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Rights do not exist

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m082844

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I know rights exist, but when faced with the statement "rights only exist if others recognize said rights", I found my response to be less than satisfactory. I can use some help with this. I think he defines rights differently than I do. Rights are a set of conditions necessary for man to thrive qua man. I think he defined rights as privileges. What are your thoughts and how would you respond to his statement?

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I know rights exist, but when faced with the statement "rights only exist if others recognize said rights", I found my response to be less than satisfactory. I can use some help with this. I think he defines rights differently than I do. Rights are a set of conditions necessary for man to thrive qua man. I think he defined rights as privileges. What are your thoughts and how would you respond to his statement?

The man on an island hypothetical situation would work. When there is no one else to recognize a person's rights and no one to "grant" him his rights, does he suddenly lose his rights? No, his rights to life, liberty, etc are most noticeable in this situation.

Also, when refuting his argument, remember that his definition of rights is one which relies on force. His argument is often founded on the idea that if others force a person to give up his/her own life, his right to life is gone. However, he still chose to give in, no matter how despicable the forces against him were, which is the epitome of his right to life. He can still make the choice, up until the "others" literally murder him. Confront him with this situation. Is man meant to live in a place in which others decide his rights; one in which, if he chooses to excercise his right to life, he is murdered? (This is, of course, a very extreme scenario, but is applicable to even the most moderate situations.)

Edited by Eyesandhands
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I know rights exist, but when faced with the statement "rights only exist if others recognize said rights", I found my response to be less than satisfactory. I can use some help with this. I think he defines rights differently than I do. Rights are a set of conditions necessary for man to thrive qua man. I think he defined rights as privileges. What are your thoughts and how would you respond to his statement?
In what way does your opponent use this assertion in the rest of his argument. If rights do not exist unless people recognize them, then what...? What conclusion follows (according to him)? Edited by softwareNerd
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The man on an island hypothetical situation would work. When there is no one else to recognize a person's rights and no one to "grant" him his rights, does he suddenly lose his rights? No, his rights to life, liberty, etc are most noticeable in this situation.

Individual Rights (Lexicon): "A “right” is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context." [my bold]

Morality (Lexicon): "You who prattle that morality is social and that man would need no morality on a desert island—it is on a desert island that he would need it most. Let him try to claim, when there are no victims to pay for it, that a rock is a house, that sand is clothing, that food will drop into his mouth without cause or effort, that he will collect a harvest tomorrow by devouring his stock seed today—and reality will wipe him out, as he deserves; reality will show him that life is a value to be bought and that thinking is the only coin noble enough to buy it." Galt’s Speech, For the New Intellectual, 127.

On a deserted island, an individual would very much have to be concerned with morality, with what is right and wrong, what he should or should not do, but he would have no reason to be concerned with individual rights. If there's no one else, the issue of rights just wouldn't come up.

Edit: Think of Tom Hank's character, Chuck Noland, in the movie, Cast Away. Four years alone on that island. "What should I do?" and "How should I do it?" came up all the time, and his continued existence depended on his thinking and acting in accord with his thinking. But "How should we deal with each other?" never came up, was never an issue.

Edited by Trebor
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I know rights exist, but when faced with the statement "rights only exist if others recognize said rights", I found my response to be less than satisfactory. I can use some help with this. I think he defines rights differently than I do. Rights are a set of conditions necessary for man to thrive qua man. I think he defined rights as privileges. What are your thoughts and how would you respond to his statement?

Man's nature does not change due to the recognition (and respect) or lack of recognition (and respect) by others. By man's nature, it is right (proper, what he should do) that he think for himself — to identify where he is, how he knows it and what he should do — and act on his own judgement.

"Man's Rights" (Miss Rand's essay at ARI):

'"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. Rights are conditions of existence required by man’s nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product of his work. If life on earth is his purpose, he has a right to live as a rational being: nature forbids him the irrational." (Atlas Shrugged)

To violate man’s rights means to compel him to act against his own judgment, or to expropriate his values. Basically, there is only one way to do it: by the use of physical force. There are two potential violators of man’s rights: the criminals and the government. The great achievement of the United States was to draw a distinction between these two—by forbidding to the second the legalized version of the activities of the first.'

Edited by Trebor
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In what way does your opponent use this assertion in the rest of his argument. If rights do not exist unless people recognize them, then what...? What conclusion follows (according to him)?

He states that there is no such thing as natural rights of man.

Ask him to define rights to begin with. His definition is likely where the problem comes from, showing why he has a wrong idea of where they come from.

He says that rights are analogues to privileges. He says no right to life exists unless your neighbors let you live thus recognizing (directly or lazily) your right to live. He thinks that if rights can be violated than they aren’t absolute.

To violate man’s rights means to compel him to act against his own judgment, or to expropriate his values. Basically, there is only one way to do it: by the use of physical force. There are two potential violators of man’s rights: the criminals and the government. The great achievement of the United States was to draw a distinction between these two—by forbidding to the second the legalized version of the activities of the first.'

I really like this last part here.
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He states that there is no such thing as natural rights of man.
I'm afraid this does not illuminate things. I suggest that the discussion should not be about rights at all. From the sound of it, there's not much point getting into definitions at this stage either.

More fundamental questions would be: can man benefit from other men? can man be injured by other men? if both, then how does one design a social system that works in principle?

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"He says that rights are analogues to privileges. He says no right to life exists unless your neighbors let you live thus recognizing (directly or lazily) your right to live. He thinks that if rights can be violated than they aren’t absolute."

That begs the question to say they are analogous to privileges for starters. It basically makes his argument circular. Why do we have this other word "rights" then? Why aren't all privileges equally well called rights? They're not the same thing, so he needs to elucidate what rights are in particular before basically just saying they are effectively identical to privileges. He also needs to define absolutes here. Oism uses contextual absolutes. Things are not either absolute regardless or context or non-absolute, they're absolute within particular circumstances, no more, no less.

If he's looking at rights like they're supposed to make it impossible for people to kill you, he's just being absurd. It's as good as saying some two year old claiming that two plus two makes five and that's what they believe means addition is non-absolute.

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He states that there is no such thing as natural rights of man.

....

He says that rights are analogues to privileges.

Rights are moral concepts, abstractions, theyre the recognition of certain facts about man. Obviously theyre not tangible in the sense that we have arms or legs, so proving that is doomed from the start.

If your friend really believes rights dont exist, ask him what stops him from going on a murderous rampage. When he answers, ask him why that answer is important, or why it makes a difference. Keep going. My guess is if you keep at this this youll have reduced him to admitting that certain facts about man give rise to the nesessity of the concept "rights".

Draw it out of him Socratically.

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He has a mystical view of rights. Rights are magical things that keep people from harming others, and since this isn't the case, they don't exist. Probably stems from a mystical view of morality.

The answer is this: Rights are not magical barriers, they are normative concepts based on the requirements of human nature and the nature of reality for living.

He confuses rights with power, or ability. It is meaningless to categorize freedom to do something as the freedom of something to violate its nature. Man has it within the capacity of his nature to kill, steal, enslave, etc. The point of morality is the question of whether or not a man ought to kill, steal, enslave, etc. Rights define these "oughts" in regard to the sphere of action men ought to take in interpersonal behavior.

Edited by 2046
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He states that there is no such thing as natural rights of man.

He says that rights are analogues to privileges. He says no right to life exists unless your neighbors let you live thus recognizing (directly or lazily) your right to live. He thinks that if rights can be violated than they aren’t absolute.

Since the primary right to life and its corollaries; liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness are a prerequisite to live according to the nature of man

in a society, they(rights) do not simply cease to be depending on the location of an individual. Go to North Korea and you will not have your rights upheld but rather infringed upon.

I had a conversation with one of my neighbors who thinks that rights are NOT objective but rather subjective. After I had told him that rights are

a requirement of man, the rational animal, to live his life he then responded and asserted that I was operating under a subjective bias. At that point

I could only direct him to Rand's quotes on rights after giving him the definition of the right to life, and then simply end the discussion. There was nothing

more for me to say.

Edited by brianleepainter
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He states that there is no such thing as natural rights of man.

Rights are natural in the sense that they can be derived from facts of reality: the requirements of long term human survival in a social setting. But they aren't natural in the sense that they exist independent of man, eg. growing off a tree. They are principles, they don't exist until they are formed and understood. But I think there's a slight difference in the usage of the word when someone says "my rights". That to me implies that they are living in a society which has granted them their natural rights. If they aren't living in such a society, then they don't "have rights".

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He states that there is no such thing as natural rights of man.

Then implicitly he is stating that man has no nature, that, for instance, it is not right or proper for man to use his eyes to see and guide his actions, and it's not right or proper for man to think and use his thinking to guide his actions.

Does your friend think that it not naturally right (proper, moral), by man's nature, that man think for himself and act in accord with his own thinking?

He says that rights are analogues to privileges. He says no right to life exists unless your neighbors let you live thus recognizing (directly or lazily) your right to live. He thinks that if rights can be violated than they aren’t absolute.

Rights are distinct from privileges, permissions from others.

Individual Rights (Lexicon):

"A right is the sanction of independent action. A right is that which can be exercised without anyone’s permission.

If you exist only because society permits you to exist—you have no right to your own life. A permission can be revoked at any time.

If, before undertaking some action, you must obtain the permission of society—you are not free, whether such permission is granted to you or not. Only a slave acts on permission. A permission is not a right." "Textbook of Americanism," The Ayn Rand Column, 83.

We all, as individuals, require that all others recognize and respect our rights (not initiate the use of force against us, the only mean that others can violate our rights), and we are harmed, we suffer if our rights are not respected.

The fact that rights, to not be violated, require that others recognize and respect them, does not mean that they cease to exist if and when others violate them. If they did not exist, they could not be violated. If rights are violated, they exist as having been violated; they don't vanish.

If you have a right to property, for example you own a car, and I steal your car, your right to your car doesn't cease to exist; it's been violated. It exists and you know it, and you take what actions you can to redress the violation. If my taking your car, violating your right to your car, caused your right to your car to vanish, then you would be indifferent to what I've done.

The essential issue is that force and mind (thought) are opposites. (Rights protect minds, or intellectual independence, one's own thinking and acting on the basis of one's own thinking.) Force, initiated force, negates one's mind. It makes one's mind irrelevant. (See or listen to Harry Binswanger's introductory, ten minute, comments in the recent debate, 'Freedom From' vs. 'Freedom To' - somewhere around 28 minutes into the video, after the initial introductions) Instead of acting on one's judgement, one is forced to act in accord with the demands of the coercer. But force does NOT convince a mind; force is NOT an argument. It's a threat imposed, demanding that one dismiss one's own thinking and act in accord with someone else's demands. Or else!

If some thug points a gun at your friend and demands, "Your money or your life!," and your friend surrenders his money, hoping to get free of the thug's force, would he then think to himself, "Well, it was my money, but now it is his, properly, rightfully"? If not, why not?

If he's honest, he will have to acknowledge that force is not an argument, that it does not convince him that his property ceases to be his property, properly, rightfully. Why?

A mind is not convinced by force.

If there were no natural rights, a gun would be an argument, and it would "convince" anyone of anything the gunman demanded. If force did convince a mind, there would be no issue of rights.

I really like this last part here.

That's Miss Rand, in "Man's Rights"

Edit: Clarity

Edited by Trebor
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It may help to keep in mind: "Thus, for every individual, a right is the moral sanction of a positive—of his freedom to act on his own judgment, for his own goals, by his own voluntary, uncoerced choice. As to his neighbors, his rights impose no obligations on them except of a negative kind: to abstain from violating his rights." ("Man's Rights")

In today's mixed-economy, "rights" now include entitlements or privileges, both of which are contrary to the proper meaning of rights which require nothing of others beyond their recognizing and respecting out rights.

"Any alleged “right” of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right." ("Man's Rights)

"A collectivist tyranny dare not enslave a country by an outright confiscation of its values, material or moral. It has to be done by a process of internal corruption. Just as in the material realm the plundering of a country’s wealth is accomplished by inflating the currency—so today one may witness the process of inflation being applied to the realm of rights. The process entails such a growth of newly promulgated “rights” that people do not notice the fact that the meaning of the concept is being reversed. Just as bad money drives out good money, so these “printing-press rights” negate authentic rights." ("Man's Rights")

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Yeah that's obvious, but that begs the question of why should might be the basis of right? He stated Rand's version of rights don't exist because they can't stop someone from violating them. Now we're saying might is right, that man has a right to live by might. Living by strength alone is morally right. If his source of proof for this is the fact that men can use force against each other, then it falls prey to the fallacy of question begging, it assumes that which it needs to proof. Why should might be the source of the good?

Good for who? Obviously not good for the victim, but is it really good for me to initiate force as well? Is it a long term value to use force as a means to gaining values from others? Is it good for me to be a parasite on the value-creators? Does my life depend on using reason to create life-affirming values like food, clothing, shelter, medicine, education, love, etc.? Or does it depend on me killing and expropriating the people who create these values? He is just claiming self-interest is good, but self-interest lies in being parasite on others, namely the others that are productive whom I know depend on in the process of killing them and making it impossible for them to live. It doesn't take much to show that the supposed self-interest of predation is plainly false, so once you can prove to him that initiating force is not in your self-interest, and that you need principles to live long-term, then maybe he can inductively see the principle that no one should initiate physical force, and finally accept individual rights.

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Addressing 2046, he agreed with another that stated basically that might makes right.

The position that "might makes right" and that "rights only exist when others recognize said rights" may make sense to the extent that it is acknowledging that rights require protection, and protection of rights does imply the use of force in retaliation to violations. That would make rights *seem* like privileges, because unless someone recognizes your rights and protect them, rights may as well not exist at all. If no one is protecting your rights, how can you say you have any? On top of that, people do make unreasoned claims about what rights do exist, so this person's conclusions don't seem much beyond being mistaken. If rights include things like right to health care, then yes, for the most part, rights would be privileges. A privilege to use health care, a privilege to get a social security check, etc. Those rights only exist insofar as some people choose to acknowledge and protect them.

The problem is that we're missing what rights are good for. As concepts, they are needed to recognize what is required by all people to live in a social context. It's not about some metaphysical attribute within people that you can point at. When rights are emphasized as concepts, they refer to something about the nature of humans rather than some agreement. For the most part, when taking the approach that rights stem from the *nature* of humans, it becomes contradictory and nonsensical to suggest that rights are privileges, as explained by other posters here. Taking that approach also allows you to see how only individual rights are valid.

Edited by Eiuol
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The position that "might makes right" and that "rights only exist when others recognize said rights" may make sense to the extent that it is acknowledging that rights require protection, and protection of rights does imply the use of force in retaliation to violations. That would make rights *seem* like privileges, because unless someone recognizes your rights and protect them, rights may as well not exist at all. If no one is protecting your rights, how can you say you have any?

I'm not completely clear of your intent, but I'll take the opportunity to make a point.

It is not true that if some or even most or all other people do not recognize and respect your rights then your rights may as well not exist at all. Even if others do not recognize and respect your rights, what about you? Your rights still matter to you presumably. What you think and do in such a context depends upon whether you yourself recognize and respect your own rights. It can make the difference between resigning oneself to death or fighting for one's life and freedom, between Socrates' acceptance of his own death on the will of the majority or Aristotle's refusal ("I will not let Athens sin against philosophy twice"), between going to a concentration camp or joining the resistance, etc. The American Revolution was a fight for rights that were not being recognized and respected. If, given that rights were not being recognized and respected, the revolutionaries concluded that rights may as well not exist, that would have been all she wrote.

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If I may interject on the exist versus violate question and on the requirement of retaliatory force to protect rights, it would seem to me that a right not respected still exists (as in the facts of reality that it reflects as an abstract principle still exist), it just makes the violator wrong (logically and morally wrong.) The question goes to the heart of an objective ethics, about the relation of norms being in the facts of reality. Even if you don't recognize what is required to live, and don't do what is required to live, it doesn't change the fact that certain things are required to live. And being that we have to discover these things through our human mode of consciousness, not recognizing them just makes us wrong and evil. If someone violates your rights, it doesn't mean your permission to live was revoked, because that would assume already a norm about who has the right to grant permissions, it would beg the question.

That's what I get out of what Rand means by that passage in AS:

You who've lost the concept of a right... 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. Rights are conditions of existence required by man’s nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product of his work. If life on earth is his purpose, he has a right to live as a rational being: nature forbids him the irrational. Any group, any gang, any nation that attempts to negate man’s rights, is wrong, which means: is evil, which means: is anti-life.

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