Do murderers have a right to life?

The following post continues a discussion that began as an offshoot from the General Forum thread, "The Ayn Rand Institute vs. John McCaskey." I am replying to Ed Thompson's post #108 from that thread and am duplicating my last post #109, so that Ed can reply to it here.

Ed wrote,

Because the right to life doesn't originate with/from chosen actions, it also doesn't end with/from chosen actions.

Well, the right not to be forced doesn't originate with chosen actions, but it does end with chosen actions. So long as I don't initiate force against others, I have a right not to be forced by others, but if I do initiate force against others, then I lose the right not to be forced by others.

My yes to #1 would be a "no" if, instead of using the word "kill", you had used the word "murder."

Well, #1 asks: "1. Do you agree with the statement, 'A person has a right not to be killed unless he's a murderer.'" It wouldn't make any sense to use the word "murder" in place of "kill," because it's impossible to "murder" a murderer. "Murder" refers to an initiation of force, not to retaliatory force.

The proper negative-sense conception of the "right to life" is the right not to be murdered.

It's true that the right to life implies the right not to be murdered; it also implies the right not to be killed, which is why murderers don't have a right to life.

Kill is a poor word choice here because it includes conflating cases like vicious animal attacks as well as lawful executions (along with murder).

Well, we're not talking about being killed by an animal; we're talking about being killed by human beings. The reason an execution doesn't violate a murderer's right to life, whereas a murder violates an innocent person's right to life is that the murderer doesn't have a right to life, whereas an innocent person does. I know you disagree with this, so let me ask you a slightly different question:

Do you agree with the statement, "If I have a right to something, then it is wrong for others to deprive me of it against my will"?

Yes or no?

(Edited by William Dwyer on 3/02, 12:46pm)

Post 1

Wednesday, March 2, 2011 - 4:48pm

Bill,

So long as I don't initiate force against others, I have a right not to be forced by others, but if I do initiate force against others, then I lose the right not to be forced by others.

Another way to say this, equally reasonable if not more so, is that you never actually had a right to initiate force in the first place. Not ever having had the right in the first place, it is not a violation of your self-same right to retaliate with force against you. It's fun to go 'round & 'round like this (I could do this with you for hours) -- but I feel we may be reaching a point where we should agree to disagree on the fundamental nature of individual rights.

It wouldn't make any sense to use the word "murder" in place of "kill," because it's impossible to "murder" a murderer.

That's my point! The only way to get to a murder is to violate individual rights. This is not the only way that people get killed however. I gave two examples of a person's life being forcibly ended without the violation of their individual rights (animal attacks and judicious executions).

It's true that the right to life implies the right not to be murdered; it also implies the right not to be killed, which is why murderers don't have a right to life.

See above. I'm curious to get your take on something, Bill. When animals kill people, are they violating their victims' individual rights?

Do you agree with the statement, "If I have a right to something, then it is wrong for others to deprive me of it against my will"?

Yes or no?

Yes.

Ed

Post 2

Wednesday, March 2, 2011 - 6:34pm

Ed,

You asked,

I'm curious to get your take on something, Bill. When animals kill people, are they violating their victims' individual rights?

No, because only a human being can violate individual rights. Individual rights are a principle, and since animals cannot act on the basis of principles -- since they cannot choose to follow them -- they cannot choose to violate them.

I asked, "Do you agree with the statement, 'If I have a right to something, then it is wrong for others to deprive me of it against my will'?"

You answered: Yes.

So you agree that if I have a right to my life, then it's wrong for others to deprive me of it against my will. In that case, it follows by the law of modus tollens that if it's not wrong for others to deprive me of my life against my will, then I don't have a right to it.

(R --> W) --> (~W --> ~R)

Therefore, since it's not wrong to deprive a murderer of his life against his will, it follows that he does not have a right to it. Q.E.D.

Post 3

Wednesday, March 2, 2011 - 7:30pm

Bill,

I'm curious to get your take on something, Bill. When animals kill people, are they violating their victims' individual rights?
No, because only a human being can violate individual rights. Individual rights are a principle, and since animals cannot act on the basis of principles -- since they cannot choose to follow them -- they cannot choose to violate them.

This is a clue that I may be right. If the issue isn't whether you die or not, but of what principles were behind your death -- then it is possible that my rights paradigm is the correct one (because it heavily involves principle, even more so than your paradigm does).

So you agree that if I have a right to my life, then it's wrong for others to deprive me of it against my will. In that case, it follows by the law of modus tollens that if it's not wrong for others to deprive me of my life against my will, then I don't have a right to it.

(R --> W) --> (~W --> ~R)

Therefore, since it's not wrong to deprive a murderer of his life against his will, it follows that he does not have a right to it.

But you don't have the right to any kind of a life. You couldn't, for instance, murder folks -- and then claim that your right to a reasonable, rights-respecting life protects you from punishment. Instead, it only protects you from aggression. When you said that if it's not wrong to take your life, then you don't have a right to life -- you were dropping the context. The fallacy you were making is the fallacy of equivocation. You were equivocating between a rights-respecting life and a murderous one.

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 3/02, 7:33pm)

Post 4

Wednesday, March 2, 2011 - 10:49pm

Ed replied,

When you said that if it's not wrong to take your life, then you don't have a right to life -- you were dropping the context. The fallacy you were making is the fallacy of equivocation. You were equivocating between a rights-respecting life and a murderous one.

Why do you say that? Recall that I also said, "[S]ince it's not wrong to deprive a murderer of his life against his will, it follows that he does not have a right to it." I was clearly referring to his life -- to the life of the murderer (i.e., to a murderous life); I was not referring to the life of an innocent man or to a rights-respecting life. There was no equivocation. In other words, having committed murder, he does not have a right to continue living. He lost that right when he committed murder. Or, as Nathaniel Branden wrote, over 48 years ago, "no man may take the life of another and still retain the right to his own." (The Objectivist Newsletter, January 1963)

Post 5

Wednesday, March 2, 2011 - 11:28pm

Bill,

Why do you say that?

It was when you said this:

... if I have a right to my life, then it's wrong for others to deprive me of it against my will ...

... if it's not wrong for others to deprive me of my life against my will, then I don't have a right to it.

The subject matter is tagged in the first sentence as "my life" -- which we can presume (and I did presume) is, for the most part, non-criminal (at the least, non-murderous). The equivocation occurs when you switch from "your life" to a murderer's. A murderer is someone who has a right to life (just like you do), but it's not wrong to kill him.

The right to life has a sphere of function extending only out to the boundary of the rights of others -- not any farther than that. Past that boundary, a right to life -- while intact -- does not protect you from retaliation (for the same reason that any limited, contextual thing doesn't always protect you from everything).

Trouble is, you aren't thinking of rights as limited and contextual (like I do) -- you are thinking of them as "supra-contextual" absolutes. You are thinking of rights like they are licenses or something.

Or, as Nathaniel Branden wrote, over 48 years ago, "no man may take the life of another and still retain the right to his own." (The Objectivist Newsletter, January 1963)

Well, 48 years ago, Nathaniel Branden must have thought of rights as supra-contextual absolutes -- as licenses.

Ed

Post 6

Thursday, March 3, 2011 - 9:11am

In post 96 of the ARI v. McCaskey thread I wrote:

Rights have a function and this function does not include the mitigation of justice. When rights are thought of as floating abstractions (stolen concepts), then they would include the mitigation of justice -- which leads us to two reactions:

1) assume that rights -- normally conceptualized as metaphysical -- can come and go, based on actions
2) check our premises

And therein lies much trouble for the "Dwyer/Branden" paradigm of rights. If rights were so powerful that, if intact, they would protect murderers from justice -- then rights have got to go (it has to be possible for you to somehow get separated from your rights). In this paradigm, they must be conceptualized as being surrendered by the murderer's actions. But can we integrate that with our larger body of knowledge wherein rights are conceptualized as metaphysical?

My answer is no.

In ITOE (p 111), Peikoff wrote:

Further, metaphysical facts are unalterable by man, and limit the alternatives open to his choice.

So, taking it as true that man can't alter metaphysical facts, and that rights are metaphysical facts -- how do we go ahead and conceptualize that man can surrender his rights (by murder)? My answer is that we cannot. We cannot proceed on that intellectual path because we cannot integrate it without contradiction. As an alternative, I offer the insight that rights don't protect against everything in the first place (such as animal attacks and the implementation of justice).

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 3/03, 9:15am)

Post 7

Thursday, March 3, 2011 - 9:21am

Ed,

You wrote, "A murderer is someone who has a right to life (just like you do), but it's not wrong to kill him." This turns the concept of rights on its head. What it means to say that someone has a right to something is that others are obligated to respect it (i.e., not to interfere with its exercise). If they are not so obligated, then it makes no sense to say that the person has a "right" to it.

In a previous post, I asked, "Do you agree with the statement, 'If I have a right to something, then it is wrong for others to deprive me of it against my will'?"

You answered: Yes.

Suppose I had said, ""Do you agree with the statement, 'If someone has a right to something, then it is wrong for others to deprive him of it against his will'?" What would be your answer?

Also, what you refer to as the "Dwyer/Branden paradigm of rights" is also one that Rand subscribed to, since she endorsed the articles by Branden that were published in her newsletter.

(Edited by William Dwyer on 3/03, 9:55am)

Post 8

Thursday, March 3, 2011 - 10:27am

Bill,

This is funny!

Ed,

In a previous post, I asked, "Do you agree with the statement, 'If I have a right to something, then it is wrong for others to deprive me of it against my will'?"

You answered: Yes.

But I didn't answer "yes" immediately and directly. Instead, I did a fair amount of explanation first, involving the difference between murder and killing, and the notion of begging-the-question and equivocation, wherein you agree with a questioner, but not with his ulterior reasoning -- an agreement which is "superficial" or potentially irrelevant to the issue at hand. Explanation which didn't take hold in your mind (hence your amusement).

Suppose I had said, ""Do you agree with the statement, 'If someone has a right to something, then it is wrong for others to deprive him of it against his will'?" What would be your answer?

Well, now that I know that using a little explanation first probably won't work (if last time is any indication), my answer will start out with an awful lot of explanation first:

The first part of your question is ripe for use in an equivocation. You start by making a general statement, then the general statement is applied to a specific instance where it does not actually take hold (but is assumed to), and then you convince your interlocuter that it does (or tell him that it is wrong to analyze or question the methodology of your question itself). Because it can be hard to understand what I'm saying, I'll give you a concrete example:

Do you agree with the statement, "If someone has lost something, then it is good for others, having found it, to give it back to him"?

And, after getting your intellectual adversary to agree with this initial point first (based on the logic of it), you then go on to introduce peculiar facts into the rule, say, about a terrorist who lost his bomb detonator. Since I agreed that if you find something initially lost, you should give it back, I apparently agree -- by extension -- that you should give a lost bomb detonator back to a terrorist (which is nonsense).

So, going back to the original question, and including this background reasoning which shows that even if I agree with the question -- that I still won't make the same additional assumptions as you, leading to the entailment of something derived from the original question, here is my answer:

I agree with the statement, in general, that if someone has a right to something, then it is wrong for others to deprive him of it against his will. But I, having a different initial paradigm of individual rights, do not think that criminals -- no, do not think that any human -- ever had a right to escape justice in the first place (i.e., that rights are more powerful than, or "trump", justice). I do not think that rights are things which, if possessed, would protect criminals from a just punishment.

Ed
(Edited by Ed Thompson on 3/03, 10:30am)

Post 9

Thursday, March 3, 2011 - 10:52am

Bill,

We cross-posted. Actually, you made edits to your post while I was in the process of responding. In the new, edited version, you bring up a point about killing (criminal) folks who have a right to life -- and this part was addressed in my response above. You also had something new to add which was not addressed:

Also, what you refer to as the "Dwyer/Branden paradigm of rights" is also one that Rand subscribed to, since she endorsed the articles by Branden that were published in her newsletter.

Okay, but it wouldn't matter how many or what kind of names you put behind the paradigm against which I here argue. It wouldn't change the fact of the contradiction I discovered and published in post 96 of the ARI v. McCaskey thread. To say it does, to say that it changes the fact of the found contradiction -- would be the fallacy of the Appeal to Authority.

Ed

Post 10

Thursday, March 3, 2011 - 11:09am

Ed,

No, of course, I'm NOT saying that you are wrong because you disagree with Rand on this issue. That certainly would be an appeal to authority, but this is an Objectivist forum, so those of us who support the philosophy presumably do value Rand's views on these issues, even if, in the final analysis, we don't agree with her.

Also, I don't think that rights are a metaphysical concept, but an ethical/political one. Citing Rand, once again, "A 'right' is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context." I happen to agree with her. The concept of rights bridges the gap between ethics and politics. It does not belong in the first branch of philosophy -- metaphysics.

Also what about my point that "what it means to say that someone has a right to something is that others are obligated to respect it (i.e., not to interfere with its exercise). If they are not so obligated, then it makes no sense to say that the person has a "right" to it."?

(Edited by William Dwyer on 3/03, 11:17am)

Post 11

Thursday, March 3, 2011 - 2:16pm

Bill, Ed,

Bill wrote, "...I don't think that rights are a metaphysical concept, but an ethical/political one. Citing Rand, once again, "A 'right' is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context." I happen to agree with her. The concept of rights bridges the gap between ethics and politics. It does not belong in the first branch of philosophy -- metaphysics."

I think that Bill and Ed are both right on this, but in different ways. Individual rights arise out of human nature and those conditions our survival requires - those constitute the foundation upon which the concept of individual rights is based. And those ARE metaphysical. Humans, by their nature, have the capacity to choose, which is a metaphysical fact and one that is a logical precursor to having a morality, or rights. We take that fact and build it into our ethical systems and then create political systems and laws from it: "Did the defendant act of his own free will?" "Did the defendant voluntarily enter into this agreement?" Implying that the defendant is a human, that humans normally have choice, that choice is a crucial aspect of legal justice, that choice should be recognized by the law if the law is to be ethical.

There is a hierarchy here that is contained in the concept of rights - just as the concept of theft could not be understood without the contained concept of property, one could not understand individual rights without understanding those aspects of human nature.

But Bill is correct that rights are ethical/political principles. They are so because of what they describe (the context or area in which they are the descriptors - as the law of gravity is a descriptor that lives within physics). They are ethical/political in their conceptual application - for example, we apply them to instances of alleged ethical transgression - that is we take the general principle and apply it to a concrete instance. And they are ethical/political in their purpose - we use them to constrain actions politically (using statutes) according to ethical principles so that we can live among one another in a way that best permits us to flourish as individual humans.

There must be a choice involved in order to be a moral issue and there must be a choice made in any instance where a right is exercised or violated. And the choice made is the basis for the any ethical or political judgment that is applied against the standard of individual rights. This hierarchically inseparable flow of logic from the metaphysical base of our nature out through ethics to politics to law is what prevents us from working out of some foolish floating abstraction, or a mish-mash of ill-defined standards that don't logically connect life-choice-right.

Here is where this hierarchical nature is so critical to this argument: Rights must have this metaphysical base to make them unchanging and universal - if approached in a different fashion we would end up with some form of relativism. But they only apply in a ethical/political context where individual choices are made and they contain the understanding that although no one can take them away, a person can, by their criminal choice, give up some portion of their rights. Notice that humanity doesn't get changed by the actions of one person. The murder doesn't destroy rights at the metaphysical level because all that exists at the level is our nature as being capable of choice.

I don't see killing a murder or locking up a criminal as violating the metaphysical base at all. The metaphysical part is the nature of man (who has choice) and we cannot change that by our actions. And the man-made, hence not metaphysical part, is the choice the individual makes in a given instance.
------------

When we discuss the metaphysical or the ethical we are discussing abstractions that we will attempt to apply as principles that are hopefully universal. When we talk about a specific person taking a specific action at a specific time we are talking about concretes and we hold them up to the universal standards - sometimes there is a confusion people have where they don't hold these separate enough.

Post 12

Thursday, March 3, 2011 - 3:42pm

Steve,

You wrote,

Rights must have this metaphysical base to make them unchanging and universal - if approached in a different fashion we would end up with some form of relativism.

Of course, rights have a metaphysical base, but so does every other hierarchical concept, since metaphysics underlies the other branches of philosophy. Unfortunately, that's not what Ed means when he says that rights are "metaphysical." He means that you don't forfeit or lose them, no matter what you do -- that a murderer retains the right to his life, the right to continue living, even though we have the right to kill him. As I've already indicated, this makes no sense, because to say that someone has a right means that others ought to respect it -- that they are morally obligated to abstain from interfering with its exercise. In that respect, a right is simply a moral principle dictating how people should behave towards one another; it is not an existent that resides inextricably within every individual, like the heart or lungs.

I agree that rights are unchanging and universal within the relevant context, but they are clearly contextual; they exist in some circumstances; not in others. Criminals and murderers don't have the same rights to freedom of action as non-criminals do. In that respect, rights are no different from other moral principles. Take the principle of honesty. There are some circumstances in which dishonesty is morally justified, even mandatory, and other cases in which it is morally prohibited. The same is true of rights. There are some situations in which a person possesses them, and other situations in which he does not. He continues to possess them if he respects the rights of others, but not if he violates those rights.

Post 13

Thursday, March 3, 2011 - 4:51pm

Bill,

I agree with everything you wrote.

The metaphysical part of rights are just the base.
Everything has a metaphysical base (but you can see that pointing out what it is in the case of rights is helpful)
I agree that is not what Ed has been saying and I hope that he will see this and join with Rand/Branden/Dwyer/Wolfer view (not as bowing to authority but because that formulation has a great deal of value, is more logical and free of contradiction)
We agree that rights are universal and unchanging in the right context (as that which we all start with by virtue of being human)
That there are acts a person can choose to commit that will reduce in some fashion their rights (without taking away anyone else's right or change the nature of rights or imply that any change has occurred at a metaphysical level)
As you said, "He [man] continues to possess them [rights] if he respects the rights of others, but not if he violates those rights."

Post 14

Thursday, March 3, 2011 - 5:42pm

Bill,

Also, I don't think that rights are a metaphysical concept, but an ethical/political one.

Okay, but Rand might disagree. Speaking in 1972, after decades of thought on the matter of individual rights, Rand was asked about what is imperfect with regard to the Declaration of Independence:

There is, however, one minor fault on the level of fundamentals: the idea that men are endowed with rights by their Creator rather than by Nature. (1)

What is important and relevant from that is that Rand thought that the rights of man "come from" nature. Another way to say this is that the rights of man are not man-made. Still another way to say this is that the rights of man are metaphysical facts.

Citing Rand, once again, "A 'right' is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context." I happen to agree with her.

Me, too. You agree with what she said in the early 1960's about rights; and I agree with what she said in the early 1970's about rights (when it became clear she was a bona fide 'natural rights' theorist).

It does not belong in the first branch of philosophy -- metaphysics.

This may be irrelevant. Many things not man-made (many metaphysical things) don't belong in the first branch of philosophy -- metaphysics. This doesn't mean that they aren't true in virtue of being metaphysical (because they are), it only means that appropriate mental categorization of those things falls into another category.

For instance, the validity of the senses, a metaphysical fact, does not belong in metaphysics, but in epistemology. Other facts are like this, too. In fact, if -- in order for a fact to be metaphysical in the first place -- if all facts had to be in the categorized into metaphysics in order to be metaphysical facts, then that branch of philosophy would be very, very large!

Also what about my point that "what it means to say that someone has a right to something is that others are obligated to respect it (i.e., not to interfere with its exercise). If they are not so obligated, then it makes no sense to say that the person has a "right" to it."?

Okay, let's take a concrete case because the issue is so easy to misunderstand. Let's take a dude in prison for rape. This dude appears to have lost some of his right to freedom -- otherwise he would not be in jail (or would not be judiciously "jailable"). That's one way to look at the issue -- that, in committing a rape, he surrendered some of his right to freedom. And , no longer having the same amount of the human right to freedom as we do, it is proper to go ahead and put him in jail.

But what about what I say about it? I say that the guy lost circumstantial (or "existential") freedom without losing the right to freedom. That the guy lost something "man-make-able" without losing something metaphysical. I say that the guy had (and has) a metaphysical right to (the full exercise of) circumstantial freedom, but with one limiting rule -- that he does not violate the rights of others. In such cases, I say that he surrenders a portion of the man-make-able (circumstantial) part, the otherwise unfettered exercise, of his metaphysical rights.

Note: It is hard to get this into words, because there is very little precedent for this thought. I may have said something wrong above (further analysis will uncover that), but I don't currently believe that I said something wrong.

Ed

Reference:
(1) Ayn Rand Answers; p. 1

Post 15

Thursday, March 3, 2011 - 6:26pm

Steve,

Post 11 was a very good post. We still disagree, but you really nailed it on many relevant things.

Bill,

Take the principle of honesty. There are some circumstances in which dishonesty is morally justified, even mandatory, and other cases in which it is morally prohibited. The same is true of rights.

This is a terrific analogy. It has twists and turns that may backfire on me, but I'm going to follow it anyway:

Let's assume that honesty in this analogy serves as the place-holder for the "respect" (1) of rights, and that dishonesty is the "disrespect" of rights, a chosen dismissal of the consideration of rights -- in the moral equation governing our lives. Under that view, treating criminals in ways that would be considered rights-"violatory" if applied to innocents, is still moral (morally justified).

In the analogy, the policy of honesty is good ("the best policy") because of metaphysical facts -- even though we shouldn't always "respect" it (even though we, at times, should dismiss honesty). Rights are also good because of metaphysical facts -- even though we shouldn't always "respect" them. For instance, when it's time for a criminal to go to jail (because we caught them red-handed), we should not mentally consider their metaphysical rights (as protectants against getting jailed) when we throw them in the slammer.

Instead of thinking about their rights, we should be thinking about justice (i.e., the rights of their victims) only. A judge might tell a jury to disregard the fact that someone has rights, in order for that jury to be more effective in determining appropriate punishment. A judge might say that the fact that a criminal has rights is evidence that is ultimately inadmissible in a court case. In jailing them, they wouldn't be losing such rights, but they would lose some of the normally-unfettered exercise of those rights.

I'll be looking at what I've written here for some time (to double-check its lucidity and logic). Any help in that regard would be welcomed.

Ed

Footnote:
(1) "respect" in the consideration sense of the term, as when a judge asks a jury to refrain from consideration (or to "dismiss") some fact of the case -- because of the ultimate irrelevance of it or because it is inadmissible -- while they are coming to a judgment, one way or the other

p.s. After my first look (re-read) at this, I'd like to say that the "'respect of rights" mentioned above would also mean the "allowance for the unfettered exercise" (of rights).

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 3/03, 6:36pm)

Post 16

Thursday, March 3, 2011 - 8:06pm

Bill and Steve,

While trying to pull myself back from the give-n-take debate with you guys, I did a little bit of browsing what it is that professional philosophers have to say on the matter. This particular wording, from James Nickel (Ph.D., University of Kansas) [*], is potentially problematic for your side of the debate:

A second claim to be rejected or qualified is that all human rights are inalienable. To say that a right is inalienable means that its holder cannot lose it temporarily or permanently by bad conduct or by voluntarily giving it up. Inalienability does not mean that rights are absolute or can never be overridden by other considerations.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rights-human/

Now, if it's indeed true that inalienability with regard to rights means 'cannot lose it by bad conduct', and if it is also true that Rand held that individual rights were inalienable, then a contradiction -- over-and-above the "metaphysical" contradiction which I noted in post 6 -- arises on your side of the debate. Actually -- because of Steve's recent claim that Rand had shared the same view that the both of you espouse -- two potential contradictions now arise:

1) whether, on inalienability, your paradigm is truly the same as Rand's (or whether mine actually is or can be shown to be)
2) whether, on inalienability, your paradigm can continue standing on its own legs -- regardless of level of agreement with Rand

The second potential contradiction seems crucial, because it goes to the very heart of our difference.

Ed

[*] Scroll down to middle of linked page to see James Nickel

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 3/03, 8:26pm)

Post 17

Thursday, March 3, 2011 - 10:38pm

Ed,

Dr. Nickels doesn't provide the reasoning for the assertions in that quote.

So, I had to go look at what he has written to see how he derives his idea of what a human right is. I don't want to take the time to read everything he has written, but I'm not excited by what I've read in comparsion to Rand.

Let me give you an example. On page 4 of "The Philosophy of Human Rights" he says, "Most rights, including many human rights have exceptions. For example, the right to freedom of association does not prevent the state from outlawing criminal organizations and conspiracies. Exceptions are typically specified either in the object of the right (what the right is a right to) or in the normative content of the right (the normative relations the right establishes between the rightholder and addressee)"

[For the sake of argument ignore the obvious flaw of mixing up a moral right with legal rights. And ignore the difference between just laws that uphold individual rights as opposed to those that violate them.]

He wrote on the previous page that each right has an addressee - that is the party or parties who are directed to do something about making available to the rightholder the object of the right. For example, the right to freedom of assembly directs the legislature not to pass laws prohibiting peaceful assembly, the police not to interfere with the peaceful assembly, etc.

Notice the big problem here when contrasted with Objectivism where a right is the moral sanction of an action that human life requires... a moral principle that puts no obligation upon anyone to do anything but to not initiate force against another. Under Objectivism, we have the right to take any action that does not violate the right of others. For us, the object of a right is an action that can be taken by the rightholder and the function of the right is give moral sanction to the exercise of that action. We are not GIVEN the object of a right by someone else - that is the way that some legal rights work, like civil rights, or like contractual rights, or like the faux rights of social justice.

Dr. Nickels is more like a taxonomist of rights jargon than a philosopher - at least in this paper - he is naming the categories that can be used to discuss and compare different rights theories but he isn't saying what a human right is apart from saying that it will have a rightholder, an object, normative content and an addressee. And then he compares different theories on the foundation of rights (and you don't have to look to closely to see his bias).

He says that "The right not to be tortured is also a right that, unlike, say, one's right to a piece of property, cannot be waived." But he doesn't say why there is a right to not be tortured - is it in scripture? Is it assumed to be self-evident? Is it the current cultural understanding? Is it the most widely held and PC position in the academy? Are we to assign historical practices moral status? He doesn't provide us with a foundation or standard from separating what is a right from what is just claimed to be a right. And why is one's right to own a piece of property something that can be waived? Shouldn't we talk about the context here? Does he mean it is okay sometimes for a government to waive your property rights, say under eminent domain? Or, does he mean you can waive your own property rights as in choosing to sell a piece of property after which you can't continue to use it? He doesn't say. He kind of takes rights as they are spouted, categorizes them, and indicates that the foundational thought on rights is still in disagreement today.

He says that most rights deal with contemporary problems and that the people of ancient Greece had no right to Social Security. Think about that one and all the craziness it implies. He appears to be okay with the idea of positive rights - that you can have a right that someone else has to provide and with the idea that rights are not universal in a way that says they derive from the metaphysical nature of man. And that you can mix up human rights with legal rights, and that rights come and go in history.

He concludes on page 24 by saying, "...there is today general (though still not univeral) philosophical agreement that there are human rights; that they include rights both negative and positive, and both politcal and economic..." Your philosopher has given the academic stamp of approval (in typical weasel words) to positive economic and political rights and managed to never say how that is justified.

In typical academic fashion, he does an excellent job of surveying the current thought but only within academic circles (and with a bit of a bias that shows through in what is presented as if it were neutral) and then he ends having never said what a right is and he leaves us with the impression that all of those rights that are claimed as rights might just be rights.... as if the true foundation of rights is that they are claimed by someone.

Post 18

Friday, March 4, 2011 - 12:34am

Steve,

You did a great job criticizing Dr. Nickel. Dr. Nickel portrays the same bankruptcy of logic as most (>50%) of the top philosophers today -- e.g., Richard Rorty, Peter Singer, etc.

I agree with your assessment of his mitigated ability or willingness to think straight.

Your philosopher has given the academic stamp of approval (in typical weasel words) to positive economic and political rights and managed to never say how that is justified.

Just to keep our thinking straight, he is not my philosopher. For details, take a gander at the above.

In citing the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article, I haven't proven my case but, instead, brought strong evidence to the table that common use of the term "inalienability" involves an implicit "cannot lose it by bad conduct" clause.

What that means is that it's plausible that Rand had the same notion of "inalienability" as the classical natural rights theorists did -- with the only difference being a difference on from where that inalienability comes from (either from God or Nature). Things -- e.g., her acceptance of rights inalienability in the Declaration of Independence; her use of the phrase "by all men, at all times" -- point to that.

This is something that flies in the face of the paradigm you and Bill have espoused. From my limited and partial point of view on the matter, there are only 3 logical responses that I see that are available to you now:

1) maintain that Rand didn't agree that inalienability precludes any loss of your rights by bad conduct (as many others -- including dictionaries and a top philosophical encyclopedia -- say that it does)
2) maintain that rights aren't inalienable things in the first place (but rather, they are merely heuristic or expedient conceptual schematisms)
3) come over to "the Dark Side", Skywalker (the Force is strong with you)

:-)

And yes, I know, I will have to eat crow if you come up with a 4th logical response.

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 3/04, 12:39am)

Post 19

Friday, March 4, 2011 - 3:06am