Against 'rights'

if youse boys is gonna kiss, turn on the webcam

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Yer a very naughty Miss Girl . . .

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Re: Against 'rights'

John Jones wrote:

People can transfer or sell rights where the burden of the fulfillment of the right is laid against other people.

Well, I can't make any sense of that. Sounds like you're merely repeating your original assertion that rights are nothing more than burdens on others. If so, that's simply a bootstrapping argument.

John Jones wrote:

I do not possess a right myself. There is no property I have that I can present as a right. You possess a copyright only as far as others take the 'burden of the right' (pursue a claim on your behalf). It is upon these others that the claim or right is made against.

Perhaps we need to understand what exactly you mean by "possess." In your opinion, can anyone possess anything that is intangible? If so, what? If not, why not?

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spendius wrote:

In England a vote in the House of Commons can take all that away and much else.Thus the "possess" is actually a granted privilege which is not a right.

I'm not exactly sure that is true anymore, at least with respect to rights that are guaranteed by the EU.

spendius wrote:

I may have this wrong but during the first days of your crisis the public's "right" to be protected from truck drivers working too long hours was announced to have been rescinded and seemingly by a state official.There may well be a raft of such things.I saw that on Fox.

The fact that a right may be nullified does not make it any less a "possession," just as the fact that your house may be swallowed by the earth does not make it any less "property."

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Joe-

1-The House of Commons can put the EU in the bin.
There are people in there who say that is what they seek.If circumstances allowed they "could" do it.For sure it would be messy but,as I understand things,it could be done.

2-You have missed the point I have been making.I think an individual is better balanced once he accepts that he has no rights.The rest of it is to do with meaning of words which,as you no doubt know,are very slippery especially in the hands of lawyers.It's a lifestyle choice.I am grateful beyond expression for the suffering of others which has gained me the many privileges I have but it seems to me that to claim them as inalienable rights is to expess a degree of contempt for that suffering.
I am also left wondering how these rights were applied to the aboriginal peoples of N America.I saw a newspaper headline recently from 1927 from a town in the south of your country which read-Sheriff organises posse to exterminate Indians.

I have seen numerous people rendered bitter for life due to imagining they have rights.The problem,as I see it,is that people who take my position are not newsworthy or exploitable and this causes a distorted view to hold sway.Threaders reading here ought to have the chance to glimpse another side.From my experience my position is the more prevalent in life but totally absent in media.Shrugs make no money but that is no reason to write them off.

An IRA bomb killed two young lads in Warrington a few years ago.One father walked away from it,as I would have,and the other made a career out of it.

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spendius wrote:

I am grateful beyond expression for the suffering of others which has gained me the many privileges I have but it seems to me that to claim them as inalienable rights is to expess a degree of contempt for that suffering.

you make an important point, but if a right could be observed universally, by not insisting on it are you not condoning those who infringe on it out of self-interest? for instance, when refugees are starving, i think it appropriate for citizens to clamor for their government to provide relief.

i also remind you that people have undergone suffering voluntarily to secure rights for themselves and others, and renouncing these rights seems contemptuous of their suffering. for instance, people were abused, imprisoned, and even assassinated to secure the right of equal protection under the law during the civil rights movement, which obligates citizens to object to discriminatory behavior, in my opinion.

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spendius wrote:

2-You have missed the point I have been making.I think an individual is better balanced once he accepts that he has no rights.

That may be so. I offer no opinion on the matter. But whether a person is "better balanced" or not is a psychological question, not a philosophical one. And, frankly, I find that psychological question uninteresting.

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yitwail-

Of course I agree with what you say but I consider them privileges.Circumstances could remove them.
Rights seem to me to be irremovable.If we agree the two words mean the same thing there seems little point in using one for the other.I think we would be more grateful towards authority if we used privileges.I cannot imagine a right which wouldn't fall before state necessity or one that over-rides the necessity of even a small group.Those who hold to their rights in the face of either,and points in between,do get excluded and thus neutralised.

Those with a strong sense of their rights usually are easily rendered indignant and often polarise their position so much it becomes irrecoverable.I think rage-road rage say-comes along for the ride.
When one is agitating to maintain a privilege one has an easier tone than when one is agitating to maintain a right and the former succeeds more readily because it doesn't polarise opposition anywhere near the same.It is an English tradition.

Of course the legal profession and media have a vested interest in stirring up indignation.As also do those who are prone to it.

Basically it is a question of education.

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Which is to say, that educated people agree with you. How quaint.

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Joe wrote-

Quote:

That may be so. I offer no opinion on the matter. But whether a person is "better balanced" or not is a psychological question, not a philosophical one. And, frankly, I find that psychological question uninteresting.

I'm afraid to say that I find no question uninteresting.To do so implies an underestimation of my fellows.If I were to only find interesting what I find interesting I would probably,by now,be a social outcast.And anyway-everything is interesting if it is scrutinised even slightly and to say something is uninteresting and use that to dismiss it seems to me to constitute a closed mind.It provides an easy ready-made excuse to stay within one's own limits.

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spendius wrote:

I'm afraid to say that I find no question uninteresting.

Good on you.

spendius wrote:

And anyway-everything is interesting if it is scrutinised even slightly and to say something is uninteresting and use that to dismiss it seems to me to constitute a closed mind.It provides an easy ready-made excuse to stay within one's own limits.

Or it is a way to keep threads in a philosophy forum from veering into non-philosophical directions. Take your pick.

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spendius, i appreciate the distinction you draw between rights & privileges. but since you argue against the idea of rights on the basis of the harm that results from those who assert their rights regardless of the cost, is it not consistent with your concerns to assert as a right whatever is universally necessary for the continuation of one's existence, such as food, water, and shelter? or can you think of an instance where a prolonged involuntary termination of one's existence is not a form of suffering?

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The contention that we refer to rights rather than privileges is absurd on the face of it. Were we not imbued with rights, but were, rather, granted privileges, from whom is the privilege granted? And by what right does such a person grant such privileges? I see nothing in this but the maunderings of, intentional or not, those who perceive human society as necessarily an autocracy, stipulating to whatever modifications have been imposed on that society. From whence the Autocrat? From whence the authority of the Autocrat? You have the silly diminishing argument which comes up when one questions the eternal nature of god. If the Autocrat has the right to grant privilege, who grants that right to the Autocrat? Who grants the right to grant the right to he who grants this to the Autocrat? Just as one can easily dispense with the concept of an eternal god by stipulating that the universe is eternal, one dispenses with such a privilege argument by pointing out that rights reside in the idividual and not in some unspecified autocratic authority which grants privileges.

I notice that neither Spendius nor Mr. Jones, the proponents here of the notion that no one possesses rights, have neither of them responded to the proposition which i advanced about the innate character of the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

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yitwail-

I don't know.It depends on what suffering is.I could think of examples to consider.
Captain Oates walking out of the tent.

Some of the Russian volunteers,if they were,who went into the reactor area or flew helicopters close to it at Chernobyl.

The Martyrs.

Are those worth thinking about.

Generally though I'm not thinking in extreme cases.And the harm I'm focussed on is the harm I think people do to themselves when they put too much stress on rights rather than any harm they might do to others.I must emphasise the "too much".I'm not saying one shouldn't go into bat for one's self or for others.I can defend my privileges as good as the next man but I couldn't possibly think of them as rights.It would compromise my scientific temperament I feel.I think I would feel uncool at the least and stupid at the worst.Would rights not have to be God given.I owe my very pleasant existence to this society and feel less than it.Rights seems to upend that hierarchy.Was this not what President Kennedy meant in his inauguration speech when he said,and forgive me if I misquote,
"Think not what your country can do for you:think what you can do for your country."
I find that noble and so do a large number of others.Wouldn't you agree?

And speaking of President Kennedy I have read books about him and his exploits on active service and from those I would guess his statement above was not empty rhetoric.

Would conjugal "rights" exercised on an unwilling wife constitute rape as Germaine Greer said.There was a big case about that not long ago here and in the course of it we discovered that an Englishman cannot rape his wife.Somebody standing on their rights could do that I suppose but someone thinking my position couldn't.Her granting of the favour would be the crucial thing wife or not if it is considered a privilege.The law may have changed since that case-I don't know.

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Joe wrote-

Quote:

Or it is a way to keep threads in a philosophy forum from veering into non-philosophical directions. Take your pick.

Come on Joe.Threads are derailed all over the place just like pub conversations are.There are so many examples of it that I'm not sure I can think of a thread of any length where the derailing has not been derailed over and over.

Also I'm not so certain that I have moved into non-philosophical areas and I'm also not so certain that you have not derailed the spirit of JJ's original post
into a purely American setting.Which I may also have done of course.It is JJ's thread and I concede to him the privilege of determining whether he considers the thread to have been derailed and if he does by whom.You have just grabbed that privilege for yourself it seems to me.

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Setanta wrote-

Quote:

Which is to say, that educated people agree with you. How quaint.

It is obviously a question of education.The phrase "educated people" used in conjunction with "How quaint" suggests to me that it was thought I was making some sort of invidious comparison.I refute such a suggestion.It never entered my head to do such a thing.I was being neither old fashioned or fanciful or odd either.

It is still a question of education,in the widest sense,whether a person will place the emphasis on thinking in terms of rights or of privileges.

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If that be so, then how would you characterize the thinking of "educated" people with regard to rights? You do not make your meaning clear.

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Setanta wrote-

Quote:

The contention that we refer to rights rather than privileges is absurd on the face of it.

and

Quote:

maunderings

and-"silly"

and after that I ceased to engage my attention.You need a rapt audience old boy.One that gazes up at you in admiration and wonderment and has few critical faculties.

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I guess i'll have to wait until you clear that up.

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First-Im sorry about the jips on my last post.I knocked "submit" half way through and thought it quickest to edit in the rest.

Setanta wrote-

Quote:

If that be so, then how would you characterize the thinking of "educated" people with regard to rights? You do not make your meaning clear.

It would be characterised by the type of education they have had which might vary from country to country or from class to class or even from school to school and to the choices made on newspaper stands,TV,books and social contacts.Some of those possible combinations will cause the emphasis to be laid on one or other of the two concepts we are discussing and the strength and degree of that emphasis.It is not black and white.

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Against 'rights'

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