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> For example, I don't think my freedom of speech should trump Cloudflare's or Voxility's right to freedom of association. Right, but those only produce a conf

> For example, I don't think my freedom of speech should trump Cloudflare's or Voxility's right to freedom of association. Right, but those only produce a conflict in a very specific case and your right to free speech should be defended by your government/peers regardless of where you do the caching for your blog (or whatever). I have a huge issue with this modern relativist approach, because it leads to the situation where - instead of acknowledging that there are in fact absolute rights - we constantly debate where _the line_ is. I think the boldest example of why this is bad is the right to live. In my view, this is an absolute right. "But what if it's a mass murderer?" - "But what if they are terminally ill and are suffering?" - "But what if they are so heavily handicapped that... ?" Adding _ifs_ and _buts_ to a right that should be absolute leads down a very dark path, because _the line_ will be a constant subject of discussion. I think we would do ourselves a favor to just outright declare some rights to be absolute (as we did before and seem to have forgotten).

Doxin 7y ago
> I think the boldest example of why this is bad is the right to live. In my view, this is an absolute right. "But what if it's a mass murderer?" - "But what if they are terminally ill and are suffering?" - "But what if they are so heavily handicapped that... ?" Adding _ifs_ and _buts_ to a right that should be absolute leads down a very dark path, because _the line_ will be a constant subject of discussion. Could you clarify what exactly you're arguing here? This part is not entirely clear to me.
- saintPirelli 7y ago
  I'm basically saying that the answer to the question of "Is murder wrong" should be a boolean value, not a float. Once it's a float, you open the door to all kinds of nasty thoughts arguing about where to draw the line. Are handicapped people worthy of killing? What about long-term unemployed? What about the opressors - like rich people? Homosexuals? There have literally been people arguing and executing all of these appalling thoughts in the last century and I would argue beneath it all lies a deadly relativism that says "Of course there is a universal right to live, well, unless you are a ... of course."
  - Doxin 7y ago
    I feel like that depends entirely on how you define murder. If you define murder to exclude things like assisted suicide then, yes sure it's always bad. If you define it to include things like assisted suicide it stops being quite that black and white. EDIT: I guess my point is that people have a right to live, not a duty to do so.
  - michaelt 7y ago
    In this context, would you oppose the idea of a country having a military?
    - saintPirelli 7y ago
      I'm not sure what you are getting at, in my country the main areas of operation for the military are helping flood victims and providing drinking water after natural disasters ... so no, those are good things. If you are asking me, if I think there is such a thing as a "just war": I don't know. I have read Saint Augustine[0] on this topic and am not convinced. I have not personally reached a conclusion on this matter. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo#Just_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo#Just_war
      - wpietri 7y ago
        You don't need guns to hand out drinking water, so if that's what your conception of "military" is, maybe you need to look outside your country a bit.
solohan 7y ago
I sympathize with this argument, but it has several problems: Rights and wrongs are inherently social constructs. The is no (currently) discovered moral potential in the laws of the universe, nor is there a well defined, clearly bounded, definition of life. I would argue that relativism is in fact the fundamental construct, and that societies only arise in the unstable balances between extremes. That's not to say that fundamental rights cannot be instrumental in strengthening society, but since they arise from within society, they will need to be updated as society inevitably changes in time.
- d0100 7y ago
  > I would argue that relativism is in fact the fundamental construct Then you pretty much agree with any practice that is currently-bad-but-wasn't-in-the-past? After all, it was relatively ok at the time, and can be again. Minorities, women and children beware!
- naasking 7y ago
  > Rights and wrongs are inherently social constructs. This is an assumption, and not on supported by debates in ethics. Once you start questioning everything, you'll see that some moral propositions appear to be unassailable, in that, no argument can simultaneously question the truth of the proposition without also descending into logical incoherency. The categorical imperative would be one such approach, although not the only one. There are good reasons why most philosophers are moral realists.
Daido_M 7y ago
...so why is the right to live an absolute right? What does it mean for a right to be absolute? (e.g. if someone kills other people to save himself, was he entitled to do so on the basis of his right to live?) Who gets to decide what rights are absolute and what rights aren't? Whose responsibility is it to enforce these absolute rights (and thereby to impose corresponding obligations on other people)? The logic of "absolute" rights requires an over-simplification that doesn't reflect how rights work in practice.
- saintPirelli 7y ago
  If I declare a right an "absolute" right I do not aim to answer any of the questions you posed, those are all good questions that need to be carefully considered, but none of them render the "over-simplified" right to live any less morally justified or desirable.
  - jmull 7y ago
    In your statement above you bemoan that without absolute rights we must "constantly debate where _the line_ is" Here you concede "those are all good questions that need to be carefully considered". ...so we're right back to debating where the line is. I'm not seeing a coherent argument here.
    - saintPirelli 7y ago
      I'm saying that knowing a right should be absolute and - for example - not knowing how to enforce this right for everyone, are not mutually exclusive.
  - rtkwe 7y ago
    That 'consideration' is drawing a line though. Where when two 'absolute' rights come into conflict does the decision to break one way or another get made? Choosing one over the other draws a limitation around the one that's less important in this context. We have all sorts of restrictions on the right of free speech. I can't libel someone, I can't make a product and say it's the product of another company, I can't open a random burger place and call it Wendy's. These are all restrictions on my speech and (as far as I've ever seen) even the most ardent free speech activist isn't saying abolish trademarks.
TeMPOraL 7y ago
Disagree. "Absolutely positively absolute rights" are taking decent heuristics and turning them into thought-terminating clichés. Let's go with the "right to live". Consider questions such as: - Who has that right? You, or your body? If you don't want to live, should you be forced to? What if you're suffering so badly it's debilitating, and this state won't improve until you eventually die? Is living in a state of endless torture better than not living? - How do you trade lives for lives? Imagine you have a crazy shooter killing people left and right. There's no fast way to get to them except a drone strike, and each minute you hesitate, they kill another person. Do you pull the trigger and save innocent victims, or do you wait for the armoured police to arrive and safely incapacitate the shooter, honoring their right to live at the expense of many other people? What if it's you facing the shooter alone, and they intend to kill you? Will you shoot first, or give your life for their right to live? - What if probabilities get involved? The shooter is cornered, and a police sniper has his head in their sights. You can either take the shooter down now, or have a team of officers incapacitate them. The latter has a X% of chance ending in a police officer dying. At X=100%, you're trading life for life. At what X do you decide to have the sniper take the shot? What if there's a risk of more than one police deaths involved? At what threshold in the probability density function is it worth to take that risk? - What if money gets involved? The most complicated variant, an extension of trading lives with probabilities. You have me sitting in front of a button, pressing which will immediately wreck the economy of a small country. You can't get to me, but see my head through the scope of your sniper rifle. I'm about to press that button. Will you pull the trigger? And before you say, "obviously no!", keep in mind that wrecking the economy of a country is bound to result in many, many deaths. "Absolute rights" are good as heuristics. But like all heuristics, they hit corner cases. These corner cases need to be thought about explicitly.
- saintPirelli 7y ago
  We can talk about edge cases when we agree on the base principles. A principle isn't automatically invalid because it has hard-to-answer edge cases. This is faulty logic.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
Natanael_L 7y ago
Declaring them absolute also don't solve these problems, because sometimes you can end up with conflicts between absolute rights, where you are not able to protect both rights at once.

Doxin 7y ago

> I think the boldest example of why this is bad is the right to live. In my view, this is an absolute right. "But what if it's a mass murderer?" - "But what if they are terminally ill and are suffering?" - "But what if they are so heavily handicapped that... ?" Adding _ifs_ and _buts_ to a right that should be absolute leads down a very dark path, because _the line_ will be a constant subject of discussion. Could you clarify what exactly you're arguing here? This part is not entirely clear to me.

saintPirelli 7y ago
I'm basically saying that the answer to the question of "Is murder wrong" should be a boolean value, not a float. Once it's a float, you open the door to all kinds of nasty thoughts arguing about where to draw the line. Are handicapped people worthy of killing? What about long-term unemployed? What about the opressors - like rich people? Homosexuals? There have literally been people arguing and executing all of these appalling thoughts in the last century and I would argue beneath it all lies a deadly relativism that says "Of course there is a universal right to live, well, unless you are a ... of course."
- Doxin 7y ago
  I feel like that depends entirely on how you define murder. If you define murder to exclude things like assisted suicide then, yes sure it's always bad. If you define it to include things like assisted suicide it stops being quite that black and white. EDIT: I guess my point is that people have a right to live, not a duty to do so.
- michaelt 7y ago
  In this context, would you oppose the idea of a country having a military?
  - saintPirelli 7y ago
    I'm not sure what you are getting at, in my country the main areas of operation for the military are helping flood victims and providing drinking water after natural disasters ... so no, those are good things. If you are asking me, if I think there is such a thing as a "just war": I don't know. I have read Saint Augustine[0] on this topic and am not convinced. I have not personally reached a conclusion on this matter. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo#Just_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo#Just_war
    - wpietri 7y ago
      You don't need guns to hand out drinking water, so if that's what your conception of "military" is, maybe you need to look outside your country a bit.

solohan 7y ago

I sympathize with this argument, but it has several problems: Rights and wrongs are inherently social constructs. The is no (currently) discovered moral potential in the laws of the universe, nor is there a well defined, clearly bounded, definition of life. I would argue that relativism is in fact the fundamental construct, and that societies only arise in the unstable balances between extremes. That's not to say that fundamental rights cannot be instrumental in strengthening society, but since they arise from within society, they will need to be updated as society inevitably changes in time.

d0100 7y ago
> I would argue that relativism is in fact the fundamental construct Then you pretty much agree with any practice that is currently-bad-but-wasn't-in-the-past? After all, it was relatively ok at the time, and can be again. Minorities, women and children beware!
naasking 7y ago
> Rights and wrongs are inherently social constructs. This is an assumption, and not on supported by debates in ethics. Once you start questioning everything, you'll see that some moral propositions appear to be unassailable, in that, no argument can simultaneously question the truth of the proposition without also descending into logical incoherency. The categorical imperative would be one such approach, although not the only one. There are good reasons why most philosophers are moral realists.

Daido_M 7y ago

...so why is the right to live an absolute right? What does it mean for a right to be absolute? (e.g. if someone kills other people to save himself, was he entitled to do so on the basis of his right to live?) Who gets to decide what rights are absolute and what rights aren't? Whose responsibility is it to enforce these absolute rights (and thereby to impose corresponding obligations on other people)? The logic of "absolute" rights requires an over-simplification that doesn't reflect how rights work in practice.

saintPirelli 7y ago
If I declare a right an "absolute" right I do not aim to answer any of the questions you posed, those are all good questions that need to be carefully considered, but none of them render the "over-simplified" right to live any less morally justified or desirable.
- jmull 7y ago
  In your statement above you bemoan that without absolute rights we must "constantly debate where _the line_ is" Here you concede "those are all good questions that need to be carefully considered". ...so we're right back to debating where the line is. I'm not seeing a coherent argument here.
  - saintPirelli 7y ago
    I'm saying that knowing a right should be absolute and - for example - not knowing how to enforce this right for everyone, are not mutually exclusive.
- rtkwe 7y ago
  That 'consideration' is drawing a line though. Where when two 'absolute' rights come into conflict does the decision to break one way or another get made? Choosing one over the other draws a limitation around the one that's less important in this context. We have all sorts of restrictions on the right of free speech. I can't libel someone, I can't make a product and say it's the product of another company, I can't open a random burger place and call it Wendy's. These are all restrictions on my speech and (as far as I've ever seen) even the most ardent free speech activist isn't saying abolish trademarks.

TeMPOraL 7y ago

Disagree. "Absolutely positively absolute rights" are taking decent heuristics and turning them into thought-terminating clichés. Let's go with the "right to live". Consider questions such as: - Who has that right? You, or your body? If you don't want to live, should you be forced to? What if you're suffering so badly it's debilitating, and this state won't improve until you eventually die? Is living in a state of endless torture better than not living? - How do you trade lives for lives? Imagine you have a crazy shooter killing people left and right. There's no fast way to get to them except a drone strike, and each minute you hesitate, they kill another person. Do you pull the trigger and save innocent victims, or do you wait for the armoured police to arrive and safely incapacitate the shooter, honoring their right to live at the expense of many other people? What if it's you facing the shooter alone, and they intend to kill you? Will you shoot first, or give your life for their right to live? - What if probabilities get involved? The shooter is cornered, and a police sniper has his head in their sights. You can either take the shooter down now, or have a team of officers incapacitate them. The latter has a X% of chance ending in a police officer dying. At X=100%, you're trading life for life. At what X do you decide to have the sniper take the shot? What if there's a risk of more than one police deaths involved? At what threshold in the probability density function is it worth to take that risk? - What if money gets involved? The most complicated variant, an extension of trading lives with probabilities. You have me sitting in front of a button, pressing which will immediately wreck the economy of a small country. You can't get to me, but see my head through the scope of your sniper rifle. I'm about to press that button. Will you pull the trigger? And before you say, "obviously no!", keep in mind that wrecking the economy of a country is bound to result in many, many deaths. "Absolute rights" are good as heuristics. But like all heuristics, they hit corner cases. These corner cases need to be thought about explicitly.

saintPirelli 7y ago
We can talk about edge cases when we agree on the base principles. A principle isn't automatically invalid because it has hard-to-answer edge cases. This is faulty logic.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago

Natanael_L 7y ago

Declaring them absolute also don't solve these problems, because sometimes you can end up with conflicts between absolute rights, where you are not able to protect both rights at once.