Natural Rights and the Social Contract

[antagon]

metternich,

i dont see chomsky's weak universality as being necessary to natural rights. i think it might lend to universal social justice and by extension common social and legal rights. history has shown the potential for independent evolution of social entitlement and privilege (or conforming lack thereof)

what i contend, however, transcends a need for contemplation or awareness of the right. it is more a fundamental circumstance arising from the nature of free will. because free will is possessed by us, but its domain is also limited to ourselves, and is non-transferable, the sole possessor of the right to determine an action of free will is the actor. this right is natural; it precedes moral attachment or qualifications by virtue of that. it is granted by nature, the actor himself cannot will or actively strip the circumstance away from free will.

 

[american chaos]

typing.

Let me help you out--

A man has the right to die.

That is an inalienable rights, is it not?

no. allow me to return the favor and help you out, too:

i've explained that natural rights are exclusive to actions of free will.

living or not living is autonomous.

But what is a natural right.

A man can die naturally, it is not always contingent upon his own free will. Unfortuantely, the right to live(if there actually is such a thing) is dependent mainly on the individual and his ability to maintain his life. Even at birth, the individual may not have the will to survive on his own, and therefore depends on the sentiments and will of others(most notably, the parents). Therefore, the right of life/death and the execution of living or dying can be mutually exclusive of the actions/will of the individual in question.

Nature does not grant the right to live/die. It only produces the circumstances where one can live in or die from. To suggest that I believe rights is dependent on will or action alone is not only incorrect, but take away from focusing on the question at hand: Does a natural right exist, and if so, what is one and why?

If a natural right cannot be taken away, then the right to death has the best chance of being a natural right. Unfortuantely, actions can be taken to prolong the life of an individual up to its natural limits regardless if that individual will so or not. In such a case, the "natural right of death" is being infringed upon and therefore not natural.

On the other hand, the idea that man can be oppressed, forced, or deprieved in this life tends to indicate that rights are abstractions and do not actually exist. We(humans) created them in order to construct a more idealized society to live in. The "protection" of such rights is therefore partly contigent upon restricting aggressive agents(such as foreigners, government, or individual/groups of citizens) from deprieving us of them. Knowing how to maintain these restrictions against these agents is the basic concept of "keeping our rights".

Apparently, rights are not possesions, but a system of concepts and restrictions that can be tailored, reconstructed or even destroyed given the circumstances. You or I may not be able to toss away a right , but someone else maybe able to take them away from us. Either by force, legislation(or ammending the constitution, which is similiar but not exactly the same), or deception.

 

[PLYMCO_PILGRIM]

I challenge the widely held belief that our compendium of rights are granted us by others or the society in which we live. Instead, I argue that we have an innate entitlement to act howsoever we please, and that our societies are crafted to impair our use of our rights for the benefit of a social agenda or determined communal virtue.

While this is similar to many enlightenment-era views on natural rights, my position differs in some crucial ways. Firstly, I challenge the necessary association with God or supernatural altogether as it is proposed in the Declaration of Independence, for example. I attribute these rights to the nature of free will itself. Should the faithful attribute the facts of our existence to God, my argument doesn't obstruct that, however, my contention is that these rights are natural rather than supernatural.

I further challenge the necessary altruism which has been associated with natural rights from as early as Thomas Hobbes. In Leviathan he describes these rights to be exclusive to acts of self preservation. John Locke elaborately augmented the concept with the introduction of a natural system of morality to which natural rights were constrained. I argue that there are no such limitations to these rights within the bounds of self-determined action.

That they could give rise to 'evil' actions or 'good', self-preserving actions or suicidal, is the struggle which I argue our natural authority over our own action - our natural rights - has thrust upon humanity and the social contracts we construct.

According to our founding documents those rights are given to us by GOD not by our fellow man or governments.

Just saying.

 

[antagon]

according to me any association with God is unnecessary. like anything else natural, religious folks are welcome to tie origins back to God, who's created everything in their view. the OP explores that.

 

[antagon]

Let me help you out--

A man has the right to die.

That is an inalienable rights, is it not?

no. allow me to return the favor and help you out, too:

i've explained that natural rights are exclusive to actions of free will.

living or not living is autonomous.

But what is a natural right.

a right is an entitlement granted to a party. where social rights or legal rights are respectively granted and enforced by society and the law, a natural right is granted and enforced by nature. while humans have the facility to defeat social and legal values, laws of nature cannot be thusly impacted by humanity.

we are entitled to take actions of free will by virtue of the nature of free will. this nature indicates that free will governing the action of an individual is exclusive to the individual. it cant be intercepted or seized. it cant be transferred. these entitlements to take actions from free will and which is afforded by the laws of nature, are natural rights. can you see how typing is a natural right?

A man can die naturally, it is not always contingent upon his own free will...

as above, life and death are not natural rights. they are not determined by free will because they are autonomous. here's more on autonomous and reflexive action from earlier in the thread:

you cant make someone till a field in the same way one can elicit instinctive action by tapping their knee with a hammer. you cant support compliance with the rule of law with a machine the way a life support machine could support the the compliance of the heart and lungs in their autonomous function.

can you see how life and death are not natural rights? nature herself possesses the entitlement to determine that. we can commit suicide by bleeding ourselves out. that is a decision made of free will... an exercise of natural rights.

Apparently, rights are not possesions, but a system of concepts...

to effectively discuss natural rights, one would have to be able to draw the difference between rights of a natural origin and rights of a social or legal origin. one is natural, innate and non-transferable, the other is artificial -- the proceeds of the constructs which we make up ourselves.