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The Nature of Rights

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ragingpanda

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I think you have to separate the concept of rights from ideas regarding their implementation. The concept of rights is a moral issue, and therefore the product of philosophy. Morality tells man what he should do.

I'm reading Ominous Parallels by Leonard Peikoff, and I've realized something important about the role of philosophy in guiding morality. The utter evil and systemic brutality of Nazism was the product of a moral depravity made possible only by a completely absurd and unreasoned philosophy - if I understood properly. What's interesting is that a common feature of the philosophies that contributed to Nazism is the idea that the mind is impotent. I've wondered about this because at first it seems wrong. If people believe that the mind is impotent - which seems impossible and absurd in the first place - how could they even wake up in the morning, or eat? Not to mention the fact that Nazis built missiles, rockets, jet planes and so forth.

But what I missed was that the concept that the mind is impotent doesn't apply to the use of the mind in all situations. The mind can be used to get through each day, build rockets, and everything else, but remain impotent as long as the choice of what to do - moral values - is the product of mysticism. Ultimately, these values would destroy a society, but presumably it could function for awhile. The issue - when it comes to man - is volition. Man must choose to survive, and make choices based on the premise that his life is in fact a moral value. My observation is that philosophy has the strongest effect on - and is the only source - of moral values and the choice of right and wrong. It answers the question, specifically, "What to do?"

Now consider the concept of the social contract. Forget the stupidity associated with general will, let's define a social contract as an arrangement between individuals regarding a common understanding on the proper use of force among them. Force, because anything not involving force requires no general common understanding.

If you 'sign on' to such a contract (say you are on a desert island with just a few other people), there are two moral issues involved. Primarily, you accept the rightful use of force against you if you breech the contract. Secondarily, you give your sanction to the use of force against other people in your name as a signatory.

Without rights, as the absolute justification for and standard of the social contract, you as an individual have not moral basis for joining it. Obviously, we are born into a country today, and by advocating for, and voting for correct political ideas you retain moral integrity. But as far as rights are concerned: absolute rights, discovered through philosophy, must be the basis for a proper social contract. It can't properly exist without them.

So, the nitty-gritty of how to organize and implement a social contract is irrelevant initially. Checks and balances are as meaningful as Nazi industrial achievements unless they exist to protect rights that are pre-existing and objectively accepted.

That said, I think that rights do usually require a practical framework in order to be protected. That is, they exist without a social contract, and they can be protected without one under ideal circumstances, but a social contract might be a rational way of protecting them under many circumstances.

That said, a child can have 'rights' but that doesn't mean they will be protected. In the same sense, a person can be completely moral, work and think to their fullest capacity, and still fail to survive. This may be tragic, but nowhere is there a moral failure. Somebody who violates a child's rights - or yours for that matter - can rightfully be punished for doing so. But that is a moral statement, objectively derived, and speaks in no way about how that punishment will occur. Importantly, the moral issue is completely settled from the beginning. While exactly what to do requires more thought, what to do generally - the ought as is - has been decided.

My personal vision of an ideal government involves parents retaining a certain 'stewardship' over minors that details how some of the child's rights are retained 'through' the parent. While the government has no explicit obligation to protect the child's rights, and therefore maintains no authority to expropriate funds from citizens by force in order run orphanages or pay foster parents, it can authorize a 'transfer' of stewardship where a concerned party can bring 'bad parents' to court and take their kids from them. The issue with children is custody, because obviously they can't function as an adult and require someone else's efforts to survive for at least some portion of their childhood. Rights are all about man acting in support of his own life, which a baby would obviously fail at. So this stewardship idea is my best effort

And about the idea of a person retaining rights 'through' somebody else, consider these examples: a child chooses to leave home, say they are 8, and can survive selling newspapers on the street. In this case, the ideal thing for the government to do would be to tell the parents that they have no right force the child back home. In another situation, the child wants to stay at home, but the parents are clearly intimidating the child and there is clear evidence of abuse. This time, the child's 'choice' is not acknowledged. This might be an error - adults are expected to know what's good for themselves, whether they demonstrably do or don't - but something about especially small children lacking the remotest opportunity to obtain enough knowledge to know better changes my opinion regarding them. Sure, you could just say the line is too fine to ever draw - that 18 is just convention - and 10, or 8 or even a 'scientific' standard is too subjective. In that case, you just ask a child what they want, and whatever best guess you have as to their answer, you allow them to reap the consequences of that choice even if you know they don't even have the capacity to do so rationally, and the only reason for this is that they are a child.

I guess, in the end, you don't draw a line. You include in the architecture of the law basic regard towards rights. All people have defined rights, and whether they be adults, the mentally ill, or children, those rights apply and are manifested clearly in the legal framework. That is, just because a person isn't properly aware of their rights doesn't mean they do not have them. So a child, or mentally ill person, can be deemed unable to properly make rational judgments, but they still have rights. So an abused child who says they want to stay in the abusive home can be taken out of one in protection of its rights. The standard for competence is broad. Emotionally damaged battered wives, or emotionally confused adolescents cannot be judged incompetent (or polygamous mormons). The state cannot remove them from a situation 'for their own good'. But mentally ill citizens, or small children who are clearly incapable of basic rational judgment can be removed 'for their own good'. In that sense, children have their rights 'through' their stewards - those who see to the survival of those utterly incompetent to do so themselves. And of course, being a steward is voluntary, so no taxes for orphans.

More broadly, my vision for a social contract is one where the use of force is authorized through the contract only. So even retaliatory force is subject to the dictates of the contract and its constitution. This is willful, you turn over your right to the use of force properly to the judgment of the constitutional government in exchange for a civilized consensus about the use of force. The government, therefore, cannot initiate force, only proscribe allowable use of force in retaliation (or immediate self-defense). It, therefore, cannot tax. But it can commission. It can authorize people - who through their own wealth, or donations (possibly according to a systematic process detailed by the legislature) - to use force in the preservation of rights.

It's like the desert island situation expanded.

By the way, these conclusions are all mine, and I don't claim that they are endorsed by anyone else.

UPDATE: I started this post an hour or two ago, and took a break, and then finished it. Since then, there have been many new comments. If my post is at all redundant, this is the reason.

UPDATE #2: I have read the new posts, and give full credit to TLD and others who expressed what I have expressed, first. They have expressed everything I wanted to express, though I'd like to know if rangingpanda is satisfied by my thoughts concerning protecting the rights of children.

Edited by ZSorenson
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Try invoking your right to life before a hungry bear who is about to eat you. If the bear could talk, he'd tell you that he is not a rational being and, as such, has no obligation to respect your rights, no matter how inalienable you consider them to be.

At that moment, I suspect, you would find it self-evident that your right to your own life is as rational and inalienable as it gets. And if the bear could talk, that alone would contradict the validity of his statement that he is not a rational being. :D If I can have a philosophical conversation with him about rational beings then he no longer needs to be a bear in your analogy. He could just as well be a potential murder. So we're back to square one on that point...

In the face of force, it is too late to invoke your rights. Anything that could, specifically, "revoke" a right would, necessarily, have to possess some such right to do so. A violation, rejection or breach of a right could occur by an external force whether it be man caused, irrational, or even by an unstoppable act of nature.

All bears aside, however, I'm at a loss. Rationally speaking, how does one come about inalienable rights?

... I cannot conceive of rights except as arising out of agreements, enforceable contracts between rational beings, where consideration is exchanged.

It seems that your definition of a right is what needs to be articulated. Would you say that you have a right to THINK whatever thoughts you choose? If no, who denies that right? If yes, how could that be anything but inalienable? Or, would that fall out of your definition of a right?

>>(from Virtue of Selfishness)

>>There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man’s right to his own life.

I agree with this statement. Unfortunately, nothing about it indicates that the right to life is inalienable or that it does not arise by virtue of contract.

If you can agree to a fundamental right, then that should supersede any requirement of consent. This is not to say that it eliminates the possibility that the right gets violated.

In the Declaration, Jefferson wrote, "We hold these truths to be self evident..." -- In Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand wrote "The source of man’s rights is not divine law or congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A -- and Man is Man." I see these as the same rationale.

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TLD and Jake Ellison did succeed in illuminating for me the lack of necessity of a Social Contract for protection of individual rights in the scheme of Objectivist ethics. I am still, however, on the fence regarding the status of children.

Children aren't irrational. They have the capacity to be rational, but a lesser ability than adults (Note: at this point measurement omission, in concept formation, would come up, but you have to take Grames's advice, and study Objectivist Epistemology for that), so they need help in acting rationally, in a complex, social context. But they have rights, for the same reasons as adults.

That doesn't mean that they have a right to get help from anyone except their parents (who are responsible for their existence, and under obligation to provide that help), but even in the absence of their parents, when they do get that help from someone (and they usually do), there is no reason for you to disregard their rights: you can expect that they will respect your rights, at least as consistently as adults (in fact, they are more likely to respect your rights, statistically), and more importantly you can also expect that they will grow into adults, and that is in your rational self interest to allow.

P.S. A good way to identify reasons why chidlren do have rights , is to try and imagine a world in which they don't: you'd have billions of little time-bombs, all around the world, who have been raised as victims of anyone's savagery, and as a result will explode into fully grown savages in about 15 years from their births. What possible use would anyone have for the rights of adults in that situation?

And most importantly, in my view:

Rights are moral principles, which are normative abstractions, meaning they are an answer to the question 'What is good?', rather than 'What is essential?'

So, when I say rights exist, and men have them, I mean that the concept of rights is an abstraction, not something that is concrete (like a pencil), and not even a cognitive abstraction like 'table' (which is a concept that subsumes units which are part of the material world: tables. It is a normative abstraction, which is more complex than cognitive abstractions, as it is (partially) explained in this link:

http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/normativ...stractions.html.

So, we are back at the point where it is essential to understand Epistemology first, in order to understand how the principle of individual rights came about. The good news is that Oist Epistemology is the most elegant, greatest achievement, and probably the most widely praised (in philosophical circles, though that's overstating it perhaps, since most academia are ideologically opposed to Rand and would never praise any of her achievements) part of Ayn Rand's philosophy.

Edited by Jake_Ellison
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P.S. A good way to identify reasons why chidlren do have rights , is to try and imagine a world in which they don't: you'd have billions of little time-bombs, all around the world, who have been raised as victims of anyone's savagery, and as a result will explode into fully grown savages in about 15 years from their births. What possible use would anyone have for the rights of adults in that situation?

Isn't this a utilitarian argument? How can you imagine children without inalienable rights - by imagining they're bears? Rights are a direct result of one's reasoning capacity. To try to imagine kids without rights is to try to imagine a contradiction, no?

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Isn't this a utilitarian argument? How can you imagine children without inalienable rights - by imagining they're bears? Rights are a direct result of one's reasoning capacity. To try to imagine kids without rights is to try to imagine a contradiction, no?

Oh, come on. Rights are normative idea; they should be observed but it is all too easy to disregard and violate them.

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Well, imagining a world where peoples' rights are violated is not the same as imagining a world where people don't have rights.

Absolutely! But in case someone wants to falsely conclude that there are many in the world today who don't have rights, remember that "rights" is a moral concept, not a political one.

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Isn't this a utilitarian argument? How can you imagine children without inalienable rights - by imagining they're bears? Rights are a direct result of one's reasoning capacity. To try to imagine kids without rights is to try to imagine a contradiction, no?

My scenario is a good way of understanding what kids are(future adults, among other things). It has value, I disagree with your assessment, but it's not an exhaustive argument.

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Since mentally retarded people cannot exercise their rights rationally and properly, like children, a legal guardian must act for them?

That does not negate their rights in principle. A criminal loses ability to exercise rights as well; having inalienable rights does not mean one is necessarily always free to exercise them.

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That does not negate their rights in principle. A criminal loses ability to exercise rights as well; having inalienable rights does not mean one is necessarily always free to exercise them.

My question is, since mentally disabled people are not free to exercise their rights, when they are violated, a party (legal guardian) should be exercising their rights on their behalf and confront the aggressor right?

Edited by The Individual
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My question is, since mentally disabled people are not free to exercise their rights, when they are violated, a party (legal guardian) should be exercising their rights on their behalf and confront the aggressor right?

Sure, even when they are not violated.

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