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"Legal rights don't exist, but natural and human rights do." Given that existence of legal rights can be proven empirically [1], whereas existence of natural a

by psb217 13y ago

"Legal rights don't exist, but natural and human rights do." Given that existence of legal rights can be proven empirically [1], whereas existence of natural and human rights is a philosophical quagmire yet to be resolved after thousands of years of inquiry, I'd argue that your statement is false. Well, at least, as false as anything can be outside of a purely axiomatic system. [1]: Again, as far as such things can be done. E.g., we could probably come to something like an agreement that the Bill of Rights exists and that it describes a set of ostensibly legally guaranteed rights.

foobarbazqux 13y ago
Oh, I meant legal rights in the state of nature, the context rayiner was describing - he was the one that said they don't exist therein and I agreed. Natural and human rights function like morals though, they describe what should happen, as opposed to legal rights which describe what will happen, at least given a competent judicial system. Morals exist, right?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- rayiner 13y ago
  "Morals" do exist, in the sense that they are observable states of mind in individual people. You can set up an experiment where you leave a $20 bill on the table, and observe that people don't take it, and call the chemical process in peoples' brains that causes them to act that way "morals." Sometimes, people with similar moral opinions come together and agree to enforce entitlements consistent with that opinion. These are called "rights." While morals can be demonstrated in the state of nature, "rights" cannot be. There are no "rights" without agreements between people, either explicit or tacit.
  - foobarbazqux 13y ago
    I didn't really mean to argue about rights, or maybe I did and I just didn't realize. What you are calling "rights" is properly qualified as "legal rights". I am not suggesting there are legal rights in the state of nature, I am just pointing out that there is an entirely different category of rights and that "rights" refers to both categories. This other category of rights, which I'll call natural/human rights, corresponds to morals, whereas the legal rights category corresponds to laws. Typically laws and thus legal rights have some basis in agreed upon natural/human rights. See Wikipedia, which also lumps human rights in with natural rights: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_and_legal_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_and_legal_rights Since I'm pretty sure you've encountered the terms natural rights and human rights before, and that you understand that they specify morals without being legal rights, and that we don't basically disagree about how things work, nor do we even disagree philosophically on a wide variety of issues (perhaps importantly that moral absolutism is terrible), I was more curious about whether you think world federalism is a good idea...
- psb217 13y ago
  Basically in agreement with rayiner's sibling comment, I'd say morals don't exist in the physical/concrete sense that gravity exists, but they do exist in the cultural/behavioral sense that beauty exists. For them to exist more concretely requires some sort of codification and system for enforcement, at which point they effectively become legal rights. Also, in the absence of a specific objective, the concepts "should" and "should not" aren't useful. If we are acting towards different objectives, then our "shoulds" and "should nots" won't necessarily align. To rephrase this, the sort of absolute existence which you seem to be implying for morals and natural rights is only obtainable within the framework of an axiomatic system. And, the process of codifying one's morals within an actionable axiomatic system transforms them into legal rights.
  - foobarbazqux 13y ago
    I never said anything about absolutism, I believe moral relativism is healthy. I disagree that should and should not are useless concepts, because every moral expresses a should or a should not sentiment. Having personal values means you have a personal code of behavior, but it isn't enshrined in law, it's just opinions about how you personally should behave. I agree about the transformation of natural/human rights into legal rights through codification and use of force. Basically, I believe we agree on all the major issues here, except I seem to have communicated some kind of belief in moral absolutism which I hope I have dispelled!
    - psb217 13y ago
      I said should and should not are useless "in the absence of a specific objective". But, as you suggest, they are useful in the context of an objective, e.g. I should not push old ladies into heavy traffic (implicitly: because I prefer not to live in a world where old-lady-traffic-pushing is a commonly accepted pastime and I believe that not indulging in old-lady-traffic-pushing makes such a world more likely to exist in the future, given some assumptions about the dynamics of social systems). So, I agree that morals express should and should not sentiments. I also agree that individuals can hold morals, in the sense of personal codes of behavior. However, my original point of contention was whether or not natural and human rights exist in the state of nature. A discussion of morals ensued because you implied that an acceptance of the existence of morals was somehow related to an acceptance of the existence of n/h rights. Morals and n/h rights are fundamentally different in that morals are intra-personal, while rights are necessarily inter-personal. So, while I would accept that morals can exist, in the sense that individuals can desire particular states and derive codes of behavior for making these states more likely to occur, these sorts of morals are not the sort needed to make the functional similarity between morals and n/h rights that you previously suggested meaningful. These form the key points of our disagreement: that morals act like n/h rights and that n/h rights exist. While you may not have intended to support absolutism, based on the way in which people typically discuss n/h rights, and based on the formal definitions of these terms that I've seen, I'd say that any support of n/h rights is implicitly support of absolutism.

by psb217 13y ago

foobarbazqux 13y ago

Oh, I meant legal rights in the state of nature, the context rayiner was describing - he was the one that said they don't exist therein and I agreed. Natural and human rights function like morals though, they describe what should happen, as opposed to legal rights which describe what will happen, at least given a competent judicial system. Morals exist, right?

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
rayiner 13y ago
"Morals" do exist, in the sense that they are observable states of mind in individual people. You can set up an experiment where you leave a $20 bill on the table, and observe that people don't take it, and call the chemical process in peoples' brains that causes them to act that way "morals." Sometimes, people with similar moral opinions come together and agree to enforce entitlements consistent with that opinion. These are called "rights." While morals can be demonstrated in the state of nature, "rights" cannot be. There are no "rights" without agreements between people, either explicit or tacit.
- foobarbazqux 13y ago
  I didn't really mean to argue about rights, or maybe I did and I just didn't realize. What you are calling "rights" is properly qualified as "legal rights". I am not suggesting there are legal rights in the state of nature, I am just pointing out that there is an entirely different category of rights and that "rights" refers to both categories. This other category of rights, which I'll call natural/human rights, corresponds to morals, whereas the legal rights category corresponds to laws. Typically laws and thus legal rights have some basis in agreed upon natural/human rights. See Wikipedia, which also lumps human rights in with natural rights: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_and_legal_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_and_legal_rights Since I'm pretty sure you've encountered the terms natural rights and human rights before, and that you understand that they specify morals without being legal rights, and that we don't basically disagree about how things work, nor do we even disagree philosophically on a wide variety of issues (perhaps importantly that moral absolutism is terrible), I was more curious about whether you think world federalism is a good idea...
psb217 13y ago
Basically in agreement with rayiner's sibling comment, I'd say morals don't exist in the physical/concrete sense that gravity exists, but they do exist in the cultural/behavioral sense that beauty exists. For them to exist more concretely requires some sort of codification and system for enforcement, at which point they effectively become legal rights. Also, in the absence of a specific objective, the concepts "should" and "should not" aren't useful. If we are acting towards different objectives, then our "shoulds" and "should nots" won't necessarily align. To rephrase this, the sort of absolute existence which you seem to be implying for morals and natural rights is only obtainable within the framework of an axiomatic system. And, the process of codifying one's morals within an actionable axiomatic system transforms them into legal rights.
- foobarbazqux 13y ago
  I never said anything about absolutism, I believe moral relativism is healthy. I disagree that should and should not are useless concepts, because every moral expresses a should or a should not sentiment. Having personal values means you have a personal code of behavior, but it isn't enshrined in law, it's just opinions about how you personally should behave. I agree about the transformation of natural/human rights into legal rights through codification and use of force. Basically, I believe we agree on all the major issues here, except I seem to have communicated some kind of belief in moral absolutism which I hope I have dispelled!
  - psb217 13y ago
    I said should and should not are useless "in the absence of a specific objective". But, as you suggest, they are useful in the context of an objective, e.g. I should not push old ladies into heavy traffic (implicitly: because I prefer not to live in a world where old-lady-traffic-pushing is a commonly accepted pastime and I believe that not indulging in old-lady-traffic-pushing makes such a world more likely to exist in the future, given some assumptions about the dynamics of social systems). So, I agree that morals express should and should not sentiments. I also agree that individuals can hold morals, in the sense of personal codes of behavior. However, my original point of contention was whether or not natural and human rights exist in the state of nature. A discussion of morals ensued because you implied that an acceptance of the existence of morals was somehow related to an acceptance of the existence of n/h rights. Morals and n/h rights are fundamentally different in that morals are intra-personal, while rights are necessarily inter-personal. So, while I would accept that morals can exist, in the sense that individuals can desire particular states and derive codes of behavior for making these states more likely to occur, these sorts of morals are not the sort needed to make the functional similarity between morals and n/h rights that you previously suggested meaningful. These form the key points of our disagreement: that morals act like n/h rights and that n/h rights exist. While you may not have intended to support absolutism, based on the way in which people typically discuss n/h rights, and based on the formal definitions of these terms that I've seen, I'd say that any support of n/h rights is implicitly support of absolutism.