Natural Rights
Do we have natural rights or not?
Natural rights are rights that we have regardless of any laws governments may or may not make. They are contrasted with legal, man-made rights. It came up in a recent thread and I'm interested in what people think.
Natural rights are rights that we have regardless of any laws governments may or may not make. They are contrasted with legal, man-made rights. It came up in a recent thread and I'm interested in what people think.
Comments (106)
One person's rights consists in either their own permission (liberty rights) or someone else's obligation to them (claim rights). Permission and obligation are deontic-logical states. Calling rights "natural" often suggests that the rights are supposed to be features of the natural, i.e. physical, world, things that "exist" out there somewhere to be found. But moral naturalism has major ontological problems. There can be moral objectivism without being naturalistic or even descriptivist at all, like Hare's universal prescriptivism, or my own similar metaethics. On that account, there can be things that are objectively permissible and obligatory regardless of what humans may or may not say they are, and those permissions and obligations can constitute rights that people objectively do or do not have independent of anybody's opinions. Calling them "natural rights" is fine, so long as these nuances are understood, but far too often they're not, and the name just leads to needless confusion instead.
What happened to essentialism?
Do crocodiles have a justice system? If I go swimming in a croc infested pool, have I ceded the natural rights to my life, if I indeed have a natural right to life?
I did, and everything, in my mind.
Property rights limit foreign access to possessions, your rights as a citizen limit the souvereignity of the state. This is why people tend to confuse them with their freedom - which is not that wrong after all.
Strictly speaking natural rights seem to depend on the needs and wants of the people who make them up.
Natural rights are a component of a certain worldview. It's Roman, so it's part of our own worldview, but it's mixed in with a lot of other conflicting ideas.
If you drift into the part of your culture that owns natural rights, then the question of whether you have them isn't debatable. Of course you do. It's just a matter of looking out into the natural world and recognizing how things work.
If you drift toward a part of your culture that can't use the idea, then the question doesn't make much sense.
You may see the typical attorney objections to that statement, as well as an introduction to my own thoughts on the topic at https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/8273/the-total-inanity-of-public-opinion-on-what-laws-are-right-and-wrong
I dont expect more discussion there as you have hijacked my thread. My own thoughts would require reading 30,000 words to get to the point of evolution on them I am now, and if anyone is interested in reading them, I will transfer the text to my current home on LinkedIn, in about 6 posts averaging 5,000 words each.
If nature is ever stupid to you with the big bang, you have the right to cause a big bang for each star (you have this right because you are, metaphorically a clean spirit - that experiences hell for evil doing).
Building on what @Pfhorrest says, it's as if we cannot conceive of universal rights unless we conceive of them as features of the natural world. The idea of moral objectivity without naturalism is a difficult one for us to handle. Incidentally, this is also clear in the effort to describe homosexuality as entirely biological, as if gay rights must depend on nature.
But I voted yes because I want to say that humans don't only find what is so, but make it so. That is, what is natural for us can change.
If you mean right as in a legit reason for certain behavior, I think everyone has them. There is not a reason needed for something to be precise, so actuallu nobody has them. They do not even exist.
If we take the definition of "natural law" as "a body of unchanging moral principles regarded as a basis for all human conduct," then I would see natural law as referencing an absolute standard necessary for all human beings. This would be opposed to a relativistic standard, which is what I take your concern above to be. For example, if we accept freedom from slavery and the right to a certain autonomy of decision to be a natural right, then that would mean in all cases at all times enslavement is a violation of my natural right. It's an absolute standard. If, it's as you say, that my right to freedom from slavery is only stipulated under certain social conditions, then you're arguing the right is relative to something (specifically, certain social conditions).
Quoting jamalrob
It's difficult to handle only because it attempts to secularize the notion of God into the notion of nature. The problem with that is that nature is studied empirically, meaning if we expect to learn the laws of nature (e.g. gravity), we go out there and measure them. While we can pretend that these moral laws are "self evident," clearly they're not because there's nothing specifically we point to to show what that evidence is. Even should we be able to see clear as day that it's wrong to enslave people because nature says so, it's not clear what authority nature has over me.
All of this makes sense in the context of a god creating these moral rules and that god being of higher moral knowledge than the rest of us. It's for that reason historically we have said these laws are endowed by our creator. I think that without accepting an absolute (god), you can't really justify an absolute morality. I think it's part of what secular humanists struggle with, but I don't see it as ultimately successful.
Per the Romans, nature enforces natural rights. Evil here is essentially the same thing as disease in that an evil doer is supposed to be violating the ways of nature.
A state can become diseased and its population will suffer when natural rights are being violated. The state will progress toward failure until the violation stops. Therefore, anyone who stands against an evil state has a natural right to do so (even if he or she is a slave).
The background if this is a patron-based society where heads of households rule like kings.
Its the beginning of the perception of the humanity of those who have no civil rights.
Yeah, sorry about that. I just wanted a show of hands on the issue. Feel free to delete this thread any mods who are looking.
What would your thoughts be if we broadened this standard a little and took the emphasis away from "unchanging moral principles" to more like "the source of morality or goodness as located in nature, i.e. something natural." I know you may very well have the same thoughts - that we need a creator, and that's a perfectly reasonable position. Maybe the creator could be Gaia or some "mind of nature" or something weaker.
I think there is an element of self-evidency even if it's not completely universal. Imagine if you lived in a close knit village and there was a terrible murder involving a home invader going into a neighbor's home and killing the family. Everybody would be horrified, with perhaps a few exceptions but I'd argue these people are missing something (analogous to how someone just might not recognize good music, perhaps.) In the case of the murder, the investigator and the policeman enter the home as the first responders and they see and grasp the wrongness first hand (you may take issue with this, but it seems at least like a reasonable start to me.)
It's only after this has happened that the philosopher comes in and reasons that the act was wrong because, e.g. it "failed to maximize happiness" or the murderer treated his victim "merely as a means" or something else that seems kind of ridiculous.
Something I've always wanted to ask you, do you think a law can be immoral?
Yes, intuitively that is my view.
I don't understand this. Many natural rights just are legal rights across the globe and many natural rights are enforced by governments. Even if there was no government there could still be consequences for violating someone's natural rights whether they're in a legal, written document or not.
I believe in "natural rights", but only as moral reminders or as easily digestible concepts for every day conversation, not as a features of the natural world. I believe it is just and moral to refrain from harming someone, censoring him, and stealing from him, but I do not believe he possesses any set of objects called "rights" that I shall not infringe upon.
This gives an opening to anyone who would seek to undermine these and other moral commitments to our fellow man, so I think the believer of "natural rights" should also ground them in tradition and trial and error, as commitments that have withstood the test of time.
While natural rights were originally grounded in the language of natural law theory, I believe even Enlightenment folks knew that this made little sense. Rather, they probably understood it more like, "Act as if we had natural rights". The "self-evidence" of this is people's tendency for making their own choices and decisions, their desire (as much freedoms as they can without infringing on other people's rights), and the theory's outcomes (a public with a variety of ideas, pursuits, and creative endeavors). Thus, natural rights was a pragmatic stance on how the best types of societies should be based. Of course, to these Enlightenment folks.. natural rights were "naturally" limited to the same type of people as themselves (highly educated, landed gentry, property-owning). Their conception was of a certain type of people with natural rights.. and this idea slowly spread to other people.
I'm not sure that a law can be described as immoral in the way we would call an act or ommission immoral, or a person immooral. I think a law could require or allow for conduct which would be immoral. It would in that case be a bad law, an objectionable law, a law which should be repealed or amended. But it would nevertheless be a law.
Well, I don't think we can equate morality and the law, and so am hesitant to characterize laws as moral or immoral. They're merely laws, and will remain laws regardless of whether we call them moral or immoral. Perhaps I shouldn't be so hesitant, but I think characterizing them as moral or immoral results in a confusion I think is already too common, and confusion. Jews should not have been excluded from the civil service in Germany in 1933. That law should not have been adopted. Nonetheless it was. Does that make that law immoral, or does its adoption mean those who caused it to be adopted were immoral, or was the conduct it sanctioned immoral? I would say the latter two statements are appropriate, but not the first.
My question was with your original statement that it's not appropriate to speak of rights that were unenforceable which confused me a little. Enforcement is a human endeavor, and when I think of natural rights the first things that come to mind are right to life and right to not be maimed for no reason. Our entire police system exists to either prevent or - if not prevent, then at least provide recourse for theses crimes. Even if there was no police force you still have families and maybe tribes.
A person who has a claimed right in those circumstances wouldn't be entitled to protection of that right or entitled to recourse in the event of violation, regardless of whether anyone felt any moral obligation. Whether the right was recognized or enforced, or recourse granted, would depend on whether others choose to recognize them, or enforce them, or see that recourse is granted. They may, or may not. There isn't anything that requires them to make any particular choice. Law provides a mechanism which identifies a right and provides for its protection or enforcement regardless of what others are inclined to do or not do, with the power of the state available to be imposed if necessary.
Eh, a policeman is duty-bound to "serve and protect" and takes an oath swearing to uphold these norms. People in society don't just exist as free floating, independent entities that have complete freedom of choice in any given interaction. In healthy societies the police owe the public at least some level of protection or at least recourse.
Right, but the actual enforcement part comes from an institution which has its own culture and set of norms. There's an initiation process for anyone who wants to enter that lifestyle and a deep history there and standards to uphold.
Even if we aren't entitled to anyone's enforcement or protection, we could still have a discussion about how to acquire that. I feel like we're missing the point with this talk about entitlement though; people could - and have - banded together as a common cause to rectify infringements on natural rights.
Sorry, I don't understand what you're saying. I think the police are part of the process of law enforcement. Law enforcement is part of the recourse a person has if legal rights are violated. We don't rely on the police to enforce natural rights. If I asked the police to protect or enforce what I believe to be my natural rights, and those rights are not legal rights, I don't think they'd be of much help.
Inalienable/natural rights such as life and liberty are first - atleast in the Anglo-American tradition - recognized as such and then enshrined into law. I can't think of any natural rights that aren't recognized by law. Even if there were no laws whether something is enforceable or not is just a question of the social reality or practical politics at the time, i.e. whether you can garner support or arms etc.
It's odd, then, that laws addressing such inalienable/natural rights tend to vary from time to time, and nation to nation, and legal system to legal system. And not just in the Anglo-American tradition (though this qualification in itself creates prolems for your position, I think).
Presumably, the authors of the Declaration of Independence thought the laws of Great Britian didn't adequately protect those rights or recognize them, for example--didn't believe they had the recourse to enforce those rights under British law. In other words, they thought that what they construed as inalienable/natural rights were not legal rights under British law.
Then, of course, we may consider the laws of nations governed by dictatorships or some other form of autocracy. If we limit ourselves to the "Anglo-American tradition" we might note that both life and liberty were subject to considerable restrictions in the past. The peculiar institution of slavery comes to mind, for example. Certain people being legally defined as property tended to limit their inalienable/natural rights of life and liberty, and because they had no such legal rights neither nature nor nature's God was able to do anything for them. The rights to life and liberty of English nobility were very limited before Magna Carta and other modification of the law. The rights to life and and liberty of those not so fortunate to be landed or noble were even more restricted.
And wouldn't you say that the right of liberty, at least, of women wasn't "enshrined in law" until they were granted the right to vote?
What you think are natural rights may be legal rights, or they may not. What you think are legal rights may be natural rights, or they may not. That's because they're different.
Yes, something could be a natural right but not recognized by law and therefore not enforced by any sort of governing body. It could still be enforced in other ways though and I think we'd both agree that there can very easily be consequences for something even if it isn't illegal. Police aren't the only ones who can mete out repercussions.
I feel like we've gotten sidetracked a little, here was what I was originally responding to:
Enforceability is extremely important and when I hear about a natural right - say, right to life - being unenforceable it should cause one to immediately ask "how do we enforce this?" not "I'm not going to recognize these rights because presently we're not capable of enforcing them."
We may assert there should be legal rights which are not currently legal rights (i.e. the violation of which is prohibited by the law, or are not recognized in the law). The fact that we say there should be such legal rights, however, doesn't make them legal rights. When we refer to natural rights that are not recognized by the law, I think the only thing we're saying, for any practical purposes, is that they should be legal rights.
I think it's very important to the protection of life and civil liberties generally that the law recognizes and preserves legal rights. However, being inclined to virtue ethics and even more inclined to maintain the distinction between morality and the law, I don't accept that nature somehow manifests rights to which all are entitled.
:up:
A few things to consider:
1) A law may exist but it may not be enforced. On the flip side, an action may be legal but there could still be dire consequences for performing it in a given society, e.g. how blacks in the American south had to conduct themselves towards white women during the Jim Crowe era.
2) Other organizations outside of the government often do enforce - and enforce strongly - e.g. the mafia, the KKK, hell's angels, etc. In some societies the police were either weak, ineffectual, or corrupt and turning to the mafia was your best bet at recourse.
3) The grievance could just be aimed towards an autocracy, and what we're really aiming towards here is regime change not a legal change. An autocrat may ignore the laws or change them at whim.
Enforcement is a human affair, it's not just a direct implementation of the law.
I honestly don't know whether natural rights exist but the sake of the discussion I'm just running with it.
But why should they be legal rights? I’m reminded of Bastiat’s argument:
“ Life, faculties, production — in other words, individuality, liberty, property — this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.”
The Law
He is not saying they were rights, he is saying they existed. The question is are they “rights”?
If we are talking about rights not granted by other men...I think I agree with what others about enforcement. Might makes rights. If you can take something you have the right to it. indeed thats the very reason for laws and rights. Your quote above expresses that nicely.
Yes. Laws (and legal rights) may be violated, and it may be that the recourse provided in the law for violation is not provided for one reason or another. Prosecutors, for example, have a certain amount of discretion in determining what cases to prosecute. Some violations may not be prosecuted due to a lack of proof. Judges/jurors may be bribed. Legal rights nonetheless exist as part of a system of laws, but the system may be perverted or overwhelmed.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
I don't think such organizations enforce legal rights. Legal rights are part of a system of laws, in any case, and the recourse available for their violation or protection is through the laws. The failure to use recourse provided in the law would violate another's legal rights. .
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Unfortunately (or fortunately) legal rights may be changed as provided in the law, as may any law. Legal rights need not be permanent. They need not be just. They're just legal. What are called "natural rights" are supposedly permanent and unchangeable, but that isn't necessarily the case with legal rights. We create legal rights, and may change them or ignore them; we may not even make them. Nevertheless, they're the only rights for which protection and recourse is provided.
Many of what are called "natural rights" aren't legal rights, depending on the system of law. Legal rights exist, though, in the sense that they've been adopted and recognized by the sovereign of a nation and provision in the system of law has been made for their protection and enforcement. "Natural rights" don't exist in that sense, unless they'e made legal rights. Most of those who believe in natural rights, I think, would desire that they be legal rights and part of a system of law which recognizes their existence and sets forth remedies for their violation.
That's a play on words. The meaning of the law is to allow or forbid something. If the law allows something immoral or prohibits something moral, the law is immoral. Because it's not anything different from that sanction. What results from the immorality of the law is the right to oppose it, which is enshrined even in the preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Any "rights" you suppose you have, you have only because other people fought and died to obtain.
But we do have "natural rights" insofar as we can die in an attempt to get other rights.
Well, I don't think it's a play on words, which normally refers to punning.
Regarding the Quoting David Mo
I've explained why I feel this isn't the case already, so I assume you're just noting your disagreement.
I'm inclined to think conduct is moral or immoral, and people act morally or immorally.
Quoting David Mo
If the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a law (the U.S. Supreme Court doesn't seem to think so), the rights it refers to are legal rights. I don't think there is a right to oppose laws unless there is a legal right to do so (i.e. the law states there is such a right under certain circumstances). However, I think certain laws should be opposed, regardless of whether there is a right to do so. No "right" is required for opposition to be appropriate.
It's more than just dissent. I explained the reasons why I dissented from your position. It's because we don't agree on what a law is. A law is a prescriptive act: it defines what can and cannot be done and what must be done. Therefore, if immorality refers to acts, you cannot separate the law from the acts, and the law that prescribes immoral acts is immoral. For example, depriving a minority of access to land ownership. If you remove the prescribed act, that law ceases to exist.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
When the UDHR mentions the right to resist unjust laws, it does not do so in an article. There is no article in the law that mentions the right to resistance. But the Preamble recognizes this unwritten right when it says that the Declaration is proposed as a way to prevent people from being forced to resort to the right to violent resistance (I quote from memory).
That can be used to justify slavery or any form of oppression. The issue is that the needs and wants of the people who make them up are not necessarily the same needs and wants of other people.
That might be historically true, but if we want natural rights to be something more than what those in power need and want, then it to ought to apply to everyone. For example, because you're human, you should have the right to determine your own life, and not be the property of someone else. And thus slavery was a violation of natural rights, no matter how the people at the time, or any time, rationalized it.
Social arrangements can and have denied people rights, which doesn't make sense if it's just a shorthand. At best, you get a relativism between social arrangements, where we can say slavery denied rights according to our modern arrangement, but not at the time.
Which makes the abolitionist case difficult, unless we just say they preferred a different arrangement. But they thought they were making a moral argument, which is people shouldn't be treated like cattle, regardless of what society says.
Human nature is like that. Everyone puts in what they like. Or what they don't like sometimes.
There is a basic question that is difficult to answer: How do you know that this characteristic is natural?
And another one later:
Why is natural good?
Legal rights are a very small part of the law. What people may consider moral or immoral is a very small part of the law. If a law addresses what people may consider moral or immoral, people often disagree on whether what it addresses or provides is one or the other. The law is a vast system, and to think of laws as moral or immoral is simply to disregard the laws as they exist.
That's the gist of it for me as well.
NGOs do and can enforce legal and/or natural rights. A recent example of this was there was a spate of attacks against Jews in New York earlier this year and in response the Guardian Angels stepped up their presence in Jewish neighborhoods around New York. That's enforcement, and the stepping up of their presence in those areas is a clear attempt to protect the population. Increased presence is certainly one means of enforcement, and in this case we'd call this enforcing a right that is both legal and natural.
There are also NGOs which protect the rights of vulnerable populations when there isn't a legal protection. In other words, the right they are protecting here is natural. For example French resistance fighters in WWII.
"We" in my remark was meant to be inclusive of all affected parties. The need to extend moral consideration to others is a necessary starting point; a given. Consequentialism can't really exist without it.
Slave owners didn't think of their slaves as people (they were considered property). Since my own take can possibly be used to justify slavery if "we" (meaning individuals) ignore the wants and needs of other people (or define certain groups as non-persons), how would you instead persuade a slaver or slave-owner that they violating natural rights?
More to the point, how would you use the idea of natural rights to persuade and compel them to change their behavior?
It would be difficult without force to do so, as history shows. But you would need to convince them that the slaves were human just as much as the slave owners. Maybe force isn't always necessary, since the British slave trade was eventually abolished by those who opposed it in Parliament.
And the slave revolts making it a ludicrously costly investment.
That too. Did you know France demanded that Haiti pay them 150 million francs for Haiti's successful revolution as compensation? How is a small country with a new government supposed to thrive with such massive debt? I wish someone strong enough at the time could have told France to fuck off.
If I had the photoshop skills to make a Dessalines Picard facepalm I would.
I should've said: "I'm sure Dessalines cut them off"
Explain this and what it has to do with our subject, please.
"Human rights in the United States"
"Treaties ratified"
"The U.S. has signed and ratified the following human rights treaties:
* International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) (ratified with 5 reservations, 5 understandings, and 4 declarations.)[266]
* Optional protocol on the involvement of children in armed conflict
* International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination
* Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
* Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees [267]
* Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography [268]
Non-binding documents voted for:
Universal Declaration of Human Rights [269]"
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_the_United_States#Treaties_ratified
To say that these legal rights have no impact is to have no sense of reality, IMO!
One other thing. The UK was still paying out its extant slave owner recompensation until 2015.
One of the issues with natural rights is that they're more or less only extant or operant if a given group of humans endorses and enforces them (where force as moral maintenance tends to be less necessary the more universally agreeable the status quo is).
For example, it's true that the inherent subjectivity in my original appeal can be incorporated into a justification of slavery, but it's not as if we might accidentally reason our way into a state of slave-ownership (it takes force to create and maintain slavery, and at least in many cases it takes force to end it). In my view, natural rights are more like a post-hoc rationalization of the current way of things, and sometimes the way we want things to be (as persuasive appeals, they do have utility, but not at the extremes).
Consider that you could go back in time and unambiguously demonstrate to slave owners that black people are people too; equals (and also women while you're at it). Even in accepting that they're greedily exerting force and oppression to exploit others, are we sure that the idea of universal natural rights would persuade them to relinquish their position of power?
Instead, I advise a full spectrum of moral persuasion (make an inductive-cumulative argument rather than a deductive argument). Where persuasion fails, the threat of force sometimes becomes relatively more effective, with the last resort being the use of force itself. I realize the irony of advocating for the use of force to achieve moral ends, but sometimes our world creates situations where no agreement and cooperation can be made, and our perfect moral spheres breakdown into self-preservation without fail.
Ultimately, humans are immensely swayable and occasionally unreasonable beasts, and because of the high stakes with which we play (against each-other), It is absolutely imperative that we exhaust each and every avenue of rational and emotional persuasion which can help us reduce mutual risk and maximize returns, because our seemingly inexorable return to violence and inconsiderate use of force (upon each-other) is always looming.
Toward that end, my go-to tactic of moral suasion is basic but effective: appeal directly to the most fundamental drives and values that nearly all humans hold; the desire to be free and unmolested from and by others; to have the opportunity for movement and to thrive (to seek happiness); to go on living with future security. By building the case for non-aggression and cooperation that is based around these nearly universally agreed upon personal values, not only do we start with values that resemble natural rights, we inherently frame them in a way that is relevant to the context and circumstances individuals or groups must operate in (the constraints of environment). Nearly natural rights might not get the shiny sticker of ultimate objectivity from philosophy departments, but they are far more practical. In the case of the slave owner, I would indeed move very quickly to the threat of force (revolt and rebellion) if I failed to persuade them that freeing slaves and ending slavery from a place of cooperation was in their interests.
Imprimis, fairly early on in this thread, titled "Natural Rights," I noted that I felt the only rights that exist are legal rights. The conversation then devolved into whether there is such a thing as an immoral law. I took, and take, the position that it's inappropriate to refer to a law as immoral. You then claimed that the immorality of a law is what creates the right to oppose it, and made reference to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. You also asserted that laws are prescriptive, apparently in support of your claim that laws can be immoral.
Now laws which create legal rights and provide for their protection and enforcement are prescriptive in nature according to your definition. Therefore, or so it seems your argument goes:
Quoting David Mo
Taking as I do the position that it's inappropriate to characterize laws as immoral (or moral), I noted that there are very few laws, including those regarding legal rights, that address what is moral or immoral as they don't prohibit or allow or mandate actions that we would characterize as moral or immoral.
Therefore, assuming for the sake of argument that your claim that laws may be immoral is correct, I point out that very few laws are of the kind you think can be said to be immoral.
I hope that helps.
I feel like there are two issues here that are separate and need to be disentangled.
A) Whether natural rights exist as a matter of actual truth.
B) Whether we can enforce these natural rights or whatever we perceive them to be.
We could have A and not B but we could also have B without A if we're just enforcing made up rights. "A" is a matter of philosophy while B is a matter of enforcement.
If natural rights exist then we have is a rule: Do not do X. Like any other rule, it could be enforced or not. Normally we don't say a rule which isn't enforced in a certain instance "isn't a rule."
Your answer does not clarify your concept of the law, which is what I was asking. That's why I'll clarify what I mean by law.
I understand the word "law" in the legal sense. That is, as a part of a particular positive law. Positive law is a statute that has been established by a legislature, a court or another human institution and can take any form that the authors wish. Positive law is by definition institutional and written.
To avoid confusion I will refer to moral standards as moral "norms". They are by definition neither institutional nor written.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
Accordingly, I do not understand that you separate the law from the legal right. What is the function of the law other than to define, guarantee or promote legal rights?
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
Positive law is not addressed to sanctioning the moral norm. But it can and does often cross, interfere with or hinder moral rights that a part of the population considers inevitable.
It is a very frequent case that does not need examples, but I will propose one. The law that prohibits legal access to euthanasia interferes with the moral right to a dignified death that a large part of society considers inalienable. Do not tell me that there is no conflict between legality and morality here, because it seems obvious.
The law is so enormous I'm not sure it's useful to attempt to define it. I've practiced law for 40 years now, and am leery of efforts by philosophers to fit it into boxes of their construction. The law is civil and criminal. The law consists of legislative acts, regulations adopted by adminstrative agencies, judicial opinions. In the U.S., such laws are enacted and enforced by federal, state and local governments. The Common Law often has application in civil matters. The law is whatever legislation and regulations that have been adopted in the manner recognized in the system by federal, state and local governments, supplemented by interpretive judicial decisions, which address virtually all aspects of human conduct.
Examples of laws which don't involve legal rights: Building codes; setback requirements; traffic laws; laws governing the licensing of cosmetologists, veterinarians, surveyors, dieticians; laws imposing permitting requirements for hunting and fishing; laws governing fence heights, noxious weeds, lawn height, stormwater regulations, zoning variances and conditional use permits; signage. Laws related tot he licensing of dogs and cats and other animals. Alas, I could go on and on.
quote="David Mo;413966"]The law that prohibits legal access to euthanasia interferes with the moral right to a dignified death that a large part of society considers inalienable. Do not tell me that there is no conflict between legality and morality here, because it seems obvious.[/quote]
First, we have the question of moral righs. As you know, I don't think such rights exists. If the law prohibits euthanasia, there is no right to a dignified death. I thing people who are competent should be allowed to choose death (I'm a traditional Stoic, in this an other ways). That doesn't mean they have a right to do so. There are systems of morality that aren't dependent on "rights." I don't think it follows from the fact that the law may address conduct considered moral or immoral that they themselves are moral or immoral.
What is the difference?
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
This is a definition that matches mine.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
All the examples you mention define or regulate legal rights. For example: building codes regulate various rights for the exercise of a certain economic activity with respect to free enterprise, the environment, etc. that affect the rights of the builder, the clients and the inhabitants of the surroundings.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
Quoting Marchesk
That's the point. I don't know what you (Ciceronianus) mean by "rights". If you say that a person should be allowed to do X, you are saying that this person has the right to do X because the right is nothing more than the expression of the conditions of use of a capacity or the obligation to do something.
[quote=Wenar, Leif, "Rights", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]To accept a set of rights is to approve a distribution of freedom and authority, and so to endorse a certain view of what may, must, and must not be done.[/quote]
You must think that our world is full of natural rights or legal rights, brimming with them. We have no natural or right to windows of a certain thickness, to toilet traps of certain minimum width, or not live adjacent to properties which have fences which exceed a certain height, or to have curbs and gutters, to retention ponds. Neither do we have a natural or legal right to have up to a certain number of cats without being required to obtain a license, all derivative of a natural (I think?) right to the exercise of a certain economic activity. Builders rights, client rights, inhabitants rights. How may rights do you believe there to be?
Such provisions are regulations designed to achieve what's thought to appropriate and in the interest of promoting public welfare in various respects. But there is no right to have housing or office space or roads, etc., of a particular kind. Nor is there any general right of public welfare, or right to be comfortable, or to be warm, or to be happy or pleased because one's lawn doesn't have weeds or isn't enclosed by a high fence.
Quoting David Mo
It's not necessary to accept the existence of a natural right to do X, however, to declare that X should not be prohibited. If you refer to legal rights, I've never claimed they don't exist, nor have I claimed they shouldn't exist.
I don't have to accept that we all have a right to live to say that we should not kill one another. Virtue ethics, for example, isn't premised on perceived or assumed rights and obligations.
The difference arises from the fact I think what it is proper or moral to do should not be determined based on supposed "rights." I don't think I should prevent a competent person who has an incurable, painful disease from taking his/her own life because I have no good reason, no moral reason, to compel that person to live, and by doing so I would be cruel. That isn't the same as saying the person has a right to die. There can be moral duties without entitlements.
I did not mention natural rights, but moral rights. Therefore, the rest of your comment does not relate to my proposal.
Furthermore, the examples you give referred to legal rights, which exist as soon as a law stipulates them. Not to moral rights that are of another order.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
If you say there's a "thou shalt not kill" rule, it's because there's a right to live. What else is it based on?
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
If there is a duty not to do something to someone it is because there is a right of someone not to suffer from something. Duty and right are two sides of the same coin. You can't claim for one without recognizing the other.
Marchesk asked you a question that you have not answered: what is the difference between X can do Y and X has the right to do Y? You have not explained the difference yet.
Now there are moral rights as well as natural rights and legal rights?Quoting David Mo
I don't think so. You seemed to feel there was some moral right (apparently) which was "in back of" or justified or resulted in the various regulations I mentioned. I don't think they create legal rights, let alone moral rights, but was trying to point out that there are no recognizable rights of any kind on which such regulations are based. Thus, there is no right to comfort or warmth on which building codes are based, or right to buildings made in a particular manner, or rights which somehow support lawn height regulations like a supposed right to well-ordered and pleasing lawns or some kind of aesthetic right.Quoting David Mo
Well, I think I did, in a reply to him a portion of which you quote.
I mention once more virtue ethics. Put very simply, those who live virtuous lives don't kill people because killing people is not virtuous, not because people have a right to live. Those who wish to live a virtuous life are obliged to act virtuously.
I prefer an ethics which isn't based on the claims of people that they are entitled to be treated in a certain way. I prefer an ethics which provides that one should strive to be virtuous, which means to act in a certain way in order to live a good life (the old Stoics, or some of them at least, used to say "act in accordance with nature" meaning in accord with the underlying reason pervading nature). The emphasis is on people having the responsibility to act in a proper manner rather than people being naturally or otherwise entitled to all kinds of rights they must be granted which must be honored by everyone else.
No. There are moral rights and legal rights. Whether moral rights are natural or not is another question.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
This is not an explanation of the question. The question began with "What is the difference between...?" You haven't explained any difference between being allowed and being entitled.
Speaking of virtue you explain nothing because you do not explain why being virtuous implies that a man is allowed to die when his life is unbearable. Virtue is a disposition to do good, but before you know whether a man is virtuous you have to specify what good is. You cannot be virtuous by raping children. Virtue is not opposed to moral rights. In any case, it complements them. Since you establish that something is good you establish a duty to do. And since you establish a duty you establish a subject of rights. You should not kill is to say the same as others have the right not to be killed by you. Duty and right are two inseparable sides of the same coin.
And this is the only way to explain why you should allow someone to die a dignified death. Because he has the right to it.
I allow someone to share food I'm eating. Or, someone takes some of the food I'm eating, and I don't prevent him/her from taking it. He/she isn't entitled to my food, has no right to it, in either case.
Have you never permitted someone to do something even though there is no right to do it? Have you never exercised forbearance (declined to restrain someone from doing something although there is no right to do it)?
I would forbear from allowing someone to die a dignified death not because of some purported right to suicide, but for reasons such as: I should not decide whether someone lives or dies; I should not be the cause of another's suffering, or perpetuate the suffering of others.
It isn't virtuous that people be allowed to die. Virtue refers to how I/we should conduct ourselves. The question what is virtuous in the case of someone who wants to die arises only when it is in the power of a person to prevent another person from fulfilling that desire. The question then arises--should I/we prevent the person from dying although they want to under the circumstances (e.g. because they're suffering and that suffering will not otherwise end)?
I would say no, for reasons such as those I noted earlier, not because they have "a right to die."
But no, if you're now asking me to explain why being virtuous is good and not being virtuous is bad, I decline to do so. This discussion doesn't require we each describe what is moral, and why. Also, I want to get some lunch and do so of that law stuff.
Indeed, because you have changed the instance from a question of right to a graceful donation. There are no recipient rights in a donation. That is not my point. My case is when the recipient has some right to something you have. Which is the same as saying that you have an obligation to do or should do something. You should give up this meal is a different case from you want to give up. The link between duty and right as two sides of the same act is what you can't explain with your theory of virtue.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
No wonder you're declining. Because you can't do it. If you stick to a concept of virtue without specifying you can do all the verbal filigrees you want. If you are forced to explain what virtue is, you find yourself with the unavoidable chain of virtue-well-duties and rights.
You beg the question by insisting I address a situation involving a right. I don't address circumstances where someone has a right to what I have because I don't think such a right, or any right, exists unless it's a legal right. Remember?
Now I could, and perhaps should, demand that you explain to me what a non-legal right is since you claim I must address only circumstances in which they're at issue. I'd be interested in your non-circular definition.
I confess I find it hard to understand why you believe, apparently, that acting virtuously, e.g. wisely, prudently, benevolently, justly, is a matter of rights and duties.
It's just like where women didn't have the legal right to abortion, but then they did. We assume that their rights just weren't recognized previously, not that they suddenly bloomed a right. Why is that a problem?
I remember very well, but you have failed in two essential points of your explanation: you have not been able to explain how the obligation of someone to do or not to do x to Y does not imply a right of Y, and how one can be virtuous without this implying a duty to do or not to do.
Your error lies in the fact that you have led the defence of virtue to absurdity.Virtue theories do not deny the existence of moral duties and rights. Just as the theories of duty do not deny the existence of virtue. Kant, the model of the theory of duty, defended the need to be virtuous, and Aristotle, the model of the theory of virtue, understood it as the fulfillment of duties. It cannot be otherwise.By pretending that there are no moral rights, you have brought the theory of virtue to a dead end.
You don't explain what a non-legal right is, but I won't chide you for it. No doubt you'd reference some right not to do so.
Aristotle is not my favorite (I prefer the Stoics, and find it hard to like someone so admired by Ayn Rand) nor is the unfortunate Kant. But I think you misunderstand Aristotle.
Regardless, I think it futile, but will try again. Virtues are qualities of an agent. A virtuous person acts in particular ways because he/she is virtuous and so acts virtuously, not because of the consequences to others, nor because of any sense of obligation to others. Consider as I suggested you do the classical virtues, which include prudence or wisdom, temperence, courage, justice or fairness. The exercise of these virtues isn't mandated by any obligation to others deriving from claimed rights. It has everything to do with living a good life, one seeking eudamonia. One is obligated to live in a particular way--one should live in a particular way--to achieve eudamonia, to live in accordance with nature as the ancient Stoics put it.
For the Stoics, desiring things beyond our control or being disturbed by them is contrary to the good life. So seeking to control people, seeking after their property, being disturbed by what they do, all the things that motivate people to kill or injure each other or take things from others, or enslave them, are contrary to living well and are therefore improper. They're not improper because of any claimed right to life, or liberty, or property.
You seem to make what I consider to be the error of treating rights as if they're legal rights. We tend to do that in America, where everyone claims they have all kinds of rights, the right to their opinion however foolish or bigoted, the right to do as they please even if others are exposed to harm, etc. Legal rights are useful in a system of law, regulating conduct, but outside of law, I prefer an ethics that focuses on what we should do.
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I'm not sure what you mean. That legal right may not exist someday, as many think there should be no such legal right. Would that mean the right is no longer recognized, or that there was no such right? Will women continue to have it if that happens? In what sense? Is it a natural right, or a moral right? What difference would that make if the law prohibits it?
"Non-legal rights" are what some people think should be legal rights, but when other people think they shouldn't be rights of any kind, there can be problems.
Then you should read well Marcus Aurelius: Meditations, VIII, 5: duties and nature.
I think you got a bad read on Ryand. It happens.
As I said, one is obligated (has a duty) to live a particular way--i.e. virtuously--to live according to nature. That doesn't mean someone else has a right to one's virtuous conduct.
When we say a person has a natural right to something, say liberty, we're making a statement about the nature of the world. It's declaration about nature's baseline.
In an absolute monarchy, the ruler is the only person who has inalienable rights, and they're considered to be divine in origin. The religious authorities are close allies of the ruler and they teach the people to assume the divine right of the ruler. If you're in this world, you understand that your right to life, liberty, and property are yours by the will of the king.
In this world, if you came to believe that your rights are yours by nature and that the same is true of everyone, you would see a deflation in the status of both the king and the religious order. That happened in Europe around the time of the Enlightenment. Philosophers didn't instigate it, they just articulated ideas associated with it.
So to answer the question about a woman's right to an abortion, there is presently a conflict in the US about whether an early abortion is moral. If it's moral and the state can't give an acceptable reason for interfering with a woman's liberty in this area, then the state has no right to outlaw it. This attitude has its roots in the above story about monarchy and religious authority. The USA has liberal ideals embedded in its constitution. So we keep faith with the founders by recognizing and protecting the natural rights of the people. That's a way to understand the feelings and beliefs in play anyway.
If abortion is murder, then the state is fully within its rights to outlaw it. The state gains that right by the social contract.
i think I understand you to be saying we have now outgrown all this language about rights and nature; that it's meaningless to talk about unrecognized rights. Since there is no monarchy in the US that threatens the liberty of citizens, maybe that's true. We have no background for the idea of natural rights, and so it becomes meaningless except as a fixture of history.
I wonder if we need a new words to deal with the challenges we face now. What do you think?
That's very good when we're talking about virtues that aren't moral. One can be a piano virtuoso without be dependent of others. Or one can have the virtue of self-control as an obligation to himself. But when virtue, as is the case with justice, is a function of what should be given to one's neighbor, the duty to be just is no more than to give each one what is rightfully his. And that is the moral virtue.
Well, like Ayn Rand, you're free (have a right?) to define "moral virtue" (as opposed to "immoral virtue" or "piano-playing virtue" etc., I assume) as you see fit if it pleases you, thus multiplying virtues as well as "rights." Vale.
The concept of "rights" as used now is, I think, relatively new, and probably arose during the Enlightenment as you note. Perhaps that's the case also with "natural rights" which I think is something different from "natural law." Stoicism influenced the development of the concept of natural law, but in the sense that the ancient Stoics thought that nature, i.e. the cosmos, in which a divine, rational spirit was immanent, reflected that spirit in a manner comprehensible to humans because of our capacity of reason, which we share with the divinity. To live according to nature was to live according to reason, as it is the peculiar and essential natural characteristic of humans. It's also one of our natural characteristics that we are by nature social animals.
The current concept of "rights" however focuses on individuals as opposed to community. According to that concept, each individual is entitled to X, Y and Z. Morality based on the current concept of rights is a morality of entitlement, and (taking a Stoic view) because we're fixated on things that aren't by their nature in our control--money, property, reputation, position--we find the idea we're entitled to such things if we can get them attractive, and this is especially the case when a system of morality justifies their pursuit and acquisition. So, e.g. the billionaire has a right to his/her money and assets, and that right should not be restricted, legally or otherwise, because it is a right. The billionaire doesn't have to share it with anyone else. There are some who argue the billionaire shouldn't do so.
Someone I think quoted Bastiat earlier in this thread, or somewhere else (I can't remember). He put it well: "When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." I think that a moral system which emphasizes individual rights, thought it may be well-intentioned, can result in this kind of selfishness.
A legal system is another matter, though. We can't adopt a law compelling everyone to be virtuous, or Stoic Sages. When we try to legislate morality we come up with abominations like Prohibition. Legal rights are needed to restrain certain conduct of a particularly offensive kind.
There's a difference between morality and the law. Because we don't regulate ourselves (particularly where we think we're entitled to so much) the law must regulate us. Morality shouldn't be confused or conflated with the law, and concepts that are useful in the law, like rights, aren't necessarily conducive to moral conduct. If we could teach virtuous conduct to all, that would be ideal.
Holding that a person has a natural right to life, liberty, and property doesn't mean the state can't tax its citizens. We agree to allow the state to enforce order, build a military, protect workers, and tax billionaires.
I'm not speaking as a champion of the concept of rights, I'm just trying to distinguish between the concept itself and the ways it ends up being used to subvert democracy and harm society. Corruption doesn't show that form of the system is bad. It just shows that we're assholes.
Whenever one has a duty to another person, that other person has a right, specifically a claim right, because a claim right just is a duty owed to you by someone else. (In contrast with a liberty right, which is just the absence of having any contrary duty yourself).
Maybe not all duties are to other people, but when they are...
Just what "duty" means is certainly significant, as is the question whether a duty implies a right or whether a right requires a duty. I think claiming duties exist only where a right exists is misguided.
Some say we owe a duty to our children, or our parents. Does that mean they have a right to certain conduct on our part? Does our obligation to them exist because of their rights, or is taking care of them simply what a good person would do? If I have a duty it means I should or should not do something. I should be good; I should not be bad. Do I have a duty to be good because everyone else has a right to my good behavior, or a duty not to be bad because everyone else has a right that I not be bad? I don't think so. I have no right to good conduct on the part of the rest of humanity.
I didn’t say that, I said the other way around. Rights are analyzable in terms of duties.
I think legal rights are restrictions on what people can do or what laws can be passed.
You give up some of your natural right to liberty through the social contract.
It's not a question of whether I like it or not. It's that there is a real difference between virtues that affect oneself and virtues that affect my duties to other people. It is the difference between something that is non-moral (not "immoral", as you write) and something that is. If the term "moral" also seems arbitrary to you, everything is.
Indeed, because right and duty are terms that describe a reciprocal relationship. What Ciceronianus is pretending is like saying there is a father without children.
I suppose it would be a duty to himself or something similar. But that kind of duty is not considered moral. By definition we understand that morality is a way of regulating our relationships with others. If what I do does not affect anyone, it can hardly be said to be moral or immoral. See how those who oppose suicide try to refer it to the harm it creates to other people, the family, good customs, etc. Or relate it to a state of mental derangement. In other cultures, suicide is even considered honorable.
Well, I don't think a non-legal right necessarily exists where a duty exists, either, so I'm afraid we still disagree.
Something about the belief that we should be good, or do something right, moral, etc., because the "rights" of another requires us to do so strikes me unsatisfactory. Why not just be good, or do the right thing, without looking to some divine command or law, or something else beyond your control or belonging in some sense to someone else, as compelling you to do so? There's something pharisaical about a morality based on such requirements.
That’s still the wrong way around. I’m not saying a right necessarily exists where a duty exists, but that a duty necessarily exists where a (claim) right exists, and those duties constitute the entirety of those rights: to have a (claim) right just is for someone else to have a duty to you.
This is independent of whether we mean legal or moral rights or duties. Google “Hohfeldian analysis”.
Not that I should be good because someone has a right. It's that choosing to be good involves analytically recognizing the rights of others.
This has nothing to do with the autonomy of my moral will. As you know, the greatest defender of good as a duty, Kant, was at the same time the defender of moral autonomy.
But it has to do with misunderstanding moral autonomy. Freely choosing the good does not mean being outside all external control. You should read Caligula by Albert Camus, which illustrates the idea very well. Moral choice implies the feeling of the collective, because the moral good is a collective property. My freedom ends where the freedom of others begins. And the moral good cannot be decided from my absolute and abstract interior. I am good in relation to others who are good in relation to me. The opposite is a metaphysical individualism that only leads to selfishness which, although it pretends to be rational, has nothing moral about it.
What happens is that in the present time, anyone who puts forward the rights of the collective as the foundation of the individual is accused of being a socialist, if not worse. We live in times of people who think they are monads.
Proponents of eudaimonia and of virtue ethics don't decide what is good from their absolute interior, nor do they claim to be free from all external influences, as their concept of the good is based on the contemplation of nature and of the place and purpose of humans as part of nature. From that contemplation, or observation and analysis, they derive an understanding of the purpose of life and how to achieve that purpose. According to them, it's achieved by being virtuous.
Quoting David Mo
This makes being good sound like an exchange, or bargain--I'm good to others who are good to me. That may not have been intended, of course, but the formulation illustrates a problem with systems of morality which make being good conditional on something others supposedly possess which imposes restraints on our conduct or imposes obligations on us. Our actions are good to the extent we comply with those restraints and meet those obligations, wrong to the extent we fail to do so. Just as our actions are legal to the extent we comply with the restraints imposed by the law and the obligations it imposes, illegal or wrongful and subject to penalty if we don't do so. It's a legalistic theory of morality, and makes the conflation of morality and the law virtually inevitable.
For me, it's the concept of moral rights which invites selfishness, as it encourages a sense of entitlement. This is especially the case where rights conflict, as they do in the case of legal rights. It takes a huge, costly legal system to resolve those conflicts when it's possible to resolve disputes in which parties claim their rights are superior or the rights of others are subject to limitations, where that resolution is possible. In the case of claimed moral rights there is no method of resolution of the disputes which arise from the conflict of opinions regarding rights, and so those claiming rights may do so ad infinitum and without check.
Not the proponents of eudaimonia, of course. Because they combine virtue with duties (See Aristotle or Marcus Aurelius). Your refusal to include duties, your extremist concept of virtue does.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
I didn't mean to, obviously. I was pointing out a logical link between duty and right. You turn it into reciprocity as causality. Don't change the premises, please.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
Conflict is the essence of human relationships in times of scarcity. It will arise whenever individualism is encouraged against community. Rights theory, like any other theory, will encourage conflict when rights are seen only in an individualistic way and cooperation when the emphasis is on collective rights. A basic human problem is to find the right balance between them.
And this is a problem of morality, not of philosophical theories of morality.