> No, rights are not physical or materially real; that does not make them “fake” or contrived. Rather, they could be thought of as more or less useful in understanding material processes and relationships, in this case between people.

I agree with this. Imaginary concepts can certainly be useful, and I'd definetely say that rights are one of those, and a good thing for humanity overall. All I object to is the speaking of rights as if they are a discrete and "real" concept that can be discovered.

> Your argument is essentially the premise of Empiricism. But what you and the Empiricists fail to grasp is that everything we comprehend is man-made. Our conception of a physical rock is just as much a psychological construct as a notion of natural rights.

First of all, I understand the underpinnings of this argument. I understand the fact that we can never truly peer behind the veil of our own cognition. But this is just philosophical masturbation, and you do not act by those words even as you say them. Yes, all concepts exist to us only within our own cognition, but that does equate purely imaginary concepts with ones based in what we perceive as "physical reality". If you disagree we can perform a simple experiment: Take your notion of natural rights, and then throw it at my head. Then I'll go find an sensory object that I conceive off as a valid equivalent to my psychological construct of a rock, and I'll throw it at yours. I hypothesize that the effects of these actions will be somewhat different.

Yes, purely imaginary concepts such as "natural rights" can have a much bigger impact on the world than any amount of rock throwing, because we act upon them. I'm not saying they are not a part of physical reality. The brain is real, and what goes on inside one has real consequences. Technically, if we're being strict about it, there is no line distinguishing imagination from "reality". However, imaginary ideas are fundamentally flexible in a way that differs significantly from "reality". You and I can have completely different conceptions of the meaning of the word "rights", and the best we can hope for as a resolution is the agreements and disagreements of ourselves and others. Meanwhile, our conception of rocks might differ significantly, but the rock will have the same structure, mass and velocity, independent of whose head it is thrown at.

> Certainly, our words and arguments are constructed psychologically and socially.

Agreed

> But that doesn’t alter the purpose of the debate. In fact, it justifies it. If our words were perfectly consistent with the nature of reality, there would be no such thing as a debate, since a perfect word would need no elaboration; and if they were completely discordant, then there would also be no utility gained from engaging in debate.

Well, the debate would be significantly different if we were discussing our relative conceptions of rocks. For one, we could put forth hypotheses about rocks and come together to perform experiments on one. In doing so we could agree whose conception of a "rock" most closely correlates with the common sensory impulses we get from observing rock-related experiments, and get some idea of whose conception most closely matches what we think of as "reality". We have an external "judge" upon which to test our words and conceptions, and we can refine them both as a result. We might start with "rock", but end up with "Foid monzosyenite". Anyone else studying the same rock by the same methods, and given the same tools, time, intellect and rock studying passion would end up with more or less exactly the same name (ok perhaps not the same name, but the same conception).

But we are discussing an inter-imaginary concept, which makes for a very different debate. By debating we can refine our inter-imaginary set of logical precepts, and even agree on a set definition of the word. Let's say that, after a fierce debate, we agree that we both agree on what a right is, and that we have the right to self-determination and life. Tomorrow we meet someone that used the same logic to arrive at his right to determine the lives of others, and that proceeds to bash our heads in with a foid monzosyenite.

Did he not have the right to do this or not? Did he violate our rights by determining to take our lives, when we had just agreed that we had a right to live? But what about what his opinion that he has the right to take our lives? Who has the better definition of the word? I'm sure the debate would have been interesting and useful, as we elaborated on our understanding through rhetorical interaction. I'm also sure that whatever psychological concept and word we would have had for them, rock, foid monzosyenite or lumpy smashy thingy, if we had one we could have hit his rock with our rock and they would have gone "clunk" and perhaps saved our heads to self-determine yet another day.

This turned into a pretty long and stupid argument from my side. My point is that all words and psychological constructs are not created equal, and that this does in fact make a pretty significant difference.

It seems to me the only principle underlying is that of self preservation. People have figured out that social groups prolong life for the individual - as long as they - despite what they must profess - continue to cover their own asses, first. It is the biggest lie around, that half or more aren't willing to put the good of the many ahead of their own interests, but they pretend that they do.

One doesn’t need a “right” to commit crimes, so why would you say that not consenting to criminal law doesn’t give one the right to commit crimes? It’s a confusing argument because it introduces an irrelevant element to the topic. I think what’s missing here is the important reality that it is not “rights” that empower people. The thing that empowers people is power and the threat and use of violence to force others to observe and act according to what we imagine to be acceptable. The nature of the violence is not the same in this application. Sometimes it’s physical bodily threats, harm, and destruction. Sometimes it’s psychological violence like isolation, public humiliation, and censorship. Sometimes it’s revisionist, property damage, and sabotage. For example: we can’t beat a malicious usurer to death with our rights. We can, however, declare our rights to have been violated and then beat them to death with a stick.

I asked this elsewhere but could you please give me the definition you hold and use for what libertarian is?

Can you please give me the definition you hold and use for what libertarian is?

Not all libertarians believe in "private property" and "property rights" the same way. I'm a libertarian socialist. As a socialist I distinguish between private and personal property.

Your existence wasn't a crime the action was because straight could and had been charged with sodomy. The law definitely was used to target gay people though and was wrong. No victim, no crime.

It's pretty annoying, that the word "rights" is used both to signify legal, practically existing rights and abstract, fictional "natural rights". Those two concepts are not closely related, and people using them interchangeably only causes confusion

I think you are confusing social with generous. It is the goal of every person to focus on themselves more than others as it should be. Society exist because it is benificial for individuals to participate with each other to benifit themselves. They dont participate for altruistic reasons, they are being rewarded for their participation.

Philosophy focuses on all types of rights and philosophers debate both which sort of foundation is best for supporting rights and which specific rights should be derived from a given foundation. Given this diversity of thought it seems a bit odd to simply proclaim a particular right to exist regardless of circumstance. I agree that in general in every society some rights exist but this is a very different claim.

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I’d argue that rights do NOT need recognition to exist. Take the Halocaust, for example. Few people would argue that the rights of the Jews and others targeted and systemically slaughtered were not violated, despite their rights to life not being recognized by the State. Those who would, we generally ostracize. Or take slavery, same thing there. That, to me, clearly and demonstrably disproves your notion that rights have to be recognized to exist. They’re therefore independent of recognition and exist separately from the State. Surely you’re not arguing that slavery and the Halocaust did not violate people’s rights? Of course, I’m sure you’re not. But that’s the logical conclusion of your argument, and we must follow amsuch arguments to their logical conclusions to test their validity. Having done so, I would hold that argument as clearly invalid. No, rights must be more primal than that. I won’t argue that people will not suffer the violation of their rights out of fear of stepping out of line of the masses, or some such phenomena, of course. But hell, homosexuality was illegal in many parts of America until 2003, are we going to seriously say that I had no right to exist until then? Of course not-that’s absolutely absurd.

And for lunatics like you we need man made rules so that you don’t get to roam free which is naturally a vacuum-like ground zero for the discussion rather than a man made thing.

> And while yes currently people do not live in a vacuum it is a very good starting point as humans are naturally selfish.

Humans are not naturally selfish. Snakes are naturally selfish. Most reptiles are naturally selfish. Humans are intrinsically social animals that rely on group coherence to survive. If humans were naturally selfish then basically all of society would not exist. American culture may reward selfishness, but that does not mean that we are naturally so.

> so man madedness does make an argument against anything?

I'm going to assume that there is a "not" missing between "does" and "make".

And this is the kind of useless statements that only make sense within the vacuum of philosophical discourse.

You know, there are a lot of iffy man made scientific stories about something called "oxidation", but I guess it being man made means that it's equivalent to all other man made stories. Hey, how about we go for a fun little duel of equal man made ideas! I'll grab my gun, and you go grab your pheonix-feather core wand. My bullets can't pierce your Protego Maximus, and I'm sure you can Expelliarmus me before I shoot you in the head.

> the argument isn't about about the REASON rights exist. The argument is about what they are and where they come from.

Tomato, tomahto. An argument about where rights come from is intrinsically an argument about why they exist. The definition of a right you're positing is that it's "something a person has intrinsically". While that may make your arguments that follow from that presupposition logically consistent, the presupposition itself has no merit, and therefore all of the arguments that follow from that definition rely on an unfounded assertion.

> As for the REASON rights exist well... There is no reason, that's like asking the reason why gravity exist or the reason natural laws exist or reason people exist. The answer quite literally is just because they do.

That's simply not true. You can look to the morality that other species have and you realize that what a particular animal deems as "moral" or not (which may stem from whatever their sense of a "right" is) relies entirely on the social structure of that animal, e.g. its sense of fairness, compassion, empathy, theory of mind.

> I was talking about these types of rights from the logical consistency standpoint. Said consistency is what often draws people to this definition of rights most often.

Fair point. However in my view, an argument's conclusions have no merits if the axiom itself is bad. Subscribing to an axiom because it gives you nice logical properties is a basically meaningless way to discover what our rights should be. My argument is that the entire position is flawed and anyone who uses the argument that rights exist because they're intrinsic are starting from a weak position, and thus all the conclusions that follow are weak. Using the logical consistency of the argument as a reason for using the original axiom is totally, fundamentally flawed because corollaries cannot be used to assert the axiom is true (it is a self-referencing logical loop). Using "intrinsic rights" as an argument means there is zero room for debate as everyone will then claim that their rights are true because they said so.

This is a bad argument. No, rights are not physical or materially real; that does not make them “fake” or contrived. Rather, they could be thought of as more or less useful in understanding material processes and relationships, in this case between people.

Your argument is essentially the premise of Empiricism. But what you and the Empiricists fail to grasp is that everything we comprehend is man-made. Our conception of a physical rock is just as much a psychological construct as a notion of natural rights.

Consider this very exchange. Certainly, our words and arguments are constructed psychologically and socially. But that doesn’t alter the purpose of the debate. In fact, it justifies it. If our words were perfectly consistent with the nature of reality, there would be no such thing as a debate, since a perfect word would need no elaboration; and if they were completely discordant, then there would also be no utility gained from engaging in debate.

So, our psychological constructs are not perfect, but neither are they completely fictitious. Thus, arguments are more or less accurate of reality, which is pretty much the starting point of any understanding of any rhetorical interaction.

Imagine that honeybees had philosophers and ethicists. Would it make sense for a worker bee philosopher to start her examination of morality based on herself and herself alone? Her whole concept of survival is intrinsically dependent on the queen and on other workers; she also can't breed. Before even discussing her concept of ethics, all of her core values are inseparable from her position in her hive society.

I'm not even proposing moral relativism here, I'm saying that any human conception of morality is inextricably connected to humans as social creatures. Even a self-centered individual has to bear that in mind as well - if "building a legacy" is a valuable goal to some specific, fully selfish individual, it's important to note that there's no such thing as a legacy without other members of society to experience or remember it into the future.

Assumptions about philosophy that start and end with the individual consciousness are IMO not "more rational" but instead something inhuman. How can a fully isolated human even be considered the same kind of existence as someone in a collective?

This is an aspect of "natural law" and "social contract" discussions that I think gets buried when people start focusing on individual positive/negative rights. If you're the only conscious individual around, there is no value in a concept of "rights" to begin with - a "right" only even has meaning when it affects another conscious being. Conjuring up some idea of "rights" one has when fully isolated and then applying that as a foundation for rules in a group is nonsensical - a fully isolated human could never have the language to conceive of "rights" (or even language at all).

Accordingly, conceptualizing what, if any, natural rights exist necessarily must begin with people in a group, not in isolation. Putting a human in a vacuum and then considering how they would behave at that point in a thought experiment is creating a non-human and then trying to give it the same label.

There seems to be some kind of disconnect here, as if we are discussing two completely separate matters. You seem to not accept, one some fundamental level, the actual fact that morality, rights, or what have you, is not real, in the sense that it is only happening in our heads. The only reality of these concepts is the one our actions make of them.

> So all one has to do is imagine a different set of rights (say the right to do wrong) and then you have no rights

Well yes, this is kind of the reality of the human condition, see Ukraine for real life examples. Okay, this is kind of a snarky response, as I get the point you're truly trying to make. The problem is that this rebuttal is a non sequitur to the argument I have made. You speak of what rights are, where they come from, and you ask me to answer what happens if they conflict. All of this language implies that you truly do not accept the fundamental reality of the situation we're in, the true fact that rights do not exist outside of our minds. No matter how much you say "unalienable" and argue about social contracts will change this fact. It almost seems silly to point this out, it is such an obvious premise to any moral discussion. But the language that you are using gives the impression that you think the word "rights" refers to some fundamental law in the universe that you can discover if you argue well enough. You speak of rights as if you adhere to Platos theory of form, as if having a really good definition of the word will somehow make it reality. All I can do is to read the words that you write, and this is the impression that they give me.

Look, I think we can all agree that morality is pretty great. And I think we can all agree that moral systems are a necessary keystone in the creation of well functioning groups of human beings. I'm personally a big fan of rights! I think they are a good basis for a lot of good things.

But even the most basic tenets that underpin moral systems get pretty murky when you start to take them too seriously. "Suffering is bad" might seem like a no-brainer until you find EAs arguing about what to do about the "wild animal problem". What you are doing is taking much hazier concepts like "social contract" and "legitimacy", and saying ipso facto rights exist. I guess your argument is logically constructed, but I am not arguing against it's internal logic, I am saying that its fundamental underpinnings hold no basis in reality.

Some rights could have existed but we are talking about pre-history, so how society functioned then is not entirely known. And their conception of "rights" may be different to how we consider them now.

Rights need recognition (either explicit or implicit) by whatever society they are a part of, whether that is a hunter gatherer society or a modern state. We now have a society which is so complex that it encompasses the entire world and is why groups of people can violate rights, even if they personally never recognized that right.

Bingo. IAI.TV is full of bullshit like this.

Unless they have anything else to elaborate on than the premise of dialectical materialism, I don’t see how that is useful. Obviously that’s what happens; humans are social, and ability to persuade others into allying with oneself is not entirely correlated with a genuine or altruistic reciprocation. That doesn’t affect the aim of social philosophy, which is attempting to understand the principles underlying those same dynamics.

Rights may not be concrete but the argument isn't about about the REASON rights exist. The argument is about what they are and where they come from. And my example is a common view that is held as to the nature of certain rights that people believe are fundamental and how said rights are decided upon.

As for the REASON rights exist well... There is no reason, that's like asking the reason why gravity exist or the reason natural laws exist or reason people exist. The answer quite literally is just because they do. The reason is irrelevant. That's why this particular definition of a right is so wide spread. Any reason the right has to existing is purely philosophical and doesnt hold weight in the real world.

I was talking about these types of rights from the logical consistency standpoint. Said consistency is what often draws people to this definition of rights most often. It provides a logically consistent answer for what rights are and where they come from as you where critiquing rights not being logically consistent. If someone disagrees that these things should be rights then that's a matter of opinion but it doesn't change their logical consistency.

I’ll categorically reject that notion. We recognized rights before the city-State emerged.

Internationalism has made it so that rights can now supersede the State (due to bodies such as the UN making agreements between all nations) but they originally came into existence from the State.

When we were hunter gatherers, we had no rights apart from what our social group/village allowed us to have. When serfdom existed, serfs were granted rights by their lords in exchange for their servitude. When liberal democracy started, we were granted rights by the state in exchange for the responsibilities of living in a society.

Now that countries hold each other accountable, some rights are given to all of humanity regardless of nationality. Prior to this internationalism, a state couldn't violate a right, unless it was a right they previously gave to subjects and then revoked.