Religion and Human Rights

[parmalee]

I did mention God at one point, but for the reason I mentioned in the post above this one. Perhaps he skims our posts so fast, assumes he understands the arguments and this explains why his reponses are to arguments we have not made and are not responses to the points we are making. Whatever it is he's doing, it is rude in the extreme.

ahh, you are correct--didn't see that.

however, within this thread, i did not--and Bells and Crunchy Cat, well, and glaucon, for that matter, certainly did not.

this is getting beyond frustrating, i think i shall have to stop before i'm pushed to the point of suicidal ideation.

 

[earth]

did you review the definition of objective? entity? do you understand what is intended by the adjective, "religious"? rhetorical questions--get back to us after you've cracked a text or two.

If you did a review of previous posts then you would know I did define objective and subjective. Rights are subjective until we decide and define our rights. Once a law is enacted establishing our rights and we exercise our rights then they become objective. (example: voting)

You and a few others using philosophy say in the beginning people had no rights so they still don't have any. I say humans interfere with determinism and have made up their own bill of rights.

 

[parmalee]

If you did a review of previous posts then you would know I did define objective and subjective. Rights are subjective until we decide and define our rights. Once a law is enacted establishing our rights and we exercise our rights then they become objective. (example: voting)

if you would review the preceding posts, you would note that i quoted your INCORRECT definition of objective--and i provided you with the appropriate definition. and NO, rights do NOT become objective--how can you possibly not understand this? C.C. has told you so, Doreen has, glaucon has, Bells has, and i have--how many people need to explain this to you before you can understand?

You and a few others using philosophy say in the beginning people had no rights so they still don't have any. I say humans interfere with determinism and have made up their own bill of rights.

how does one interfere with "determinism"? sorry, that does not make any sense. and who has said that humans do not have rights?

you cannot read.

 

[glaucon]

I must admit I'm confused as to the confusion here.

In the hope of clarification then, I'll ask this single open question:

Is there anyone here who is advocating the position that Human Rights are anything other than an artifice of human design?

 

[Doreen]

ahh, you are correct--didn't see that.

however, within this thread, i did not--and Bells and Crunchy Cat, well, and glaucon, for that matter, certainly did not.

this is getting beyond frustrating, i think i shall have to stop before i'm pushed to the point of suicidal ideation.

I mean, we are in a Religion subforum in the philosophy forum of a science forum. All of this makes it absolutely appropriate to question the existence of something so ephemeral as 'rights'. When the person asserting the existence of rights uses the same arguments theists use to support God, he or she should not be surprised to find him or herself facing the same responses theists get to such arguments here - this has been one of the approaches I used, but I was flexible. I also approached the issue from a scientific standpoint and asked a number of questions about the origins of rights and what they are made of, but these were ignored. For some reason we have the reasoning ability of trees. An interesting and rather pagan notion, but very surprising in context.

 

[Doreen]

I must admit I'm confused as to the confusion here.

In the hope of clarification then, I'll ask this single open question:

Is there anyone here who is advocating the position that Human Rights are anything other than an artifice of human design?

Earth
Rights are subjective until we decide and define our rights. Once a law is enacted establishing our rights and we exercise our rights then they become objective. (example: voting)

To this kind of argument I responded, several times, that it is clear that humans act as if rights exist, but this does not give them objective existence. They are not inherent properties of people. They are not something one 'has'. But we act as if people 'are born with them' etc.

You and a few others using philosophy say in the beginning people had no rights so they still don't have any. I say humans interfere with determinism and have made up their own bill of rights.

I'll leave it to you to work with this one.

 

[parmalee]

I must admit I'm confused as to the confusion here.

In the hope of clarification then, I'll ask this single open question:

Is there anyone here who is advocating the position that Human Rights are anything other than an artifice of human design?

earth is stating that rights exist objectively, rather they become objective; and of course, he is proceeded from a befuddled understanding or "objective."

 

[earth]

earth is stating that rights exist objectively, rather they become objective; and of course, he is proceeded from a befuddled understanding or "objective."

nonsense

 

[parmalee]

I mean, we are in a Religion subforum in the philosophy forum of a science forum. All of this makes it absolutely appropriate to question the existence of something so ephemeral as 'rights'. When the person asserting the existence of rights uses the same arguments theists use to support God, he or she should not be surprised to find him or herself facing the same responses theists get to such arguments here - this has been one of the approaches I used, but I was flexible. I also approached the issue from a scientific standpoint and asked a number of questions about the origins of rights and what they are made of, but these were ignored. For some reason we have the reasoning ability of trees. An interesting and rather pagan notion, but very surprising in context.

i wish i had copied earth's initial response to my post, #338; unfortunately, it was swiftly edited. anyhow, these assertions are sufficient:

earth
Parmalee thinks voting is a religion brought about by atheists.

and:

Is voting a human right or not? You stepped in and made comments on your own. You can't get your head out of your religious ass long enough to understand anything. Religion is ignorance chow down.

and (to Bells):

Your righteous religious belief hasn't stopped the bigotry and hate or killing.

i'm certain that i do know some, but at present i cannot name a single "religious" person i know whose thinking is so muddled, and curiously "religious," in this respect as is earth's.

 

[parmalee]

nonsense

Originally Posted by EARTH

Rights are subjective until we decide and define our rights. Once a law is enacted establishing our rights and we exercise our rights then they become objective. (example: voting)

so you are retracting this statement?

 

[Doreen]

Glaucon,
This is how I would describe my disagreement with earth.

He is saying that now rights are objective because people have agreed that we have them. When it is pointed out that they are not objective, he will mention practical consequences of 'rights' such as that he can vote or if he is murdered there will be a trial. The problem for me with this is that there are objective consequences of people believing that there are 'rights', of course, but that the rights do not gain some objective status. And I mean this in two senses. They have no more ontological status than any other idea does. And they are not objective as in correct morally. They shift from culture to culture, time to time. Rights are claims to inherent qualities in humans (or other things) such that they deserve this or that treatment, etc. These inherent qualities do not exist, or if they do, earth needs to show how and where and when they arose, what they are made of, etc.

At times he responds as if we are saying there should be no laws.

At other times as if we are saying that God must exist.

The irony being that his defense has been very similar to theists who point to people's behavior to prove there is a God and theists who say that without God everyone will act immorally.

I am sympathetic to his reactions to what he thinks we are saying and to what he thinks the implications of our positions are. I think his reactions to these things are fairly reasonable ones. But, as said, these are not the positions we have.

I think he thinks that local, collective decisions about what exists can be referred to as objective because this means that certain objective things will happen afterwards.

I also think he misses the problems inherent in nominalism.

Again, I have sympathy for this, but given his not really reading our posts and that his responses are therefore oddly skewed, I am getting tired of being aware of how he sees things without him seeming to have an interest in making this mutual.

 

[earth]

Originally Posted by Doreen
.....I was glad Crunchy Cat said there were no objective rights.....

Originally Posted by earth
Is a person's right to have a lawyer when in a court of law a subjective right or objective right?

Originally Posted by Crunchy Cat
It's a subjective right that is enforced by people.

That is the disagreement. One can include voting as an objective right.

The definition of subjective and objective at dictionary.com is:
Objective – adjective
being the object of perception or thought; belonging to the object of thought rather than to the thinking subject (opposed to subjective ).
subjective
existing in the mind; belonging to the thinking subject rather than to the object of thought (opposed to objective ).

Subjective exists in the mind or belonging to the thinking having no application.
Objective is the object of thought having an application such as voting.

I think I have it defined correctly.

Originally Posted by Glaucon,
Is there anyone here who is advocating the position that Human Rights are anything other than an artifice of human design?

No I agree, but to state those rights don't exist because they are not objective is incorrect IMO.

 

[Doreen]

No I agree, but to state those rights don't exist because they are not objective is incorrect IMO.

But notice the very important and core change you have made. You are now saying they are NOT objective. If you go back to the original exchange I kept saying 'objective rights do not exist.' I then referred to 'rights in themselves' do not exist.

To be fair to both of us, language is a key issue here. What does it mean when someone says 'rights' exists? Is the word a shorthand for a whole lot of behaviors and thoughts humans have
or
is it an assertion that there are these things or properties of people that exist?

Most of the language around rights makes it seem like rights are nouns like rocks and trees. But they are not like these. Laws are more like these kinds of nouns because we make them and we do not refer to them as inherent in persons. We understand they are contracted agreements, for the most part. But when people talk about rights it is as if they are properties of humans.

Leaves have green pigments. Humans have rights. Even after we have agreed to think of people in terms of rights they do not 'have' something new. Absolutely real, existent consequences happen once people are viewed as having rights.

None of us are denying that.

 

[parmalee]

The definition of subjective and objective at dictionary.com is:
Objective – adjective
being the object of perception or thought; belonging to the object of thought rather than to the thinking subject (opposed to subjective ).
subjective
existing in the mind; belonging to the thinking subject rather than to the object of thought (opposed to objective ).

when you speak of something existing objectively, you are invoking the notion as it is used in philosophy--the definition offered by dictionary.com is NOT adequate for this employment of objective.

you are incorrect.

 

[glaucon]

hmmm.
Not a single straight answer?

Well, perhaps I jumped in here too late.
In any case, unless I'm misunderstanding something here, it seems I agree with both parties.

I'll leave a few comments and then most likely leave you all at it.

when you speak of something existing objectively, you are invoking the notion as it is used in philosophy--the definition offered by dictionary.com is NOT adequate for this employment of objective.

you are incorrect.

An astute observation.

See my comments to follow below.


It does seem to me here that, as Doreen points out:

But notice the very important and core change you have made. You are now saying they are NOT objective. If you go back to the original exchange I kept saying 'objective rights do not exist.' I then referred to 'rights in themselves' do not exist.

To be fair to both of us, language is a key issue here. What does it mean when someone says 'rights' exists? Is the word a shorthand for a whole lot of behaviors and thoughts humans have
or
is it an assertion that there are these things or properties of people that exist?

semantic issues abound.

I think all parties would be well served by being quite particular in explicating what it is they mean when certain terms are made use of.

Regardless, as Doreen points out, at the very least, however one chooses to interpret a particular term, ones usage of that term must be consistent.

I think he thinks that local, collective decisions about what exists can be referred to as objective because this means that certain objective things will happen afterwards.

I also think he misses the problems inherent in nominalism.

I agree wholeheartedly with your first paragraph here.
Then again, I am a nominalist, so......

 

[Doreen]

I agree wholeheartedly with your first paragraph here.
Then again, I am a nominalist, so......

There are nominalists and there are nominalists.
I am quite sure you would understand positions saying 'rights' period do not exist even if you disagreed. Hence you would be unlikely to refer to those challenging that nominalism of thinking like trees.

It is important to add that imagining that rights inhere in humans leads to a lot of gnarly problems
and not just philosophical ones. I can't get around the bias of everyday language in relation to rights where this is the strong implication.

 

[glaucon]

There are nominalists and there are nominalists.

lol

I guess it all depends one one's definition...

 

[Doreen]

An interesting example is when a murderer, who clearly is a murderer, claims via his lawyers that 'his rights' were violated by an illegal search - a search that led to the gun and the pieces of the womans' body, etc, all with his fingerprints and the video of the murder. I think this is a case of incorrect nominalism. If any rights were violated, they were 'our rights' not to be searched illegally by the police. I am not saying that his rights were not violated, but I think his counter assertion is absurd. It is as if he had a force field which we refer to as a right or somewhere in him a right was violated. And his guilt or innocence is not the point, really, though I think it helps make the issue clearer. Whereever rights are, they are not in him, he does not have them - nor do I - but we have agreed to act in certain ways - in this case as police - and these agreements can be called rights which act as the limit the police can go behaviorally without negative consequences. Sort of like a highway yield sign in the ether.

The sentence

I have the right to an attorney

is not wrong, practically speaking, in some places. But the reason it is not wrong is because the error is built into the language, so in practical terms we have to ignore the error. The language is hallucinating metaphorically, mostly with the verb. So what can we do, in most instances, but accept the sentence.

 

[glaucon]

An interesting example is when a murderer, who clearly is a murderer, claims via his lawyers that 'his rights' were violated by an illegal search - a search that led to the gun and the pieces of the womans' body, etc, all with his fingerprints and the video of the murder. I think this is a case of incorrect nominalism.

I couldn't disagree more.
By the contextual definition, whether or not rights were violated is a simple determination. Whether or not it serves other, possibly related purposes [including other rights] is an entirely different issue. This of course, explains why most contemporary litigation is so complex....

 

[Doreen]

I couldn't disagree more.
By the contextual definition, whether or not rights were violated is a simple determination. Whether or not it serves other, possibly related purposes [including other rights] is an entirely different issue. This of course, explains why most contemporary litigation is so complex....

Keep reading.....I think I dealt with this issue, though I understand why you took it this way.