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

[DunderMifflin]

2 minutes ago, Stubby said:

I'm not mad and I'm not huffing and puffing.

You aren't entitled to drive without a licence. This bloke tried to argue that he was entitled to drive without a licence and got precisely nowhere:

Barrett-Lennard v Bembridge [2015] WASCA 353.

I also note that he was ... wait for it ... self represented!

Your position is entirely in your own head.

 Yeh. Exactly as I said it was. My entitlement is decided by me or "inside my own head" as you put it. Not by you, Scot, or any court of law. All any one of you can do is punish me or kill me.

I got put in jail for weed possession once, guess what it did not effect my entitlement to possess weed whatsoever. To this day I'm still entitled to it.

[Stubby]

2 minutes ago, DunderMifflin said:

 Yeh. Exactly as I said it was. My entitlement is decided by me or "inside my own head" as you put it. Not by you, Scot, or any court of law. All any one of you can do is punish me or kill me.

I got put in jail for weed possession once, guess what it did not effect my entitlement to possess weed whatsoever. To this day I'm still entitled to it.

Well that was silly then wasn't it?

[DunderMifflin]

3 minutes ago, Stubby said:

Well that was silly then wasn't it?

Like I said, you don't have to be ok with my entitlements. But I'm still entitled to them.

[Stubby]

49 minutes ago, DunderMifflin said:

Like I said, you don't have to be ok with my entitlements. But I'm still entitled to them.

You are entitled to be silly.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

6 hours ago, DunderMifflin said:

Like I said, you don't have to be ok with my entitlements. But I'm still entitled to them.

No.  Legally you are not.  Heck even moving to moral entitlement that's debatable.  You seem to be offering a variation on solipsism/anarchy wherein people are "entitled" to anything they want without reference to anything but their partucular desires. That simply isn't the case in an objective, moral, or legal sense. 

You appear, based upon your argument here, to have a very unusual idea of what an "entitlement" is.

[maarsen]

Scot we are dealing with a child here who can only say "I want what I want and you can't tell me what to do." DM has no understanding of philosophy whatsoever and may not have the capacity to do so.

[Iskaral Pust]

In its own way, the liberal democratic creed of personal freedom and individual rights is just as dangerous as divine revelation.  When people think their rights are subjectively determined and supersede the tyranny of law, righteous anarchists follow. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

7 minutes ago, Iskaral Pust said:

In its own way, the liberal democratic creed of personal freedom and individual rights is just as dangerous as divine revelation.  When people think their rights are subjectively determined and supersede the tyranny of law, righteous anarchists follow. 

IP,

It is and it's not.  We need individual liberties as a bulwark against overly aggressive collective action wherein extreme utilitarianism is used to claim that individuals cease to matter.  

Last year I read a fascinating book by Mark Weiner called Rule of the Clan.  It postulates that individual liberties, which he believes are important to a civil society, only exist in those societies where the State does hold significant power.  To illustrate his point he goes on to discuss the rise of "Clans" in various "failed States" or societies wherein the State is exceptionally weak.  He points out that family based "clans" almost universally arise in those circumstances and goes on to demonstrate how to a "clan" the individual is much less important than the "collective".  

He does admit that the State can, and has, been used to further collectivist interests in circumstances like Soviet Russia, Mao's China, and the Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia but holds to his thesis that a reasonably strong State is necessary for individual liberties to be an idea that people espouse and seek to protect.  

Here's a review of the book.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/books/review/the-rule-of-the-clan-by-mark-weiner-and-more.html

My point is that individual liberties can be taken to extremes wherein people try to claim "individual sovereignty" over themselves claiming no other person or groups of person should have the power to control their actions.  I, eternal advocate of the "Golden Mean", believe we can come to a place wherein individual liberties continue to be protected by the power of the collective but there is always going to be a tension between the desire for protection of the "collective" versus protection for the "individual".  Taking an absolutist position as to the superiority of either idea is an unwise course of action in my view.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

1 hour ago, maarsen said:

Scot we are dealing with a child here who can only say "I want what I want and you can't tell me what to do." DM has no understanding of philosophy whatsoever and may not have the capacity to do so.

Maarsen,

I don't think he is a "child".  I think DM is thinking... shallowly.  I'm hoping he looks hard at what he is saying and starts to see the flaws in his advocacy.

[maarsen]

My 40 year old memories of the philosophy of rights is hazy now but one thing I distinctly remember is a right does not exist on its own. All rights have an obligation attached to them. The right to do X is followed by the obligation to not interfere withe another person's right to also do X. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

11 minutes ago, maarsen said:

My 40 year old memories of the philosophy of rights is hazy now but one thing I distinctly remember is a right does not exist on its own. All rights have an obligation attached to them. The right to do X is followed by the obligation to not interfere withe another person's right to also do X. 

Oh, I agree.  Where my "right" to do X interferes or interacts with DM's "right" to do Y things become complicated and the interaction and competing interests of the two existing rights need to be evaluated and weighed.  That's where law or custom comes into play.
 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

@Stubby,

Please nuke the last page and a half or so. DM derailed this thread and I really want to have a conversation on this nuanced topic. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

16 hours ago, Altherion said:

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.

Here's another theoretical question, when rights were established here in U.S., were they not actually privileges since many of them only applied to a small group of people?

15 hours ago, Swordfish said:

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.   

Go tell that to the Japanese-Americans in 1942......

13 hours ago, Altherion said:

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.

And now you finally get it, it's a little lie we like to tell ourselves to make us feel better......

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

11 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

@Stubby,

Please nuke the last page and a half or so. DM derailed this thread and I really want to have a conversation on this nuanced topic. 

But not my response to IP.  I really liked that one.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

6 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Here's another theoretical question, when rights were established here in U.S., were they not actually privileges since many of them only applied to a small group of people?

Go tell that to the Japanese-Americans in 1942......

And now you finally get it, it's a little lie we like to tell ourselves to make us feel better......

That is why I asked in the opening post if some other idea or philosophical notion would be a better way of discussing what "rights" are supposed to preserve and protect.  When we deal with abstract concepts like "rights" I don't believe there is ever going to be a way to enforce or preserve them universally because... they have no concrete existence.  People will always misunderstand or disagree about what a "right" actually protects and as such regardless of how vigerously a right is protected there will always be people who believe their "rights" have been violated.

Is there another way to do what "rights" do for societies.  There will never be a truly objective or platonic version of a "right".

[DunderMifflin]

2 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

No.  Legally you are not.  Heck even moving to moral entitlement that's debatable.  You seem to be offering a variation on solipsism/anarchy wherein people are "entitled" to anything they want without reference to anything but their partucular desires. That simply isn't the case in an objective, moral, or legal sense. 

You appear, based upon your argument here, to have a very unusual idea of what an "entitlement" is.

I never argued otherwise. Your buddies can call me a child. They can blame me for singlehandedly derailing a thread. But let's be clear here. You are consistently pushing my claim to a point where it's fits what you wanted it to be. I corrected you from the very first post of the very first post that I'm not conflating entitlement with legal right.

 

[DunderMifflin]

And let's be honest, my post before this was 8 hours ago. For someone to still be fretting over thread derailment 7 and a half hours later just looks like bullshit

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

4 minutes ago, DunderMifflin said:

I never argued otherwise. Your buddies can call me a child. They can blame me for singlehandedly derailing a thread. But let's be clear here. You are consistently pushing my claim to a point where it's fits what you wanted it to be. I corrected you from the very first post of the very first post that I'm not conflating entitlement with legal right.

 

I'm moving my response to this point to the "Driving is not a right" thread.  Lets keep this one for more abstract discusssions.

[DunderMifflin]

2 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I'm moving my response to this point to the "Driving is not a right" thread.  Lets keep this one for more abstract discusssions.

Why? so your cheering gallery can call me a child and accuse me of singlehandedly derailing the the thread while you and many others go down the same tracks I do b4 I even go there? No thank you.

[aceluby]

Oh yay.... the victim card has been played.