Human Rights

Well, pay attention to what I'm telling you, and you'll learn how your arguments are wrong. I introduced no ambiguity. All you're doing here is a playground game of "no I'm not; you are." How uncreative. If you're going to make up accusations, do you think you could be bothered to come up with some I didn't just level at you?It was your writing that was ambiguous, on purpose. Now that I've pointed it out you're having a right ol' self-pity party. The other parts were irrelevant. The question was whether or not privileges were rights. You answered with a definition that said they weren't to support an argument that they are.It's nonsense, CS. And now you're pissed that I pointed that out. Get over yourself. The discussion would be better if you didn't insist on it being so personal, on seeing every refutation of your position as a personal attack. That's how you address an argument - by showing how it is mistaken. How else would you address an argument that was wrong? And if it was right, why would you do anything but agree with it? Lol! No, of course there isn't. Arguments advance positions, so attacking an argument is how you attack a position.

First off, you misrepresented RR by saying: but you did ask for clarification: I replied to the first quote above to point out the misrepresentation:

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He's not advocating that. He's just saying it shouldn't be considered a right but they should still be able to get them.

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and to you request for clarification I gave an example:

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Crash, you do not have the right do drive a car. Now, am I stating that nobody anywhere should drive a car? By your logic I am. Its just not true.

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Now, driving a car on public streets is a common example of the differences between rights and privileges. It thought you would be familiar with it and that me saying you don’t have the right to drive a car was clear enough, apparently it wasn’t. Were you familiar with the car driving example of the difference between a privilege and a right before I mentioned it?Now, here is your reply: Now I realize I forgot the public street part but this disclaimer at the end really looks like you new what I meant. But instead of addressing that there are differences between rights and privileges and the RR saying that abortion is a privilege and not a right does not mean that he is saying that nobody should have abortions anywhere, you would rather argue about how you can drive on private property so you do have the right to drive a car. That isn’t even related to the point I was making, that being a privilege and not a right doesn’t mean that you think people shouldn’t do it.Then we get into whether driving is a privilege or a right and whether there is even a difference between a privilege and a right. The terminology is poor when discussing rights and privileges. You said: Now your arguing whether a privilege can be called a right because if its bestowed like a privilege then it wasn’t a right to begin with so it can’t be called a right.Then I go on to explain the difference between a privilege and a right and how the government can bestow privileges which are a type of rights and so on.All you replied to was where wiki was wrong in saying that a privilege is not a right. You didn’t even address the rest of my argument that proved you wrong that rights can’t be granted at all, where I explained how the government can give you the right to something you didn’t have before.I guess you’re having fun with it but its really annoying to me that you avoid the major points of the argument just to attack any small mistake I made.But working back, governments can give you privileges, which are different than rights that you are born with. RR was arguing that abortion is a privilege, not a right. You replied that he is saying that nobody should have abortions anywhere. That is not what he is saying. That was my argument, and it wasn't wrong. You just look for holes in a correct argument to point out rather than actually addressing the argument.

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But she doesn't use equivalent positions.

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Yes I do.Rat says that he has no right to get treatment for an injury sustained from jumping off a cliff because he knew the risks before jumping.I simply inserted different injuries into his argument to show him how it looks to apply it in that way.Using his example and switching out another activity, such as having sex, he would argue that people who contract STD's have no right to treatment because they knew that there was a risk of contracting STD's.It is very much an equivalent position.

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There's a difference in attacking the argument and attacking the position.

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What is the difference?

Sometimes.....What about this one that I mentioned in Message 251:From your Message 119

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You say that a pregnancy is not like an injury but clearly, an unwanted pregnancy is exactly like an unwanted injury or infection. Think of it like a sexually transmitted disease.

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No, I can't think of it like that. But even if I did, it still doesn't mean I have a right to get rid of my desease. I got what I took a chance for, and now I would just be lucky to get rid of it, not have a right to.

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So, what you are saying is that all of those people with AIDS should be left to suffer horribly and die because they knew the risks and have no right to medical treatment.

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All of those people who get cancer, emphysema, heart disease, strokes, diabetes, etc, due to smoking, poor diet, lack of exercise, and stress have no right to treatment, according to you, because they knew the risks of those behaviors and went ahead and did them anyway.

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Correct?

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I don't think those positions are equivalent. Him saying that you don't have a right to a cure doesn't equate to letting people die. He could think that the cure is a privilege and not necessarily a right, which is what his argument on abortion is. You take a position in a debate and support it with arguments. Those arguments can take positions in sub-debates within the debate as a whole. Those sub-positions can be supported by additional arguments.You can refute an argument for a sub-position without hurting the position on the larger debate, especially when the sub-position is forced when the goalpost is moved, for example. One could go through a post and attack all the sub-arguments without even addressing the position in the larger debate. Sometimes the sub-arguments aren’t even needed for the larger position. Someone might include an ambiguity in a sub-argument, and another could reply by just pointing out the ambiguity and not saying anything about the position the person took. That other person would be attacking an argument while not attacking the position.Edited by Catholic Scientist, : No reason given.

No. Why would I be? (Maybe it's the fact that you make unwarranted assumptions about what your opponents know that gets you into these ambiguity problems.) Now does it look like I knew what you meant? I was correcting your mistake where you said that the government has to let you drive. That's not true; you can drive all you like. But the reason that people have driver's licenses is so that they can use public roads.If I knew what you meant, wouldn't I have known that you weren't mistaken about what driver's licenses are? And if I had known, why would I have told you?You're not making any sense, CS. There's no indication in my post that I knew what you were talking about, which I confirmed in the next post when I told you I didn't.But you go on ahead and believe that I can read your mind if it makes you feel better. Honestly, what the fuck are we even arguing about? Arguing about it? I said you could drive on private property with no license, and then you agreed, and we stopped talking about it. Where's the argument?And you're misrepresenting RR. He thinks that it's a privilege, sure, but he thinks its a privilege that sexually-consenting women shouldn't have. Why do I think RR is saying women shouldn't have abortions? Because he's saying women who consent to sex shouldn't have abortions. It's really simple. I just pay attention to what he's saying, CS, and therefore I know his position. If people have all rights not specifically disallowed, I don't see how they can get new rights. That means new privileges can't be rights. The wikipedians seem to agree with me, but you say they're wrong based on a dictionary.This isn't a debate, CS. This is argument by dictionary; an argument about what words mean. And I can't think of anything more boring. You said they were wrong, not me. I'm under the impression that they're quite correct. You didn't explain anything, CS. You just asserted that the government can do that - in the face of two hundred years of constitutional philosophy, I might add. Everybody knows that the government isn't the source of rights - our own humanity is.Do you just not understand the difference between defense and assertion, or what? How can we be expected to debate if you don't even seem to know what a debate is? If all you do is repeat assertions - "the government can do this; privileges are that" - then we're not having a debate and no, I'm not having any fun. And everybody's getting fairly tired of you posting nothing but assertions and complaining. I know I am.

Me neither.The end.

This is nonsense. What kind of background do you have in debate? None, I'm guessing?You can't attack a position because a position is a statement of what you believe - "I believe that humans are causing global warming". How are you supposed to attack that? Read his mind and tell him what he really believes?No. All you can do is attack the arguments he puts forth, show how they're counterfactual or faulty, at the same time that you put forth arguments for your position. Positions are held up by arguments; dealing with arguments is how positions are defended and attacked.

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I don't think those positions are equivalent. Him saying that you don't have a right to a cure doesn't equate to letting people die.

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Sure it is, when the disease or injury is life-threatening, like cancer or AIDS. Or the injuries sustained when jumping off a cliff, for that matter.I asked him to think of an unwanted pregnancy as a STD.He said that If he did think of an unwanted pregnancy as an STD, that people with STD's have no right to treatment for that disease, because they knew that in having sex there was a risk of getting an STD.His words:

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But even if I did, it still doesn't mean I have a right to get rid of my desease. I got what I took a chance for, and now I would just be lucky to get rid of it, not have a right to.

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Now, I then used the exact same argument, only with life threatening maladies such as AIDS and cancer: It's the same argument, CS. I've just plugged different values in to his argument to show the problems with it. Here it is, stated in the abstract:1) Somebody chooses to engage in an activity with known risks.
2) That person experiences the negative consequences of that behavior.
3) That person has no right to mitigate those consequences because they knew the risks going in and chose to engage in that activity anyway.It doesn't matter if the consequences we plug in to his argument are life-threatening or not, since rat never made any exception in any of his arguments for anybody's life as to if they have a right to medical treatment or not.

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He could think that the cure is a privilege and not necessarily a right, which is what his argument on abortion is.

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True, but then he should agree with my example for ALL injuries where people knew the risks before and engaged in them anyway.He should not have had the objection to his own argument when AIDS was plugged in as the consequence instead of pregnancy.Edited by schrafinator, : No reason given.

Hey dopey, for the thousanth time, I am not saying to make abortion illegal, wtf is your problem?You obviously feel that if you omit to it not be an actual right other than just being legal, that some how that is grounds to make it illegal again?

Wait is it she has control over her body, or say?

More stupid analogys. Can't you ever just address the point, or at least make an analogy within the context of the discussion?If I were to use your analogy, then you are saying that abortion is wrong, since running up high credit card debt is wrong too.So in a sense, within your analogy, you admitted to abortion being wrong, even though it is legal.Abortion is ok, because the government has deemed it ok. There are no governement warnings about it. Yes, our legal system is part of what makes up our morals.
I was morally correct for supporting an abortion.

Well isn't that what this thread is about, a chance for all of us to come to a conclusion of just exactly what is?Too bad your so hell bent on arguing with me, you might have noticed that is what it is about.

I'm starting to have a problem with the name-calling. Oh, well, whatever - creationists get away with anything, don't you. ("Dopey", though - what am I, one of the seven dwarves?) Because people are free, people have all rights not specifically disallowed. If you say that abortion is not a right then you're saying that it is (or should be) disallowed.Unless you construct rights the opposite way; and that people have only those rights that have been specifically granted to them, and everything else is not a right. I see that view as entirely anathema to freedom, but I also see it as entirely consistent with your stated views.

First off, I want to thank you, for sticking up for me, and what I am trying to say, whether you support it or not. Thanks Having realized that you do not have trouble understanding what I am saying, then that it must be crash and scraf who are in denial. They must understand perfectly what I am saying, but will not admit to it. We are at the point of beating a dead horse, especially when the people debating aren't realistic, and pocess hte capability to be so.I do not consider crash or schraf unintelligent, so it must be something else then. I wish I could get to the heart of that matter. There is obviuously emotions involved, not logic, so all rational discussion is out the window. No matter how simply it is explained, they will pretend like they don't get it, and that I am a fool for thinking this way. I think we should drop it, they know what they do.

It's not free will that makes her lose a right, it's consent.
It's that birth control is not 100% full proof, so there is no garauntee that she won't become pregnant.Your question is the exact opposite of what I asked in the op, to help me understand this concept a little better, and that is, what makes it a right, other than being legal?