[WalterBright]

There are fundamental rights of man. Government can recognize or abrogate those rights, but cannot invent those rights.

For example, if rights were invented by the government, there would be nothing about slavery that was wrong. If we say slavery violates the right to liberty, then we are saying that the right to liberty is inherent.

[wrycoder]

Government seems to be inventing a lot of rights lately that even contradict basic facts, and a lot of people heartily approve.

Might makes right. Liberty, free speech, facts, etc. are apparently just nice theories from a more enlightened time.

[pixl97]

>Liberty, free speech, facts, etc. are apparently just nice theories from a more enlightened time.

*Terms and conditions may apply. Please review your wealth, race, gender, and sexual orientation before attempting to use said liberty and free speech in public. US.A does not accept liability in the case of injury or death by law enforcement officers.

[tstrimple]

This is ascribing some sort of mythical quality to rights. Rights are simply what a society decides should be conveyed to its people. A country could decide that their people have a right to receiving a free hoodie every November and as long as the country supports that right, those people have that right. There is nothing inherently moral about rights. Countries have many times supported the immoral rights of their people. And people's rights are only as good as the society's support for those rights. There is nothing inherent or inalienable about them.

[eldritch_4ier]

This is exactly the root of the “atheists can’t be moral” argument. Not that any individual atheist can’t be moral for the time being, but that a godless society inevitably falls into relativism where the only good is the consensus and the only morality is what you can argue.

This is one of those cases. I think we’d all be better off with an absolute basis for rights than a relativistic one.

[zanellato19]

There is no absolute basis for rights and the good being the consensus happens on religious societies as well. What is good is constantly being argued over and over in all societies.

[janalsncm]

Believing in an absolute basis for rights ignores the reality that every single right people have was usually fought for during a time when people did not have that right. You can lose rights and you can gain them.

It’s also how you get people arguing that the rights people have in some places (e.g. healthcare, higher education) aren’t legitimate rights even though they most certainly are.

[eldritch_4ier]

Believing in a relative basis for rights means that slavery is ok as long as the consensus agrees on it. So slavery in the US was completely moral right up until the start of the Civil War and it's moral anywhere in the world it is fine today (as long as it is legal / consensus). I don't think that's moral at all. An absolute basis for rights is above law or human discourse - slavery was appallingly evil exactly because it was an stain against the enslaved peoples' human rights to liberty (regardless of whether the law allowed it or not).

African Americans didn't earn the right to not be enslaved. They always had the innate human right to liberty regardless of what the law said, abolitionists defeated the oppressors that suppressed their innate rights to liberty.

[janalsncm]

I can see now why we’re talking past one another. I am making a statement about the usage of the word “rights”. When I say “you have a right to due process” it is not a statement about an abstract concept but a matter of fact statement about the legal protections you have, which depends on the jurisdiction in which you are physically located.

You’re talking about the philosophical basis for how we come to our individual beliefs about what rights we should have. Note that the conversation is teetering on the edge of an appeal to the law fallacy: what the law currently says is entirely irrelevant when considering what it should say. To say that slavery is legal is not to say that it is moral, it’s just a question of fact.

In any case, if you have an absolute basis for rights I’d like to hear it. I’m not an expert and I’m curious about people’s theories about these things.

[WalterBright]

> if you have an absolute basis for rights I’d like to hear it

Societies based on free men do far better than societies based on slaves. Armies of volunteers are much more formidable than armies based on conscripts. Economies based on free markets are much more prosperous than command economies.

I don't know what you'd find compelling, but I see a consistent pattern there. It's almost as if being free confers an inherent advantage. :-/

Anyhow, if you had a job where you are paid to work and could leave any time to get a better job, would you say you'd perform better at the job than if you were forced to work there and whipped if the overseer didn't like your work?

[jay_kyburz]

I think you should consider what life would be like for many segments of our society if we were not constantly reviewing what we consider immoral.

[eldritch_4ier]

I certainly don't think we are always in accordance with our absolute human rights.

In a relativistic basis for rights, there is not "reviewing what we consider immoral", because morality is just "what every we consider moral". Slavery is moral (at least in 1850s America) because the consensus was that it is ok. Under an absolute basis for rights, it's clear that slavery was wrong then, and wrong now, and will always be wrong (regardless of what the law or consensus says).

[WalterBright]

Under your view, there's nothing wrong with slavery if the government legalizes it?

> There is nothing inherently moral

Morality has nothing to do with rights.

> There is nothing inherent or inalienable about them.

Oh yes there is. The proof is simple - societies that guarantee those rights thrive. Those that abrogate them, do not.

[wizofaus]

I can personally believe slavery is morally wrong but still accept that a different culture may universally consider that there is a right to own other humans as slaves.

[WalterBright]

That different culture will be wrong. (And I doubt their slaves agreed with them.)

[wizofaus]

I did say "universally consider". Presumably that would only be sustainable if the slaves felt it was an arrangement that suited them.

[WalterBright]

I've never heard of slaves that were happy to be enslaved. Have you?

[tstrimple]

This is inane. I explicitly said that rights are orthogonal to morals. Why are you trying to claim I said the opposite? Do you understand what words mean?

[HDThoreaun]

How could rights be orthogonal to morals? Do you have any examples, either real or theoretical, of a right that came to be without an argument based on morality? In fact it's right there in the name. "Rights" refer to things it would be wrong to take away from people, making them right.

[HDThoreaun]

There are absolutely no natural rights. Every right we have we fought tirelessly for, and forgetting that would be a mistake.

[WalterBright]

The fight is to recognize those rights, not invent them.

[wizofaus]

Out of curiosity, where do you propose such rights stem from? And would you argue that those same rights were still "natural"/unalienable etc. even in a society that universally didn't accept them?

[WalterBright]

> where do you propose such rights stem from?

Natural evolution. Human nature.

> would you argue that those same rights were still "natural"/unalienable etc. even in a society that universally didn't accept them?

Yes, and I did just that in this thread.

[wizofaus]

If they came about as the result of "natural evolution" then they can't be truly universal in the sense that evolution could very well have taken different paths that led to a species recognisably similar to us but whose nature and genetic make up would lead to adoption of a quite different set of rights than those you believe to be unalienable. As it is, I suspect you'd have a hard time getting many groups of humans from millennia ago to agree with you on exactly what such rights are. Or are they all wrong too?

[WalterBright]

Bees followed a different evolutionary path, and human rights are not applicable to them.

> Or are they all wrong too?

Humans are full of false beliefs. If they believe that man does not have a right to liberty, then they are wrong, just as wrong as believing that throwing virgins into volcanoes assures a good harvest.

[danans]

> For example, if rights were invented by the government, there would be nothing about slavery that was wrong.

Slavery (or it's near equivalent: peasantry) was not considered unnatural for the vast majority of human history, really up until modern era. As horrible as it was, it was also the basis of many feudal economies the world over, and it probably powered societies through the dawn of agriculture, so at least 10k years. Prior to that, hunter gatherer groups also raised other groups and took slaves.

Industrialization had more to do with slavery's eventual decline than any idea that it was unnatural.

This is reflected in the areas where it ended earlier due to earlier industrialization (England, the Northern States of the US) vs where it ended later due to a persistent preindustrial agrarian society (Russia and the American South).

What is inherent in humans is the capacity for empathy and the ability to mentalize about another human's experience. That can lead to a belief that slavery is wrong, but that belief is in battle with the desire to exploit other humans for your own gain.

[WalterBright]

When slave societies were faced with free societies, the free societies tend to bury them. Free societies have an inherent advantage, as they better fit human nature.

Human societies across history and prehistory have always believed in destructive and wrong things of all sorts.

[danans]

> When slave societies were faced with free societies, the free societies tend to bury them.

> Free societies have an inherent advantage, as they better fit human nature.

What are the examples of that which are not also essentially industrial vs feudal or technologically primitive societies?

That history seems pretty thin.

What's more likely is that freer societies are better able to harness the abilities of their inhabitants, and unlike slavery/serfdom based states, they don't have to deploy as many resources to defend against their own enslaved inhabitants. It's a triumph of a better organizational structure, not something inherent to human nature.

Otherwise free societies would have become the norm far earlier in history than they did.

[WalterBright]

> What's more likely is that freer societies are better able to harness the abilities of their inhabitants, and unlike slavery/serfdom based states, they don't have to deploy as many resources to defend against their own enslaved inhabitants. It's a triumph of a better organizational structure, not something inherent to human nature.

I.e. a structure that fits human nature better, making it inherent.

Rome's army consisted of free men, and they conquered everyone else. Slave armies have a poor track record when they come up against free men.

[danans]

> Rome's army consisted of free men, and they conquered everyone else.

Rome relied heavily on slavery. Slaves were 20-30% of the population [1]. The slaves did the labor that allowed the free men to go fight and conquer others. It's not an example of a free society in the slightest.

1. https://byustudies.byu.edu/further-study-chart/6-4-estimated...

[diordiderot]

> There are fundamental rights of man

Yeah, but not really.

God is dead and such.

[tekla]

The fundamental rights of man explicitly doesn't use God as the basis for human rights.

[jimbokun]

Historically, some conceptions of them absolutely do.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."