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

Dont run off so quick. Before I respond to all the gaslighting and plethora of non sequiturs I have yet to respond to;
If not rights grounded in the consensus good of individuals within society, natural rights, laws of nature etc. how should we look at this? Only valid rights are political rights? Laws of unnatural? No laws at all? Laws of state? Should we get rid of them as obsolete? What is the underlying point of this thread, to take power from the people? ....and give it to whom?

 

Need to be careful reading what I write, "in the consensus good of individuals" is not the same as your interpretation.

Anyway when you say found to exist, how would we need to find something to exist?

 

"It may be comforting to treat natural rights theory as an impenetrable fortress capable of providing absolute protection against the objections of political opponents. A political view that dogmatically shouts 'freedom!' to every criticism and closes its ears to the potential trade-offs such criticisms reflect will not, and should not, be taken seriously." Natural Rights Don't Exist | Brad Taylor In Jeremy Bentham's terms, such natural rights rest on a "flat assertion".“Anarchical Fallacies,” in “Nonsense Upon Stilts”: Bentham, Burke, and Marx on the Rights of Man, ed. Jeremy Waldron (London: Methuen, 1796/1987), 66.

Seems to me that fits the case for natural rights that's been presented so far. The "rights" to Life, Liberty, and Property (not to mention the pursuit of happiness) are supposedly natural inalienable rights. But these rights are vague and poorly defined and shouldn't be treated as absolutes to be protected though heaven fall, impervious to changing circumstances . We allow the death penalty, prison and the taking of property for public purposes by eminent domain, and people pursuing happiness by taking illegal substances are in danger of losing their liberty.. Does anyone think those are violations of natural rights or the social contract, or that our Founding Fathers, even Jefferson, would be shocked that we tolerate such things? "The fundamentalist notion of natural rights, conceived of as a kind of personal possession of individuals divorced from responsibilities, "turns individualism into an absolute that subverts the common good." Nigel Biggars, What's Wrong With Rights?

 

That's our question and yours to answer. (S)he who asserts must prove. We don't know that natural rights exist. You say they do. Prove it!

 

Ive seen no evidence of that

Ah back to the mob is always the best rule for everyone.
50.01% can vote to send you to a labor camp, "it would serve the common good well".

Again, Im asking to see a few examples of what would be considered acceptable proof?
Its not a difficult question.

 

Ah now I can better see why this is all going sideways.

There are several different types abd categories of proofs for proving something. Its important that we choose the correct method of proof for the correct situation.

The method that you and tish are proposing is not conducive to the subject matter.

Its like trying to mix water and oil without an emulsifier.

Please read the following and get back to me with an applicable method of proof.

Philosophy of science - Wikipedia

Ontology - Wikipedia

(S)he who requires proof must first understand proofs.

 

ShyOne told us awhile ago that for the State to invade her womb by regulating her right to control her own body would be a violation of her natural rights. That, of course, is a statement of the "Pro Choice" position. But as we know, state governments are criminalizing women's choices involving their own wombs. And what do they call that? "Pro Life". Whose life? The life of the fetus. And they are backed by Catholic natural law philosophers and theologians, who argue that life begins at conception. Aristotle, who invented natural law https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/cgi/...&context=nd_naturallaw_forum&source=post_page said otherwise. He thought the fetus acquired rights and moral significance at the point of "ensoulment", when it developed sentience and cognition. If natural law is based on the facts of nature discoverable by reason, one of these claims must be irrational. Or perhaps, as we've been arguing, moral truths can't be extracted by reason from natural facts without committing the naturalistic fallacy. And if that is so, the only way to resolve the controversy is to duke it out in political arenas, court cases, and/or the battlefield. On feature of the Locke/Jefferson natural rights theory that hasn't received much attention here is that if a government flagrantly violated the natural rights of its citizens, the remedy wasn't disobedience but instead REVOLUTION. They relied on the drastic nature of that remedy to limit its use. In a polarized society like ours, natural rights theory is a prescription for anarchy and/or insurrection.

Natural law and social contract theories were in vogue during the Enlightement, when confidence in the powers of human reason reached their zenith. The last of this genre was Rousseau's The Social Contract, which helped to inspire the French Revolutionaries. And that's what led to its going out of style. The twentieth century became notorious for replacing reason with empiricism and eventually "postmodern" rejection of absolutes of any sort. Which is why claims of natural rights are likely to fall on deaf ears.

Defenders of the doctrine must rely on "arguments" like the ones Shy has given us:assertions that it is true, backed by articles showing that people once believed it so it can be found in dictionaries and encyclopedias. If that doesn't work, say it over, and over, and over, and over again. again, in larger and bolder print. If that doesn't work,make the print even larger, and larger (and cast some shade on the skeptics). And give it a multi-syllable label like "existential quantification." That oughta do it!

 

I already proved it, however you and tish fail to recognize the proof I used, which is why I gave you the list so you could learn different methods of proof.

It was a test question to see if you would correctly pick the method of proof that I used.

I need to know the people I am debating with understand what proof is before I waste countless hours posting proofs.

Anyway aside from the fact that I am using existential quantification which is all that is necessary to establish existence, you are demanding universal quantification, and thats if I look past the categorical fallacy of trying to cram this into a space-time issue.

 

I haven't seen much quantification going on, existential or otherwise. On of the beauties of math and deductive logic is that they can actually lead to indisputably right answers. One of the drawbacks is that they are essentially tautological unless the premises can be supported by empirically validated premises. ∃ can't get us to moral imperatives, let alone legal ones--the naturalistic fallacy again. .

 

So then your question: "Natural rights: Do they exist?" is purely rhetorical? You really do not want a serious answer.

Nothing, as in its not possible to create a condition description that is absolutely 'indisputable', from every conceivably possible angle of analysis, that metric is patently ridiculous.

Which has been my complaint in our little debate, that you all commit a constant assault of contextonomy fallacies without so much as batting an eye. Same as you have done in my religion thread to derail it.

∃ does prove existence.

 

I didnt use an adverb.
I thought you may have missed it.
Our little demonstration about self defense was put up here as a demonstration that natural rights exist.
The term natural rights is a term used to describe a condition, in our case self defense.
Literally all, as in even the least sentient life has some form of self protection to survive from being killed and will defend itself if possible. Natural rights are an observation of the condition of man, rights with regard to a scope of humans. If people generally are willing to kill for it, that is the most extreme example as to why we label these tings rights. For instance a mother has the natural right to protect herself and baby and kill you if you threaten its life.
I like the way jefferson said it: "self evident".

 

Funny you should bring that up:
contextonomy fallacy
(also known as: fallacy of quoting out of context, quoting out of context)'
Description: Removing a passage from its surrounding matter in such a way as to distort its intended meaning.
You do this frequently. Let's start with Durkheim. You lifted a passage from Durkheim, and can't tell us where it came from. Supposedly, it was from an unnamed book you came across in the library and copied a page from. But the passage compares religion and ideology to philosophy and science, and concludes that the former are more concerned with the emotional and action-oriented aspects of belief than the cognitive content. It is hardly a definition of religion, which Durkheim defines in Elementary forms of Religious Life as"a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden — beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them. The second element thus holds a place in my definition that is no less essential than the first: In showing that the idea of religion is inseparable from the idea of a Church, it conveys the notion that religion must be an eminently collective thing. (p. 44) But you soon make it eminently an individual thing, and are off and running with your concept (not Durkheims) as a source of natural rights protecting individuals. Fess up. Have you ever read a book by Durkheim? Not just a page, but a book. Have you ever read Hobbes' Leviathan? Locke's Second Treatise on Government?

 

Existence is not in question, and ∃ proves existence only in a tautological sense, or at an abstract conceptual level. And get real. You haven't been using existential quantification to prove your point. We know that and you know that. ∃ is the stuff of mathematics or formal logic. To get to natural rights, you have to use inductive methods and empirical arguments, as well as reasoning. Yes, instinct to live and maternal instinct are powerful emotions. But a right is a claim that others have a duty to honor--other people, in the case of moral rights; governments and judges, in the case of legal rights. How do self defense and maternal instinct get translated into natural rights?

 

Natural rights: Do they exist?

But it seems existence is in question, do I detect a nice case of cognitive dissonance brewing?

If existence is not in question then its crystal clear that you have just contradicted yourself.

You dont say!

and when that fails formal logic.

Nonsense, Ive seen no evidence anywhere on this planet that instinct is the same thing as emotions.

 

The existence of natural rights is the question. Existence in general isn't, and certainly not proven by ∃. Unless you think you've been offering a formal logical or mathematical proof, which would be delusional, ∃ doesn't get us anywhere and is simply pretentious, like the rest of your arguments.

Well, I thought I needed to point it out, because you seem to be delusional enough that you purport to be using it,or are about to.

Formal deductive logic also fails, unless somewhere along the line you can show that your premises are sound, which means showing somewhere how facts become rights.

Semantic quibbling again. https://library.psychology.edu/wp-files/uploads/2019/10/Instinct.100919.pdf Instincts, Emotions & Thought Processes in Behaviorism - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com Whether you call it instinct (the root of self preservation) or emotion (the result of having self-preservation threatened) you still haven't explained how you get from there to a duty on the part of others or the government to honor it. A right is a claim that others have a duty to honor--other people, in the case of moral rights; governments and judges, in the case of legal rights. How do self defense and maternal instinct (or emotions) get translated into natural rights?