Where do rights come from?

[Zevico]

I'd hate to ask you for your views on communist-pacifists.

[Felch]

They're the enemies of my blood.

[Imran Siddiqui]

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

This.

[Aeson]

Usually they are set up with a left jab.

:mannypacquiao:

[Aeson]

And rights don't necessarily come from "enough" people. They come from authorities with enough power to enforce their view of what should be rights. Technically, this could be a single person, a group of persons, or potentially something else entirely like an AI.

Natural rights come from nature

[Elok]

That's exactly what he was trying to say, obviously. But he failed miserably.

edit: it should be noted that the position "natural rights don't exist" is basically equivalent to complete moral relativism, and no one is actually a true moral relativist.

I'm no moral relativist, and I don't think natural rights exist. Certainly they're not "natural." What we call rights are simply rules we believe in very strongly, and like most rules we made them up. Now, as a Christian, I don't think God wants us to murder, steal or lock people up for no reason, but He also doesn't want us to gossip, for example, and nobody talks about "the right to not have haters talking crap behind your back."

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Perfect set up. I see your left handed

now if only they had a right handed to use.

[dannubis]

I'm no moral relativist, and I don't think natural rights exist. Certainly they're not "natural." What we call rights are simply rules we believe in very strongly, and like most rules we made them up. Now, as a Christian, I don't think God wants us to murder, steal or lock people up for no reason, but He also doesn't want us to gossip, for example, and nobody talks about "the right to not have haters talking crap behind your back."

The question of course is: did the ten commandments come from God directly or were they a summary of principles that were already prevalent at that time but needed a stamp of divine approval to make them more easily enforcable?

BTW, I do think the ten commandments have a high DU-UH-level and therefore most of them make sense...

[Kuciwalker]

I'm no moral relativist, and I don't think natural rights exist. Certainly they're not "natural." What we call rights are simply rules we believe in very strongly, and like most rules we made them up. Now, as a Christian, I don't think God wants us to murder, steal or lock people up for no reason, but He also doesn't want us to gossip, for example, and nobody talks about "the right to not have haters talking crap behind your back."

Elok, any moral code will define certain privileges as inviolable or nearly so. Saying that no one is permitted to kill you is identical to saying that you have a right to life. So yes, Christian morality has rights.

[Elok]

Okay, how are you defining "natural right?" The version set forth by the DoI is vague puffery and, admirable as the sentiment is, not what you'd call a rigorous definition; what would you say is the bare-bones definition that makes a natural right different from a plain rule?

[Pekka]

I would put the question of "where do rights come from" a bit differently and answer it .... there are people who say that there are no rights to begin with... I say we are all born free, and from the first day onwards, other people start enforcing rules upon you. And the idea that you have no rights, or that you have rights. To them, FU, you don't declare superiority over a person less than a day old. They don't owe anyone anything. The only thing there's left is "we have more power than the baby", meaning that we can smash it, and by not smashing it we say we give them rights. That's BS.

[curtis290]

Here were the responses:

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

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.

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.)

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.

Rights come from God and guns. Anyone says different is a communist, or worse, a pacifist.

And rights don't necessarily come from "enough" people. They come from authorities with enough power to enforce their view of what should be rights. Technically, this could be a single person, a group of persons, or potentially something else entirely like an AI.

Natural rights come from nature

I'm no moral relativist, and I don't think natural rights exist. Certainly they're not "natural." What we call rights are simply rules we believe in very strongly, and like most rules we made them up. Now, as a Christian, I don't think God wants us to murder, steal or lock people up for no reason, but He also doesn't want us to gossip, for example, and nobody talks about "the right to not have haters talking crap behind your back."

Okay, how are you defining "natural right?" The version set forth by the DoI is vague puffery and, admirable as the sentiment is, not what you'd call a rigorous definition; what would you say is the bare-bones definition that makes a natural right different from a plain rule?

I would put the question of "where do rights come from" a bit differently and answer it .... there are people who say that there are no rights to begin with... I say we are all born free, and from the first day onwards, other people start enforcing rules upon you. And the idea that you have no rights, or that you have rights. To them, FU, you don't declare superiority over a person less than a day old. They don't owe anyone anything. The only thing there's left is "we have more power than the baby", meaning that we can smash it, and by not smashing it we say we give them rights. That's BS.

Lorizael basically said we don't know. Kuciwalker basically said they're useful for maximizing the welfare of people. ABS, Felch, and Aeson basically said they came from people in power, either commoners with guns (ABS and possibly Felch) or authority figures. Pekka, if I understood him correctly, said we are born free and that society gives us rules, which may or may not include rights. Elok says they are rules that we believe in very strongly and stick to. Oerdin had the most popular answer, which was basically the same as Elok's: we make rules that say people have rights, and if we say someone has rights, they have them.

So none of you believe in universal rights of any sort, which should mean two implications. First, rights are easily malleable. Since we have them for purely practical purposes, they can be superceded or ignored if it's for the common good. If we can 'optimize welfare' by violating rights, than we should do so. Second, rights don't apply to foreign policy. In many liberal countries we have documents that guarantee the citizens' rights. But in the US' case, the Constitution doesn't say anything about the rights of non-citizens. So this means that we are not in violation of anyone's rights when we torture or detain enemy combatants. And if we say the enemy doesn't have rights, than they don't have them (how we're even having this discussion is beyond me, when in history did the opposite sides of a relatively evenly balanced war give each other rights and seriously respect them?).

The same would go for illegal immigrants: there is controversy over whether or not they can be arrested. The Geneva Convention says they're economic refugees and that they can't be prosecuted for fleeing to a different country. But since the Geneva Convention is just a piece of paper declaring that certain people in certain situations have these 'rights' that we're supposed to follow, why do we have to listen to it? Last I checked, America decided what it wanted to do, not some piece of paper written in Switzerland.

Lastly, why are they so important? If they exist for purely practical purposes, why do we bend over backwards to follow them? And I don't think many liberals would buy your guys' definitions. The amount of devotion they give to these rights shows they worship them with a religious fervor. I think they truly believe that natural rights exist somehow...how this makes sense within their atheism is beyond me, and if they're Christian, how do they reconcile the fact that Locke not the Bible said that there were natural, God-given rights.

What kind of country allows its people to burn its flag in public, just because we think it falls under the vague category of 'the right to free speech'? Or doesn't allow prayer in schools because we're afraid it will infringe on other students' right to the freedom of religious worship (as if the presence of prayer in schools would infringe upon someone's ability to practice their religion? What kind of political system just makes up new rights that weren't even in its ever-so-holy Constitution, such as the right to privacy? Why do we have to defend that right with such a moral fervor, why is privacy so important that it deserves to be a natural right (and when in history has privacy been guaranteed)? And how the heck do we justify murdering unborn children because we think it falls under a woman's right to privacy? What does that have to do with privacy?

That's exactly what he was trying to say, obviously. But he failed miserably.

edit: it should be noted that the position "natural rights don't exist" is basically equivalent to complete moral relativism, and no one is actually a true moral relativist.

No. You can have a moral philosophy not founded on the idea of individual rights. That's what every moral philosophy held before the Enlightenment as well as many after that point.

Elok, any moral code will define certain privileges as inviolable or nearly so. Saying that no one is permitted to kill you is identical to saying that you have a right to life. So yes, Christian morality has rights.

I'm going to have to disagree with you on this one. First, if Christian morality held that there are natural rights, why didn't any theologians make this claim before Locke? Second, the Bible lays out rules so that society operates effectively, such as don't kill and don't steal. But this doesn't mean that God gives you a 'right' to property, to life, to liberty, or to happiness. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.

This is why God killed many in the Old Testament, or why he took everything from Job. He wasn't sinning because those people didn't have a 'right' to life or to property or to the pursuit of happiness. He gave them their lives, as well as everything they owned, so He could take them away if He desired to. You don't get a free lunch in life, and nothing is a guarantee. Of course if you break the rules of society laid down by God, that is a sin. But you don't get any guarantees or rights. Such rights are completely unimportant because they deal solely with life in this world. If we are going to eternal paradise after we die, it seems very silly to believe that we have a 'right' to live until we die of old age, or that we have a 'right' to own property. They are infinitely small in the grand scheme of things. All we can do is follow the rules of society and refrain from sinning and breaking those rules.

[Aeson]

no

[Kuciwalker]

So none of you believe in universal rights of any sort, which should mean two implications. First, rights are easily malleable. Since we have them for purely practical purposes, they can be superceded or ignored if it's for the common good. If we can 'optimize welfare' by violating rights, than we should do so.

Don't get too hasty; if rights are abrogated in every case where it is situationally optimal, the rights may as well not exist, and this will likely result in a globally suboptimal outcome. Rights (just like threats) must be credible in order to provide benefits.

Second, rights don't apply to foreign policy.

This doesn't follow at all from your premise.

In many liberal countries we have documents that guarantee the citizens' rights. But in the US' case, the Constitution doesn't say anything about the rights of non-citizens. So this means that we are not in violation of anyone's rights when we torture or detain enemy combatants.

Fallacy of equivocation! You switched from using 'rights' in the sense of 'morally inviolable privileges' to using it in the sense of 'legally inviolable privileges'. Enemy combatants are, in fact, human beings and therefore have moral value.

Moreover, you are potentially wrong on legal grounds as well. The Eight Amendment does not, in fact, explicitly restrict its scope to citizens of the United States. Beyond that, we are signatory to treaties (legally binding on us, as per that same Constitution) which prohibit torture and certain types of indefinite detention.

And if we say the enemy doesn't have rights, than they don't have them (how we're even having this discussion is beyond me, when in history did the opposite sides of a relatively evenly balanced war give each other rights and seriously respect them?).

Non sequitur! "Historically, people did things this way" is not sufficient justification for "it is morally permissible to do things this way".

The same would go for illegal immigrants: there is controversy over whether or not they can be arrested. The Geneva Convention says they're economic refugees and that they can't be prosecuted for fleeing to a different country. But since the Geneva Convention is just a piece of paper declaring that certain people in certain situations have these 'rights' that we're supposed to follow, why do we have to listen to it? Last I checked, America decided what it wanted to do, not some piece of paper written in Switzerland.

You were a political science major and you can write this kind of sophomoric drivel with a straight face? "American decides what it wants to do, not some piece of paper" come on.

1) The Constitution is "just a piece of paper". That piece of paper happens to have binding legal force.

2) According to same, in general treaties ratified by Congress are legally binding and are "the supreme Law of the Land" (Article IV Clause 2).

3) As mentioned before, illegal immigrants are human beings and therefore accrue the moral value afforded all people.

Lastly, why are they so important? If they exist for purely practical purposes, why do we bend over backwards to follow them? And I don't think many liberals would buy your guys' definitions. The amount of devotion they give to these rights shows they worship them with a religious fervor.

Because freedom dies by a thousand cuts, and only an unyielding defense can preserve it in the face of the normal operation of society. Because there is ample evidence that individual liberty is crucial for the general welfare.

What kind of country allows its people to burn its flag in public, just because we think it falls under the vague category of 'the right to free speech'?

This one, thankfully.

Or doesn't allow prayer in schools because we're afraid it will infringe on other students' right to the freedom of religious worship (as if the presence of prayer in schools would infringe upon someone's ability to practice their religion?

This one, thankfully, because we recognize that institutionalized state support for a religion ends in all others having second-class status.

What kind of political system just makes up new rights that weren't even in its ever-so-holy Constitution, such as the right to privacy?

One where the judiciary is given sufficient power to defend essential freedoms against the perennial assaults of the legislature, and therefore occasionally oversteps its bounds.

And how the heck do we justify murdering unborn children because we think it falls under a woman's right to privacy?

Because we legitimately do not consider embryos and early fetuses to have intrinsic moral value, and therefore the only item on the scale is the woman's individual liberty.

What does that have to do with privacy?

God damn it, how can you be a political science major and be so thoroughly ignorant of American law? In this context, the right to privacy is not referring to freedom from observation but freedom from coercion - the right to the privacy of one's own decisions, a general principle of individual liberty. The name was, perhaps, poorly chosen in light of the confusion it's caused, but your misunderstanding of the term reflects a basic ignorance of the subject matter.

No. You can have a moral philosophy not founded on the idea of individual rights. That's what every moral philosophy held before the Enlightenment as well as many after that point.

Reading is fundamental, kid. I never stated that all moral systems have inviolable rights as their moral axioms, but that something isomorphic to natural rights emerges as a necessary consequence of any moral code.

I'm going to have to disagree with you on this one. First, if Christian morality held that there are natural rights, why didn't any theologians make this claim before Locke? Second, the Bible lays out rules so that society operates effectively, such as don't kill and don't steal. But this doesn't mean that God gives you a 'right' to property, to life, to liberty, or to happiness. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.

The two are isomorphic. There is no meaningful difference between "something I have a right to do" and "something no person may morally coerce me from doing". The meaning of a claim such as "I have a right to free speech" is literally just that it is morally impermissible for the government to restrict my speech.

This is why God killed many in the Old Testament, or why he took everything from Job. He wasn't sinning because those people didn't have a 'right' to life or to property or to the pursuit of happiness. He gave them their lives, as well as everything they owned, so He could take them away if He desired to. You don't get a free lunch in life, and nothing is a guarantee. Of course if you break the rules of society laid down by God, that is a sin. But you don't get any guarantees or rights. Such rights are completely unimportant because they deal solely with life in this world. If we are going to eternal paradise after we die, it seems very silly to believe that we have a 'right' to live until we die of old age, or that we have a 'right' to own property. They are infinitely small in the grand scheme of things. All we can do is follow the rules of society and refrain from sinning and breaking those rules.

Whatever. Since I reject the premise (of God existing), none of this is very interesting.

[Kuciwalker]

Prediction: curtis will key off of my use of "human beings" as a convenient proxy for "objects with intrinsic moral value" to argue that I'm inconsistent in my position on abortion. I'm just going to state ahead of time that I do not actually subscribe to the idea that being biologically human is the actual proper criterion for moral value, but it is a useful substitute outside of the abortion context.