Or it could be that our societies are more peaceful, stable and prosperous because we've leveraged rapid technological progress alongside a complete disregard for the rights of everyone outside of our societies to dominate the resource base of virtually the entire planet. It's really a lot easier to be stable and prosperous when you've inherited the lion's share of resources from your less scrupulous ancestors.
Yes, that still speaks to something about our society causing our society to ultimately end up ahead - but that something is technological prowess and willingness to aggressively colonize those we viewed as inferior, not being less tolerant of murder.
You think technology is what causes peace and stability? Not, "I can go to bed without the fear that I won't be murdered, I won't be taken away in my sleep, my children won't be kidnapped, I won't have my house looted, and my land won't be invaded?"
...
I think having the resources available for near-zero starvation levels and an enormously powerful police force are what cause peace and stability. If we didn't have those things, it wouldn't be true that we could go to bed without fear of being murdered etc.
Our values are not the thing that sets Europe and the United States apart from South America (and possibly Africa, but there are greater differences in values so it's a bad example). South American values in particular are fundamentally the same as European values. If you polled South Americans on natural rights, you'd get the same range of responses as if you polled Europeans. Yet kidnappings are common and revolutions are more or less continuous in some regions. The difference is fundamentally economic.
I think that the technological advances of 15th-20th century Europe are the things that have put us in a position to have those resources available. So, yes, I think technology is the reason for our stability.
Incidentally, I don't really appreciate the tone of your response. At best, you didn't bother to read what I wrote with the aim of understanding it. At worst, you're intentionally caricaturing me. You don't have to agree with me, obviously, but if you want to have a serious conversation, at least make the effort to understand me.
I think having the resources available for near-zero starvation levels and an enormously powerful police force are what cause peace and stability. If we didn't have those things, it wouldn't be true that we could go to bed without fear of being murdered etc.
Except, I can think of several recent instances in which peace and stability did not exist in which food shortages and absence of an enormously powerful police force were not the primary reasons why.
In fact, the presence of an enormously powerful police force was quite often one of the primary reasons why.
It's obviously not completely arbitrary. I just don't think it has anything to do with anything like natural rights (however we might justify it after the fact).
One (admittedly somewhat abstract) reading of the idea of natural rights is that they are the common thread that underlies the non-arbitrary nature of societal norms.
Property rights aren't universal (looting doesn't come with a lack of property rights, by the way; looting doesn't make sense in a society that lacks property rights, since you don't get to keep what you loot anyway) to all societies.
The notion of personal property is so close to being universal that it might as well be, though. Even in societies that don't have a penetrating property infrastructure, it is still the case that, say, tearing the clothes off of someone's back or taking the food out of someone's mouth is frowned upon.
Another one for murder - societies below a certain size needed no prohibition against murder.
I don't take just-so stories very seriously, but I do wonder how you arrived at this particular premise?
On the flip side, the idea that it stems from some kind of natural rights runs into difficulties immediately. First, it has no explanatory power. You still need to explain how it came to be enshrined in law; in the vast majority of cases excepting a handful of modern democracies, it wasn't by sitting around and thinking about natural rights.
You seem to be setting up a very literalistic straw man of the relationship between law and natural rights. This seems like the "design fallacy" in the sense that saying that "a legal system that converges on natural rights can only be the product of people deliberately thinking about natural rights" is no different than saying something like "large primate brains can only arise by the deliberate act of a designer who wanted large primate brains."
So how did we come to enshrine natural rights into law? It seems like a great coincidence.
One possibility (Hobbes): there is a kind of selection pressure on laws. If your laws are not conducive to the flourishing of your society, either the laws will change or your society will fall by the wayside. "Natural rights" refer to the maximum/maxima, if any, that are present on this fitness landscape, so on this view it is not surprising if laws tend toward natural rights.
Second, it has little hope of explaining the enormous differences in laws between different cultures. There are remarkably few points where law is consistent from culture to culture, except in closely related cultures or where they've been trading law for some time (e.g. French and English laws enshrine very similar rights, but they're really just an example of subtle riffs on one legal framework, since their laws developed in tandem and with reference to each other).
I don't understand your basis for this assertion. Some 80 out of 200 countries are labeled (by the Freedom House organization) as "free" (meaning in this case that they have nontrivial notions of free speech and free enterprise, along with a notion of inviolate property rights). In terms of population density, India and China, accounting as they do for 2 out of 7 billion people, are really the only large holes in what amounts to an astonishingly broad agreement on basic freedoms.
And most societies before modern times (and a lot of societies in modern times, possibly the majority of societies if we're counting ones that have legal frameworks based on English, French, Portuguese and Dutch law - all of which are closely intertwined - as really the same thing) have denied equal rights to women - are we supposed to say that where societies agree on principles that we agree with, it's evidence of a fundamental and immutable universal law, but when there is substantial agreement on principles like the second class status of women, it's an historical artifact?
This form of argumentation is just bizarre to me. Recall that if A is anterior to B, then B may or may not be informed by A but A certainly isn't informed by B, and it's your opponent's position that natural rights are anterior to the law. Therefore, pointing out to your opponents that the law fails to inform natural rights is not likely to discommode them.
As far as I can tell, the evolution of women's rights worldwide is confirmatory of a natural-rights-based position, at least one of the kind I indicated above. Whatever the state of women's rights in any given place, there is nearly universal worldwide social pressure, both internal and external, to broaden the rights afforded to women. The Islamic world, for instance, has to struggle daily to suppress and silence voices speaking in favor of women's rights.
This corresponds very nicely with a scenario involving natural law (something along the lines of "all moral creatures ought to be afforded equal moral treatment") along with selection pressure on societies to converge on that law. On the other hand, if this were a chaotic, capricious thing, would we not expect to see some kind of normal distribution, with some more-than-trivial portion of the population seeking to further reduce the rights afforded to women?
The law is the law. It is created by people to serve those people, or very occasionally to serve what they think is best for their society. We don't need to postulate prior natural rights to account for its existence or its form and postulating prior natural rights doesn't help us understand either how it came to be or in what form it came to be.
It doesn't mean that there's no such thing as a natural right, but the law isn't a great way to get at the topic.
I couldn't disagree more. Natural rights have to do with the flourishing of societies. Does law impact the flourishing of society? If it does, then it necessarily has a relationship to natural rights. If one further believes that rights are anterior to law, the character of that relationship becomes somewhat clearer: the rights inform the law, not vice versa.
It seems to me that to deny that there is a relationship at all is to flatly deny natural rights. If natural rights exist, they cannot but inform the law -- after all, they make it possible to say that certain kinds of law (e.g. "it's always legal to kill anyone anywhere") are actually wrong!
Or it could be that our societies are more peaceful, stable and prosperous because we've leveraged rapid technological progress alongside a complete disregard for the rights of everyone outside of our societies to dominate the resource base of virtually the entire planet. It's really a lot easier to be stable and prosperous when you've inherited the lion's share of resources from your less scrupulous ancestors.
Yes, that still speaks to something about our society causing our society to ultimately end up ahead - but that something is technological prowess and willingness to aggressively colonize those we viewed as inferior, not being less tolerant of murder.
Please consider the possibility that you are here arguing from an emotional place - colloquially, "liberal guilt" - rather than a rational one. You have rejected the concept of natural rights offhand because you hold a morally-charged narrative that the cause of Western prosperity is its historical sins, and therefore other proposed causes are not just a factual but a moral challenge and must be resisted as such.
But nowhere have I said anything to excuse Western nations of the crimes of colonialism or slavery, nor will you ever see me do so*. The challenge you are resisting is a strawman. The implicit assumption you are making is that a phenomenon can have only one cause - that to claim "prosperity is a consequence of respect for natural rights" is equivalent to claiming "prosperity is not a consequence of resource acquisition (licit or illicit)". But of course this is not the case. A phenomenon can have multiple contributing causes. So I certainly won't deny that technology and raw material wealth factor into prosperity, because that would be brainless. Nor will I deny that some Western material wealth is the spoils of condemnable acts, because that would be heartless. But these economic/historical/moral commitments in no way contradict the simple proposition I have made on this thread: that moral behavior naturally and predictably has consequences that humans find desirable, and that this causal fact is what is called a "natural right".
For that matter, I'm not even really talking about the same kind of peace, stability, and prosperity you seem to be thinking of. You're contrasting the modern West with the vastly less wealthy and advanced cultures historically victimized thereby, and yes, a comparatively large part of the difference there is best attributed to the tech and resource gap. But I am more contrasting the modern West with the less-modern West. As a consequence of Westerners' expanding notions of moral behavior, women and minorities lead far better lives and contribute more in turn to the rest of society, and war between European powers is basically unthinkable. There are not and cannot be the result of economic wealth or technology alone. It may be that wealth and technology (especially telecommunications technology) are required to set the stage for such developments, but nevertheless they can only set the stage. Whatever influence they have on a society's future must be through the human behaviors they enable, and human behaviors and their consequences are of course exactly what I'm talking about.
*Nor, for that matter, will you ever see me excuse these crimes committed by any people, because I am not a moral relativist.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
I wasn't really sure how to vote on this to best represent my views, but I chose the first one since I've felt it may of been the best fitting answer.
So as far as Government is concerned. I believe that Government is a natural result from the development of cultural norms, beliefs, and traditions and is established as an institution to promote this culture.
I believe that Rights are subjective social constructs created within the norms of a society in order to promote the welfare of those who are considered to have those rights.
I personally am a philosophical anarchist, but because I don't think we live in a culture that promotes love and virtue, I would not like to see a stateless society at this time.
Or it could be that our societies are more peaceful, stable and prosperous because we've leveraged rapid technological progress alongside a complete disregard for the rights of everyone outside of our societies to dominate the resource base of virtually the entire planet.
I'm really not trying to play a "gotcha" game here, but you lost me a bit with this comment. How did Westerners violate the rights of those people if no one has any rights? (Or, alternatively, if one only has rights that which are effectively defended by a State.)
That is,
There's a general prohibition against murder, but lots of leeway given regarding killing, where it can be justified by this or that thing.
So, to be overly broad, if there's no such thing as natural rights, and if Western culture gave Westerners a justification for killing non-Westerners, then I'm not understanding what you mean by, "disregard for the rights of everyone outside of our [Western] societies." What rights?
Or it could be that our societies are more peaceful, stable and prosperous because we've leveraged rapid technological progress alongside a complete disregard for the rights of everyone outside of our societies to dominate the resource base of virtually the entire planet.
I'm really not trying to play a "gotcha" game here, but you lost me a bit with this comment. How did Westerners violate the rights of those people if no one has any rights? (Or, alternatively, if one only has rights that which are effectively defended by a State.)
That is,
There's a general prohibition against murder, but lots of leeway given regarding killing, where it can be justified by this or that thing.
So, to be overly broad, if there's no such thing as natural rights, and if Western culture gave Westerners a justification for killing non-Westerners, then I'm not understanding what you mean by, "disregard for the rights of everyone outside of our [Western] societies." What rights?
Poor choice of wording, and I apologize, that was an extremely confusing way to put it.
Rephrase to:
Or it could be that our societies are more peaceful, stable and prosperous because we've leveraged rapid technological progress alongside a complete disregard for everyone outside of our societies to dominate the resource base of virtually the entire planet.
I didn't mean to say (though I certainly did in fact say) that I think that we're in the wrong for having trampled the rights of non-Western populations. I meant to say simply that Europeans have dominated the lands and peoples of non-Europeans. I'm not passing judgment on Europeans for doing this. I think it's the natural thing for a powerful society to do. I'm just pointing out that it did happen, and that our society is stable largely because our society is powerful and wealthy.
EDIT: And this addresses the liberal guilt concern as well. Societies have been dominating each other for longer than they could be called societies. When Europeans first established contact with New Guinea, there were hundreds of fragmented tribes, numbering from a few score to some hundreds. Genocide and claiming a neighboring tribe's land was and apparently had been for thousands of years a normal part of tribal interactions in New Guinea, though lack of any very effective weaponry limited the scope of the violence.
I don't think this is something Westerners do. I think it's something people do. If it were a purely Western phenomenon, it'd be a lot easier to call that an aberration and optimistically look across the rest of societies who don't do what Westerners do and say, "Well, we might have mucked things up, but at least here's a chance to look for the universal truth that we've defiled." But that's simply not the case. I mean, territory grabs through violence and genocide is something that chimpanzees do. The only thing that Europeans have done differently is using applied science to create weaponry capable of giving them power over the whole globe and an economic system (systems?) that allow them to sustain that power over the whole globe. It's a difference in scale, not kind.
Got a lot more to think about than time to think about it right now. I'll be back. The place I'm stalling out is in motivating a notion of 'natural rights' as having to do with the law. I don't see that natural rights have a lot to do with which societies are powerful - that a respect for natural rights has anything much to do with the success of that society. To motivate this, consider that it's fully possible that the two most powerful regimes on the planet for the last 80 years could have been Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia if Hitler had chosen not to invade Russia. I don't say would be, but it seems like an awful historical accident that societies like ours are the most powerful right now. Societies with diametrically opposed views of the individual very nearly came to dominate the world. I'm not skeptical of valuing the rights of the individual, I'm skeptical that valuing the rights of the individual has the consequence that your society will be more powerful.
Ah, the perils of resolving cognitive dissonance. Bertrand Russell: "A philosophy which is not self-consistent cannot be wholly true, but a philosophy which is self-consistent can very well be wholly false."
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
I'm not skeptical of valuing the rights of the individual, I'm skeptical that valuing the rights of the individual has the consequence that your society will be more powerful.
That's not the claim. The claim is that the society will be more peaceful, stable, and prosperous. Furthermore, the claim is implicitly ceteris paribus: obviously a massive totalitarian military empire will goose-step all over a small liberal state for reasons completely unrelated to their relative moral virtues. To determine causation scientifically, you have to control for all those other factors - population, industrialization, technology, natural resources. You have to compare societies that are, well, comparable.
Unfortunately this is impossible to do with full scientific rigor, because our past only affords with a small and imperfect sample pool. This is why history cannot be listed among the hard sciences, and we must always be more skeptical of historical theories than we are of, say, evolution. Nevertheless it does furnish some semblances of experiments. Foremost among them must be the divided nations that were the product of the Cold War - East and West Germany, North and South Korea. In spite of comparable starting points (because they used to be a single country), the liberal halves came to wildly outperform the communist halves in just about every measure of social success, both economic and personal. And these results, though they dismay, should not surprise, because they are predicted by game-theory models for reciprocal altruism strategies and by psychological studies of human moral thought and behavior. Together, the mathematics, the science, and the history paint a compelling picture that certain behavior patterns weigh more in a society's favor than other behavior patterns. Once again, this is obviously not a guarantee that the good guys will win; sometimes the bad guys just have more tanks. But over the long term, you can expect liberalism to succeed and grow. I have no way of falsifying this, but I suspect that in your scenario of a victorious Nazi Germany in World War II, the resulting empire would have struggled socially and economically, and eventually dissolved, collapsed, or reformed, much as actually happened to the Soviet Union and didn't happen to the United States.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
It's possible. I have no better way of falsifying it than you have.
My worry is that if natural rights are whatever leads to the most peaceful, stable and prosperous society, what if it turns out that the most peaceful, stable and prosperous society is one that totally tramples the rights of the individual? It's possible, maybe even probable that it's true that a society with a treatment of rights like ours is the best (at what we've been talking about) one, but what if, say, we're a transitional stage and if you run the experiment for 50,000 years over and over, the societies that emerge as stable and peaceful and prosperous turn out to be a certain brand of authoritarian that emerges after technology develops for another hundred years or so? Does that mean that, since those societies tend to hit that point, natural rights are defined in terms of the rights you have in that society?
By the way, consider Singapore. They still practice caning and the like. Their justification - in a quote which I have been vainly searching for today - is along the lines of, "You Westerners consider the individual to be critical, but we see the society as critical. You see an infringement of one person's rights, while we see their infringement on society's rights." I don't know how to compare that approach to rights to ours; I've debated this for many hours with a Singaporean friend of mine (an older woman who lived in the United States for about 10 years through I think her late 30s into her 40s), and she certainly maintains that Singapore is more stable and peaceful than the US. If it's true, well, where does that leave us? You don't have a natural right to not be caned for minor offenses?
By the way, consider Singapore. They still practice caning and the like. Their justification - in a quote which I have been vainly searching for today - is along the lines of, "You Westerners consider the individual to be critical, but we see the society as critical. You see an infringement of one person's rights, while we see their infringement on society's rights."
I know you couldn't find the exact quote, so I may be attacking a straw man here -- but how, exactly, is this quote supposed to provide a justification for caning?
In order to get from here to caning, an additional proposition is required -- something like "beating criminals until they are crippled and disfigured is good for society." It is that statement that must be argued for in order to justify caning -- and best of luck with that.
This quote seems to miss the mark in another way as well. You could argue that all forms of punishment based on individual deterrence infringe on individual rights. Yet we do practice those kinds of punishments in the West -- we just stop short of regarding brutal disfigurement as an acceptable form of deterrence. So the argument that we over-elevate the individual falls flat in the first place, even though it would fail to justify caning even if true.
I've debated this for many hours with a Singaporean friend of mine (an older woman who lived in the United States for about 10 years through I think her late 30s into her 40s), and she certainly maintains that Singapore is more stable and peaceful than the US.
What would be the basis for this assertion?
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
A limit of time is fixed for thee
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
A warning before I dive right into this: we're now talking about a quotation that I remember and can't find, from a single government minister. There's a real chance that this whole issue - which was a minor illustration - falls apart if it turns out that one guy was some crazy jerk.
With that said, remember that all I'm trying to establish is the plausibility - even if unlikely - that it could turn out that the societal approach to natural rights that results in the highest stability, peace and prosperity in the long run (slight tangent, our society hasn't existed "in the long run", and the fact is we're looking at a relatively small historical slice. If we were having this debate 2000 years earlier, we'd be talking about the Roman Imperial system as the most prosperous and stable system, and it's possible that 2000 years ago people will looking back at us in much the same light) is one that we'd consider anathema.
By the way, consider Singapore. They still practice caning and the like. Their justification - in a quote which I have been vainly searching for today - is along the lines of, "You Westerners consider the individual to be critical, but we see the society as critical. You see an infringement of one person's rights, while we see their infringement on society's rights."
I know you couldn't find the exact quote, so I may be attacking a straw man here -- but how, exactly, is this quote supposed to provide a justification for caning?
It isn't. I argued vehemently against caning then and I would again now. But I don't have a good way of demonstrating that caning results in a less stable or prosperous society or even that it doesn't result in a MORE stable, peaceful and prosperous society - the best I can do is arguing that I would rather live in a society that doesn't practice caning, and the only argument that I've got that I wouldn't want to live there is that it seems like a human rights violation to me even if it does lead to a more prosperous society. Certainly Singapore is a fairly peaceful, stable and prosperous society, but equally certainly, the causalities are extremely complicated, and it's fully possible that caning is working against those things, and it'd be even more peaceful, stable and prosperous without them. It's difficult to demonstrate and I haven't got any good way of doing it.
It's important to stress, by the way, that I'm not saying Singapore is a massive human rights violator. They take things further than I'd like and I suppose that means I do think they're an abuser. But they don't try to stamp out any individual rights entirely on principle, it's more of a "You have whatever rights don't get in the way of our social system" approach.
The point of the quote isn't, "Caning is good", it's, "There is at least the possibility that very different ways of looking at the whole question of human rights which also result in peaceful, stable and prosperous societies." I DON'T agree with her on which is better, it's just that you arrive at a position where it's reasonably debatable with a state that gives little consideration to human rights.
It's also not a proof, it's a worry. If the things we value under the name of 'rights' turn out not to be the things that correspond causally with peace, stability, and prosperity, what happens? And how can we lay that concern to rest?
As I said, it's plausible that our approach (or further refinements to it) result in maximal peace, order and prosperity. What if some very different approach does? Is there a reason why it is impossible or seriously implausible that the optimal (on those 3 axes) society would give no thought at all to natural rights?
I've debated this for many hours with a Singaporean friend of mine (an older woman who lived in the United States for about 10 years through I think her late 30s into her 40s), and she certainly maintains that Singapore is more stable and peaceful than the US.
What would be the basis for this assertion?
She was rather horrified at the volume of crime and especially violent crime in the US, which is of course objectively verifiable ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate has the US sitting at about 15 times the per capita homicides as Singapore), but is also of course subject to an enormous number of considerations. There was also an element of horror at the disrespect or lack of consideration given to fellow citizens regarding holding doors and the like, which is of course purely a matter of perspective and which frankly I don't (and didn't) view as evidence of anything at all.
Which, incidentally, leads to a question - how do we define peaceful, stable and prosperous?
Which, incidentally, leads to a question - how do we define peaceful, stable and prosperous?
I hope you're awere those things are different subjects and shouldn't be treated as single one.
Peaceful
* Lower number of non natural, non accidental deaths.
Stable
* GDP with lower short-term fluctuations (Product Stability).
* Lower Inflation (Monetary Stability).
* Lower fluctiotions in the exchange rates in case of floating exchange systems or trade balance in case of fixed enchange systens (Commercial Stability)
* Greater periods of time without a revolution (Political Stability)
Prosperous
* Greater GDP per capita (for the avarage prosperity)
* You can take in account Gini or other form of Inequity Index if you want to build a distribution of wealth instead of just looking at the avarage number.
Cingapura is a more peaceful and prosperous country. I don't have data on stability though...
Which, incidentally, leads to a question - how do we define peaceful, stable and prosperous?
I hope you're awere those things are different subjects and shouldn't be treated as single one.
Peaceful
* Lower number of non natural, non accidental deaths.
Stable
* GDP with lower short-term fluctuations (Product Stability).
* Lower Inflation (Monetary Stability).
* Lower fluctiotions in the exchange rates in case of floating exchange systems or trade balance in case of fixed enchange systens (Commercial Stability)
* Greater periods of time without a revolution (Political Stability)
Prosperous
* Greater GDP per capita (for the avarage prosperity)
* You can take in account Gini or other form of Inequity Index if you want to build a distribution of wealth instead of just looking at the avarage number.
Cingapura is a more peaceful and prosperous country. I don't have data on stability though...
I'm perfectly aware of it. If you read back a bit, you'll see that I'm tackling someone else's proposal.
Incidentally, I was a bit surprised that this thread died after my last post. I'd like to answer my own question:
I wrote:
It's also not a proof, it's a worry. If the things we value under the name of 'rights' turn out not to be the things that correspond causally with peace, stability, and prosperity, what happens? And how can we lay that concern to rest?
Suppose that in 200 years, a culture has come about leveraging yet-unknown science to create a perfectly peaceful, stable, prosperous society. This society depends on making nearly all of the population slaves to a handful of controllers, using brain controlling technology to make people literally incapable of conceiving of doing other than what the controllers want them to do, and other planning technologies to plan out a society such that as long as people follow the rules exactly, peace, stability and prosperity are maximized.
I would suggest that we'd still consider this society abhorrent, and would still value things like freedom of speech and of religion, even if it turned out that they did not lead to maximal peace, stability and prosperity. That is, I don't think our notion of natural rights is consequentialist. I think we value them regardless of what the law says and regardless of what other good things they turn out to maximize.
Which is the argument I was making up front - the law came about in a variety of ways, many of which presumably have nothing whatsoever to do with natural rights. We want to change the law (and have been changing the law) to align with our notion of natural rights, however it originally came about.
Completely random tangent: why 'Cingapura'? This has no bearing on how I view your arguments, I'm just curious because I haven't come across that before.
Suppose that in 200 years, a culture has come about leveraging yet-unknown science to create a perfectly peaceful, stable, prosperous society. This society depends on making nearly all of the population slaves to a handful of controllers, using brain controlling technology to make people literally incapable of conceiving of doing other than what the controllers want them to do, and other planning technologies to plan out a society such that as long as people follow the rules exactly, peace, stability and prosperity are maximized.
I find these kinds of arguments specious. If I asked you to consider the function f(x)=-x^2 and to assume that its maximum value is 3, then you'd be wise to reject my hypothesis because I've simply asked you to assume a contradiction.
The same thing is going on here. You could ask us to assume any society is optimal -- your argument that one might still find the society abhorrent in spite of its optimality carries no force unless the putative society actually is optimal. Thus, I think you need to provide an argument for the optimality of this society.
For my part, I can immediately think of some reasons to suspect that this society is not optimal.
As concerns peace, complete sublimation of the will is basically the ultimate force, subsuming as it does all other kinds of force -- and since the society in question operates through constant sublimation of the will of its members, it is maintained by constant internal application of force and therefore is not peaceful.
As concerns stability, I am not sure what to think. On one hand, the people are zombies so there's no real chance of that sort of revolt. On the other hand, there is nothing here that suggests that the controllers of the society aren't as prone to infighting as any other body, and given their ability to sublimate wills, they can use the population as pawns in their conflict. Verdict: no more inherently stable than any other society, I'd say.
As concerns prosperity, I bet the GDP per capita of this society is insane, considering that it consists of zombies that need only be provided for at the subsistence level and will work until it becomes biologically impossible. But who benefits from that prosperity? Not the zombie portion of the populace, that's for sure. Their inequality index would basically be pinned to the absolute maximum, in perpetuity.
And a fourth heuristic: the sniff test. Would you voluntarily abandon your current society and join this one, given a choice? I consider myself a somewhat rational agent and I'm all about peace, stability, and prosperity -- but I sure as hell wouldn't make this switch.
I would suggest that we'd still consider this society abhorrent, and would still value things like freedom of speech and of religion, even if it turned out that they did not lead to maximal peace, stability and prosperity. That is, I don't think our notion of natural rights is consequentialist. I think we value them regardless of what the law says and regardless of what other good things they turn out to maximize.
I offer a different hypothesis -- the society you've described is transparently not optimal. We regard it as abhorrent because it is abhorrent.
Let me be clear -- I know your point extends beyond this one truly unfortunate example, which does not support it -- and I accept the idea that the constitution of the best possible society is far from a known quantity. For my part, I say only that there is evidence and argumentation that bears on the problem, and that evidence and those arguments begin to point in the direction of respect for natural rights, rather than the opposite.
The United States may have a thing or two to learn from Singapore. I've never been to Singapore and I doubt if I ever will be until their society makes some changes (because I don't want to be beaten, crippled, and disfigured for a minor crime) so I don't know. But whatever Singapore has on the United States, caning sure as hell ain't it.
And a fourth heuristic: the sniff test. Would you voluntarily abandon your current society and join this one, given a choice? I consider myself a somewhat rational agent and I'm all about peace, stability, and prosperity -- but I sure as hell wouldn't make this switch.
Your "sniff test" has been elaborated and formalized by John Rawls in his veil of ignorance concept.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
To explain the prior example a bit - the prior example is transparently abhorrent and that's the point. The mistake I made in writing it was in failing to specify an exact definition of peace, prosperity and stability, for which I had in mind something like: elimination of violence, generally high standard of living measured in lifespan and material wealth, and the ability to rely on the regime as something that would continue on while guaranteeing you stability in your own personal life. Further, I failed to point out the main purpose of the exercise (and I grant that this is a suggestion and not an argument, of course) - I strongly suspect that whatever set of benefits you explicate in advance for a society to be good at, you will face a similar problem - some abhorrent society will turn out to be better at it than the one that we want to recognize as obeying 'natural rights', unless of course you explicate a definition of 'success' that lines up almost exactly with where we are (or potentially, where you think we should go).
And further, as I said, I don't think this is a problem. I think we'd choose our vision of 'rights' over a fascist or otherwise authoritarian, thought policing regime even if we knew it would lead to our inevitable destruction (or at least we'd want to flatter ourselves that we would; we might choose to let the things we've picked out as 'rights' go in order to save ourselves, but we would view it as tragic) due to whatever contrived example.
In short, I think that the plausibility on the face of it that 'natural rights' are 'the things that make successful societies successful, on average' depends on leaving 'successful society' as undefined, so that we can fill in the blanks of 'successful' as 'similar to our own, or further along the same lines of development'. Other definitions of success - such as the success that would be achieved if a fascist regime successfully conquered most of the planet, or heck, for that matter, the success currently being enjoyed by China at the cost of some rather extreme human rights violations - don't count, for one reason or another. I think we'll come up with as many reasons why they don't count as there are noteworthy regimes to set aside, because I think the goal is to ensure by argumentation that something we already believe anyway - that certain rights are important - also turn out to correlate with the 'important' version of success.
Also, I think ^ that's a lot more words than I should've written, given that it doesn't really even contain much of an argument. Need to work on conciseness at some point.
And a fourth heuristic: the sniff test. Would you voluntarily abandon your current society and join this one, given a choice? I consider myself a somewhat rational agent and I'm all about peace, stability, and prosperity -- but I sure as hell wouldn't make this switch.
Your "sniff test" has been elaborated and formalized by John Rawls in his veil of ignorance concept.
The veil of ignorance concept is interesting enough reading but not quite right for this particular situation, I think. The society described is abhorrent even if you can specify in advance that you get to be a controller.
To explain the prior example a bit - the prior example is transparently abhorrent and that's the point. The mistake I made in writing it was in failing to specify an exact definition of peace, prosperity and stability, for which I had in mind something like: elimination of violence, generally high standard of living measured in lifespan and material wealth, and the ability to rely on the regime as something that would continue on while guaranteeing you stability in your own personal life. Further, I failed to point out the main purpose of the exercise (and I grant that this is a suggestion and not an argument, of course) - I strongly suspect that whatever set of benefits you explicate in advance for a society to be good at, you will face a similar problem - some abhorrent society will turn out to be better at it than the one that we want to recognize as obeying 'natural rights', unless of course you explicate a definition of 'success' that lines up almost exactly with where we are (or potentially, where you think we should go).
No, I follow the structure of your argument, or at least I think I do. You are alleging a kind of question-begging in our judgment of abhorrence -- that we'd abhor a rightless society even if it were peaceful, prosperous, and stable.
You are attempting to prove this by offering an example. In order to meet this standard of proof, you'd have to give an example of a society that is rightless while also being maximally peaceful, prosperous, and stable, and then get us to judge that society as abhorrent.
Unfortunately, the example you have given does not meet the standard. It is rightless and we do judge it to be abhorrent, but examination of your description shows that it is not maximally peaceful or prosperous; see my last post for arguments. (I grant that you could argue for stability, but it would be controversial.)
You have asked us to assume that your proposed society is maximally peaceful and prosperous, but that is a fallacy because you are merely asking us to assume a contradiction. The argument you have offered thus far on this particular matter is therefore unsound.
In short, I think that the plausibility on the face of it that 'natural rights' are 'the things that make successful societies successful, on average' depends on leaving 'successful society' as undefined, so that we can fill in the blanks of 'successful' as 'similar to our own, or further along the same lines of development'.
I'll surely grant you that whatever is regarded as 'successful' depends on the definition of success. However, I deny the assertion that we simply define 'success' to be 'just like us,' or 'freedom,' or any other circular construction.
I think that we define peace, prosperity, stability and so forth not in any strange or circular or question-begging way, but rather in accordance with the plain meaning of words -- and we derive the association between those things and natural rights by examination of evidence (compare free and unfree societies) and argumentation (read Kant, Hobbes, et al.)
In other words, you've got the ontology exactly backwards. The protection of natural rights follows from -- or, if you like, is a necessary condition of -- peace and prosperity in society.
You have asked us to assume that your proposed society is maximally peaceful and prosperous, but that is a fallacy because you are merely asking us to assume a contradiction. The argument you have offered thus far on this particular matter is therefore unsound.
Defining the terms isn't as straightforward or commonsensical as you're making it sound.
For example, italofoca offered this first cut definition, which seems reasonable on the face of it to me:
Peaceful
* Lower number of non natural, non accidental deaths.
Stable
* GDP with lower short-term fluctuations (Product Stability).
* Lower Inflation (Monetary Stability).
* Lower fluctiotions in the exchange rates in case of floating exchange systems or trade balance in case of fixed enchange systens (Commercial Stability)
* Greater periods of time without a revolution (Political Stability)
Prosperous
* Greater GDP per capita (for the avarage prosperity)
* You can take in account Gini or other form of Inequity Index if you want to build a distribution of wealth instead of just looking at the avarage number.
My example doesn't run into straightforward, instantly obvious problems with these definitions. It does ask you to assume a few things - e.g. that a technological solution to resource distribution that performs better than a free market is possible, given extreme advances in computing.
It's clear that you're not operating under these definitions ("As concerns peace, complete sublimation of the will is basically the ultimate force" does not obviously follow from that definition).
So there's at least more to be said about the definitions, if it matters, unless there's some good reason up front to reject that kind of definition of the terms (I don't see one).
In other words, you've got the ontology exactly backwards. The protection of natural rights follows from -- or, if you like, is a necessary condition of -- peace and prosperity in society.
This is a productive phrasing of the issue.
You seem to be arguing either that natural rights are those things which, if a society is peaceful and prosperous, it will tend to protect, or that natural rights are the things which if a society protects them, it will tend to be more peaceful and prosperous. Or, based on the fairly strong language in that quote, that a society is defined as peaceful and prosperous insofar as it succeeds at protecting natural rights, possibly?
Defining the terms isn't as straightforward or commonsensical as you're making it sound.
For example, italofoca offered this first cut definition, which seems reasonable on the face of it to me:
Well, I don't intend to make it sound as though defining the terms is necessarily straightforward or simple. In fact, I myself find italofoca's definitions to be quite bad on the whole, mostly because of correlation-causation fallacies.
Qatar, the nation with the highest GDP per capita on Earth, has that GDP per capita because an accident of geography has placed it on top of an absurd quantity of an insanely valuable resource that is in high demand. They could be running a gulag over there (I know they aren't) and still show high in the standings.
My example doesn't run into straightforward, instantly obvious problems with these definitions.
It does. As I argued above, the inequality index of your society is permanently pegged to the maximum because the zombie class, which is (presumably?) the great majority of your society, neither possesses nor desires anything beyond subsistence.
It's clear that you're not operating under these definitions ("As concerns peace, complete sublimation of the will is basically the ultimate force" does not obviously follow from that definition).
In fairness to myself, that definition is atrocious. Peace means people not dying? Under that definition, the society of the gods of Olympus is maximally peaceful because they happen to be immortal.
Here I am asserting a certain property of peacefulness, namely that peacefulness varies inversely as the amount of force (physical or otherwise) that is applied to or by members of society in the course of its operation. The more force that is applied to you or by you as you go about your life, the less peaceful your society is.
This is a productive phrasing of the issue.
You seem to be arguing either that natural rights are those things which, if a society is peaceful and prosperous, it will tend to protect, or that natural rights are the things which if a society protects them, it will tend to be more peaceful and prosperous. Or, based on the fairly strong language in that quote, that a society is defined as peaceful and prosperous insofar as it succeeds at protecting natural rights, possibly?
I am not articulating a definition, I am explaining the ontological structure of the arguments of proponents of natural-rights-based viewpoints -- which is that the natural rights follow inexorably as a result of any attempt to construct a (prosperous/stable/peaceful/etc.) society. (I am curious if you have read The Leviathan by Hobbes? It's available free online...)
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
A limit of time is fixed for thee
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
I am not articulating a definition, I am explaining the ontological structure of the arguments of proponents of natural-rights-based viewpoints -- which is that the natural rights follow inexorably as a result of any attempt to construct a (prosperous/stable/peaceful/etc.) society. (I am curious if you have read The Leviathan by Hobbes? It's available free online...)
I'm familiar with Leviathan but have not made a careful study of it, and it has admittedly been years.
I didn't ask for a definition of natural rights, just a clarification of the position. And you've given it: Natural rights are the things that follow as a result of an attempt to construct a 'psp*' society.
* tired of typing out prosperous/stable/peaceful 10 times a response. Take it as given.
Which leaves us pretty well back where we started. We can try to specify exactly what society we're going to try to build. It's not a maximally wealthy society, a maximally powerful society, etc. It's a particular set of societal ideals which can't be taken as a given as what it means to build society, since demonstrably societies have been built that don't aim at it.
Note the intentionality in there. We intend to build this society. Natural rights could be the things that automatically fall out of the attempt to build that society, but I don't think that's what's generally meant, at least nowadays.
We hold certain values - for example, freedom of speech, of religion, and freedom from physical oppression (in most but not quite all cases, for each of those).
If we specify our goals for the society that we're building, if it turns out to be inconsistent with one of these values, we'll adjust the society rather than give up the value. Perhaps even more to the point, many of these values will be part of the specification of the society that we want to build - we want to build a free society. We want to build a peaceful society, meaning free from use of force insofar as possible. We set out to build a peaceful (by your - quite good, by the way - definition) society because freedom from most violence is something we already hold as a right.
So, I have the reverse ontology not by accident, but because I think that the position you've advocated is backwards. We specify the society that we want to have, then we set about building that society, adjusting the details of the society to fit our prior notion of rights as needed. We take the rights as a given and fit the society to it.
Defining the terms isn't as straightforward or commonsensical as you're making it sound.
For example, italofoca offered this first cut definition, which seems reasonable on the face of it to me:
Well, I don't intend to make it sound as though defining the terms is necessarily straightforward or simple. In fact, I myself find italofoca's definitions to be quite bad on the whole, mostly because of correlation-causation fallacies.
Qatar, the nation with the highest GDP per capita on Earth, has that GDP per capita because an accident of geography has placed it on top of an absurd quantity of an insanely valuable resource that is in high demand. They could be running a gulag over there (I know they aren't) and still show high in the standings.
My example doesn't run into straightforward, instantly obvious problems with these definitions.
It does. As I argued above, the inequality index of your society is permanently pegged to the maximum because the zombie class, which is (presumably?) the great majority of your society, neither possesses nor desires anything beyond subsistence.
It's clear that you're not operating under these definitions ("As concerns peace, complete sublimation of the will is basically the ultimate force" does not obviously follow from that definition).
In fairness to myself, that definition is atrocious. Peace means people not dying? Under that definition, the society of the gods of Olympus is maximally peaceful because they happen to be immortal.
Here I am asserting a certain property of peacefulness, namely that peacefulness varies inversely as the amount of force (physical or otherwise) that is applied to or by members of society in the course of its operation. The more force that is applied to you or by you as you go about your life, the less peaceful your society is.
This is a productive phrasing of the issue.
You seem to be arguing either that natural rights are those things which, if a society is peaceful and prosperous, it will tend to protect, or that natural rights are the things which if a society protects them, it will tend to be more peaceful and prosperous. Or, based on the fairly strong language in that quote, that a society is defined as peaceful and prosperous insofar as it succeeds at protecting natural rights, possibly?
I am not articulating a definition, I am explaining the ontological structure of the arguments of proponents of natural-rights-based viewpoints -- which is that the natural rights follow inexorably as a result of any attempt to construct a (prosperous/stable/peaceful/etc.) society. (I am curious if you have read The Leviathan by Hobbes? It's available free online...)
About Qatar, your comment made zero sense. They could have been using sticks and stones, but they still have the highest share of the global product per citizen, meaning they might not produce the best technology but they can certainly buy it. In the average, the Qatar citizen is the richest in the world as long as oil and natural gas is tradeble.
About peace, "force" is a pretty bad start to measure it. A society that uses a lot of force to contain criminals and external enemies and is succesful in doing so could be more violent then one that lets crimes happen against its citizens. Peace is not the absense of force, its the absence of violent conflict. And force plays a whole in eliminating and preventing conflicts.
A human being in its natural state is in equilibrium with their natural environment. A human being is also a product of that natural environment. In order for a natural human being to "EXIST" or for that human being to continue to "BE" in that natural environment there are certain natural conditions that must be met. Some of these include food, water, a means to protect themselves from other natural elements and oxygen. Without these conditions present or not in adequate supply in order to sustain, a human being in their natural state will seize to exist. What differentiates humans from animals is our humaniqueness ie things like creativity, personality, abstract thinking and moral judgment. Human beings may also use their humaniqueness to meet these conditions which are a necessity to them in order to "EXIST" and to "BE" as part of nature. These according to rational human thought (part of which makes us unique in our natural state) we may define through words such as "natural necessities".
Something that makes us unique is having a moral compass and the ability to use a hierarchy of reason and evidence which sets the conditions for 'truths of virtue' for example. And yes these are not always subjective but in many cases can indeed be black and white once the hierarchy of reason and evidence is applied unless of course you believe it to be virtue to hit an old lady over the head with a baseball bat for no reason at all. From this we have therefore created ideas relating to the notion of 'natural rights'.
Considering all of this and the environmental conditions that we have here on natural earth it all seems pretty natural to me. As long as there is the natural sentient human being which requires certain natural conditions in order "to exist" and "to be" there will also be that human consciousness which gives the notion of 'natural rights' a reality which in turn can also create actions and behaviors that may cater for these. As long as there is human consciousness it will continue to exist even if you can not necessarily see it. There are many things that I am not able to perceive with the naked eye or hear or even touch for example but that does not imply it does not exist. When I get hungry others may not necessarily be able to see it or feel it or hear it but I can certainly feel and perceive it. And it certainly feels real to me. I will certainly need to act on that or I will seize to be. So yes indeed natural rights are very real and existing as part of my value system stemming from my "humaniqueness" and evolution.
And when we then consider that it was some higher energy that created all that is including man.... and it was man that created the idea of government .... well it was also man himself that created the idea of natural rights as government is also just an idea. Did government which is just an idea or fiction in our mind create such ideas? No. Governments as an entity and idea was created by our minds as was the idea of natural rights or for that matter even rights. It stems from our humaniqueness and natural tendencies as part of being human. However natural rights for eg are in harmony with nature whereas government and many of its associated rights for eg. and its associated behaviors and actions are destructive to nature as has been evident throughout history. Also note that man is corruptible within a given environmental setting and certain conditions which is also reflected by many of today's epic failures and in numerous behaviors displayed by governments and centralized power structures.
A human being in its natural state is in equilibrium with their natural environment. A human being is also a product of that natural environment. In order for a natural human being to "EXIST" or for that human being to continue to "BE" in that natural environment there are certain natural conditions that must be met. Some of these include food, water, a means to protect themselves from other natural elements and oxygen. Without these conditions present or not in adequate supply in order to sustain, a human being in their natural state will seize to exist. What differentiates humans from animals is our humaniqueness ie things like creativity, personality, abstract thinking and moral judgment.
First of all, nothing differentiates humans from animals- humans are animals. Simple scientific fact for you.
Secondly, creativity, personality and moral judgement are all suggested to be characteristics shared with other animals, simply by looking at their behaviour, abstract thinking is harder to judge, but there's no reason to assume other animals don't have it.
Humans seem to be more sophisticated in many mental processes, but even then this is not proven and indeed may be impossible to prove without actually being able to get inside their heads.
Human beings may also use their humaniqueness to meet these conditions which are a necessity to them in order to "EXIST" and to "BE" as part of nature. These according to rational human thought (part of which makes us unique in our natural state) we may define through words such as "natural necessities".
Something that makes us unique is having a moral compass and the ability to use a hierarchy of reason and evidence which sets the conditions for 'truths of virtue' for example
As above, other animals also seem to exhibit moral thinking. It shouldn't be surprising, really, as far as I am concerned, at least, morality is largely a matter of group practicality.
And yes these are not always subjective but in many cases can indeed be black and white once the hierarchy of reason and evidence is applied unless of course you believe it to be virtue to hit an old lady over the head with a baseball bat for no reason at all. From this we have therefore created ideas relating to the notion of 'natural rights'.
Considering all of this and the environmental conditions that we have here on natural earth it all seems pretty natural to me. As long as there is the natural sentient human being which requires certain natural conditions in order "to exist" and "to be" there will also be that human consciousness which gives the notion of 'natural rights' a reality which in turn can also create actions and behaviors that may cater for these. As long as there is human consciousness it will continue to exist even if you can not necessarily see it. There are many things that I am not able to perceive with the naked eye or hear or even touch for example but that does not imply it does not exist. When I get hungry others may not necessarily be able to see it or feel it or hear it but I can certainly feel and perceive it. And it certainly feels real to me. I will certainly need to act on that or I will seize to be. So yes indeed natural rights are very real and existing as part of my value system stemming from my "humaniqueness" and evolution.
So what you are saying is that natural rights exist because people have real perceptions of it? I don't quite understand what you are saying.
As I am concerned, 'natural rights' exist because people demonstrably have relatively common, practical desires about how people and other animals are to be treated, and I'm willing to call that a 'natural right' I suppose.
The only natural law is Survival of the Fittest. The strong ones are the one with power and they can do whatever they want until someone stronger comes along.
Government is a construct of humanity as a form of coöperation and to settle disputes.
Depending on the type of government, a weaker person can only stand up to a stronger person because government empower the weaker person while restraining the stronger one.
Or, as George Carlin put it: " You have no rights, only temporary privileges"
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The secret to enjoyable Commander games is not winning first, but losing last.
If my post has no tags, then i posted from my phone.
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
...
I think having the resources available for near-zero starvation levels and an enormously powerful police force are what cause peace and stability. If we didn't have those things, it wouldn't be true that we could go to bed without fear of being murdered etc.
Our values are not the thing that sets Europe and the United States apart from South America (and possibly Africa, but there are greater differences in values so it's a bad example). South American values in particular are fundamentally the same as European values. If you polled South Americans on natural rights, you'd get the same range of responses as if you polled Europeans. Yet kidnappings are common and revolutions are more or less continuous in some regions. The difference is fundamentally economic.
I think that the technological advances of 15th-20th century Europe are the things that have put us in a position to have those resources available. So, yes, I think technology is the reason for our stability.
Incidentally, I don't really appreciate the tone of your response. At best, you didn't bother to read what I wrote with the aim of understanding it. At worst, you're intentionally caricaturing me. You don't have to agree with me, obviously, but if you want to have a serious conversation, at least make the effort to understand me.
Except, I can think of several recent instances in which peace and stability did not exist in which food shortages and absence of an enormously powerful police force were not the primary reasons why.
In fact, the presence of an enormously powerful police force was quite often one of the primary reasons why.
One (admittedly somewhat abstract) reading of the idea of natural rights is that they are the common thread that underlies the non-arbitrary nature of societal norms.
The notion of personal property is so close to being universal that it might as well be, though. Even in societies that don't have a penetrating property infrastructure, it is still the case that, say, tearing the clothes off of someone's back or taking the food out of someone's mouth is frowned upon.
I don't take just-so stories very seriously, but I do wonder how you arrived at this particular premise?
You seem to be setting up a very literalistic straw man of the relationship between law and natural rights. This seems like the "design fallacy" in the sense that saying that "a legal system that converges on natural rights can only be the product of people deliberately thinking about natural rights" is no different than saying something like "large primate brains can only arise by the deliberate act of a designer who wanted large primate brains."
One possibility (Hobbes): there is a kind of selection pressure on laws. If your laws are not conducive to the flourishing of your society, either the laws will change or your society will fall by the wayside. "Natural rights" refer to the maximum/maxima, if any, that are present on this fitness landscape, so on this view it is not surprising if laws tend toward natural rights.
I don't understand your basis for this assertion. Some 80 out of 200 countries are labeled (by the Freedom House organization) as "free" (meaning in this case that they have nontrivial notions of free speech and free enterprise, along with a notion of inviolate property rights). In terms of population density, India and China, accounting as they do for 2 out of 7 billion people, are really the only large holes in what amounts to an astonishingly broad agreement on basic freedoms.
This form of argumentation is just bizarre to me. Recall that if A is anterior to B, then B may or may not be informed by A but A certainly isn't informed by B, and it's your opponent's position that natural rights are anterior to the law. Therefore, pointing out to your opponents that the law fails to inform natural rights is not likely to discommode them.
As far as I can tell, the evolution of women's rights worldwide is confirmatory of a natural-rights-based position, at least one of the kind I indicated above. Whatever the state of women's rights in any given place, there is nearly universal worldwide social pressure, both internal and external, to broaden the rights afforded to women. The Islamic world, for instance, has to struggle daily to suppress and silence voices speaking in favor of women's rights.
This corresponds very nicely with a scenario involving natural law (something along the lines of "all moral creatures ought to be afforded equal moral treatment") along with selection pressure on societies to converge on that law. On the other hand, if this were a chaotic, capricious thing, would we not expect to see some kind of normal distribution, with some more-than-trivial portion of the population seeking to further reduce the rights afforded to women?
I couldn't disagree more. Natural rights have to do with the flourishing of societies. Does law impact the flourishing of society? If it does, then it necessarily has a relationship to natural rights. If one further believes that rights are anterior to law, the character of that relationship becomes somewhat clearer: the rights inform the law, not vice versa.
It seems to me that to deny that there is a relationship at all is to flatly deny natural rights. If natural rights exist, they cannot but inform the law -- after all, they make it possible to say that certain kinds of law (e.g. "it's always legal to kill anyone anywhere") are actually wrong!
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
But nowhere have I said anything to excuse Western nations of the crimes of colonialism or slavery, nor will you ever see me do so*. The challenge you are resisting is a strawman. The implicit assumption you are making is that a phenomenon can have only one cause - that to claim "prosperity is a consequence of respect for natural rights" is equivalent to claiming "prosperity is not a consequence of resource acquisition (licit or illicit)". But of course this is not the case. A phenomenon can have multiple contributing causes. So I certainly won't deny that technology and raw material wealth factor into prosperity, because that would be brainless. Nor will I deny that some Western material wealth is the spoils of condemnable acts, because that would be heartless. But these economic/historical/moral commitments in no way contradict the simple proposition I have made on this thread: that moral behavior naturally and predictably has consequences that humans find desirable, and that this causal fact is what is called a "natural right".
For that matter, I'm not even really talking about the same kind of peace, stability, and prosperity you seem to be thinking of. You're contrasting the modern West with the vastly less wealthy and advanced cultures historically victimized thereby, and yes, a comparatively large part of the difference there is best attributed to the tech and resource gap. But I am more contrasting the modern West with the less-modern West. As a consequence of Westerners' expanding notions of moral behavior, women and minorities lead far better lives and contribute more in turn to the rest of society, and war between European powers is basically unthinkable. There are not and cannot be the result of economic wealth or technology alone. It may be that wealth and technology (especially telecommunications technology) are required to set the stage for such developments, but nevertheless they can only set the stage. Whatever influence they have on a society's future must be through the human behaviors they enable, and human behaviors and their consequences are of course exactly what I'm talking about.
*Nor, for that matter, will you ever see me excuse these crimes committed by any people, because I am not a moral relativist.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
So as far as Government is concerned. I believe that Government is a natural result from the development of cultural norms, beliefs, and traditions and is established as an institution to promote this culture.
I believe that Rights are subjective social constructs created within the norms of a society in order to promote the welfare of those who are considered to have those rights.
I personally am a philosophical anarchist, but because I don't think we live in a culture that promotes love and virtue, I would not like to see a stateless society at this time.
I'm really not trying to play a "gotcha" game here, but you lost me a bit with this comment. How did Westerners violate the rights of those people if no one has any rights? (Or, alternatively, if one only has rights that which are effectively defended by a State.)
That is,
So, to be overly broad, if there's no such thing as natural rights, and if Western culture gave Westerners a justification for killing non-Westerners, then I'm not understanding what you mean by, "disregard for the rights of everyone outside of our [Western] societies." What rights?
Poor choice of wording, and I apologize, that was an extremely confusing way to put it.
Rephrase to:
Or it could be that our societies are more peaceful, stable and prosperous because we've leveraged rapid technological progress alongside a complete disregard for everyone outside of our societies to dominate the resource base of virtually the entire planet.
I didn't mean to say (though I certainly did in fact say) that I think that we're in the wrong for having trampled the rights of non-Western populations. I meant to say simply that Europeans have dominated the lands and peoples of non-Europeans. I'm not passing judgment on Europeans for doing this. I think it's the natural thing for a powerful society to do. I'm just pointing out that it did happen, and that our society is stable largely because our society is powerful and wealthy.
EDIT: And this addresses the liberal guilt concern as well. Societies have been dominating each other for longer than they could be called societies. When Europeans first established contact with New Guinea, there were hundreds of fragmented tribes, numbering from a few score to some hundreds. Genocide and claiming a neighboring tribe's land was and apparently had been for thousands of years a normal part of tribal interactions in New Guinea, though lack of any very effective weaponry limited the scope of the violence.
I don't think this is something Westerners do. I think it's something people do. If it were a purely Western phenomenon, it'd be a lot easier to call that an aberration and optimistically look across the rest of societies who don't do what Westerners do and say, "Well, we might have mucked things up, but at least here's a chance to look for the universal truth that we've defiled." But that's simply not the case. I mean, territory grabs through violence and genocide is something that chimpanzees do. The only thing that Europeans have done differently is using applied science to create weaponry capable of giving them power over the whole globe and an economic system (systems?) that allow them to sustain that power over the whole globe. It's a difference in scale, not kind.
Got a lot more to think about than time to think about it right now. I'll be back. The place I'm stalling out is in motivating a notion of 'natural rights' as having to do with the law. I don't see that natural rights have a lot to do with which societies are powerful - that a respect for natural rights has anything much to do with the success of that society. To motivate this, consider that it's fully possible that the two most powerful regimes on the planet for the last 80 years could have been Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia if Hitler had chosen not to invade Russia. I don't say would be, but it seems like an awful historical accident that societies like ours are the most powerful right now. Societies with diametrically opposed views of the individual very nearly came to dominate the world. I'm not skeptical of valuing the rights of the individual, I'm skeptical that valuing the rights of the individual has the consequence that your society will be more powerful.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
That's not the claim. The claim is that the society will be more peaceful, stable, and prosperous. Furthermore, the claim is implicitly ceteris paribus: obviously a massive totalitarian military empire will goose-step all over a small liberal state for reasons completely unrelated to their relative moral virtues. To determine causation scientifically, you have to control for all those other factors - population, industrialization, technology, natural resources. You have to compare societies that are, well, comparable.
Unfortunately this is impossible to do with full scientific rigor, because our past only affords with a small and imperfect sample pool. This is why history cannot be listed among the hard sciences, and we must always be more skeptical of historical theories than we are of, say, evolution. Nevertheless it does furnish some semblances of experiments. Foremost among them must be the divided nations that were the product of the Cold War - East and West Germany, North and South Korea. In spite of comparable starting points (because they used to be a single country), the liberal halves came to wildly outperform the communist halves in just about every measure of social success, both economic and personal. And these results, though they dismay, should not surprise, because they are predicted by game-theory models for reciprocal altruism strategies and by psychological studies of human moral thought and behavior. Together, the mathematics, the science, and the history paint a compelling picture that certain behavior patterns weigh more in a society's favor than other behavior patterns. Once again, this is obviously not a guarantee that the good guys will win; sometimes the bad guys just have more tanks. But over the long term, you can expect liberalism to succeed and grow. I have no way of falsifying this, but I suspect that in your scenario of a victorious Nazi Germany in World War II, the resulting empire would have struggled socially and economically, and eventually dissolved, collapsed, or reformed, much as actually happened to the Soviet Union and didn't happen to the United States.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
My worry is that if natural rights are whatever leads to the most peaceful, stable and prosperous society, what if it turns out that the most peaceful, stable and prosperous society is one that totally tramples the rights of the individual? It's possible, maybe even probable that it's true that a society with a treatment of rights like ours is the best (at what we've been talking about) one, but what if, say, we're a transitional stage and if you run the experiment for 50,000 years over and over, the societies that emerge as stable and peaceful and prosperous turn out to be a certain brand of authoritarian that emerges after technology develops for another hundred years or so? Does that mean that, since those societies tend to hit that point, natural rights are defined in terms of the rights you have in that society?
By the way, consider Singapore. They still practice caning and the like. Their justification - in a quote which I have been vainly searching for today - is along the lines of, "You Westerners consider the individual to be critical, but we see the society as critical. You see an infringement of one person's rights, while we see their infringement on society's rights." I don't know how to compare that approach to rights to ours; I've debated this for many hours with a Singaporean friend of mine (an older woman who lived in the United States for about 10 years through I think her late 30s into her 40s), and she certainly maintains that Singapore is more stable and peaceful than the US. If it's true, well, where does that leave us? You don't have a natural right to not be caned for minor offenses?
I know you couldn't find the exact quote, so I may be attacking a straw man here -- but how, exactly, is this quote supposed to provide a justification for caning?
In order to get from here to caning, an additional proposition is required -- something like "beating criminals until they are crippled and disfigured is good for society." It is that statement that must be argued for in order to justify caning -- and best of luck with that.
This quote seems to miss the mark in another way as well. You could argue that all forms of punishment based on individual deterrence infringe on individual rights. Yet we do practice those kinds of punishments in the West -- we just stop short of regarding brutal disfigurement as an acceptable form of deterrence. So the argument that we over-elevate the individual falls flat in the first place, even though it would fail to justify caning even if true.
What would be the basis for this assertion?
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
With that said, remember that all I'm trying to establish is the plausibility - even if unlikely - that it could turn out that the societal approach to natural rights that results in the highest stability, peace and prosperity in the long run (slight tangent, our society hasn't existed "in the long run", and the fact is we're looking at a relatively small historical slice. If we were having this debate 2000 years earlier, we'd be talking about the Roman Imperial system as the most prosperous and stable system, and it's possible that 2000 years ago people will looking back at us in much the same light) is one that we'd consider anathema.
It isn't. I argued vehemently against caning then and I would again now. But I don't have a good way of demonstrating that caning results in a less stable or prosperous society or even that it doesn't result in a MORE stable, peaceful and prosperous society - the best I can do is arguing that I would rather live in a society that doesn't practice caning, and the only argument that I've got that I wouldn't want to live there is that it seems like a human rights violation to me even if it does lead to a more prosperous society. Certainly Singapore is a fairly peaceful, stable and prosperous society, but equally certainly, the causalities are extremely complicated, and it's fully possible that caning is working against those things, and it'd be even more peaceful, stable and prosperous without them. It's difficult to demonstrate and I haven't got any good way of doing it.
It's important to stress, by the way, that I'm not saying Singapore is a massive human rights violator. They take things further than I'd like and I suppose that means I do think they're an abuser. But they don't try to stamp out any individual rights entirely on principle, it's more of a "You have whatever rights don't get in the way of our social system" approach.
The point of the quote isn't, "Caning is good", it's, "There is at least the possibility that very different ways of looking at the whole question of human rights which also result in peaceful, stable and prosperous societies." I DON'T agree with her on which is better, it's just that you arrive at a position where it's reasonably debatable with a state that gives little consideration to human rights.
It's also not a proof, it's a worry. If the things we value under the name of 'rights' turn out not to be the things that correspond causally with peace, stability, and prosperity, what happens? And how can we lay that concern to rest?
As I said, it's plausible that our approach (or further refinements to it) result in maximal peace, order and prosperity. What if some very different approach does? Is there a reason why it is impossible or seriously implausible that the optimal (on those 3 axes) society would give no thought at all to natural rights?
She was rather horrified at the volume of crime and especially violent crime in the US, which is of course objectively verifiable ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate has the US sitting at about 15 times the per capita homicides as Singapore), but is also of course subject to an enormous number of considerations. There was also an element of horror at the disrespect or lack of consideration given to fellow citizens regarding holding doors and the like, which is of course purely a matter of perspective and which frankly I don't (and didn't) view as evidence of anything at all.
Which, incidentally, leads to a question - how do we define peaceful, stable and prosperous?
I hope you're awere those things are different subjects and shouldn't be treated as single one.
Peaceful
* Lower number of non natural, non accidental deaths.
Stable
* GDP with lower short-term fluctuations (Product Stability).
* Lower Inflation (Monetary Stability).
* Lower fluctiotions in the exchange rates in case of floating exchange systems or trade balance in case of fixed enchange systens (Commercial Stability)
* Greater periods of time without a revolution (Political Stability)
Prosperous
* Greater GDP per capita (for the avarage prosperity)
* You can take in account Gini or other form of Inequity Index if you want to build a distribution of wealth instead of just looking at the avarage number.
Cingapura is a more peaceful and prosperous country. I don't have data on stability though...
BGU Control
R Aggro
Standard - For Fun
BG Auras
I'm perfectly aware of it. If you read back a bit, you'll see that I'm tackling someone else's proposal.
Incidentally, I was a bit surprised that this thread died after my last post. I'd like to answer my own question:
I wrote:
Suppose that in 200 years, a culture has come about leveraging yet-unknown science to create a perfectly peaceful, stable, prosperous society. This society depends on making nearly all of the population slaves to a handful of controllers, using brain controlling technology to make people literally incapable of conceiving of doing other than what the controllers want them to do, and other planning technologies to plan out a society such that as long as people follow the rules exactly, peace, stability and prosperity are maximized.
I would suggest that we'd still consider this society abhorrent, and would still value things like freedom of speech and of religion, even if it turned out that they did not lead to maximal peace, stability and prosperity. That is, I don't think our notion of natural rights is consequentialist. I think we value them regardless of what the law says and regardless of what other good things they turn out to maximize.
Which is the argument I was making up front - the law came about in a variety of ways, many of which presumably have nothing whatsoever to do with natural rights. We want to change the law (and have been changing the law) to align with our notion of natural rights, however it originally came about.
Completely random tangent: why 'Cingapura'? This has no bearing on how I view your arguments, I'm just curious because I haven't come across that before.
I find these kinds of arguments specious. If I asked you to consider the function f(x)=-x^2 and to assume that its maximum value is 3, then you'd be wise to reject my hypothesis because I've simply asked you to assume a contradiction.
The same thing is going on here. You could ask us to assume any society is optimal -- your argument that one might still find the society abhorrent in spite of its optimality carries no force unless the putative society actually is optimal. Thus, I think you need to provide an argument for the optimality of this society.
For my part, I can immediately think of some reasons to suspect that this society is not optimal.
As concerns peace, complete sublimation of the will is basically the ultimate force, subsuming as it does all other kinds of force -- and since the society in question operates through constant sublimation of the will of its members, it is maintained by constant internal application of force and therefore is not peaceful.
As concerns stability, I am not sure what to think. On one hand, the people are zombies so there's no real chance of that sort of revolt. On the other hand, there is nothing here that suggests that the controllers of the society aren't as prone to infighting as any other body, and given their ability to sublimate wills, they can use the population as pawns in their conflict. Verdict: no more inherently stable than any other society, I'd say.
As concerns prosperity, I bet the GDP per capita of this society is insane, considering that it consists of zombies that need only be provided for at the subsistence level and will work until it becomes biologically impossible. But who benefits from that prosperity? Not the zombie portion of the populace, that's for sure. Their inequality index would basically be pinned to the absolute maximum, in perpetuity.
And a fourth heuristic: the sniff test. Would you voluntarily abandon your current society and join this one, given a choice? I consider myself a somewhat rational agent and I'm all about peace, stability, and prosperity -- but I sure as hell wouldn't make this switch.
I offer a different hypothesis -- the society you've described is transparently not optimal. We regard it as abhorrent because it is abhorrent.
Let me be clear -- I know your point extends beyond this one truly unfortunate example, which does not support it -- and I accept the idea that the constitution of the best possible society is far from a known quantity. For my part, I say only that there is evidence and argumentation that bears on the problem, and that evidence and those arguments begin to point in the direction of respect for natural rights, rather than the opposite.
The United States may have a thing or two to learn from Singapore. I've never been to Singapore and I doubt if I ever will be until their society makes some changes (because I don't want to be beaten, crippled, and disfigured for a minor crime) so I don't know. But whatever Singapore has on the United States, caning sure as hell ain't it.
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
To explain the prior example a bit - the prior example is transparently abhorrent and that's the point. The mistake I made in writing it was in failing to specify an exact definition of peace, prosperity and stability, for which I had in mind something like: elimination of violence, generally high standard of living measured in lifespan and material wealth, and the ability to rely on the regime as something that would continue on while guaranteeing you stability in your own personal life. Further, I failed to point out the main purpose of the exercise (and I grant that this is a suggestion and not an argument, of course) - I strongly suspect that whatever set of benefits you explicate in advance for a society to be good at, you will face a similar problem - some abhorrent society will turn out to be better at it than the one that we want to recognize as obeying 'natural rights', unless of course you explicate a definition of 'success' that lines up almost exactly with where we are (or potentially, where you think we should go).
And further, as I said, I don't think this is a problem. I think we'd choose our vision of 'rights' over a fascist or otherwise authoritarian, thought policing regime even if we knew it would lead to our inevitable destruction (or at least we'd want to flatter ourselves that we would; we might choose to let the things we've picked out as 'rights' go in order to save ourselves, but we would view it as tragic) due to whatever contrived example.
In short, I think that the plausibility on the face of it that 'natural rights' are 'the things that make successful societies successful, on average' depends on leaving 'successful society' as undefined, so that we can fill in the blanks of 'successful' as 'similar to our own, or further along the same lines of development'. Other definitions of success - such as the success that would be achieved if a fascist regime successfully conquered most of the planet, or heck, for that matter, the success currently being enjoyed by China at the cost of some rather extreme human rights violations - don't count, for one reason or another. I think we'll come up with as many reasons why they don't count as there are noteworthy regimes to set aside, because I think the goal is to ensure by argumentation that something we already believe anyway - that certain rights are important - also turn out to correlate with the 'important' version of success.
Also, I think ^ that's a lot more words than I should've written, given that it doesn't really even contain much of an argument. Need to work on conciseness at some point.
The veil of ignorance concept is interesting enough reading but not quite right for this particular situation, I think. The society described is abhorrent even if you can specify in advance that you get to be a controller.
No, I follow the structure of your argument, or at least I think I do. You are alleging a kind of question-begging in our judgment of abhorrence -- that we'd abhor a rightless society even if it were peaceful, prosperous, and stable.
You are attempting to prove this by offering an example. In order to meet this standard of proof, you'd have to give an example of a society that is rightless while also being maximally peaceful, prosperous, and stable, and then get us to judge that society as abhorrent.
Unfortunately, the example you have given does not meet the standard. It is rightless and we do judge it to be abhorrent, but examination of your description shows that it is not maximally peaceful or prosperous; see my last post for arguments. (I grant that you could argue for stability, but it would be controversial.)
You have asked us to assume that your proposed society is maximally peaceful and prosperous, but that is a fallacy because you are merely asking us to assume a contradiction. The argument you have offered thus far on this particular matter is therefore unsound.
I'll surely grant you that whatever is regarded as 'successful' depends on the definition of success. However, I deny the assertion that we simply define 'success' to be 'just like us,' or 'freedom,' or any other circular construction.
I think that we define peace, prosperity, stability and so forth not in any strange or circular or question-begging way, but rather in accordance with the plain meaning of words -- and we derive the association between those things and natural rights by examination of evidence (compare free and unfree societies) and argumentation (read Kant, Hobbes, et al.)
In other words, you've got the ontology exactly backwards. The protection of natural rights follows from -- or, if you like, is a necessary condition of -- peace and prosperity in society.
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
Defining the terms isn't as straightforward or commonsensical as you're making it sound.
For example, italofoca offered this first cut definition, which seems reasonable on the face of it to me:
My example doesn't run into straightforward, instantly obvious problems with these definitions. It does ask you to assume a few things - e.g. that a technological solution to resource distribution that performs better than a free market is possible, given extreme advances in computing.
It's clear that you're not operating under these definitions ("As concerns peace, complete sublimation of the will is basically the ultimate force" does not obviously follow from that definition).
So there's at least more to be said about the definitions, if it matters, unless there's some good reason up front to reject that kind of definition of the terms (I don't see one).
This is a productive phrasing of the issue.
You seem to be arguing either that natural rights are those things which, if a society is peaceful and prosperous, it will tend to protect, or that natural rights are the things which if a society protects them, it will tend to be more peaceful and prosperous. Or, based on the fairly strong language in that quote, that a society is defined as peaceful and prosperous insofar as it succeeds at protecting natural rights, possibly?
Well, I don't intend to make it sound as though defining the terms is necessarily straightforward or simple. In fact, I myself find italofoca's definitions to be quite bad on the whole, mostly because of correlation-causation fallacies.
Qatar, the nation with the highest GDP per capita on Earth, has that GDP per capita because an accident of geography has placed it on top of an absurd quantity of an insanely valuable resource that is in high demand. They could be running a gulag over there (I know they aren't) and still show high in the standings.
It does. As I argued above, the inequality index of your society is permanently pegged to the maximum because the zombie class, which is (presumably?) the great majority of your society, neither possesses nor desires anything beyond subsistence.
In fairness to myself, that definition is atrocious. Peace means people not dying? Under that definition, the society of the gods of Olympus is maximally peaceful because they happen to be immortal.
Here I am asserting a certain property of peacefulness, namely that peacefulness varies inversely as the amount of force (physical or otherwise) that is applied to or by members of society in the course of its operation. The more force that is applied to you or by you as you go about your life, the less peaceful your society is.
I am not articulating a definition, I am explaining the ontological structure of the arguments of proponents of natural-rights-based viewpoints -- which is that the natural rights follow inexorably as a result of any attempt to construct a (prosperous/stable/peaceful/etc.) society. (I am curious if you have read The Leviathan by Hobbes? It's available free online...)
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
I'm familiar with Leviathan but have not made a careful study of it, and it has admittedly been years.
I didn't ask for a definition of natural rights, just a clarification of the position. And you've given it: Natural rights are the things that follow as a result of an attempt to construct a 'psp*' society.
* tired of typing out prosperous/stable/peaceful 10 times a response. Take it as given.
Which leaves us pretty well back where we started. We can try to specify exactly what society we're going to try to build. It's not a maximally wealthy society, a maximally powerful society, etc. It's a particular set of societal ideals which can't be taken as a given as what it means to build society, since demonstrably societies have been built that don't aim at it.
Note the intentionality in there. We intend to build this society. Natural rights could be the things that automatically fall out of the attempt to build that society, but I don't think that's what's generally meant, at least nowadays.
We hold certain values - for example, freedom of speech, of religion, and freedom from physical oppression (in most but not quite all cases, for each of those).
If we specify our goals for the society that we're building, if it turns out to be inconsistent with one of these values, we'll adjust the society rather than give up the value. Perhaps even more to the point, many of these values will be part of the specification of the society that we want to build - we want to build a free society. We want to build a peaceful society, meaning free from use of force insofar as possible. We set out to build a peaceful (by your - quite good, by the way - definition) society because freedom from most violence is something we already hold as a right.
So, I have the reverse ontology not by accident, but because I think that the position you've advocated is backwards. We specify the society that we want to have, then we set about building that society, adjusting the details of the society to fit our prior notion of rights as needed. We take the rights as a given and fit the society to it.
About Qatar, your comment made zero sense. They could have been using sticks and stones, but they still have the highest share of the global product per citizen, meaning they might not produce the best technology but they can certainly buy it. In the average, the Qatar citizen is the richest in the world as long as oil and natural gas is tradeble.
About peace, "force" is a pretty bad start to measure it. A society that uses a lot of force to contain criminals and external enemies and is succesful in doing so could be more violent then one that lets crimes happen against its citizens. Peace is not the absense of force, its the absence of violent conflict. And force plays a whole in eliminating and preventing conflicts.
BGU Control
R Aggro
Standard - For Fun
BG Auras
Something that makes us unique is having a moral compass and the ability to use a hierarchy of reason and evidence which sets the conditions for 'truths of virtue' for example. And yes these are not always subjective but in many cases can indeed be black and white once the hierarchy of reason and evidence is applied unless of course you believe it to be virtue to hit an old lady over the head with a baseball bat for no reason at all. From this we have therefore created ideas relating to the notion of 'natural rights'.
Considering all of this and the environmental conditions that we have here on natural earth it all seems pretty natural to me. As long as there is the natural sentient human being which requires certain natural conditions in order "to exist" and "to be" there will also be that human consciousness which gives the notion of 'natural rights' a reality which in turn can also create actions and behaviors that may cater for these. As long as there is human consciousness it will continue to exist even if you can not necessarily see it. There are many things that I am not able to perceive with the naked eye or hear or even touch for example but that does not imply it does not exist. When I get hungry others may not necessarily be able to see it or feel it or hear it but I can certainly feel and perceive it. And it certainly feels real to me. I will certainly need to act on that or I will seize to be. So yes indeed natural rights are very real and existing as part of my value system stemming from my "humaniqueness" and evolution.
And when we then consider that it was some higher energy that created all that is including man.... and it was man that created the idea of government .... well it was also man himself that created the idea of natural rights as government is also just an idea. Did government which is just an idea or fiction in our mind create such ideas? No. Governments as an entity and idea was created by our minds as was the idea of natural rights or for that matter even rights. It stems from our humaniqueness and natural tendencies as part of being human. However natural rights for eg are in harmony with nature whereas government and many of its associated rights for eg. and its associated behaviors and actions are destructive to nature as has been evident throughout history. Also note that man is corruptible within a given environmental setting and certain conditions which is also reflected by many of today's epic failures and in numerous behaviors displayed by governments and centralized power structures.
First of all, nothing differentiates humans from animals- humans are animals. Simple scientific fact for you.
Secondly, creativity, personality and moral judgement are all suggested to be characteristics shared with other animals, simply by looking at their behaviour, abstract thinking is harder to judge, but there's no reason to assume other animals don't have it.
Humans seem to be more sophisticated in many mental processes, but even then this is not proven and indeed may be impossible to prove without actually being able to get inside their heads.
As above, other animals also seem to exhibit moral thinking. It shouldn't be surprising, really, as far as I am concerned, at least, morality is largely a matter of group practicality.
So what you are saying is that natural rights exist because people have real perceptions of it? I don't quite understand what you are saying.
As I am concerned, 'natural rights' exist because people demonstrably have relatively common, practical desires about how people and other animals are to be treated, and I'm willing to call that a 'natural right' I suppose.
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
FATE of ALARA: Multicolour factions (currently on hiatus)
Contibutor to the Pyrulea community set
I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice
Government is a construct of humanity as a form of coöperation and to settle disputes.
Depending on the type of government, a weaker person can only stand up to a stronger person because government empower the weaker person while restraining the stronger one.
Or, as George Carlin put it: " You have no rights, only temporary privileges"
If my post has no tags, then i posted from my phone.