Where do rights come from?

[curtis290]

Of course a smart-aleck will come in here and say well they came from this document and name off the Magna Carta or the US Constitution or the Geneva Convention or something like that. But according to theorists like Locke and these really important liberal documents, human rights are universal and we all have them. Of course, Locke and Jefferson's declaration say they came from God. But since most of you are atheists, I doubt you believe that.

So where do these individual rights come from? Who gave them to us? When did we get them? And does everyone get them? Which rights? Life, liberty, and property? The 'pursuit of happiness'? The right to bear arms? Some of the human rights stuff we saw develop in the 20th century? The rights of citizenship? Are there just economic rights, or are there political rights, too? Social rights? Cultural rights? Do societies and nations have rights, or just individuals? I'm curious to hear your opinions.

[Dinner]

Rights come from people and when enough people decide something is a right then it becomes a right.

[dannubis]

And here is me thinking that the most brutal despots in history believed their authority came from God / was divine...

[MikeH]

Rights come from people and when enough people decide something is a right then it becomes a right.

[Elok]

"Most of us" are atheists? I haven't done a count, but I'd guess it's closer to fifty-fifty between all the OT regulars.

Anyway, Oerdin pretty well answered the question on the first go--for me, too, and I'm hardly an atheist. I believe in free will, but that doesn't translate to God-given rights as such.

[Lorizael]

If rights do exist, we will only become aware of what those rights are when we achieve omniscience. Universally applicable rights can only come from outside the universe. All other rights are subjective to particular contexts and carry no moral weight beyond those contexts.

[Elok]

Actually, that's a good question. We'll exempt Curtis since he said "most of you."

Elok, BK, Imran, JM, Kid, Hera, Sloww, MrFun, Cali, Nikolai, Robert Plomp

MikeH, KH, Kuci, AS, Danny, Moby, Guy, GePap, realBoris, Asher, Oerdin, Ming

Those are the ones I *know* are believers--of some sort--and atheists, respectively. I suppose for the purposes of this argument, agnostics go in the "not-atheists" pile. If I had to guess I'd say HC is atheist, but I don't know. This list is weighted heavily towards people I regularly interact with. Probably the atheist list is a bit longer once all the folks I don't know are added in, and people I'm not sure of (CH: atheist? C0ckney: agnostic-ish?). But as it stands, it's 11-12. Not an overwhelming majority.

[MikeH]

Wow. That second group is really full of WIN.

[MikeH]

I'd say 50/50 is a reasonable estimate for the OT. It's certainly not exceptionally biased one way or the other.

[Kuciwalker]

Rights are a component of the practical solution to the welfare-optimization problem, of course.

[OzzyKP]

Actually, that's a good question. We'll exempt Curtis since he said "most of you."

Elok, BK, Imran, JM, Kid, Hera, Sloww, MrFun, Cali, Nikolai, Robert Plomp

MikeH, KH, Kuci, AS, Danny, Moby, Guy, GePap, realBoris, Asher, Oerdin, Ming

Those are the ones I *know* are believers--of some sort--and atheists, respectively. I suppose for the purposes of this argument, agnostics go in the "not-atheists" pile. If I had to guess I'd say HC is atheist, but I don't know. This list is weighted heavily towards people I regularly interact with. Probably the atheist list is a bit longer once all the folks I don't know are added in, and people I'm not sure of (CH: atheist? C0ckney: agnostic-ish?). But as it stands, it's 11-12. Not an overwhelming majority.

I've been left out.

Though maybe I just don't waste/spend so much time in the OT anymore. *shrug*

And rights are just (sometimes) useful mental constructs, in any practical sense Oerdin is correct, rights are just what we say they are.

[Al B. Sure!]

Rights are a component of the practical solution to the welfare-optimization problem, of course.

And that works under a dictatorship how exactly?

Rights are whatever the people with the biggest guns say they are. That's real talk. All this Post-Enlightenment stuff about the rights of man only had the opportunity to be put into practice because the popularization of the means of destruction (ie- proliferation of fire-arms) gave commoners who benefited from these ideas the opportunity to revolt successfully (ie- English Civil War, American Revolution, French Revolution, Spanish colonial revolutions, etc.)

[Al B. Sure!]

Oh and while the people with the guns may decide to do things in keeping with Kuci's practical solution to the welfare-optimization problem, human irrationality means whatever construction of rights they develop is likely NOT a solution to the welfare-optimization problem.

If the evolution of societies operated along more Darwinian terms than I suppose that might have more credence with respect to the societies that would come to dominate but even then, I don't believe that doing so would necessarily enhance a society's survival chances.

[Elok]

Yeah, Ozzy, I forgot a bunch of people there. I left out DanS too on the believer side, and a couple of others. It wasn't really a scientific list. But it is pretty close to fifty-fifty around here.

[BeBMan]

Mostly from admins.