Thread: Rights Theory

Originally Posted by gwahir

I'm saying:

THIS IS COMMONLY ACCEPTED AS BEING TRUE: According to every conception of property right I can think of, you have every right to do as you please with it, even throw it away. Furthermore, he has absolutely no right to your sandwich.

THIS IS MY POSITION: It is immoral to do anything other than give him the sandwich, and you therefore have no right to do anything else with it.

I disagree that just because a choice is immoral than you have no right to do it, or rather, the only choice you have the right to make is the moral one. I still have every single right to not give the man the sandwich, despite it being immoral. So yes, you have the right to do immoral things, yet most people are conditioned in a way that they would give the man the sandwich given the situation you gave is as simple and factual as presented.

I didn't say anything about it making the world better, in my opinion in nature, there are no rights of any kind, we as human beings made up "rights". Why wouldn't I have the right to that which is immoral?

The right thing to do and what I have the right to do are two very different things. In my mind, moral/ethical "rights" are as far away as possible from what people have the "legal right" to do, black and white. Now when it comes to legal man-made law, if doing the ethical or moral "right" thing were a part of every single law, where it is illegal to do anything rather than moral choices, we get into a situation where we ask "who decides what is moral?", what if someone viewed it as immoral not to donate every dollar of free money that you had to charity, it is immoral not to donate to charity, therefore the only right you have is to donate to charity?

In the middle east it is perfectly fine to cut off someones hands for stealing, I view that as far too harsh a punishment, morality is a sliding scale. So my position is on natural rights: We have none, human morality that has developed with our cognitive abilities doesn't mean there are any rights present of any kind. And on legal rights: Clearly there are laws based on what the majority view as immoral (theft, murder etc...), which allow us to live in a relatively civilized manner.

Originally Posted by gwahir

Well, I think it's generally agreed that ethics is about what the world should be, as opposed to what it is. Given that, why shouldn't we talk about the best of all possible shoulds? And if we're going to do that, we should endeavour to come up with principles of behaviour that make the world a better place.

If you think the world is a better place if people have "rights" -- and, more specifically, rights which enable them to act immorally -- that's one thing, but you're going to have to back it up somehow.

EDIT: And I'm not even going to address your relativistic claims because I've already made my feelings clear on the matter. It is NOT right, despite being considered to be in some cultures, to cut off a hand as punishment for shoplifting. It is NOT right to enforce sexual repression and make women wrap themselves in burkas, even if some cultures think it is. It is NOT right to act cruelly towards animals, despite the ways in which certain ritualistic cultures would have you behave.

Natural rights (not legal) are a relative thing despite you saying they are not. You need to back up your claim that people DON'T have the right to cut off others hands just as much as you say I need to back up my claim that people have the right to do immoral things. Just because you say "It is NOT right, despite being considered to be in some cultures, to cut off a hand as punishment for shoplifting. It is NOT right to enforce sexual repression and make women wrap themselves in burkas, even if some cultures think it is." doesn't make it so. I would agree that we view these things as "not right" but that is because of how we were raised and the culture we are in.

They would view allowing women to have the rights they have over here as an absurd abomination, and may say something like "It is NOT right to allow women to expose herself, it is NOT right to allow a woman to speak" and would say it with just as much certainty as you do. Why is your version of morality any more valid than other culture or any other person's view, as if there were some written in stone code of morality that sets the standard?

So yes, we have the natural right (or rather, lack of any definition of "rights") to wrap women in burkas, bleed cows, and lop off peoples hands. In our cultures though, we were raised that these types of things are inappropriate and view them as immoral. They view wrapping women in burkas perfectly moral. So your standard would pass, they would view what they are doing as perfectly moral, not immoral, so they would have the right to do it.

hah, the irony is, mrtroy, that the relativism that you're so vigorously defending, supports, in my interpretation, precisely Gwahir's viewpoint. IF all ethics and rights are relativistic constructs, then why retain the rights that liberal society currently allows us? To elucidate, if you say that morals and rights are equal, simply culture-dependent, then they become arbitrary. There is no way of saying that the US has an inherently better system than the Middle East. In the absence of this, you can only measure the value of cultural norms on the basis of ethical and philosophical frameworks, i.e. utilitarianism or the categorical imperative. From this position, gwahir's stance is clearly favourable; by reflecting a philosophy of maximising the quality of life of a society in our views of rights, we inevitably lead to a more harmonious, contented and kind society (i.e. the greatest happiness for the most), we also fulfill the categorical imperative to a tee.
What I'm saying is that in this case your argument must by definition be rooted in anti-relativism. You need to prove that the system of western countries is inherently better than gwahir's alternative, regardless of whether gwahir's alternative has a higher ethical value.
There's a precise and important reason that the US Constitution requires that "we hold these Truths to be self evident"; if they're not, if the ideology is not inherently valuable, the paper can't justify itself against any other, save on ethical grounds (and like I said, gwahir wins there, I fail to see how he could not).

gwahir, I think the main argument you have to deal with is that of whether morality has any depth or meaning to it if it is a foregone conclusion (the clockwork orange argument...). Is morality about the individual making a choice (often when they needn't and it is to their detriment to do so), or can you successfully claim that morality IS utilitarianism, and so personal choice a moot issue?

Originally Posted by Think

IF all ethics and rights are relativistic constructs, then why retain the rights that liberal society currently allows us? To elucidate, if you say that morals and rights are equal, simply culture-dependent, then they become arbitrary. There is no way of saying that the US has an inherently better system than the Middle East. In the absence of this, you can only measure the value of cultural norms on the basis of ethical and philosophical frameworks, i.e. utilitarianism or the categorical imperative. From this position, gwahir's stance is clearly favourable; by reflecting a philosophy of maximising the quality of life of a society in our views of rights, we inevitably lead to a more harmonious, contented and kind society (i.e. the greatest happiness for the most), we also fulfill the categorical imperative to a tee.

Exactly, we can't say that the US has an inherently better system because morality and ethics are relative to culture and beliefs. We like to say that our culture is better, but vice versa, they believe their set of morals and ethics are better, which one is better? Well, if you ask an American, ours is better, if you ask someone from Saudi Arabia, theirs is better.

Now, back to original argument, the way America is set up, our legal rights allow us to not give a damn and do what most of western culture considered "immoral" (I.E, not giving your sandwich to the homeless guy), it is my legal right to perform or not perform that action. We would have to throw the constitution out the window if we wanted to maximize harmony. Freedom allows divergence from harmony, if everyone did what was good for the whole instead of themselves, then most freedom would have to be taken away, maybe the government could divvy up your income to people who need it. Maybe you wouldn't have the right to write a opinionated or slanderous book or article, because it would only cause waves in the pool and disrupt harmony.

In my opinion we have no legal or moral right to interfere or judge with other cultures (again, that is based in MY standard of morality and legality), if the middle eastern folk think that it is a good idea to beat women, I wholeheartedly disagree, but it is not my problem, and there is no real way for me to make a difference on that issue anyway. Throughout history right and wrong have been defined by the culture. Who's to say that our more liberal culture is better than a fascist culture? It is all in how we were conditioned. Stoning a woman to death for having pre-martial sex would be horrendous according to the western civilization's view on ethics and morality. It was perfectly moral to do so at one time.

As liberal as the USA is, what about sex and prostitution, in other nations they show full frontal nudity on regular network stations (not just HBO or anything of the sort), and much more racy and graphic content, I would estimate that the majority of American's would view it as immoral to show nude women on FOX or NBC, yet, these countries that are conditioned to this as a normality, view us as prudes... who is right? It depends on who you ask.