5 ms·

Rights can be violated, of course, but the key is that there has to be some potential punishment for doing so. If you're in Saudi Arabia and they decide to exec

by deong 9y ago

Rights can be violated, of course, but the key is that there has to be some potential punishment for doing so. If you're in Saudi Arabia and they decide to execute atheists, and they do so with the full approval of the state, then those people did not have the freedom to practice religion as they saw fit. On the other hand, if you steal from someone and they arrest you, then that person had the right to be free from your theft of their property. You can assert whatever rights you want, but they aren't rights until other people agree that you have them and collectively decide that no attempt at punishment will follow you exercising them.

maxerickson 9y ago
I think it's easy to resolve this by being specific. Moral rights exist regardless of legal rights.
- deong 9y ago
  Yes, but moral rights are my personal view, and don't help anyone. Legal rights actually matter.
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    What do you mean, they don't help anyone? Your moral consciousness is an extremely powerful thing, which is why repressive governments employ censorship so assiduously. If we consider society in terms of game theory, law provides the rules, but the object of the game is to rewrite the rules through the exercise of power, for which you must employ strategy. The assertion of moral rights is a strategic objective.
thraway23 9y ago
Where do you (and who are you to tell) put the treshold of number of people who have to agree with someone's right? If some mob me on the street, and I'm outnumbered, do I loose my rights in this kind of "vote"? What about when police does it? What about police state? Or maybe "when the president does it it's not illegal"? I have to say I'm astonished by HN lately. I havae not seen so many badly rationalized apoloegtic arguments on slavery in my long life nor in 10 years at HN as these past three months.
- deong 9y ago
  It's not an apologetic argument for slavery. In my mind, I'm making a distinction for a very real reason -- to say that, e.g., freedom of speech is a universal human right explicitly whitewashes over the fact that a tremendous number of people are deprived of that right. What I want to make very explicit in the language I use is the idea that you have only the rights that you can reasonably pursue your daily life comfortably exercising. I find slavery abhorrent, as does pretty much everyone. Which is why I don't want to pretend like the problem just doesn't exist anymore, because after all, everyone unambiguously has the right to an existence free from slavery. They absolutely don't. There are plenty of people who can point to that idea as a travesty. There's no specific number of people they need to convince otherwise to gain that right. They need to exist in a governmental, societal, political system that demands that that right be conferred on them. Until that happens, they don't have it and we shouldn't be saying otherwise.
  - thraway23 9y ago
    Unrecognized right is still a right, just a breached one. That's why the whole concept of breach exists that is separate from enforcement. Distinction you posit is in fact between a priviledge and a right. Priviledges are bestowed by a form of governance, rights exist regardless.
anigbrowl 9y ago
I think we're arguing at cross purposes because you're talking about legal rights while I'm talking about the philosophical concept. Even if my rights are universally denied, I can still assert their existence, and insist on exercising them, as long as I'm willing to pay the price of fines, incarceration, or life - and there are many examples of this in history. For context, I also hold the position that while being incarcerated obviously limits your physical liberty and maybe others, true liberty is a a state of mind; if you both take responsibility for acting on your authority and consider your incarceration unjust, your psychic liberty is intact and can't be mechanically confiscated from you. This might seem like a meaningless distinction, but the consciousness of one's fundamental freedom is what sustains many political prisoners, and conversely what authoritarians most fear and work to suppress.

by deong 9y ago

maxerickson 9y ago

I think it's easy to resolve this by being specific. Moral rights exist regardless of legal rights.

deong 9y ago
Yes, but moral rights are my personal view, and don't help anyone. Legal rights actually matter.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  What do you mean, they don't help anyone? Your moral consciousness is an extremely powerful thing, which is why repressive governments employ censorship so assiduously. If we consider society in terms of game theory, law provides the rules, but the object of the game is to rewrite the rules through the exercise of power, for which you must employ strategy. The assertion of moral rights is a strategic objective.

thraway23 9y ago

Where do you (and who are you to tell) put the treshold of number of people who have to agree with someone's right? If some mob me on the street, and I'm outnumbered, do I loose my rights in this kind of "vote"? What about when police does it? What about police state? Or maybe "when the president does it it's not illegal"? I have to say I'm astonished by HN lately. I havae not seen so many badly rationalized apoloegtic arguments on slavery in my long life nor in 10 years at HN as these past three months.

deong 9y ago
It's not an apologetic argument for slavery. In my mind, I'm making a distinction for a very real reason -- to say that, e.g., freedom of speech is a universal human right explicitly whitewashes over the fact that a tremendous number of people are deprived of that right. What I want to make very explicit in the language I use is the idea that you have only the rights that you can reasonably pursue your daily life comfortably exercising. I find slavery abhorrent, as does pretty much everyone. Which is why I don't want to pretend like the problem just doesn't exist anymore, because after all, everyone unambiguously has the right to an existence free from slavery. They absolutely don't. There are plenty of people who can point to that idea as a travesty. There's no specific number of people they need to convince otherwise to gain that right. They need to exist in a governmental, societal, political system that demands that that right be conferred on them. Until that happens, they don't have it and we shouldn't be saying otherwise.
- thraway23 9y ago
  Unrecognized right is still a right, just a breached one. That's why the whole concept of breach exists that is separate from enforcement. Distinction you posit is in fact between a priviledge and a right. Priviledges are bestowed by a form of governance, rights exist regardless.

anigbrowl 9y ago

I think we're arguing at cross purposes because you're talking about legal rights while I'm talking about the philosophical concept. Even if my rights are universally denied, I can still assert their existence, and insist on exercising them, as long as I'm willing to pay the price of fines, incarceration, or life - and there are many examples of this in history. For context, I also hold the position that while being incarcerated obviously limits your physical liberty and maybe others, true liberty is a a state of mind; if you both take responsibility for acting on your authority and consider your incarceration unjust, your psychic liberty is intact and can't be mechanically confiscated from you. This might seem like a meaningless distinction, but the consciousness of one's fundamental freedom is what sustains many political prisoners, and conversely what authoritarians most fear and work to suppress.