Where do Rights Come From?

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Purple Knight
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Where do Rights Come From?

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Post by Purple Knight »

Question for Debate: Where do rights come from?

Put another way, do I ever have a right to just make up rights and unilaterally impose on you not to do things?
I might, for example, make up a right not to hear voices I find annoying and demand they not speak in my presence. I might get offended because I don't like the scent of the air you breathed out so I demand you stop breathing at once. I might take anything in the world I don't like that is bothering me, construct it as something you have done to me, and say I have a legitimate right to be free of whatever that bothersome thing is.

Your right that you have, preventing me from murdering you, does it exist even if I disagree?

A Libertarian will say, rights simply are, and they are what they are, and they are not what they're not. But that just means, in practice, that Libertarians and only Libertarians decide on rights. Maybe rights really are written into the Stone Table at the time when the Deep Magic began the universe, and Libertarians happen to be correct about what they are, but I don't have the Stone Table in front of me to see that they're correct, so as far as I'm concerned I'm under no obligation to go along with their nonsense.

It's tricky business because the lot of you will not agree that I can just decide that the right not to be murdered is invalid and go on a killing spree, but you will disagree with many of the Libertarian's rights-which-simply-are-and-you-can't-contest-them. And if rights simply are, despite objections, then nothing stands in the way of the Libertarian's right to blackmail, because all you can do is object and objections don't invalidate rights.

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Re: Where do Rights Come From?

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As George Carlin aptly quipped: " by nature we have no rights! We merely want privileges. The privilege to fart, to eat, etc.". Though everyone wants the privilege to exist, they expect to be afforded some mystical courtesy by everyone else. Society is nothing more then a strange battle of privileges. A " tricky business " as you put it. Where do privileges ( I must insist 'rights' are a failed concept ) come from? Hubris, I suppose. Perhaps, these imagined privileges simply afford a more efficient manner to do as one pleases. But there's the battlefield. The battle of imagined privileges.
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Re: Where do Rights Come From?

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Post by Miles »

Purple Knight wrote: Wed Jan 18, 2023 3:20 pm Question for Debate: Where do rights come from?

Put another way, do I ever have a right to just make up rights and unilaterally impose on you not to do things?
Only to the extent I would have the very same right to just make up rights and unilaterally impose on you not to do things. Tit for tat as it were.

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Re: Where do Rights Come From?

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Miles wrote: Wed Jan 25, 2023 1:17 pm
Purple Knight wrote: Wed Jan 18, 2023 3:20 pm Question for Debate: Where do rights come from?

Put another way, do I ever have a right to just make up rights and unilaterally impose on you not to do things?
Only to the extent I would have the very same right to just make up rights and unilaterally impose on you not to do things. Tit for tat as it were.

.
A good example is that people in city neighbourhoods have made laws imposing on all there not to have "farm" animals like pigs and chickens, even though parrots are allowed and are just as dirty and noisy.

What should chicken man get in exchange? Or rather, who decides what is fair and not fair to impose on parrot guy? How far does tit for tat not go?

What I'm thinking is that they don't really equate unless they're the same right and we both agree. In other words, you don't want to be murdered, I don't want to be murdered, we're in agreement, so there is nothing wrong with generating a right not to be murdered that applies between us. It becomes, in essence, contractual.

And it's fine if George Carlin is correct about this because everyone who has broken the contract can be punished (at very least treated as if they had not made the contract), and toward those who have not made the contract, we have no obligations at all.

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Re: Where do Rights Come From?

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Post by Davado »

Protestant Christians won and invented the right to free speech Which makes the subversion of it by every other Christian forum hard to explain.
They enthusiastically over moderate and ban willynilly.
What are modern Christians afraid of ?
Congratulations for making this one free speech

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Re: Where do Rights Come From?

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Post by Miles »

Davado wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 4:55 pm Protestant Christians won and invented the right to free speech Which makes the subversion of it by every other Christian forum hard to explain.
They enthusiastically over moderate and ban willynilly.
What are modern Christians afraid of ?
Congratulations for making this one free speech

"Protestant Christians" you say. Hmmm. I think not. Simply consider the following:

"Freedom of speech—the right to express opinions without government restraint—is a democratic ideal that dates back to ancient Greece. In the United States, the First Amendment guarantees free speech, though the United States, like all modern democracies, places limits on this freedom. In a series of landmark cases, the U.S. Supreme Court over the years has helped to define what types of speech are—and aren’t—protected under U.S. law.

The ancient Greeks pioneered free speech as a democratic principle. The ancient Greek word “parrhesia” means “free speech,” or “to speak candidly.” The term first appeared in Greek literature around the end of the fifth century B.C.

During the classical period [500-336 BC], parrhesia became a fundamental part of the democracy of Athens. Leaders, philosophers, playwrights and everyday Athenians were free to openly discuss politics and religion and to criticize the government in some settings.
source

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Re: Where do Rights Come From?

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Post by Davado »

Actually America is originally a Protestant country a refuge from Rome and it's constitution merely reflects that

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Re: Where do Rights Come From?

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Post by Davado »

Your history pre USA could do a with a little work

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Re: Where do Rights Come From?

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Post by Davado »

And the Greeks maybe lay claim to the concept but that's all. They didn't win the right or enjoy it

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Re: Where do Rights Come From?

Post #10

Post by Shem Yoshi »

Purple Knight wrote: Wed Jan 18, 2023 3:20 pm Question for Debate: Where do rights come from?

Put another way, do I ever have a right to just make up rights and unilaterally impose on you not to do things?
I might, for example, make up a right not to hear voices I find annoying and demand they not speak in my presence. I might get offended because I don't like the scent of the air you breathed out so I demand you stop breathing at once. I might take anything in the world I don't like that is bothering me, construct it as something you have done to me, and say I have a legitimate right to be free of whatever that bothersome thing is.

Your right that you have, preventing me from murdering you, does it exist even if I disagree?

A Libertarian will say, rights simply are, and they are what they are, and they are not what they're not. But that just means, in practice, that Libertarians and only Libertarians decide on rights. Maybe rights really are written into the Stone Table at the time when the Deep Magic began the universe, and Libertarians happen to be correct about what they are, but I don't have the Stone Table in front of me to see that they're correct, so as far as I'm concerned I'm under no obligation to go along with their nonsense.

It's tricky business because the lot of you will not agree that I can just decide that the right not to be murdered is invalid and go on a killing spree, but you will disagree with many of the Libertarian's rights-which-simply-are-and-you-can't-contest-them. And if rights simply are, despite objections, then nothing stands in the way of the Libertarian's right to blackmail, because all you can do is object and objections don't invalidate rights.
I believe the fundamental law, or "perfect law" of liberty. Modern society is governed (or ought to be governed) by liberty. It is the establishment of freedom that respects the same rights of all people. I think the best definition i have read of it comes from the French Revolution "Declaration of the Rights of Man" (which was aided by Thomas Jefferson and the American Revolution).. Simple but to the point.

"Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights. These limits can only be determined by law."

it ensures the freedom and equality of human rights.

Now let us imagine a situation where a problem will arise, maybe someone is practicing the freedom of speech and it offends someone else. Perhaps it is annoying... So say the law takes up the issue and wants to put a law on it... It can get complicated in law, i have a few freedom of speech and first amendment right cases open right now as we speak, but if they want to restrict the speech of a person, it goes out universally to all people by the definition of liberty. So say one person is annoying another with speech and you restrict that, well anyone that annoys someone else is now in jeopardy of the law.

Society would have to set the bounds of liberty by law, and often times people have to endure other peoples freedom for the sake of liberty. Like if someone is picketing outside a store, that store might not like it, but they would have to endure it for the sake of liberty for all people.

So if someone think someone else needs to stop breathing, by the definition of liberty, that would go out and all people would be in jeopardy of the same thing.
“Them that die'll be the lucky ones.”

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