Natural vs. Human rights

Ack! for the love of Pete!

I self-banned at my favorite shit-shooting forum because it was taking up too much of my time and I wanted to force myself to stay away: but my silly neurons and dendrites will have none of it, so here I am viewing a thread about 'natural rights', and so far not a single contributor to the thread has recognized the distinction between natural right and human right. Before I continue, YES! the concept of a 'right' is man-made, and nature does not traffic in 'rights'. Rights, like language, like currency, like modes of musical composition, are the inventions of conscious, thinking, reasoning beings, and are not inherent in, nor intrinsic to, nature. This we know, but since certain people seem to suffer from amnesia every single time the subject of rights comes up, we are forced to reiterate and remind everyone of this fact from the start, in the hope that some tiny seed of this fundamental truth might take hold and find root in the rich and balmy soil of the brains of our potential interlocutors.

Now, a natural right to exist is that which every living entity possesses, and by this we mean only that all such entities are given leave to sustain and promote their existence by whatever means necessary; by 'whatever means necessary' we mean just that: a natural right to exist is the right to kill and eat other entities, to seek, exploit, and horde resources, to act, in whatever way an entity can, to survive. There is no question of privilege or entitlement, no penalty or punishment, no moral quandaries, no ethical responsibilities or considerations whatsoever. Might makes right, in nature. The laws that govern the overwhelming majority of unreasoning, living organisms in the cosmos are force and happenstance.

So much for the definition of 'natural rights'. Now we come to the definition of human rights. These rights are also called civil rights, individual rights, etc. Man, as an intelligent, rational, reasoning being, is not provided by nature with certain instincts particular to most other animal species: he has no inherent, automatic knowledge pertaining to how he must act in order to survive. He has drives, urges, and predilections, but these are not instincts, as many incorrectly assume. A bird knows how to make a nest by virtue of instinct; a man may well desire shelter and dryness and warmth, but he is not provided with the knowledge of how to build a house, an igloo, or a tepee. He must learn this knowledge for himself, and such information is remembered and passed down, rather than being encoded and inherited genetically.

That being the case, as man began to become civilized he reasoned that since he is not endowed with certain animal instincts he must be allowed to abide by the governance of his own mind, he must be at liberty to learn and to seek out the means for his survival, and to pursue whatever course he chooses that seems adequate to ensure that those means be attained; however, this right which man grants to himself, by virtue of inter-subjective, voluntary, social cooperation and agreement, carries with it a necessary negative aspect, which is that he may do only that which is rational and reasonable to sustain his own life, and not any action whatsoever, as it is with his natural right, which, it needs to be stressed, he still possesses, with respect to his dealings with lower animals who operate solely in the realm of natural right. Natural rights, or, the laws of nature, do not have this negative aspect. That is the distinction between the two terms, right there. If an individual wishes to possess the right to his life and to the pursuit of happiness, he is obligated to understand and obey the restraint which the negative aspect of that right imposes upon him, which is, that he may not interfere with nor violate the right of any individual to possess and to benefit from that very same right which he himself wishes to possess.

And so it goes, yadda yadda, etcetera, and so forth. Why can't people get this straight?

7/25/2011

On Morality; BB post

Originally Posted by G: Since I've realized that I was a moral nihilist I have no longer claimed that anything is moral or immoral. But this does not, as I have found, interfere with things like, say, vegetarianism which I practice. One can be entirely empathetic with other sentient beings without the idea "killing sentient beings is wrong" or "eating meat is wrong." Thoughts?

 

My opinion is that you've set up a false dichotomy, i.e: if there are no objective, moral absolutes, then there is no such thing as moral or immoral. But this is obviously not the case since you can empathize with other organisms, and that empathy is the result of a real quality you possess which we call morality. I would call it a moral sense, as some philosophers have named it. That there is no hard, brute fact called morality to examine, and by which to measure degrees of the intuitive beliefs and suppositions we call morals, is not a problem, as there are no hard, brute facts about a great many qualities which are nonetheless real qualities, experienced across the board by the greater majority of humans throughout history: love, hope, fear, grief, etc.

Take language itself: languages are human inventions. There are no absolute, objective linguistic facts against which we measure the utility of speech. We have modes of speech which have developed over vast periods of time, and complex grammars built up around them, fixed rules that are in a certain sense objective, in that they apply to all users of language regardless of subjective feelings or perspective (for instance, "shovel" is a noun and a verb in English whether I like or not), but which are nonetheless human inventions that exist only by inter-subjective social agreement and custom.

I think the sort of thinking implied in the OP is a remnant of religious thinking, and not the other way around as many would suggest. If you think about it, what fuels religious thinking, and in particular modern Christian reformed theology, is the idea that only God is perfect and absolute. Humans fall short of the perfection of God in every sense; they are crippled from the start by an inherent predilection towards reckless and "sinful" behavior. Since they can never know moral perfection, they are fatally and irrevocably flawed and can have no moral guidance other than obedience to the moral law set down by this mysterious and perfect Lawgiver.

The thing to remember is that there is no perfect, personal lawgiver*, and that Nature doesn't traffic in morality. Morality is a human invention, and is thoroughly unnatural. We should be proud of the fact that we've invented it and that we are able to live up to it at least some of the time.

To say that without absolute, objective moral facts there is no such thing as morality is the same as saying "without God, all is permissible." It's an old lie that needs to be put to rest.

**Methinks I was in error there. 18 July 2011 GB