights. And we can understand what is bad about negative effects on welfare because we are welfare subjects. On the other hand, if the effect is wrong only because someone has broken a rule, then we can't appeal to welfare and we have no explanation other than a dogmatic appeal to explain why violating a right is bad. Appealing to the idea of a God who only cares about the quality of your decisions rather than their effects is one way of bashing some sense into this view. The notion of rights is senseless unless one can give a non question begging account of what makes violating them wrong.
Though I'd disagree that a consequentialist view is inherently more justifiable than an absolutist one - there's still the question of "why is it wrong to hurt this person?"
But our claim to live has to compete with the similar claims of others. Thus, if situations arise in which we have to decide between more or less deaths, it is permissible to kill people.
Of course Libertarians think it's OK if more people die than less, but that is why it is such a peculiar view and almost no one believes in it.
Do you consider all state action legitimate? What if they break the the law or cultural guidlines?
No, state actions are not inherently legitimate. That is why the term State Terror exists. For example, genocide is now explicitly illegitimate, period. One could term that terrorism- thought genocide is a much more potent term so why downgrade the terminology?
But much of what people try to call terrorism isn't becuase to some extent states do have a large set of nasty actions they can legitimately carry out.
If you don't like reality, change it! me
"Oh no! I am bested!" Drake
"it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong" Voltaire
"Patriotism is a pernecious, psychopathic form of idiocy" George Bernard Shaw
No, state actions are not inherently legitimate. That is why the term State Terror exists. For example, genocide is now explicitly illegitimate, period. One could term that terrorism- thought genocide is a much more potent term so why downgrade the terminology?
But much of what people try to call terrorism isn't becuase to some extent states do have a large set of nasty actions they can legitimately carry out.
What is legitimate is really just a matter of political opinion then. We can more objectively say though, when a state is terrorizing to achieve it's goals.
I drank beer. I like beer. I still like beer. ... Do you like beer Senator?
- Justice Brett Kavanaugh
Not necessarily for three reasons. The fact that it is shared does not entail that it is natural.
Yes it does, of all the times you've heard something is or is not natural, what better qualifies that something we all agree upon?
Most human beings share the belief that people have visited the Moon, but that is not a naturally occurring belief.
So? You're confusing nature's rights - rights we have because we exist - with a human accomplishment.
Secondly, it is the basis for natural rights theories on some accounts, but not others.
Like what others?
Thirdly, it is not just the basis of natural rights theories, but of other theories as well.
So? The latter precludes the former?
The state creates legal rights.
And that leaves you to defend the crimes of states that didn't create legal rights, e.g., the Nazis.
For example, the right to profit from copyright is a legal right. Not even the Framers believed that ideas could be property in the same sense as land (and the courts have upheld the utilitarian understanding of copyright for over 200 years).
Before we get into a discussion of what our rights are or should be, let's discuss whether or not they exist with or without a state.
There is no logical basis for morality.
Sure there is, shared sentiments. If we all agree something is moral or immoral, then our shared sentiment makes it moral or immoral.
There are biological bases and perhaps cultural bases, but it isn't a matter of pure logic.
And these bases aren't logical?
We already do have a reasonable understanding of the basis of morality via evolutionary psychology. But that's besides the point – merely showing how our moral beliefs came about is not the same as justifying them. We could say the same of children's beliefs in fairies – there is an explanation for why they believe in them, but that is not a justification of that belief.
Why are you hung up on justification?
No. I would say that morality is based on common beliefs.
Shared, common? You said shared before... Common can mean a belief held by the majority and that's another can of worms.
I don't want to say any more than that because introducing things like sentiments complicates matters. It is enough to say that most people agree about morality.
I'd go further, ~universal sentiments. And this is very important cuz this is how we arrive at the few fundamental principles you mentioned earlier.
However, it does not follow from this shared ground of belief that rights follow from it.
Why not? This is the basis for morality and morality is the basis for rights.
Some conception of morality does follow from it, but it isn't clear that it is a rights based conception. Thus you need additional argument to prove the existence of natural rights, appealing to common sentiment or whatever is insufficient.
It is clear - a right is a moral claim, a legitimate claim of moral authority.
If moral properties are objective in the way that things like weight and height are then we should be able to detect them by scientific means, but we can't, so they aren't.
We're talking about ideas. But we can observe if a sentiment is shared or not...
If what matters about violating the right to life is the breaking of the rule by the perpetrator and not the effect on the victim then it is hard to see why we should believe in the right.
I already said what matters is the effect on the victim. If there is no victim, there should be no rule.
If we accept that the effect is what makes the violation wrong then we fall into welfarism and that opens the door to non-absolutist understandings of rights.
Huh?
And we can understand what is bad about negative effects on welfare because we are welfare subjects. On the other hand, if the effect is wrong only because someone has broken a rule, then we can't appeal to welfare and we have no explanation other than a dogmatic appeal to explain why violating a right is bad. Appealing to the idea of a God who only cares about the quality of your decisions rather than their effects is one way of bashing some sense into this view.
You're the one who keeps appealing to the idea of a God, not me.
The notion of rights is senseless unless one can give a non question begging account of what makes violating them wrong.
By definition, it's wrong to violate a moral claim.
Not necessarily. Morality could be such that it cannot be captured by means of specific rules (the Stoic view), or it could be that the rules are too complex for creatures such as us to grasp.
So you disagree with your own statement. You said there were a few fundamental principles upon which to base morality.
Moreover, even if morality does depend on absolute principles, it does not follow that these are rights as Libertarians understand them, or even rights at all. For example, the utilitarian principle could be the fundamental ground of morality.
So let's discuss what these rights are after we agree that rights exist with or without a state.
What's this got to do with me. I've never claimed that.
Okay, where do our rights come from? I'm sure you're in the "rights are a social construct" camp.
That's not my position. I claim that morality derives from something like this, but I don't claim that rights do. My reasoning is that rights may be a way of understanding morality but they are not necessarily a cogent or coherent way of doing so.
So morality is a social construct but not rights? Just how do you define the word "rights"?
Rights are a recent conceptual innovation. Human beings entertained moral thoughts for millenia before someone thought of talking about it in terms of rights. That should be sufficient to prove that morality does not mean talking about rights and that rights are only one way of expressing moral beliefs or sentiments.
That's a contradiction, morality does not mean talking about rights but rights are a way of expressing moral beliefs? Again, rights are moral claims - the two are linked.
Because you can't. You can point to a chair and its colour, but you can't point to its goodness.
It's a chair, it's neither good nor bad.
You can describe an action's physical features, but its value is a matter of our evaluation of it. There would be no values if there were no people, because value is value to or for a thing.
So people are incapable of discerning what is good as opposed to what is bad?
Because rights based theorists resist the idea of justifiable homicide to prevent more killings. They believe that you should never kill no matter what anyone else is going to do. Thus, they care more about the breaking of the rule than its effects.
Ah, and assuming they're wrong, this proves something other than them being wrong? I've never heard anyone say killing a would-be murderer is not justified.
If it is, then it is permissible to break the rule in order to prevent more violations of the rule by others.
If a prohibition on murder is the rule, then that does not prohibit killing a would be murderer in self-defense. The first rule doesn't necessitate a second...
Your favourite: the inability of villagers to forcibly requisition arms from the unwilling smith to prevent themselves all being killed by brigands. Your usual response to this is to change the case or introduce irrelevant, empirical objections.
My response was to point out the obvious, the smithy would want to save himself and that would lead him to hand out the weapons.
The thought experiment on its own is sufficient to show that they are an unreliable guide because the same principles ask us to put up with more violations of rights than less.
Only if we assume the smithy wants to die.
Empirical concerns (such as whether or not the smith would submit willingly) are irrelevant, since a moral principle is meant to operate over all empirical possibilities (as we say in the trade).
And self-interest applies to the smithy as well as other members of his community. Your thought experiment is just that, it isn't a real world application.
But we don't have to buy into a system of rights to understand this belief.
Why understand it, we're discussing where our rights come from. A system of rights is synonymous with a system of morality - the former is an expression of the latter.
If you say that, you make welfare the good and rights merely an efficient means of securing it. But this makes rights no more essential to morality than the law is, since well designed laws aim to improve the general welfare. In fact rights are better understood as legal fictions on this account.
A right is a moral claim, that makes morality essential to rights. Laws are often detached from both...
But that's a complete toilet of an explanation. One could point out all sorts of problems with ethnic cleansing, the most obvious being that it harms the victims, without appealing to a rights based conception of morality.
That was their explanation, of course it was a complete toilet of an explanation. But you've decided some rights are primary and others unworthy of consideration, so they did too. That's the problem with your argument about "primary" rights and other rights that can be sacrificed. It leaves those in power with a "moral" loophole...
No they haven't. The Maori didn't.
Oh c'mon, you're just making stuff up. The friggin Maori found out a tribe lived on a distant island and they went and slaughtered them because they didn't want future competition.
No. This isn't true. Oftentimes weapons manufacturers regarded what they made as a contribution to the well being of the tribe rather than as their own property.
In exchange for something they wanted from the tribe. But if the tribe kicked them out and they had the choice of whether or not to take their weapons, they would have taken their weapons. So much for "the good of the tribe"...
That's culture, not nature. We live in a capitalist society with a capitalist culture. In many cultures, if the chief did that, it would be regarded as right and proper. One only has to look at potlaches to realize that attitudes towards property vary significantly among cultures, whereas attitudes to things like murder do not.
Again, people exchange what they have for what they want - bartering property doesn't help your argument that tribal societies didn't believe in property. I rely on human nature and you offer your ability to read the minds of tribal members who just saw the chief walk up and take their property - and they liked it.
When it is not shared among the vast majority of human beings, as it is not.
And you think the vast majority of people who've lived rejected the notion of property? Tell that to the Indians who were constantly at war over land cuz Indians didn't believe in owning land. The Navajo were constantly stealing food from the Hopi and the Hopi didn't like it one bit, but according to you, the Hopi shouldn't have cared because they didn't believe in property.
The idea of a person owning themselves is a bizarre idea.
It's amazingly natural, well, the amazing part is you think it's bizarre. Self-ownership is hard-wired into us and we can see it with acts of self-defense and survival.
What you are talking about is a particular theoretical conception of morality, not a universally shared sentiment.
Have you discovered some shared desire to be enslaved?
Aristotle would put that first.
Then let him explain how one can pursue happiness without first being alive and free. Jefferson at least had the sense to put life and liberty ahead of pursuing happiness, although liberty and pursuing happiness is kinda redundant.
But this is a particular view of morality, not a universally shared belief or sentiment.
So people either want to be killed or enslaved?
You've spent ages typing away only to fail to realize that it is possible for someone to agree that morality is based on shared belief or sentiment and yet not agree to your peculiar conception of rights. That's so obvious that it goes without saying.
Yes, I'm assuming people want to live and do so free as opposed to being killed or enslaved.
Of course Libertarians think it's OK if more people die than less, but that is why it is such a peculiar view and almost no one believes in it.
I believe that? I'd love to see the quote to support that nonsense.
Originally posted by Berzerker
A right is a moral claim to act...
A right is not a moral claim to act. Rather, it's a legal grant of action or state by the government or society.
Consider the rights accorded to a corporation (a limited company) and you will see there's no moral basis for rights.
(\__/) 07/07/1937 - Never forget
(='.'=) "Claims demand evidence; extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence." -- Carl Sagan
(")_(") "Starting the fire from within."
What is legitimate is really just a matter of political opinion then. We can more objectively say though, when a state is terrorizing to achieve it's goals.
No we can't, in the sense that "to terrorize" is not the same as carrying out terrorism.
If you don't like reality, change it! me
"Oh no! I am bested!" Drake
"it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong" Voltaire
"Patriotism is a pernecious, psychopathic form of idiocy" George Bernard Shaw
But since when is a recognition of property a peculiar version of morality?
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