Natural rights: Do they exist? Where do they come from? Are they relevant today?

I don't think she's capable of understanding the simple, basic point you're trying to make, which I take to be: that nature can create powerful needs, drives, and interests but those don't necessarily translate to inalienable legal rights--claims that governments have a duty honor. Even mother nature can't commit the naturalistic fallacy and make a fact, an "is" into a duty, an "ought". At best they translate into demands which, if shared by enough people, prudent governments take into account, or else. We have numerous examples of governments that run roughshod over the interests of their citizens--China, Russia and Iran being examples that come to mind. We have a Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the UN General Assembly. As a practical matter, those can be talking points in trying to exert external pressure on those governments, and hopefully will provide moral and rhetorical ammunition for citizens resisting those regimes. What else does it mean? Anything?

 

Babies are in fact born with an innate sense of morality, and while parents and society can help develop a belief system in babies, they don't create one.

A team of researchers at Yale University's Infant Cognition Center, known as The Baby Lab, showed us just how they came to that conclusion.Feb 14, 2014

Are we born with a moral core? The Baby Lab says 'yes' - CNN
https://www.cnn.com › 2014/02/12 › baby-lab-morals-ac...


Just because you dream up a metaphor does not change the interpretation using applicable verbiage.

Nature is not defined using the word "desire". Its instinctual to defend yourself if someone is choking you, you agreed to this, yet you insist on using inappropriate metaphors.

Its instinct not desire.

 

Sure the exception proves the rule.

So you two think we should abolish and redefine natural rights/law because maybe 1% of the worlds 8 billion population defies them and commits suicide? The brain has the power to defy nature.

Are you running some kind of an inverse bell scheme here?

Please provide proof that absolute is a requirement to define anything?

I cant think of any 'instinct' for any creature that is "absolute" that path is ridiculous.

What is an absolute fallacy?

Those who study formal logic may be familiar with some absolute rules, but the point is the absolutist fallacy arises when we fail to make exceptions for rules that have exceptions . . . and most rules have exceptions. Identify the exceptions for any rule (see Socratic Method Section).

12. Absolutism - Lucid Philosophy
https://lucidphilosophy.com › 12-absolutist


can we come back down to earth now?

Morals are now scientifically proven as part of our Human 'Nature' as seen at birth, prior to social training thats (instinct), not "desire".

in·stinct

an innate, typically [not absolutely] fixed pattern of behavior in animals in response to certain stimuli. "birds have an instinct to build nests"

Cant get much more natural than that!

 

There is no is/ought fallacy here. Where are you dredging that up from?

Sure we could have declared eating peanut butter sandwiches on sunday an inalienable right if we wanted to.
The government becomes liable when it signs the contract.

Oh yeh you mean like the US who has taken up residence inside my womb?

Inalienable rights, or natural rights are based upon the 'innate nature' of man which is what man does instinctively. Humans do certain things out of instinct which as I said in my last post has nothing to do with 'desire', 'wants, and demands.

 

Laws of based on justice arent laying around in the field either.

Yes they exist by necessity.

So do most living things in exigent circumstances.

Ive never heard that one before, are you claiming a right to be lazy?

You realize that what you just said is pure nonsense dont you?

Natural law is the law of natural rights.
Natural rights and legal rights - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Natural_rights_and_legal...



Natural Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
https://www.merriam-webster.com › dictionary › natural
Jan 10, 2023 — adjective ·
1. : based on an inherent sense of right and wrong ·
2. : having an essential relation with someone or something : ...



NATURAL | definition in the Cambridge English Dictionary
https://dictionary.cambridge.org › dictionary › natural
from nature; not artificial or involving anything made or caused by people: Cotton is a natural fiber.

So you expect a newborn of a couple months old to write an abstract on it and publish it for peer review before you accept the premise?

tests like that have to be set up such that a baby can show like or dislike since they cant even talk till they are about a year old.

You dont think your expectations are extreme?
You dont think your expectations to pick up a right in the field is over the top extreme?

 

Like I said using colorful metaphors to argue that natural rights are not valid is completely inappropriate for the subject matter and absurd.

None of either of your colorful metaphors can be found in any law of nature or inalienable right.

Innate has little to do with 'desire'.

 

That was one of the findings of the Yale baby studies Shy conveniently leaves out. As investigator Paul Bloom put it, "We start off the world as "little bigots", eagerly dividing the world into "us" and them".Born good? Babies help unlock the origins of morality
This is developed in other studies by the Yale research team. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797612457785 entitled "Not Like Me=Bad:
The "morality" operationalized by the researchers as liking or disliking the behavior of characters depicted in puppet shows, is a far cry from the conventional morality preached by the major world religions. Note the subtitle "Infants Prefer Those who Harm Dissimilar Others." Violent little bigots at that!

But Shy still doesn't get it. She doesn't understand that having innate rudimentary "moral" inclinations, defined as preferences for conduct depicted by puppets, is not the same as a natural right. The term "natural rights" doesn't enter the researchers discussion. It can, at best, be the basis for a claim of natural right, no matter how misguided. I suspect, looking back at her discussion of What is Religion? that she thinks of her personal preferences as having quasi-religious significance. And she seems incapable of understanding anything that points to the contrary. She declares "There is no is/ought fallacy here. Where are you dredging that up from?" I dredged it up from her latest post. Claiming that the fact of an innate tendency for value preferences confers a right that must be honored is the essence of the naturalistic fallacy. Social Contract and natural rights theories are, at best, metaphors, "colorful" or otherwise. I'll bet she thinks there really was a talking snake and a Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden. And she continues to cite definitions of natural rights as though they prove its validity.

 

Proving the point that humans at birth have innate sense of right/wrong.

Babies instinctively know when someone other than mom picks them up and cry out.

yes us v them, mom vs others.

More like Tish and meagain doesnt get it.

Natural law is based on nature, nature is based upon instinct, instinct is innate, and babies are innately moral, the basis for religion and natural rights.

The tests proved that babies instinctively comprehend right/wrong and make moral distinctions at birth, long before they can talk, and thats pretty natural. Natural rights are observed on the same basis.

Now you come along and try to claim rights are not natural despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary by your use of colorful inapplicable metaphors.

Sorry by your premises and conclusions are non sequitur and lack standing.

 

Natural rights:

Do they exist?
Yes

Where do they come from?
The innate nature of the human condition.

Are they relevant today?
Yes as long as mankind is genetically a human being.


Looks like the question has been sufficiently answered.

 

Proving the point that humans at birth have evil as well as good tendencies, and that to try to claim all these as natural rights can lead to the Jan. 6 insurrection.

 

Is the record broken?

 

to answer your question again, innate is not a tendency, its the essence of what something is.
another of your colorful metaphors!!
Yes Life is better than death is a great is/ought.
Any ideal how absurd you are getting here?
You would not be alive right now if life was not accepted as better than death.
Natural rights are for the part accepted universally through out the world.

Sound doesnt travel well in a vacuum

Yes our 'good' has been placed with a higher standing than our evil, therefore our innate nature of good has been championed, and evil discarded as not worthy.

They lead to the creation of america!
The same america that acknowledges laws empowering the people that you clearly hate and want to dispose of!

 

For further thoughts on babies and phiolsophIzing about rights, see Paul Boom (one of the lead Yale baby researchers}, Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil. He says, there OR elsewhere:

...“Here's how to freak out a baby: sit across from the baby, engage with him or her, and then suddenly become still. If this goes on for more than a few seconds, with you looking all corpselike, the baby will become upset.”
---"Families survive the terrible twos because toddlers aren't strong enough to kill with their hands and aren't capable of using lethal weapons."
...“Gopnik compares baby consciousness to that of an adult dumped into the middle of a foreign city, totally overwhelmed, constantly turning to see new things, struggling to make sense of it all. Things are even worse for a baby, actually, because even the most stressed-out adult can choose to think of something else: we can look forward to getting back to the hotel; imagine how we would describe our trip to friends; fantasize, daydream, or pray. The baby just is, trapped in the here and now.”
---“the egalitarian lifestyles of hunter-gatherers exist because the individuals care a lot about status. Individuals in these societies end up roughly equal because everyone is struggling to ensure that nobody gets too much power over him or her. This is invisible-hand egalitarianism.”
...".most everyone agrees that a just society promotes equality among its citizens, but blood is spilled over what sort of equality is morally preferable: equality of opportunity or equality of outcome”

A bit cynical for a natural rights thinker, wouldn't you say?

 

Spot on. The infant "morality" consists in a preference for seemingly helpful behavior. If that's morality, it's certainly rudimentary.

 

Me ,too. I think we've explored the relevant issues, and as social media discussions go, this one has been relatively high quality. I don't think we'd make much further headway if we argued with Shy until hell froze over.