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Until the Arabs came up with the concept of zero, no human had any idea about zero, nor did mathematicians use the zero. Nevertheless, zero has always existed.

Until the Arabs came up with the concept of zero, no human had any idea about zero, nor did mathematicians use the zero. Nevertheless, zero has always existed. Just because humans didn't know about it doesn't mean zero didn't matter. Likewise, all human beings have always had fundamental rights, and that was true during the era when people did not spend much time talking about rights. You assume this when you write "Those were won by sweat and blood." The point is, why did people fight for them? Why did people think they had any right to fight for them? More so, you are wrong that the discussion of rights has only happened in the modern era. Elaine Pagels, a historian of early Christianity, has studied why women and slaves were often the strongest supporters of early Christianity -- part of the answer is the Christian church fought for their rights. Pagels offers, as an example, a priest in North Africa who felt that slave owners should be punished if they raped their slaves. At the time, the idea was counter to Roman law, but of course the millions of slaves in the Empire were supportive of such ideas.

danbruc 9y ago
Nevertheless, zero has always existed. The mathematical anti-realist would disagree. Likewise, all human beings have always had fundamental rights [...] Where do they come from? How did we discover them?
- lkrubner 9y ago
  I responded in another comment.
deong 9y ago
People fought and bled and died for the right to own slaves too. The point is that there's no such thing as a universal right. There are only rights some individual believes should be universal rights. If enough individuals band together, they can get those rights enshrined by whatever authority has the ability to grant and recognize rights for those people, but as long as that authority refuses them, they don't have that right. They just should have that right, according to you or me or whoever.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  Yes, but they lost because ultimately they couldn't explain why one person should own slaves and another should be enslaved, other than luck. Rights are indeed what people assert, but to argue they have no conceptual existence is to confuse them with power relations.
  - deong 9y ago
    No, they lost because their military power wasn't sufficient to impose their view of "rights" onto those they were fighting. Again, we all likely agree that there is a moral imperative in play here that slavery should not be tolerated. And had the South won, I'm sure the guy being whipped against a post would be super comforted by us sitting around talking about his universal human rights. He could think about them to take his mind off the lashings. I'm not arguing that rights have no conceptual existence. I'm arguing that conceptual existence isn't the existence that really matters. It's all lovely for me to say that anyone has the right to draw whatever cartoons they want, but there are 30 million people in Saudi Arabia who would rightly call me an idiot. The actual existence of the right is not some airy concept that I just get to define because it pleases me. It's a very practical thing that affects people's daily lives, and I don't get to declare otherwise just because it suits me.
    - anigbrowl 9y ago
      That's certainly true once you get to the kinetic stage of war with people actually battling, but I'd back up and look at the political breakdowns that led to that outcome. It does feel like we basically agree though, and are just describing the same thing from somewhat different perspectives, so I don't want to be pedantic about it.
  - Swizec 9y ago
    Here's a counter argument: Every single peasant revolt in history failed and resulted in the peasants often having even fewer rights. At the very least everyone involved in the revolt received extreme sanctions. Revolts only started working during the enlightenment era when the idea of rights started being supported by the nobles as well. Conceptually at least. That's where we got the French Revolution, worker's rights in the 19th century, and stuff like that. Think about it, until the 1st world war or thereabouts, we as commoners didn't even have the right to free time.
jcranmer 9y ago
> Until the Arabs came up with the concept of zero, no human had any idea about zero, nor did mathematicians use the zero. Babylon had a 0 symbol (𒑊, I think) by 300 BC. The Olmecs and/or Maya had the Long Count (and presumably a 0 symbol) by at least 100 BC, although the first known contemporary long count date with a 0 by around 357 AD.
eveningcoffee 9y ago
>Until the Arabs came up with the concept of zero, no human had any idea about zero, nor did mathematicians use the zero. In principle all these three statements are completely wrong (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0#History).

danbruc 9y ago

Nevertheless, zero has always existed. The mathematical anti-realist would disagree. Likewise, all human beings have always had fundamental rights [...] Where do they come from? How did we discover them?

lkrubner 9y ago
I responded in another comment.

deong 9y ago

People fought and bled and died for the right to own slaves too. The point is that there's no such thing as a universal right. There are only rights some individual believes should be universal rights. If enough individuals band together, they can get those rights enshrined by whatever authority has the ability to grant and recognize rights for those people, but as long as that authority refuses them, they don't have that right. They just should have that right, according to you or me or whoever.

anigbrowl 9y ago
Yes, but they lost because ultimately they couldn't explain why one person should own slaves and another should be enslaved, other than luck. Rights are indeed what people assert, but to argue they have no conceptual existence is to confuse them with power relations.
- deong 9y ago
  No, they lost because their military power wasn't sufficient to impose their view of "rights" onto those they were fighting. Again, we all likely agree that there is a moral imperative in play here that slavery should not be tolerated. And had the South won, I'm sure the guy being whipped against a post would be super comforted by us sitting around talking about his universal human rights. He could think about them to take his mind off the lashings. I'm not arguing that rights have no conceptual existence. I'm arguing that conceptual existence isn't the existence that really matters. It's all lovely for me to say that anyone has the right to draw whatever cartoons they want, but there are 30 million people in Saudi Arabia who would rightly call me an idiot. The actual existence of the right is not some airy concept that I just get to define because it pleases me. It's a very practical thing that affects people's daily lives, and I don't get to declare otherwise just because it suits me.
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    That's certainly true once you get to the kinetic stage of war with people actually battling, but I'd back up and look at the political breakdowns that led to that outcome. It does feel like we basically agree though, and are just describing the same thing from somewhat different perspectives, so I don't want to be pedantic about it.
- Swizec 9y ago
  Here's a counter argument: Every single peasant revolt in history failed and resulted in the peasants often having even fewer rights. At the very least everyone involved in the revolt received extreme sanctions. Revolts only started working during the enlightenment era when the idea of rights started being supported by the nobles as well. Conceptually at least. That's where we got the French Revolution, worker's rights in the 19th century, and stuff like that. Think about it, until the 1st world war or thereabouts, we as commoners didn't even have the right to free time.

jcranmer 9y ago

> Until the Arabs came up with the concept of zero, no human had any idea about zero, nor did mathematicians use the zero. Babylon had a 0 symbol (𒑊, I think) by 300 BC. The Olmecs and/or Maya had the Long Count (and presumably a 0 symbol) by at least 100 BC, although the first known contemporary long count date with a 0 by around 357 AD.

eveningcoffee 9y ago

>Until the Arabs came up with the concept of zero, no human had any idea about zero, nor did mathematicians use the zero. In principle all these three statements are completely wrong (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0#History).