Do people have an inherent right to live?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Do people have an inherent right to live?

DOCTOR ZIMBARDO: May 8, 2006

Rights are political instruments conceived, ratified, and enforced in specific and historically contingent circumstances. In their modern form they were created by the bourgeoisie to destroy the aristocracy. Some things conceived of as rights in the US are good ideas, some are not. There is no meaningful philosophical distinction between positive and negative rights. Uhh, any other questions?

# ¿ Feb 24, 2015 21:23

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 10, 2024 21:35

DOCTOR ZIMBARDO: May 8, 2006

spacetoaster posted:

This discussion is about "inherent" rights. If it has to be ratified/etc it's not really inherent.

Exactly. There are no inherent rights, that exist independent of society or that existed before society. Nobody "discovered" the right of gays to get married, for instance. You don't put ideas into some sort of Lockeian microscope to see if they are truly in compliance with Natural Law.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2015 21:49

DOCTOR ZIMBARDO: May 8, 2006

paranoid randroid posted:

Obviously you are not on the Moral Majority's newsletter mailing list.

Not since I got an hour of weekly weekend access to the Grand Theory Collider with my membership in the True Science of Marxism-Leninism Society.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2015 22:21

DOCTOR ZIMBARDO: May 8, 2006

wateroverfire posted:

That would be a positive right to life - others are obligated to act in such a way that keeps you alive by providing you food, shelter, their kidney (they only need one after all.), etc.

A right not to be deprived of life would mean that others are obligated not to murder you, kill you through gross negligence, etc.

I agree you have a negative right to not be killed, but not a positive right to be protected by police while alive or to have your murderer investigated or prosecuted or convicted or jailed if you are killed.

# ¿ Feb 26, 2015 21:47

DOCTOR ZIMBARDO: May 8, 2006

wateroverfire posted:

Consider for instance a hypothetical right to live.

If it's phrased as a negative right it is, straight-forwardly, the right of a person to not have their life taken. To respect that right people don't have to do anything. They merely have the obligation to refrain from killing someone, which presumaby is not an undue burden, and a person's right not to be killed generally doesn't interfere with another person's right not to be killed.

If it's phrased as a positive right it's very different - it's the right to be kept alive. But to respect that right means what? Others have the obligation to keep the person alive? There are over 7 billion people on the planet - do they have an equal obligation to each person alive? Are they obligated to donate all their resources above subsistance level to terminal cancer patients who can't afford treatment? What if there are also burn victims who need funding? What if it's unclear that an act of support is actually going to keep someone alive - if for instance it might just make their lives a little more pleasant or permit them to hustle less to provide for themselves - are they violating someone's right to be kept alive if they decide to devote resources to bettering themselves and their family?

What does a "right" mean if there is not a corresponding obligation? I reiterate my previous example - if you have a negative right to not be killed but there is no obligation on anyone to enforce or honor that right (by the way this more or less accurately reflects your rights in the United States), what good is it to say you have such a right? How does it differ from a world where such right does not exist? You are right back to the strong doing as they please and the weak accepting what they must.

# ¿ Mar 2, 2015 16:58

DOCTOR ZIMBARDO: May 8, 2006

wateroverfire posted:

The corresponding obligation would be "Don't kill people", right? In a world without a negative right not to be killed presumably that obligation wouldn't exist?

What is an obligation with no way to "oblige" it? We call those "suggestions".

# ¿ Mar 2, 2015 19:12

DOCTOR ZIMBARDO: May 8, 2006

wateroverfire posted:

I'm kind of confused. We're discussing the philosophical question of whether people have an inherent right to life, right? I'm not getting how "how we enforce a right not to get killed / right to life" is within the scope of that discussion.

If you have a "negative right" not to be killed but there are no corresponding "positive rights" enforcing it, it's meaningless.

# ¿ Mar 2, 2015 19:16

DOCTOR ZIMBARDO: May 8, 2006

wateroverfire posted:

Can you explain that? I'm not following you. What would the positive right be and why is it necessary?

To be meaningful a negative right creates a corresponding positive right: the enforcement of that negative right from infringement. Otherwise the negative right could be infringed by anyone at any time. In which case what is a "right" and how can you have it, if it can be taken from you by anyone at any time without consequence?

# ¿ Mar 2, 2015 19:24

DOCTOR ZIMBARDO: May 8, 2006

wateroverfire posted:

So something like "You have a right to have your death investigated?"

That would be a positive right, wouldn't it?

# ¿ Mar 2, 2015 19:27

DOCTOR ZIMBARDO: May 8, 2006

OwlBot 2000 posted:

It's not meaningless; the Right to Life exists even if people don't acknowledge it or abide by it. Would you agree with Nazis when they said that Jehova's Witnesses didn't have a right to life? There was nobody to protect it.

I don't think God, or the Realm of Forms, or the "right to life" is or ever was real. How, then, can I condemn the Nazis, you ask? You'll have to wait for my book.

# ¿ Mar 2, 2015 19:45

DOCTOR ZIMBARDO: May 8, 2006

wateroverfire posted:

It would!

I'm not sure in what sense a dead person would have rights in that sense. I mean, you're dead. Nothing that happens after that can really be for your benefit, can it?

You're the one telling me rights exist independent of their enforcement or recognition, so it's up to you to decide. But I don't get the feeling you're engaging my argument very seriously. That is: any allegedly "negative" right necessarily contains a corresponding positive right in order to have any effect on society.

# ¿ Mar 2, 2015 19:49

DOCTOR ZIMBARDO: May 8, 2006

wateroverfire posted:

To directly engage with that point - no, I don't think that's right. As a practical matter there is far less enforcement capacity than you'd need to enforce, for instance, a right not to be killed, if people weren't morally wired not to kill to begin with. How many cops are there in a city like New York? If people were mostly down with killing other people the whole system would collapse. Clearly our moral framework - that is, things we consider basic rights - influences society independant of how those rights are enforced.

This doesn't address my point, which is that from a purely logical perspective there is no distinction between a negative and a positive right. All negative rights contain positive rights, and vice-versa. Some rights may be more or less expensive for a government to enforce, or a better or worse idea from one perspective or another, but the distinction between a positive and negative right is a rhetorical flourish without logical support.

# ¿ Mar 2, 2015 20:42

DOCTOR ZIMBARDO: May 8, 2006

wateroverfire posted:

Can you lay that argument out, because it doesn't seem to follow.

Just by the definitions of the terms, there is a distinction between negative and positive rights right off the bat. Whether some rights imply other rights - and I don't see how you evaulate that on anything other than a case by case basis - doesn't impact whether there's a distinction.

Because its worthless to have a "right" if it can be controverted at a moments notice with no recourse to the victim or punishment for the violator. A purely negative right is meaningless without any way to defend it - but that defense constitutes a positive right or obligation on some other person.

# ¿ Mar 2, 2015 20:56

DOCTOR ZIMBARDO: May 8, 2006

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Eh, *now* you're getting debatable I think. What about if a theoretical possible enforcement tool exists? Say, African American civil rights in the Jim crow era.

Those rights did not exist, until they were won as a result of social and political struggle. This is why "human rights" is so nonsensical as a framework for human liberation etc.

# ¿ Mar 2, 2015 21:09

DOCTOR ZIMBARDO: May 8, 2006

wateroverfire posted:

Defense of a negative right needn't constitute a positive right, though. For instance, your right not to be killed does not obligate the police, or anyone else, anyone to protect your life. They may investigate after the fact but they're looking after society's interest rather than yours.

If your negative rights are not protected then what happens when they are challenged? They disappear. They go away. They do not exist. They were an illusion all along.

# ¿ Mar 2, 2015 21:12

DOCTOR ZIMBARDO: May 8, 2006

wateroverfire posted:

Alternately, whether you have a right or not does not impact whether that can sometimes be violated. Having a right not to be murdered doesn't mean that as a practical matter you can't be murdered, but having that right does mean that you aren't murdered by people who recognize it a lot more than you are by people who don't. It's social convention and deep wired moral reasoning that keep you from getting killed, mostly, and not the police - who are not around to prevent it most of the time.

You're not describing a "right" though. You're merely describing "what usually happens". If nobody is obliged to act to prevent murder, or to resuscitate a victim, or to punish a murderer - then how can you be said to have a right not to be murdered? The most you can say is that murder is uncommon.

It is those obligations that allow you to say you have a right in something. Otherwise a "right" is only "whatever would have happened anyway". That would be pretty banal wouldn't you agree?

# ¿ Mar 2, 2015 21:25

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 10, 2024 21:35

DOCTOR ZIMBARDO: May 8, 2006

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

When I say "X has the right to Y," though, I'm not just making a descriptive statement about the current system as it exists now. I'm also making a prescriptive, normative, affirmative statement about how the system should be. We may not currently be free from warrantless surveillance, but we have the right to be so free, we should be so free. Whether a "right" is currently enforceable isn't the issue; the issue is whether or not it should be enforceable. That's the real question that "rights" language addresses. To invoke the language of rights is not to describe, it is to advocate.

Whenever someone describes something as a "right", I take it as they mean it is a good idea but cannot or will not articulate why. Because "rights" are these nebulous things that apparently reflect the Realm Of Forms or the Natural Law or the Will of George Washington or whatever they aren't subject to analysis or falsifiability.

# ¿ Mar 2, 2015 21:33

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Do people have an inherent right to live?