Why do rights exist?

[tonyrey]

Do you realize that non-believers can also accept that a human person is worthy of profound respect? This is one reason why this simple statement can serve as the universal basis for human rights.

Yes. They can and do but whether they have an adequate reason is another matter. In a purposeless existence why should we regard** every person** as worthy of profound respect? If there is conflict between our interests and those of others why not put ourselves first? If this is the only life we have why regard strangers as equally valuable as ourselves? We can see from all the selfishness, greed, violence and bloodshed in the world that this is the exception rather than the rule - and that includes many of those who profess to believe in God!

 

[grannymh]

Yes. They can and do but whether they have an adequate reason is another matter. In a purposeless existence why should we regard** every person** as worthy of profound respect?

An objective truth exists independently of anyone’s reason for it. Whether or not a person regards any other person as worthy of profound respect is immaterial. A person’s regard or opinion or choice cannot change an independent objective truth.
We can regard other persons as worthy of profound respect because we know deep down that we are worthy of profound respect.

If there is conflict between our interests and those of others why not put ourselves first?

This is really an interpretation of our interests which does not change an objective truth.

If this is the only life we have why regard strangers as equally valuable as ourselves?

Now we are getting to the point of finding a person’s inherent worth. At this point, it is not absolutely necessary to consider life’s future. I can consider myself valuable with my own reasoning powers. This can be tricky because the reasons for the valuable me can also be based on subjective thinking. Please jump in here because I am a bit hazy.

What I am driving at is that it is possible for me to conclude that I am valuable and as such I am worthy of profound respect. Of course, most likely I would not use such serious words as profound respect, but the underlying sense is there. If I am honest with myself, I can see that my human nature is uniquely separate from any other species. I am a person.

I also recognize that other persons have the same human nature and thus I can extend my respect to strangers. Do I do this? Having free will, I can choose to respect whomever I wish.

We can see from all the selfishness, greed, violence and bloodshed in the world that this is the exception rather than the rule - and that includes many of those who profess to believe in God!

Dang my memory! I thought exceptions proved the rule. Seriously, to put selfishness, greed, violence and bloodshed in perspective, one has to turn to the Catholic teaching on original sin. The state of deprivation of original holiness did not destroy Adam’s human nature, it wounded it. A wounded human nature is still worthy of profound respect independently of the evil in the world. The persons’ spiritual soul exists independent of Catholic teaching. This brings us right back to your post 79.

Post 79 – A human person is worthy of profound respect because he or she has been created by God with immense opportunities for development, creativity, love, enjoyment and fulfillment both in this life and after death.

Catholic teaching is independent of a person’s worldview. Its teaching on the profound worth of the human person applies to all. This means that people of other types of religious beliefs or of no beliefs can find worth in themselves and in the human species. Granted their view of human worth is limited but it is still there.

Blessings,
granny

Human life is meant for eternal life.

 

[BonumTeEsse]

I just saw this thread (I’m a newbie) and so I don’t want to entirely derail the conversation, but I argue in my blog that rights, in fact, do not exist, that they were basically “invented” by the classical liberal thinkers, and that a politics centered on “goods” and not “rights” more appropriately addresses the point of government and of society.

You can find that blog here, with a link to the initial post in this series: bonumteesse.blogspot.com/2010/06/politics-of-good.html

If would please, allow me to quote a section from that series:

“Rights” as they are understood today were essentially created by a series of political thinkers over the course of several centuries. The circumstances which prompted the creation of these so-called rights are extensive and complex. The authors, considering these circumstances, constructed “solutions” to the problems of their day which became immensely popular and remarkably persuasive.

As one theory goes, the liberal, rights-centered platform was created with the purpose of removing the Church’s claims on the human person in the wake of the Reformation by isolating and devaluing “the good” and proposing a “right” instead. In the mind of the rights-centered liberal (classically speaking), everyone is equal; all distinctions are neutralized; and, with the exception of the government which protects everyone from each other’s choices, no one, not even the Church, can tell one what to do or what not to do.

There are several modern day examples of how the “good” is isolated and devalued and replaced with a “right.” Take “gay rights.” While self-proclaimed gay people have been fighting for the ability to be legally married for years, it wasn’t until relatively recently that States began recognizing that homosexual couples have a “right to marry.”

Though there were those who were arguing for the good of heterosexual marriage and the good of the gay couples themselves, all these arguments were made null and void by creating the language of a “right” when it comes to homosexual marriage. We can no longer talk about the good of marriage or of human sexuality. Instead, we must talk about whether or not gay people have a right to homosexual marriage—i.e., whether the philosophical principles created by 17th and 18th century thinkers and politicians apply to these particular people in this particular situation.

If you see anyone actually arguing this way, please let me know. But, if my assumption is correct, if no politician, or judge, or executive actually engages in this sort of “philosophical heavy lifting” in America today, why then are some states honoring the “right” of gays to marry? The language of “rights” holds because that is precisely the language that everyone uses to describe every other privilege and freedom that Americans have. So to argue against “gay rights” is, in some sense, to argue against America and what she stands for. Is this not the state of the debate today? “You are unAmerican if you say that gays don’t have the right to marry.”

As a Catholic, I know that there is a good of marriage and a good of human sexuality which gay marriage cannot ever fulfill. The good of marriage is not meant for homosexual people. Not only are the gay people themselves deserving of better than homosexual marriage, but our society would suffer as a result. Indeed, it already has. If you’re like me, the language of rights is your worst enemy in the public sphere.

 

[FlyCatcher]

Rights exist because someone else has accepted an obligation. They do not exists where someone else has not accepted an obligation.

 

[tonyrey]

Rights exist because someone else has accepted an obligation. They do not exist where someone else has not accepted an obligation.

So before anyone accepted the obligation to respect life no one had a right to life? And if everyone agrees not to accept that obligation the right to life disappears?

 

[tonyrey]

Yes. They can and do but whether they have an adequate reason is another matter. In a purposeless existence why should we regard every person as worthy of profound respect?

Unfortunately not everyone believes that. One atheist on this forum described it as a “sentimentality”…

If there is conflict between our interests and those of others why not put ourselves first?

This is really an interpretation of our interests which does not change an objective truth.

I agree but others don’t.

If this is the only life we have why regard strangers as equally valuable as ourselves?

Now we are getting to the point of finding a person’s inherent worth. At this point, it is not absolutely necessary to consider life’s future. I can consider myself valuable with my own reasoning powers. This can be tricky because the reasons for the valuable me can also be based on subjective thinking. Please jump in here because I am a bit hazy.

The problem is that many people believe all values and the reasons for them are subjective. So there is no reason to consider them obligatory.

What I am driving at is that it is possible for me to conclude that I am valuable and as such I am worthy of profound respect. Of course, most likely I would not use such serious words as profound respect, but the underlying sense is there. If I am honest with myself, I can see that my human nature is uniquely separate from any other species. I am a person.
I also recognize that other persons have the same human nature and thus I can extend my respect to strangers. Do I do this? Having free will, I can choose to respect whomever I wish.

Quite a few people even deny that we have free will!

Dang my memory! I thought exceptions proved the rule. Seriously, to put selfishness, greed, violence and bloodshed in perspective, one has to turn to the Catholic teaching on original sin. The state of deprivation of original holiness did not destroy Adam’s human nature, it wounded it. A wounded human nature is still worthy of profound respect independently of the evil in the world. The persons’ spiritual soul exists independent of Catholic teaching. This brings us right back to your post 79.
Quote:
Post 79 – A human person is worthy of profound respect because he or she has been created by God with immense opportunities for development, creativity, love, enjoyment and fulfillment both in this life and after death.

Catholic teaching is independent of a person’s worldview. Its teaching on the profound worth of the human person applies to all. This means that people of other types of religious beliefs or of no beliefs can find worth in themselves and in the human species. Granted their view of human worth is limited but it is still there.

It certainly is still there but it has no metaphysical foundation. It is like an aesthetic preference rather than a categorical imperative.

 

[Leela]

I just saw this thread (I’m a newbie) and so I don’t want to entirely derail the conversation, but I argue in my blog that rights, in fact, do not exist, that they were basically “invented” by the classical liberal thinkers, and that a politics centered on “goods” and not “rights” more appropriately addresses the point of government and of society.

I agree that a politics of “goods” is preferable to a politics of “rights” and think that you’ve found a good way of phrasing your point. However, saying that rights are invented (made rather than found) is in no way to say that they do not exist.

My short answer to the title of this thread “why do rights exist?” is probably the same as yours: they exist to make our lives better. Rights are in the service of the good. Human beings have no duty to rights that transcends the good.

In politics, claiming a right is to put ones foot down–to refuse to argue further. It must be done at some points, but a politics of “goods” may facilitate discussion about reasons WHY we think one way of living is better than another and may better aid the goal of finding better ways to live.

Best,
Leela

 

[FlyCatcher]

So before anyone accepted the obligation to respect life no one had a right to life? And if everyone agrees not to accept that obligation the right to life disappears?

Correct. A right can’t exist without a corresponding obligation. The obligation only exists if someone accepts and expresses it.

Consider an astronaut stranded a zillion light years from earth. He floats around all alone in his ship. Nobody knows he is out there. He has no hope of ever returning to earth. He has no rights because there is nobody to accept an obligation.

However, if another stranded explorer bumps into his ship, and they both inhabit the same ship, then they determine rights by accepting obligations. Now, if each accepts the obligation to let the other live, we have a right. When one dies, so does the right.

 

[grannymh]

Unfortunately not everyone believes that. One atheist on this forum described it as a “sentimentality”…

No problem as long as one understands the meaning of objective reasoning. Personally, with no real facts to back me, I would say that the objective truth that the human person is worthy of profound respect can be discerned sentimentally as well as through experiential learning.

I agree but others don’t.

No problem as long as one understands the meaning of subjective reasoning.

The problem is that many people believe all values and the reasons for them are subjective. So there is no reason to consider them obligatory.

May I beg to differ from last year’s experience with CAF posts. I found that some posters believed that their subjective reasons are objective; therefore, they have objective values. Consequently, it was very hard for them to understand that their moral system was based on subjective relativism in some form.

Quite a few people even deny that we have free will!

It is sad to say – but last year I read posts where Catholics could not adequately explain free will. The faculties of the soul given to every human person do not depend on a person’s acceptance or understanding.

It certainly is still there but it has no metaphysical foundation. It is like an aesthetic preference rather than a categorical imperative.

May I assume the “it” refers to the inherent worth of the human person? Could a metaphysical foundation be found in Aristotle’s writings?

I do realize that in simply saying that the human person is worthy of profound respect, I stop short of a recognition of God’s existence. Nonetheless, human cultures from the beginning of history have recognized the existence of something immaterial or spiritual. For my purposes, any recognition or experience of something immaterial or spiritual is acceptable but not totally necessary.

If I were an atheist, I could find the human person so unique, so wonderful, and so on for pages and pages, that I could honestly say that the human person is worthy of profound respect.

Blessing,
granny

Human life is sacred.

 

[grannymh]

Consider an astronaut stranded a zillion light years from earth. He floats around all alone in his ship. Nobody knows he is out there. He has no hope of ever returning to earth. He has no rights because there is nobody to accept an obligation.

Pardon me. But in the case of a stranded astronaut, he or she would still have the right to life.

 

[Leela]

Pardon me. But in the case of a stranded astronaut, he or she would still have the right to life.

I can’t figure out what difference it could make to say that this stranded astronaut does or does not have a right to life.

 

[Leela]

You think you can have it both ways but you are mistaken. A biological machine cannot have free will and responsibility no matter how hard you try to endow it with free will and responsibility. Either a person is a biological machine or a person is more than a biological machine…

I don’t see any forced choice to say how things REALLY are beyond all appearances–an obligation to do ontology. There is no description that is not a description created for a human purpose so we shouldn’t expect to have any TRUE description that floats free of all human concerns.

Thinking of a body as a biological machine is good for certain purposes. Thinking of human beings as having intentions that motivate behavior is good for certain other purposes. Both perspectives help us to predict and control the world to help us get what we want. In the pragmatic view, both are ways of using reality rather than representations of The Way Things Really Are which just isn’t one of our concerns. Representation just isn’t how we think of language as functioning.

 

[Leela]

It certainly is still there but it has no metaphysical foundation. It is like an aesthetic preference rather than a categorical imperative.

Kant’s categorical imperative seems to me (and John Dewey) to be no more than a commending of our practice of considering generalizability in our moral deliberation. Such is a good practice, but the desire for ready-made formulae for solving every moral conundrum isn’t a very mature view of ethics. Dewey say this is the desire of the timid and the lovers of authoritative prestige, and more, it demonstrates a tendency toward sadomasochism. It is for people who want to be punished by something powerful and not ourselves for their misdeeds. It is a view that sees the self as a cold, calculating, and self-interested psychopath where moral obligation can only come from something external to this self. It is this very pessimistic view of humanity that makes the question “why be moral?” impossible to answer without appeal to a Supreme Punisher to keep these psychopaths in line. In this view we are to think of serving our own needs as “natural” while taking care of others as “unnatural.” This is the consequence of your treasured “metaphysical foundation.”

The answer to the question “why be moral?” is simple once we deny the view of humanity as a bunch of psychopaths needing to be restained. Un;ike psychopaths, we do feel connected to others and love at least some others as we love ourselves. Serving others is no more “unnatural” than looking after our own interests once we deny the notion of a static essence called Human Nature in favor of a view of humanity as an ongoing project that has shown a lot of progress and can be even more than it ever was and much more that it is even now. Our moral progress so far has been the process of self-enlargement as we have become more and more sensitive to the neeeds and suffering of others and continue to expand our circles of moral concern. We should continue to expand the community of those deserving of our moral consideration and recreate ourselves to become better able to empathize with and serve the needs of others. It is such self-enlargment in an on-going process of self-creation rather than the adherence of beings with fixed Human Natures to a static pre-ordained Moral Law that the pragmatist understands moral progress.

 

[grannymh]

I can’t figure out what difference it could make to say that this stranded astronaut does or does not have a right to life.

Obviously, you have never been stranded.

 

[Leela]

Obviously, you have never been stranded.

No, I haven’t, but I can imagine it. If I were the sole survivor of a sunken vessel floating alone in the middle of the ocean with the fins of sharks beginning to appear on the water, what more would it mean, as the sharks begin to eat me, that I claim an intrinsic right to life than simply to say that I want desparately to live?

I certainly do not want to die such a horrible death, but if I do I get eaten by sharks in such a situation, have one or more of my rights been violated? What would it mean to say so?

Best,
Leela

 

[grannymh]

No, I haven’t, but I can imagine it. If I were the sole survivor of a sunken vessel floating alone in the middle of the ocean with the fins of sharks beginning to appear on the water, what more would it mean, as the sharks begin to eat me, that I claim an intrinsic right to life than simply to say that I want desparately to live?

I certainly do not want to die such a horrible death, but if I do I get eaten by sharks in such a situation, have one or more of my rights been violated? What would it mean to say so?

Best,
Leela

The right to life has nothing to do with an individual, such as yourself, claiming it.

 

[BonumTeEsse]

No, I haven’t, but I can imagine it. If I were the sole survivor of a sunken vessel floating alone in the middle of the ocean with the fins of sharks beginning to appear on the water, what more would it mean, as the sharks begin to eat me, that I claim an intrinsic right to life than simply to say that I want desparately to live?

I certainly do not want to die such a horrible death, but if I do I get eaten by sharks in such a situation, have one or more of my rights been violated? What would it mean to say so?

Best,
Leela

It is quite clear that “rights” are only meaningful in community with other rational beings.

For the example, the right to life means nothing in a context without rational creatures.

I would argue that no one has a right to life. Instead, we ought to acknowledge, instead, that life is one of the highest goods and that it ought to be defended as such.

The language of rights is misleading, obtuse, and altogether incorrect. We need to abandon the language of rights for the language of the “good.” Only then can we actually discuss the important issues.

As for me, just to make clear, rights do not exist. They were made up, solutions to the problems of a particular society in particular circumstances.

Why we continue to insist on using the language of rights is beyond me.

 

[grannymh]

It is quite clear that “rights” are only meaningful in community with other rational beings.

For the example, the right to life means nothing in a context without rational creatures.

I would argue that no one has a right to life. Instead, we ought to acknowledge, instead, that life is one of the highest goods and that it ought to be defended as such.

The language of rights is misleading, obtuse, and altogether incorrect. We need to abandon the language of rights for the language of the “good.” Only then can we actually discuss the important issues.

As for me, just to make clear, rights do not exist. They were made up, solutions to the problems of a particular society in particular circumstances.

Why we continue to insist on using the language of rights is beyond me.

The American Heritage College Dictionary devotes nearly a column to definitions and synonyms for “right”. I am interested in your choice of usage for the word “right” if you have one.

Going back to the OP, I would agree with number 7 as an independent statement, because for me the word “right” can be related to the idea of an inherent universal, objective truth regarding human nature. However, I agree with you that the language of rights is misleading. But I cannot think of a more appropriate word (good can be subjective at times) to describe what objectively belongs to human nature because of the dignity of the person.

Blessings,
granny

Human life is sacred.

 

[Leela]

As for me, just to make clear, rights do not exist. They were made up, solutions to the problems of a particular society in particular circumstances.

Saying that rights do not exist because they are invented to solve human problems is like saying that motorcycles don’t exist.

 

[tonyrey]

I don’t see any forced choice to say how things REALLY are beyond all appearances–an obligation to do ontology. There is no description that is not a description created for a human purpose so we shouldn’t expect to have any TRUE description that floats free of all human concerns.
Thinking of a body as a biological machine is good for certain purposes. Thinking of human beings as having intentions that motivate behavior is good for certain other purposes. Both perspectives help us to predict and control the world to help us get what we want. In the pragmatic view, both are ways of using reality rather than representations of The Way Things Really Are which just isn’t one of our concerns. Representation just isn’t how we think of language as functioning.

Ontology doesn’t come directly into this issue. We have no experience of machines being responsible for their activity nor do we ever regard them as responsible whereas we do regard human beings as responsible. It follows inexorably that either we are not responsible or we are not machines. Similarly either machines have intentions or they do not. Since intentions are a necessary condition of responsibility machines are not responsible - unless evidence is produced that they have intentions.

Thinking of a body as a biological machine is certainly good for certain purposes but if you believe persons are morally responsible they must be **more than **bodies.