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Thread: Rights Theory

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    feel like funkin' it up gwahir's Avatar
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    Default Rights Theory

    Okay, I'm going to start this thread off with a question.

    Do you agree with the following statement?

    It is absurd to say that one has a right to do something immoral.

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    Senior Member Syme's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by gwahir View Post
    Okay, I'm going to start this thread off with a question.

    Do you agree with the following statement?

    It is absurd to say that one has a right to do something immoral.
    "Rights" and "morality" are both subjective social constructs, not objective absolutes. So is "absurdity", for that matter.


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    Hahah.

    Uh-huh, but given those things... answer the question.

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    Senior Member Syme's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by gwahir View Post
    Hahah.

    Uh-huh, but given those things... answer the question.
    But, "given those things", isn't the question meaningless? Or are you just curious about all the different opinions that people will have on the basis of how they've been socialized?

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    feel like funkin' it up gwahir's Avatar
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    Pretty much!

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    windmills of your mind Think's Avatar
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    Syme raises a good point; an operalisation of "right" and "morality" would be nice.
    Are we talking about a man breaching his own moral code, or his society's? Or a code which seems to apply to most societies (i.e. Murder, incest)? Are we talking about political right? Philosophical right?

    I'd assume that we're talking about philosophical right, and society's moral code; in which case, I'd say yes, but equally the society has the right to try to stop and punish him. (i.e. Everyone has rights to do everything they can practically do, but conflicts with the rights of others (which are equally vast) ultimately lead to society and law (agreed neutering of parts of our liberty in return for the same from others))

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    kiss my sweaty balls benzss's Avatar
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    Yeah, I suppose it is absurd taken at face value

    But I assume you're driving at some other point
    Last edited by benzss; 04-10-2009 at 11:05 AM.

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    Senior Member ephekt's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Syme View Post
    "Rights" and "morality" are both subjective social constructs, not objective absolutes. So is "absurdity", for that matter.

    While it is true that cultural and religious morality is subjective, I would argue that ethics are not subjective, as only objective statements can enter into logical relations.

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    Quote Originally Posted by ephekt View Post
    While it is true that cultural and religious morality is subjective, I would argue that ethics are not subjective, as only objective statements can enter into logical relations.
    Sorry, you're going to have to elaborate on this for me.

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    Quote Originally Posted by ephekt View Post
    While it is true that cultural and religious morality is subjective, I would argue that ethics are not subjective, as only objective statements can enter into logical relations.
    By the way, I agree, but it's going to be too hard for me to go into that debate, so I didn't. You're welcome to, though.

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    In the United States, I have the right to be seen in public with a woman who is not my relative.

    The Taliban has killed woman for doing this, saying that it's immoral.

    Therefore, I have the right to do something immoral.


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    Well if we're going to operate within meaningful confines, you're going to have to answer THIS question:

    Do you think it's absurd to say that you have a right to do anything that you consider immoral?

    As I said, I don't believe morality is subjective like that (in other words, it is simply NOT immoral for you to be seen with an unrelated woman, no matter what anyone of any religion thinks), but for the thread to get anywhere we're just going to have to be sensible.

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    What kind of right? Natural right? Legal right? Physical right?

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    Journeyman Cocksmith Mr. E's Avatar
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    The question is too poorly defined to give it a proper answer. I know what you are looking to do gwahir, but I think you expected us to be a little less thorough in our analysis of your question, lol.

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    Quote Originally Posted by gwahir View Post
    As I said, I don't believe morality is subjective like that (in other words, it is simply NOT immoral for you to be seen with an unrelated woman, no matter what anyone of any religion thinks), but for the thread to get anywhere we're just going to have to be sensible.
    I'd agree that in an absolute sense, it's "not immoral" to be seen with an unrelated woman. It's not "moral" either. It's neither. The act has no intrinsic moral quality at all. Just like all other acts.

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    kiss my sweaty balls benzss's Avatar
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    Yeah, set out your argument or don't. I don't want to be trapped in some kind of logical contradiction because you worded your question badly :P

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    Moral and immoral are illusions based on the standards in the society in which we live.

    Quote Originally Posted by gwahir View Post
    Well if we're going to operate within meaningful confines, you're going to have to answer THIS question:

    Do you think it's absurd to say that you have a right to do anything that you consider immoral?
    lets say I have a girlfriend, I have the legal right to cheat on her, or rather, a lack of a law that prohibits it. I personally think it is immoral to cheat in a relationship, and would not do it.
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    Quote Originally Posted by benzss View Post
    What kind of right? Natural right? Legal right? Physical right?
    Well, I can't argue against the existence of legal rights, because they clearly exist. I don't know WHAT a physical right is. So what I'm talking about is "natural right", I suppose -- I haven't studied this. Things like a "right to life". In any case, since I'm out of my depth with the question, I'll skip that bit.

    Say you have a sandwich. You are quite satisfied by your lunch but it's just sitting there. Along comes a starving man who, if he does not get that sandwich, will probably die. It's yours in every possible way -- you bought or grew the components and compiled it yourself. 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. However I suggest it is immoral to do anything other than give him the sandwich, and you therefore have no right to do anything else with it.

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    Quote Originally Posted by gwahir View Post
    Well, I can't argue against the existence of legal rights, because they clearly exist. I don't know WHAT a physical right is. So what I'm talking about is "natural right", I suppose -- I haven't studied this. Things like a "right to life". In any case, since I'm out of my depth with the question, I'll skip that bit.

    Say you have a sandwich. You are quite satisfied by your lunch but it's just sitting there. Along comes a starving man who, if he does not get that sandwich, will probably die. It's yours in every possible way -- you bought or grew the components and compiled it yourself. 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. However I suggest it is immoral to do anything other than give him the sandwich, and you therefore have no right to do anything else with it.
    This depends on each persons personality. My mind is wired to treat issues of "ownership" and what to do with it on a case by case scenario. In this case I would give him the sandwich, I am more than well-fed and I would feel bad the I let a man die, even though it is not my fault he has no regular access to food. I wouldn't say I have no right to do anything else with it, I have the right to do whatever the hell I want with it, but my conscience would not allow me to do it, I would give him the food. But I would also have to know that he hasn't eaten in so long that if he doesn't get this sandwich he would die. Even after the I gave him the sandwich I would consider that I gave him the sandwich even though I owned it, and I had every right to do whatever I pleased with it.

    I pass homeless people all the time when I am downtown, and if I gave money to every single person I saw, I would be broke myself, and of no use to anyone. If he wasn't going to die from not eating that day, and would just eat out of the trash later or something, I might not give him the sandwich depending on the exact circumstances and what I knew.

    I imagine there are people despicable enough (based on my view of morality) to let the man die even IF they knew he would die if he did not get that particular sandwich right away.
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    Quote Originally Posted by MrTroy View Post
    I pass homeless people all the time when I am downtown, and if I gave money to every single person I saw, I would be broke myself, and of no use to anyone. If he wasn't going to die from not eating that day, and would just eat out of the trash later or something, I might not give him the sandwich depending on the exact circumstances and what I knew.
    That's why I made the example the way I did. There's a difference between a sandwich you don't even need to eat (I said you were "satisfied") and money which you need to survive and build a life.

    Quote Originally Posted by MrTroy View Post
    i imagine there are people despicable enough (based on my view of morality) to let the man die even IF they knew he would die if he did not get that particular sandwich right away.
    How can you be despicable for exercising rights? You have a right to be despicable?

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    I'll bite.

    One has a right to chose and personally decide what is moral or immoral. While some would believe stealing is immoral, a homeless or starving child would see it as a means to an end. Even if someone disagrees over morals, you do not have a right to force those morals onto someone else.

    That's the best I can answer with the vague OP.
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    Quote Originally Posted by no_brains_no_worries View Post
    I'll bite.

    One has a right to chose and personally decide what is moral or immoral. While some would believe stealing is immoral, a homeless or starving child would see it as a means to an end. Even if someone disagrees over morals, you do not have a right to force those morals onto someone else.
    Well that's just nonsense. I can justifiably force my non-baby-torturing agenda on any society or person who wants to torture babies.

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    I don't know if I can add anything to this, but I will try. There are no natural rights, the world does not entitle us to anything, that is why it is a struggle. Rights are a human construct designed to help people live together in a society. Since society is fairly diverse, I think he often try to build rights into something as objective as possible, so they can be generalised.

    Morality however is very subjective and means different things to different people. There is some black and white on the issue, somethings we can agree upon and upon this agreement form the concept of a law, allowing and forbidding certain actions, such as rape, because it is always horrific and can never be justified.

    Aside from the few grounds we can usually all agree upon, there is a lot of grey. What is immoral to some, is perfectly ok to others. Take homosexuality, alot of people think it is immoral, however not all of us do. Because there can be no solid agreement, we can be sure that it would be unwise to make a ruling either way, so I think it is fair to have the right to induldge in homosexual activities.

    I make a distinction here between actions which are moral/immoral and actions which are moral/immoral and illegal. Actions for which we cannot agree should be illegal, we should have the right too, regardless of how people see it morally. However, views change over time. Laws change, we are becoming more liberal. This doesn't really do much to adress the change in opinions.

    So to answer your question, I think it isn't absurd, because morality isn't set in stone.

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    Senior Member ephekt's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by gwahir View Post
    By the way, I agree, but it's going to be too hard for me to go into that debate, so I didn't. You're welcome to, though.
    What's funny is that I was thinking the same thing before even seeing this post. I remember the last time I tried to dispatch the constant stream of post-modernist hokum. It wasn't pretty.

    So, um, I digress I guess.
    Last edited by ephekt; 04-15-2009 at 08:35 AM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by ephekt View Post
    What's funny is that I was thinking the same thing before even seeing this post. I remember the last time I tried to dispatch the constant stream of post-modernist hokum. It wasn't pretty.

    So, um, I digress I guess.
    I, for one, am interested to hear what you have to say about objectivity. Don't digress!

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    Fine, then, I'll bite.

    You could tackle this waaay too open ended question from two fronts:

    1) Should the law make illegal every immoral action?

    2) Conversely, should what we consider immoral be simply circumscribed by the law?

    So, I'll first address the second question. In my opinion, the law's primary purpose is to make society orderly and to restrict the liberty of some parties to commit certain actions in order to ensure that the greater liberty or more fundamental right of another party is secure. So, my liberty to kill another person is curtailed in order to assure other people's right to life. However, in my opinion, the set of actions which should be illegalized is smaller than (and possibly even not completely contained in) the set of actions which I deem immoral. For example, I don't think it should be illegal to cheat on your girlfriend, but it could possibly be immoral. So, to answer question 1, no, I don't believe that the set of laws needed to maintain an orderly society would render illegal every immoral action.

    The second question tackles it from the other side, looking at the laws on the books and asking if any action not prohibitted by them is immoral. It could also consider the more fundamental question asking if, in human socities in general, are codes of laws equivalent to codes of morals, and if morality should extend beyond these codes of laws. Of course, I believe that our law's primary purpose is to ensure social order and not to ensure that an individual is moral, so the response to the first version of this question is no. In general, it seems clear that most societies' codes of morals exceed and even do not completely contain their codes of laws.

    So, in conclusion, in every possible logical permutation of the question in the original post that I can conceive of, the answer is "no."

    There, how's that?

    EDIT: I just realized that I more or less answered a question that was not asked in the original post. I fail.


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    Quote Originally Posted by gwahir View Post
    Well that's just nonsense. I can justifiably force my non-baby-torturing agenda on any society or person who wants to torture babies.
    I said they have a right to personally chose what is immoral and moral, not practice said beliefs. If I believe torture is moral, that doesn't mean I have the right/ability to take away your belief that is wrong by force or otherwise.
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    Quote Originally Posted by no_brains_no_worries View Post
    I said they have a right to personally chose what is immoral and moral, not practice said beliefs. If I believe torture is moral, that doesn't mean I have the right/ability to take away your belief that is wrong by force or otherwise.
    What if your beliefs say that it's moral to take away his beliefs and/or force your own upon him?

    Given that that is a tenet of a goodly portion of the world major belief systems...

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    MrShrike, that is usually phrased in the form of "I'm right and I'm correcting his mistakes," which some (idiots) see as a carte blanche for forcing their belief system on you. This doesn't justify their actions, but it does mollify my anger towards proselytizers. At least they are, in their own way, trying to help you and it's from the best of intentions that they do what they do, in spite of whatever it is that the road to Hell is paved with.

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    Quote Originally Posted by MrShrike View Post
    What if your beliefs say that it's moral to take away his beliefs and/or force your own upon him?

    Given that that is a tenet of a goodly portion of the world major belief systems...
    Yes but we're talking about rights. What I'm trying to say (poorly I admit), is that you have a right to believe anything. However there is a fine line between where your beliefs begin to effect others' rights. In the USA you can believe anything and we tolerate nearly everything as long as you do not oppose on other peoples rights, not beliefs.

    That's why the neo-Nazi's get a parade. That's why you see anti-white rallies. They are expressing their beliefs, but as long as they don't tread on your individual rights it's okay.
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    Quote Originally Posted by no_brains_no_worries View Post
    Yes but we're talking about rights. What I'm trying to say (poorly I admit), is that you have a right to believe anything. However there is a fine line between where your beliefs begin to effect others' rights. In the USA you can believe anything and we tolerate nearly everything as long as you do not oppose on other peoples rights, not beliefs.

    That's why the neo-Nazi's get a parade. That's why you see anti-white rallies. They are expressing their beliefs, but as long as they don't tread on your individual rights it's okay.
    Sure, that's standard liberal philosophy, but I think gwahir wants to connect morality to rights. So perhaps you should consider why you reached this conclusion about individual rights, and what it's based on.

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    Quote Originally Posted by no_brains_no_worries View Post
    Yes but we're talking about rights. What I'm trying to say (poorly I admit), is that you have a right to believe anything. However there is a fine line between where your beliefs begin to effect others' rights. In the USA you can believe anything and we tolerate nearly everything as long as you do not oppose on other peoples rights, not beliefs.

    That's why the neo-Nazi's get a parade. That's why you see anti-white rallies. They are expressing their beliefs, but as long as they don't tread on your individual rights it's okay.
    You seem to be talking about natural rights. You seem to be arguing that you have a natural right to your beliefs (and furthermore a natural right to express them).

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    Absolutely and categorically not.
    One is born with a right to freedom, this freedom is, among other things, to make choices.
    Choices as in this or that, wendys or burger king, left or right, good or evil, moral or immoral.

    Furthermore, immoral is just a point of view. I can do many immoral things (according to my society), which, while taboo, are not neccesarily illegal. I absolutely have the right to do so.

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    We are accustomed to what our culture generally views are right and wrong, and that we are born with certain rights. Undoubtedly there are obvious legal rights that we all have, but disbarring any government, I'd say that all "natural rights" are a myth that we have created. There are no rights of any kind in nature, we just adapted with our civilizations that certain things are considered wrong.
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    Quote Originally Posted by gwahir View Post
    Say you have a sandwich. You are quite satisfied by your lunch but it's just sitting there. Along comes a starving man who, if he does not get that sandwich, will probably die. It's yours in every possible way -- you bought or grew the components and compiled it yourself. 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. However I suggest it is immoral to do anything other than give him the sandwich, and you therefore have no right to do anything else with it.
    You used at least two different definitions of what a 'right' is in here. What you say makes sense until the last sentence. How did you change your definition of what a 'right' is in your last sentence compared to previous ones?

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    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.

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    We're pretty much done with my petty sandwich example, though, so I'm not even sure it's still relevant. I mean, clearly I didn't put enough thought into this thread before I made it.

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    Quote Originally Posted by gwahir View Post
    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.
    Quote Originally Posted by gwahir View Post
    We're pretty much done with my petty sandwich example, though, so I'm not even sure it's still relevant. I mean, clearly I didn't put enough thought into this thread before I made it.
    Yeah I suppose. Are you able to start over and give a clear definition of what you consider to be a right then? Also I really like examples like this, so if you'd like to give a different one to more accurately describe your meaning I think this would be a great discussion.

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    In my mind, the only sensible definition of "right" is "something which I am ethically permitted to do". That varies from case to case, so actually thinking of any "rights" is near to impossible. Therefore, it is my position that we should abandon thinking of rights, instead thinking about responsibilities (i.e. the responsibility held by all to act for the best consequences, or something).

    I used the sandwich example to illustrate why I think the widely held rights definition is unviable. If I am acting within my rights, what I'm doing should not be considered unethical. But it is unethical to let a person starve because you simply want to throw a sandwich at a wall, or eat it yourself when you are already satisfied. Therefore, by doing anything other than giving the staving person my sandwich, I'm acting unethically, but I'm acting within my rights, so it's ethical. Ditching the idea of rights allows us to more easily get to the bottom of the ethical permissability of taking lives, using other people's property, etc.

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    Quote Originally Posted by gwahir View Post
    In my mind, the only sensible definition of "right" is "something which I am ethically permitted to do". That varies from case to case, so actually thinking of any "rights" is near to impossible. Therefore, it is my position that we should abandon thinking of rights, instead thinking about responsibilities (i.e. the responsibility held by all to act for the best consequences, or something).

    I used the sandwich example to illustrate why I think the widely held rights definition is unviable. If I am acting within my rights, what I'm doing should not be considered unethical. But it is unethical to let a person starve because you simply want to throw a sandwich at a wall, or eat it yourself when you are already satisfied. Therefore, by doing anything other than giving the staving person my sandwich, I'm acting unethically, but I'm acting within my rights, so it's ethical. Ditching the idea of rights allows us to more easily get to the bottom of the ethical permissability of taking lives, using other people's property, etc.
    Ok well that makes sense. I certainly agree that it's ethical to give a starving person your sandwich assuming there aren't any other factors that would make such a choice possibly not the best one (like ten other starving children you could help instead or whatever). Though, while it may be the best ethical choice in that situation, I would argue that it is unethical for someone else to force that man to give his sandwich to the starving man.

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