RE: About "rights" again

From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Wed Jan 15 2003 - 01:12:31 MST


Lee Daniel Crocker writes

> [mailto:owner-extropians@extropy.org]On Behalf Of Lee Daniel Crocker
> Sent: Tuesday, January 14, 2003 4:43 PM

> The fact that a term is used in ambiguous ways doesn't mean
> it can't also be used more rigorously by people who agree
> on a foundation.

I guess not, but, I find their terms confusing and unnecessary,
just as I do Jefferson's.

> I think the libertarian/anarchocapitalist/individualist
> interpretation of "natural rights" is reasonably consistent
> and useful, even if some of those who use it probably go too far.
>
> > So what then? Are we to follow your reasoning and suppose
> > that human sacrifice is a part of natural law? Moreover,
> > I guess that you've got the ultimate argument that we can
> > use to dispose of the socialists: "You see," we tell them,
> > "Capitalism is just a part of natural law, resistance is
> > futile".
>
> If sacrifice succeeded more than other cultures of the time
> (which I don't concede for a moment, but I do concede that it
> might be possible), then that only shows that some particular
> complex collection of cultural memes with a certain feature
> out-competed some other complex collection without that feature.
> That says little about the individual feature unless you are
> able to study a very large number of cultures over a long time
> and draw good conclusions. I suspect that if the correlation
> you posit really existed, it would just be a statistical
> artifact.

I don't quite follow. If human sacrifice turned out to be as
among primitive cultures as common as incest taboo, then, while
I agree that the *explanation* might be vastly more complex---
e.g., my chess example of a truth that can't be easily chunked
---it would still be what some might want to call a "natural law".

> On the other hand, something like "supply and
> demand" is more likely to show up as a real "law" of human
> behavior that's universal and exists in exactly the same sense
> that laws of physics exist, even prior to their discovery.

Now yes indeed, that's practically a law of nature.

> I will also concede that "natural rights" is a term inherently
> two steps removed from reality in the sense that it implies
> both that there are natural laws of human behavior, and further
> that many of them are expressible in terms of "rights", which
> are restraints of secondary action.

> I.e., when we say that one
> has a "right" to action X, what we mean is that we think it's
> wrong for person B to restrain or punish person A for X, which
> is a circuitous way of saying that the action of such restraint
> or punishment leads to bad outcomes.

Well said.

> It is probably true that
> there are universals in this form: a culture that restrains or
> punishes political speech is probably doomed to failure, so
> expressing this universal in terms of a "right to free speech"
> is perfectly reasonable.

What's wrong with simply endorsing the simpler claim "Our
society and all modern ones should endorse the legal right
to freedom of speech"?

Now as I first asked Ron, and as Michael Butler responded,
I suppose that a political necessity might exist for claiming
more than the bare facts warrant, and that the reification
of some sort of "rights" in the abstract pays dividends. An
old paradox: should the plain truth be spoken to our political
disadvantage? Well, we've all wrestled with that, and know
the answer. ("It depends.")

> But there may be other such laws that aren't expressible
> that way, and indeed for which such an expression gets
> in the way of seeing the underlying truth.

Yes, sounds like an important corollary.

Lee Corbin



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