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Author | Topic: radical liberals (aka liberal commies) vs ultra conservatives (aka nutjobs) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Taq Member Posts: 10038 Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
when in doubt change the topic. And here I thougt the topic was harvest of animals. I agree that well managed hunting is fine. I have no problem with that. What I have a problem with is unfettered harvesting with no regulations.
You got pwnd. You stated they don’t stop at the border, I gave evidence that they do, and now you move the goalposts. LOL And that evidence would be . . . what?
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Taq Member Posts: 10038 Joined: Member Rating: 5.3
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But the rights are granted by a government and apply only within a given context. Human rights are intrinsic to being human, and no government can take them or grant them. At least that is what Locke and many others have argued, and what the Founding Fathers alluded to as well. Governments can only protect or violate human rights. Going back to the water example, if Congress passes a bill stating that water is no longer wet does water stop being wet? No. Wetness is intrinsic to water. In the same way, some rights are intrinsic to being human (e.g. life and liberty). These are the natural human rights. Edited by Taq, : No reason given.
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Taq Member Posts: 10038 Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
When it comes to water being wet, what does all the evidence show? I guess I could argue that the property of being wet is just a consensus of what we agree on, right?
The evidence shows though that life and liberty are not intrinsic to being human. What would that evidence be?
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Taq Member Posts: 10038 Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Now I may well believe that they have no right to do so, and I may well express my belief that the government has no right to do so, but they still can do so.
You are confusing an is with an ought (Hume's Is/Ought problem). One is not the other. Rights are statements of how things ought to be. They are not derived from how things are (the is). Can a government hypothetically do whatever it wants? Yes. No one is disagreeing with this. However, human rights are not contingent on what the government does or does not do. The argument of whether or not a person has a specific right is not determined by the actions of the government. Rather, specific rights are determined by reason and morality. Just so you don't think that I am talking out of my ass, here is a paragraph from the wiki page on natural rights:
quote: You can certainly debate the legitimacy of this school of thought, but I thought I would let you know that I am drawing from the work of others.
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Taq Member Posts: 10038 Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
The evidence is that even in the US the State has the right to take away someone's life or liberty. They have the ability to, yes. A government could even have laws that state they have the right to. However, they would still be violating human rights. You are once again confusing an is with an ought. It is an important distinction.
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Taq Member Posts: 10038 Joined: Member Rating: 5.3
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That african slave from 1000 years ago? yeah, he had all the rights a modern day american has, he was just chained up starving in the desert... but he still had his rights! He did. Others violated those rights. Along with jar, you are confusing an is with an ought. Again, human rights are not a list of things that humans are physically incapabe of doing. Natural rights can be violated. No one is disagreeing with this.
And by "being there", you mean that you pretend that they are there. As much as we pretend that reason and morality exist.
That's oddly religious... No, it is reason and morality, two things often missing from religion.
These rights seem to stem from rationalism or, fuck it, pull out the big card: they were just endowed by our Creator! In the deist or pantheist sense, yes. In this school of thought, the Creator can be nature and the argument is unaffected. Natural rights are not derived from infallible proclamations of a supernatural deity. They are derived from reason and empathy.
Euthyphro's Dilemma is a good example of what I am talking about. Socrates once asked, "Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?". IOW, is morality separate from the supernatural? Is morality something we have access to independently of the supernatural? I would argue that we judge for ourselves whether the commandments of a god are moral or not. Morality is not obedience.
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Taq Member Posts: 10038 Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
But reality seldom pays much attention to philosophy except through building a consensus in a particular society. Hence the Is/Ought problem. Playing the Godwin card . . . many Nazi officers used what is now famously called the Nuremburg defense ("I was just following orders"). This was not accepted as an excuse for violating human rights. Just because you are allowed to do something, or in fact ORDERED to do something, does not acquit you of acting morally.
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Taq Member Posts: 10038 Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Again, they were found guilty based on what the victors believed and under the rights endowed by the victors system.
They were guilty of violating human rights regardless of any court.
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Taq Member Posts: 10038 Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Aren't such things highly subject to cultural world views and thus not really "universal" at all? How do we decide what these rights are? How do we decide who or what these rights apply to? That has been the topic of philosophy for quite some time now. Locke proposed three basic rights: life, liberty, and estate (property). Natural rights have been debated for centuries, and no complete and final list has been produced. Codifying morality has always been problematic.
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Taq Member Posts: 10038 Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Really. Had Germany won would they even have been charged? That has nothing to do with whether or not they were guilty of violating human rights. A government ought not violate human rights. The Nazis did. They are guilty of violating human rights. Whether or not someone is punished has nothing to do with whether or not they violated those rights. Again, the Is/Ought problem.
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Taq Member Posts: 10038 Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
You may think they "ought not" or "ought", but what does that have to do with reality? It has to do with how we shape human society, how we make the oughts become a reality. The "oughts" are the goal of the social contract.
Rights only exist within the consensus of a state, culture, community. Legal rights, yes. Natural rights, no. You are born with natural rights, and no government can grant or revoke those rights.
You are free to argue for what you believe should be "human rights" but it is only through building consensus or through force that you can impose those rights. You don't impose human rights. You already have them. What we can do is construct a government that punishes those that violates those rights. The imposition is the justice system.
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Taq Member Posts: 10038 Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
You keep claiming that "You are born with natural rights, and no government can grant or revoke those rights" yet governments, societies, cultures, communities, religions, clubs, individuals do grant and revoke rights. They grant and revoke legal rights, not natural rights. Legal rights are the "is", and natural rights are the "ought". Oughts are not derived from the Is.
You may think they are goals or ideals that "ought to be recognized" but you have not shown any evidence that "human rights" or "natural rights" even exist outside of the consensus of a government, society or culture. Natural rights exist as much as reason and empathy exist. Both reason and empathy are abstract concepts as are natural rights. I can no more show evidence of natural rights than I can show evidence of reason or logic. What I can show is the reasoning behind natural rights which deals with fairness and empathy. The Golden Rule was mentioned before, and that is a good approximation.
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Taq Member Posts: 10038 Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
But this will vary from society to society. Of course. So will morality.
If we don't know what these "natural rights" are I am not sure how we can possibly know whether we have them or not. We all have a sense of fairness and empathy (at least normal people do). Using a childhood example, you will often hear kids yell "But that's not FAIR!!!". What is the response? "Life isn't fair, kid". We all have a sense of fairness, and we realize that the reality of life often falls short of that ideal. Like morality, natural rights are somewhat vague and difficult to nail down in specific cases, but the fundamental reasoning is still there. We don't want our lives taken from us. We don't want our stuff stolen from us. We want to live our lives how we see fit as long as it doesn't break the first two rules. It is simple to say, but it is very difficult to put into practice.
But the idea that humans specifically have some sort of special claim to rights that are independent of human society seems like a rather arbitrary assertion on your part. Are fairness and empathy arbitrary? I don't think so, but perhaps you do.
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Taq Member Posts: 10038 Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Yet the governmental entity that was the Nuremberg Tribunal revoked the rights of life and liberty from those tried and found guilty. Justice is built into human rights. If you violate the human rights of others then you can be punished.
I can see evidence that the capability to reason exists and the capability to feel empathy exists, but no evidence that either reason or empathy exist. I fail to see how this distinction is relevant in any way. Yes, there are such things as abstract concepts. I am not arguing otherwise. I am also arguing that these abstract concepts are important for how we construct political systems and how we interact with each other.
You now change the topic to fairness, again, something that does not exist except within the context of a particular government, society and culture. I see fairness as the same topic. Someone who is enslaved is being treated unfairly. Someone who is discriminated against because of their skin color is being treated unfairly. Someone who has their stuff stolen is being treated unfairly. Also, any discussion of natural or legal rights necessarily involves human societies. A single person living on an isolated island who never comes into contact with another soul doesn't have to worry about rights. I thought it was a given that we were talking about human societies.
Oughts, by definition, do not exist. They are an abstract development of a State, culture or society. I 100% agree that Oughts are abstract concepts. What I am trying to convey is that Oughts are IMPORTANT.
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Taq Member Posts: 10038 Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Oughts though depend on the belief system of a State, community, culture, group. They depend on the beliefs that I don't want my life taken from me, I don't want my stuff stolen, and I don't want to spend the rest of my years in jail for no good reason. Those seem to be universal beliefs, and they are rights that we are born with.
"Oughts" do not exist. That doesn't stop them from being important for how we form human societies.
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