Rights as an abstract concept... should we find something else:

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Tywin made an interesting statement in the "Driving" thread.  I'm linking it below it got me to thinking (always a good thing to try).  This was my response: 

 

What do you mean?  I do think that we run into interesting existential and structural questions in these circumstances.  We are clearly dealing with the "abstract" and that "rights" are ephemeral ideas that exist only as figments of our imaginations.  

That said "rights" that are enumerated and well defined do serve to as shields from the power of the State.  The really insidious question and the one that comes to mind from the Schenk case that Rippounet linked to a couple of pages back is the ease with which even well defined and enumerated rights are set aside as the convenience of the State.  

I think looking at cases like that and the way Japanese-Americans were treated during the Second World War, Blacks in the South, and throughout the history of the US, calls into question the utility and very existence of "rights" as abstractions that serve a purpose.  The fact that when things get confusing or difficult, in times of war, when dealing with minority populations, Courts will just allow our liberties to be infringed and trampled for the convenience of the State suggests that "rights" do not exist.  I just don't know what else we can do, beyond the creation of "rights" to protect ourselves from the power of the State.

 

 

Now I'm starting this thread to try to get a clean discussion started.  

  

Rights aren't rights if someone can take them away. It's happened before in the U.S. and our current President will test everything you just wrote.

 

[Iskaral Pust]

Not to sway you from the legalistic thrust of this argument, but I think most people carry an informal bill of rights in their heads that stems from an innate* sense of fairness.  Most are not legally supported, or if they are it is only because they became by-laws to reflect the social norm.

An elderly, pregnant or disabled person has a right to the seat of a more able-bodied person on public transport.  Any person, no matter how homeless or impecunious, has the right to some minimal acknowledgement of their existence as a person by any passerby they engage.  Any person upon whom violence or harm is visited has the right to reply in kind, which exceeds the legal right to self defense.  Any person, if hungry enough, has the right to expropriate a convenient source of food.  Any person in extreme distress in a public place has a right to expect assistance from a passing stranger.  If something is your personal property, it is your right to use it or dispose of it as you see fit (this is slightly controversial because individual property rights are hardly universal in time or location, but I think this has seeped into the consciousness of parts of the western world).

I'm sure people could suggest many more.

*I say innate because of the behavioral studies of fairness wiht infants and primates, but I won't pretend that social science produces real scientific fact.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

IP,

Interesting but is a moral social obligation really the same thing as a "right".  "Rights" in a legal context are either an entitlement to something from government or an entitlement to be free of government interference within a given context.  

Perhaps informally socially understood obligations are also "rights" I'm not certain.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

15 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Perhaps informally socially understood obligations are also "rights" I'm not certain.

If you follow DM's logic from the previous thread they would absolutely be rights (because it's an accepted entitlement). 

Also, in one sense these type of rights are strong than the rights given to us by the Bill of Rights. A socially accepted "right" like a pregnant woman is always entitled to a seat on a crowded bus is harder to take away than the right of due process. The latter can be undone by a small group of people while the former cannot. 

[DunderMifflin]

I'm fine with the state defining legal rights in effort to just keep a civil society and to try to keep chaos to a minumum. I just think there's still room for an individual to have thoughts and use words in different context than legalise speak. Like if 2 people in a relationship are arguing and one says "I have a right to ask you where you were last night". It's going to stray from the point if you have a 6 page conversation on whether or not you have a legal right to ask why your spouse didn't come home last night.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

23 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

If you follow DM's logic from the previous thread they would absolutely be rights (because it's an accepted entitlement). 

Also, in one sense these type of rights are strong than the rights given to us by the Bill of Rights. A socially accepted "right" like a pregnant woman is always entitled to a seat on a crowded bus is harder to take away than the right of due process. The latter can be undone by a small group of people while the former cannot. 

I don't know that I agree with that.  The right of a pregnant woman to a seat on a crowded bus can be taken by one person who simply will not surrender their seat.  

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

5 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I don't know that I agree with that.  The right of a pregnant woman to a seat on a crowded bus can be taken by one person who simply will not surrender their seat.  

I meant more as a social construct, but point taken. And that get's to the core of my objection. Is a right truly a right if it can be taken away?

[Altherion]

48 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Is a right truly a right if it can be taken away?

It pretty much has to be because literally everything (can you think of an exception?) we call a right can be taken away if certain sets of people (not necessarily including us) agree to it. This is not likely in practice, but it is certainly possible.

To answer Ser Scot's question from the title of the thread: it's an aspirational word. Even with respect to the legal definition, there are two things that can go wrong:

1) The government (in the US, the judiciary branch) chooses to interpret what rights mean. I'm sure everyone can think of their own example of the definition of specific rights changing to expand or limit them in a way that to the vast majority of people amounts to either creating a new right out of thin air or eliminating an existing right.

2) As online debaters constantly point out to each other, most (though not all: anti-discriminatory rights are one counterexample) rights only protect an individual from the government. For example, the right to free speech does not protect people from their employers firing them over what they said. Since the welfare of most people is dependent on the whims of private parties, the legal rights are in practice far more limited than a reading of the text would suggest.

[Swordfish]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

I meant more as a social construct, but point taken. And that get's to the core of my objection. Is a right truly a right if it can be taken away?

yeah, I'm with Altherion on this one.  If a right ceases to be a right if it can be taken away, then there is no such thing as a right to anything.

 

 

 

[DunderMifflin]

16 minutes ago, Swordfish said:

yeah, I'm with Altherion on this one.  If a right ceases to be a right if it can be taken away, then there is no such thing as a right to anything.

 

 

 

How to distinguish between a right and a privilege then?  A right comes with an empty promise that it will never be taken away?

[Swordfish]

1 minute ago, DunderMifflin said:

How to distinguish between a right and a privilege then?  A right comes with an empty promise that it will never be taken away?

I don't know.  Might be like profanity.  'I know it when i see it'?  I don't have an answer really.

[maarsen]

Almost 40 years ago I took a philosophy courses for one semester. The entire course was about trying to define the idea of what are our rights and what does it mean to have a right.  My brain is still bent from that experience. 

[Altherion]

1 hour ago, DunderMifflin said:

How to distinguish between a right and a privilege then?  A right comes with an empty promise that it will never be taken away?

In theory, a right is something that is universal (or nearly so) while a privilege is something specific to a certain individual or group. Of course, in practice, the two points I mentioned above (especially the second one) significantly blur the distinction.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

41 minutes ago, Altherion said:

It pretty much has to be because literally everything (can you think of an exception?) we call a right can be taken away if certain sets of people (not necessarily including us) agree to it. This is not likely in practice, but it is certainly possible.

 

43 minutes ago, Swordfish said:

yeah, I'm with Altherion on this one.  If a right ceases to be a right if it can be taken away, then there is no such thing as a right to anything.

But that's my whole point. So do we have rights or do we have privileges? I know this is nitpicking but it's important to consider how real our rights are. And more troubling, people tend to lose their rights at the moment in time that they need them the most. 

[Swordfish]

33 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

 

But that's my whole point. So do we have rights or do we have privileges? I know this is nitpicking but it's important to consider how real our rights are.

I think the esoteric answer is to maybe look at it the other way around.  you have the ability to exercise rights that you (or someone else) is willing to enforce and protect.   

 

Quote

And more troubling, people tend to lose their rights at the moment in time that they need them the most. 

I'll nitpick on your nitpick a little and suggest that you never lose your rights, you simply lose the ability to exercise them.

 

I'm not sure what that means in terms of the larger conversation though.

[DunderMifflin]

if the language fails to convey what's really goin on with law then perhaps there should be some change in the terms to properly describe what's going on. 

Otherwise we can't even let the Beastie Boys sing about fighting for the right to party without "umm, actually fellas the Constitution says nothing about a guarantee of your right to party, so knock it off!"

[Altherion]

2 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

So do we have rights or do we have privileges?

In practice, we have privileges some of which we call rights because we aspire to live in a society where these are as close to impossible to violate as possible. Of course, people disagree on the specifics.

1 hour ago, DunderMifflin said:

if the language fails to convey what's really goin on with law then perhaps there should be some change in the terms to properly describe what's going on.

Every field and even sub-field has its own jargon. For example, in finance, "call option" means something that is not at all obvious from the common English usages of "call" and "option" or, in programming, "virtual function" means something that is not obvious from either word. Law has its own jargon and its meaning must be discerned based on context just as with other fields.

[DunderMifflin]

14 minutes ago, Altherion said:

 

Every field and even sub-field has its own jargon. For example, in finance, "call option" means something that is not at all obvious from the common English usages of "call" and "option" or, in programming, "virtual function" means something that is not obvious from either word. Law has its own jargon and its meaning must be discerned based on context just as with other fields.

Law tends to try to take over the conversation more than programming jargon though. Perhaps rightfully so, but it does.

This whole topic stems from a misunderstanding/error that was taken as a legal claim. 

Context is tricky. If a discussion happens to have legal matters within it doesn't neccesarily mean that every comment is meant to be taken as legal jargon, though it often is taken that way.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

6 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I don't know that I agree with that.  The right of a pregnant woman to a seat on a crowded bus can be taken by one person who simply will not surrender their seat.  

But someone will get up. Probably multiple someones. Not a Right so much as part of the Social Contract that most are not going to violate. 

[Swordfish]

11 minutes ago, DunderMifflin said:

Law tends to try to take over the conversation more than programming jargon though.

That simply does not compute.