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

How to get from "Is" to ought. (It's impossible, unless we introduce a premise containing ought or should). I can think of a four ways in which that can be done. There may be more:
(1) The Aristotelian/Stoic way: natural functionalism; (2) The Catholic way: divine purpose; (3) The Social Darwinist way: survival of the fittest; and (4) The modern Fuller/ Dworkin/Rawls way. social functionalism.

(1) Aristotle and the Stoics are examples of natural functionalist approach. Everything in nature has a proper function, and it's wrong to interfere with it. That, of course, opens the door to debates over the existence of the functions and what they are..There is usually room for debate over that. For example, is the proper purpose of sex having kids, enjoying intimacy by partners in a relationship, or both?

(2) Catholic natural law;Divine purpose.. This combines natural functionalism with Judeo-Christian theology. St. Paul,St.Augustine, and Saint Thomas Aquinas are examples of the divine purpose approach. God shows us His will through the design of nature, in addition to revelation in scripture. Of course, that requires a belief in God.

(3) Social Darwinism isn't usually thought of as a natural rights theory, but it is at least a close relative: survival of the fittest. Nature knows best, acting through the process of evolution by natural selection. The fittest (i.e., successful elite types) deserve to run things and enjoy the lion's share of benefits, and the losers deserve to perish as a means of culling the herd. Trouble is
(a) Social Darwinism, the brainchild of sociologist Herbert Spencer, is a distortion of scientific eveloutionary theory. Evolution favors the fit, who can survive and reproduce, not necessarily the fittest in the sense of being strong and worthy; these can be lowly types: viruses, bacteria, cockroaches, etc, who are mainly good at reproduction.; and (b) nature isn't necessarily an arbiter of virtue.

(4) social functionalism: every successful society requires effective governmental and legal system, however rudimentary.can be judged as effective or inadequate on that basis They have to meet certain specifications and perform certain tasks to carry out these functions effectively, and they can be judged on how well it does these. A government is distinguished from a band of thieves by legislating for the common good, and a legal system is distinguished by promoting regularity instead of disorder in society. If those systems aren't up to the task, they don't need to be dignified by the normal respect we show for such institutions. (Fuller, The Morality of Law) Likewise, "rights' worthy of the name must reflect a level of respect and concern for the citizenry. (Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously). We can even import modified social contract theory (Rawls) as a heruistic device to show that there are certain conditions all would insist on as a precondition for entering society if they weren't sure what SES, race, gender, etc. they would have in the future social order--i.e., conditions for fairness. These can serve as general standards by which governmental performance can be judged. But they are not clearcut. It's always a matter of degree--useful in guiding voting behavior, dangerous as a basis for direct action like insurrection.

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and you expect everyone to believe you simply because you use big bold letters?

I dont see any proofs or even so much as one reasoned syllogism from you, just naked unsupported opinions.

Well the "is/ought" position you trotted out here is top shelf delusional since it wipes out all value judgments.

Emotions are the resultant of natures built in instinct, not the other way around.

The law states murder is punishable by electric chair.
A is being choked by B's attempt to murder A
A shoots B dead to protect and save A's life.
The state puts A in the electric chair for defending its life because it follows your is/ought prescription.
The logic claim you propose is delusional.
The state executes an innocent man for instinctively defending his life.
Damned if you do damned if you dont.

None of which can be supported in logic since you just trashed all means of bringing in an evaluative judgment.

Common lacks clarity, common among thieves is not common for the rest of society.

Like RvW? From the frying to the fire legal representation!
Now the government dictates what I can and cannot do with my womb and any violation of this regularity promotion is punishable by fine and imprisonment. Your legal position wholly dictatorial.

Yes most if not all religions do that.

your presentation of the is/ought fallacy flushes all valuative morals right down the tubes!

 

Like all animals, humans have instincts, genetically hard-wired behaviors that enhance our ability to cope with vital environmental contingencies. Our innate fear of snakes is an example. Other instincts, including denial, revenge, tribal loyalty, greed and our urge to procreate, now threaten our very existence.Sep 19, 2012

Human Instincts - Utexas
www.bio.utexas.edu › courses › THOC › HumanIns...

For Maslow, an instinct is something which cannot be overridden, and therefore while it may have applied to humans in the past it no longer does. We experience in our life various feelings of anger, fear, disgust, repulsion, etc.

15. instincts and emotions - eagri.org
http://eagri.org › eagri50 › AEXT391 › lec15



What is instinct According to Psychology?

instinct, an inborn impulse or motivation to action typically performed in response to specific external stimuli. Today instinct is generally described as a stereotyped, apparently unlearned, genetically determined behaviour pattern.

Instinct | Definition & Facts - Britannica
https://www.britannica.com › topic › instinct

Is anger an emotion or an instinct?
instinctual emotion
Anger is an instinctual emotion that can cause an aggressive urge. It is a completely normal response; it is an ancient part of our defense mechanism that allowed us to survive, adapt, and defend, making it a necessary survival instinct. Anger is a completely normal and natural feeling to have.

Understanding the Behavior of Anger - Universal Class
UniversalClass: Online Courses and Continuing Education › anger-management › un...


NOT semantic quibbling as you have said in an attempt to skirt another valid point!

You seem to be promoting some delusional theory that we should make some sort of ideological laws no holds barred, not grounded in human nature but according to some whimsical fancy at the behest of government since government represents social to you therefore the individual has no rights except those set out in positive state law!

 

Just following your example. Just keepin' up.

??????????????? Not at all. Moore’s Moral Philosophy (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Moore's Ethics Ethics - Moore and the naturalistic fallacy
Besides, I just got thru identifying at some length four ways in which it can be done.(post #121). Despite the bold letters, you musta missed it.

Do you somehow think someone disagrees with that?

The law is a human enterprise. Humans by their nature make mistakes. The law that sets limits on people's right to kill others whenever they may mistakenly think their lives are being threatened is a good law. It protects the natural right to life of the person mistakenly killed under a claim of self-defense. But somehow the law went haywire in your hypothetical, probably because you made it up. Ordinarily, people who kill because of an erroneous perception of self-defense aren't put to death in any of our states.

No, your hypothetical is. Obviously, in the real world, a jury would listen to the lawyers for both sides, be instructed about the law of self defense, and reach a verdict. There would be no death penalty in such a case, unless the jury concluded A had intentionally killed B using self-defense as a pretext. More likely, it would be a prison sentence, if the jury concluded B had misjudged his right to use deadly force under the circumstances. Or, if B was acting reasonably within the limits of the law, the jury should acquit him.

It happens. Neither judges nor juries are infallible. But all states set limits on killing in mistaken self-defense.

There are numerous other ethical systems besides natural rights to chose from: deontology, utilitarianism, ethical non-naturalism, etc.

Not at all. I'm not arguing that every government or law is good and shouldn't be opposed. I'm just not ready to join an insurrection over particular instances of bad policies unless the means of changing laws democratically are no longer available, or the laws reach a degree of general repressiveness that they no longer serve the common good of society. (see definition supra) Currently, your womb is being dictated to by Republican politicians, and your immediate remedy is to help vote them out of office. I did that. What about you?

Good for them!

Common, in the context given, means "the advantage of everyone" in society.Definition of COMMON GOOD You're really reaching

No it doesn't. Just the ones based on quaint seventeenth century notions of natural rights For four ways in which it can be done, see Post #121.

 

That's all for awhile. Unless some intelligent, rational person like Meagain joins us, I have other priorities.

 

look at that theres your big bold font again LOL

I just identified the results of your bear trap.

Thanks for admission that you sidestepped and misrepresented the matter by stating 'emotion' instead of instinct which was the issue on the table. Like I would not have supplied all those citations if you hadnt? Puhlease!

Heres some bold for you: Ridiculous!

It was open ended, NO context was given! Well law, but then my response was with regard to law.

Neither am I, however if there is no logically sound bridge between a fact (IS) and an evaluative (OUGHT) then as I said you just wiped out literally everything moral including the greater majority of law on the planet.

Yes you just totally sidestepped the premise as stated and defer to goalpost moving, IOW you created a strawman premise that you believe you can argue instead of arguning ON POINT.

Last time I checked they are GOVERNMENT et al.
Party is not relevant, government IS.

Now that you wiped out justification for all culture I dont think so.

and legislating what I can do with my body serves the common good???????
PUHLEASE
Do tell!

Yes its a very large business interest to many.

They also in todays world make plenty of cons to con people out of rights and part them from their money.

Its a huge pretense to claim legislating what I can do with my womb is a huge mistake.

Strawman, goalpost moving fallacies, that was NOT the hypothesis given.

If a person is mistakenly killed the law cant bring them back to life, I fail to imagine how their life was protected after they are dead?

In the hypothesis given to you person A would be dead, murdered by person B.
Based upon your is/ought fallacy it is impossible to prevent any government that applies that philosophy against the people in law making from going completely astray as history has proven how many times now!

Stalin with his atheist experiment comes to mind.
It happened in reality, my hypothetical is logically valid possibility.

The premise I proposed is a mind exercise to prove is/ought as you presented it cant stand except possibly for insignificant trivials.

LOL

So how is the government legislating what I can do with my womb serving the COMMON GOOD?

Sure take a break let me know when you come up with acceptable logic to justify the plethora, like to the tune of 65million laws here in the US that all depend on fact(IS) and Valuation(OUGHT), obviously all grounded in fallacy according to you!

 

Removing natural rights using the is/ought fallacy scheme (the effective removal of a person to make their own valuative judgment calls), with the idea it cant be recognized as logical therefore has no standing as a persons valid life choice within the legal system summarily wipes all rights off the board leaving the only people with the right to make valuative judgment calls under those conditions are those employed by the state. Welcome to the end of all religion, including secular religion!

Thats not a slippery slope any more, thats damn the barricades full speed ahead over the cliff!

Presently I would argue I have the natural right to breathe, guess what its not stated in positive state law therefore the state according to everything I have read in tishs posts has the authority to decide I do not have that right, that my right to breathe is not a right at all, natural or otherwise. It it likely? No, however it exemplifies the blank check he is giving the government.

In effect if we look at my religion thread his theories wipe out all religion, (except theirs)!!!

What is Religion?

They bought a boat load of straw for that thread, and I will get back to it eventually, meantime I am identifying illogical logic in this natural rights thread.

 

I'm so glad someone else is interested. Don't be shy (no pun intended.) Your participation would be welcome!

 

I do exist. I'm not so sure I have a "right" to do so, but here I am.

Well said!

 

Jeremy Bentham was one of the first critics of natural rights, seeing them on display first hand in the French Revolution in 1796. He discusses them under the heading "Anarchical Fallacies, and dismisses them as "nonsense on stilts":"There are no such things as natural rights, he says -- no such things as rights anterior to the establishment of government -- no such things as natural rights opposed to, in contradistinction to, legal: that the expression is merely figurative; that when used, in the moment you attempt to give it a literal meaning it leads to error, and to that sort of error that leads to mischief -- to the extremity of mischief."
What troubled Bentham about them in particular was their potential for feeding into the selfish inclinations of humans, which are a part of all of us, along with the noble ones, and elevating them to the statues of inalienable rights. Keeping these selfish passions under control and to subordinate them to the good of society by encouraging self-control was, he thouht, a great achievement of civilization. "Society is held together only by the sacrifices that men can be induced to make of the gratifications they demand; to obtain these sacrifices is the great difficulty, the great task of government." But the object of natural rights is to do the opposite: "To add as much force as possible to these (selfish) passions, already too strong, -- to burst the cords that hold them in, -- to say to the selfish passions, there - everywhere -- is your prey! -- to the angry passions, there - everywhere -- is your enemy." Bentham was by no means an ethical nihilist. He developed in place of natural rights theory his own theory of morality, utilitarianism, which called for the greatest happiness (defined as pleasure) for the greatest number of people. . , That was the measure to be applied to public policy. Everyone's pleasures were to be taken into account equally, and democracy was to be established to decide what policies would meet that standard. If the greatest number wasn't satisfied, they could vote the rascals out. So instead of grinching about woman's rights over their own wombs, the utilitarian remedy would be to give them the vote and let them make clear to the politicians that their days in office were numbered unless they came around.

Shy thinks utilitarianism is too "socialistic', even though one of Bentham's friends and fellow utilitarians was Adam Smith, the apostle of libertarian capitalism. Shy rails about "government" exerting control over her womb. The remedy natural rights theory offers is to overthrow the government and install a new one, which presumably would do things differently. But would it? Actually, it is only one political party, the Retrumplicans, which wants to control her womb. The other one wants the government to keep its hands off. It seems very unlikely that we're going to have a revolution that would restore Roe v. Wade. Judging from the looks of the insurrectionists it is more likely it would install an authoritarian regime under a Trump (who put the pro life justices onto the Supreme Court) or a DeSantis, who is making the cultural conservative agenda the hallmark of this platform. Paul Bloom, lead researcher of the Yale baby research team that Shy often cites, puts it. And that's the dilemma of natural rights theory. There's never been an agreement on exactly what the rights are, except for vague platitudes like "life", "liberty', equality" and "property"--the meaning of which have been subjects of controversy. It is the so-called "Pro Life" movement that wants to control Shy's body, on the natural law theory that the fetus's right to life supersede her claims. As a practical, real world matter, natural rights don't work to her advantage. As for equality, to quote Paul Bloom, lead investigator in the Yale baby research study she often cites, ."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”. No government can measure up to the high standards natural rights rhetoric, taken literally, sets for it, so the quest for the perfect becomes the enemy of the good. I tend to share Bentham's view that effective government is preferable to anarchy, and if we're going to insist that government observe moral requirements, I'd put democracy and concern for the public interest, defined as the greatest happiness for the greatest number, high on the list.

To be sure, Bentham's utilitarianism could stand improvement. Rawls revived the Social Contract metaphor to prevent the "greatest number" from throwing minorities under the bus. He concludes that the social contract must provide for the greatest equal liberty and that all inequalities work to the benefit of the least advantaged. J.S Mill, who learned his utilitarianism on Bentham's knee, added another concern: the quality of protected interests. He argued that some pleasures are of a higher quality than others, and that it's "better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied." Quality, of course, is hard to measure; but the two areas for which Mill is particularly memorable are liberty and privacy. It was Mill who introduced the :harm principle": that the only justification for regulating liberty is to prevent harm to others, not to oneself or from engaging in whatever the government might find offensive. And Mill essentially invented the right to privacy; the right to be let alone and to keep personal matters from public view. He didn't derive these rights from natural law, but rather from what he thought was required for human happiness. This, of course, comes close a natural rights argument, by resting rights on the conditions necessary for human flourishing. The big difference between this hybrid utilitarian approach and natural rights approaches are that the latter are conceived of as absolutes, while the former can change with changing human circumstances and needs.

 

In a sense, nature has given us some natural moral faculties we can use in judging governmental actions. As I've said, evolution by process of natural selection produced social beings which included empathy and reciprocal altruism in their behavioral repertoires. These traits can be observed in non-human species and (according to E.O. Wilson) probably pre-human hominids. Of course, they had to compete with selfish tendencies which seem also to have been retained in separate modules of the human brain, and they tended to be limited to kinsmen and fellow tribesmen, with anti-social impulses directed toward out groups or the "other". As commerce and conquests produced larger kingdoms and empires, and international ties, there was a need to encourage attitudes toward strangers that were similar to reciprocal altruism and empathy. Cultural evolution took over, and memes (in Dawkins' sense for transmissible units of culture) were developed for that purpose. During the Axial Age, great prophets and religious thinkers developed these into new religious and ethical systems that placed new emphasis on both reciprocal altruism and empathy. The former translated into variations of "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you", the latter into "Love thy neighbor." I think these moral standards are suitable for judging all human conduct, including politicians and governments.

Natural rights philosophy reflects a concern for the natural requirements for human flourishing, but bears the imprint of a particular period of history in which it evolved: the Enlightenment of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries. Two characteristics of that era come out loud and clear in the theory: individualism and faith in reason to arrive at right answers. Rights in earlier times were tied to roles in the community, and carried responsibilities along with them. The new individualistic version put the individual and his claims first and foremost,, as kinds of personal possessions divorced from responsibilities-- as though humans survived in a State of Nature as self-sufficient units. Face it, there never was such a State. It was either a naive view of the past.or a heuristic fiction. I think the latter. And these rights were supposedly discoverable by reason. This soon became evident to thinkers like Burke and Bentham after the French Revolution, and what they saw as extravagant claims of natural rights. Unlike the American Revolution, which was a rebellion of colonies against their oversees ruler, the French Revolution was a social revolution, pitting neighbor against neighbor. Since the Enlightenment, we've come to have more doubts about the reliability of reason, because different people using it can come to different conclusions-- owing to emotions and unconscious needs and drives our Founders didn't even know about. In a highly polarized society like our own, we most often hear claims of natural rights in the mouths of insurrectionist mobs like the one storming our Capitol on January 6, 2020 shouting "1776".And the advance of representative democracy has given us channels for expressing our values and preferences in peaceful arenas.

To me, one of the more disturbing stories in this week's news was that three active duty marines were arrested in the January 6 insurrection. These are men who took an oath of allegiance to the U.S. and its constitution. One said that another civil war was necessary, and expressed affinity with the Boogaloo Bois--a motley collection of white supremacists and anti-government libertarians dedicated to insurrection. These are only one of several groups of confused people, their heads filled with unfounded conspiracy theories, calling for a "new start" for the country by violent means. Dunning-Kruger on steroids!

 

Its about this government not a political party as tish tries to infer.

2 sides of the same coin, what one side doesnt mess with the other side finishes.

That why the Bill of Rights exists.

No place in the constitution did the people agree to government "interference" into their rights.

Compared to 63 million laws on the books? Any good lawyer will tell you that literally just by being born you are in violation of at least 3 laws.

Id say thats government getting out of hand.

It is now. Rebranding religious principles doesnt magically make them secular any more than painting a pile of poo gold makes the stink go away.

 

One of the most well-known theocratic governments was that of Ancient Egypt. Though it is divided into different periods, the theocratic monarchy of Egypt lasted for about 3,000 years.

Examples of Theocracy in Government | YourDictionary
https://examples.yourdictionary.com › Government


we have a long way to catch up!

I see religion in government all over!

 

Except one side wants to invade your womb, while the other wants to protect it. IMHO, one side is much worse than the other, and populist dictatorship and anarchy would be far worse still.

The Bill of Rights exists[/QUOTE] The Bill of Rights exists to assure anarchy? The Framers would turn over in their graves!

Not so. What do you think "due process of law" means"

Compared to 63 million laws on the books? Any good lawyer will tell you that literally just by being born you are in violation of at least 3 laws .Id say thats government getting out of hand.[/QUOTE]What lawyer is that? He ought to be disbarred. I think most people (the sane ones at least) prefer laws to lawlessness, and the Law of Nature, interpreted by self-interested individuals, inevitably results in lawlessness--especially when those are elevated to religious or quasi-religious status.

Id say thats government getting out of hand.It is now. Rebranding religious principles doesnt magically make them secular any more than painting a pile of poo gold makes the stink go away.[/QUOTE]Only by your crazy definition of "religion"-- expounded on the thread "What is Religion", which nobody could figure out. The best sense I could make of it, it refers to everybody's deeply held convictions.

 

Would you prefer that one to ours? People had no rights under Pharaoh.

Why, if you think governments are already controlled by religion? As for those "theocracies" of yesteryear, all of them had two things in common: God wasn't running any of theml and People had no rights other than those the theocratic government said they had. You make no sense.l

Naturally. Because, to the extent I understand you, religion=everybody's deeply held convictions.