Do we have certain unalienable rights?

[Berzerker]

Why does this moral authority stem from existence?

You quoted the answer

you're alive (right to life) and whomever or whatever created you did so without chains (right to liberty)

What you've said here seems a lot like deriving an ought from an is. We exist therefore we ought to exist. That isn't logically valid; we would reject the argument "North Korea is a dictatorship therefore North Korea ought to be a dictatorship". There's no clear connection between what is the case and what ought to be the case. Thus, where does this moral authority come from?

You dont have the moral authority to exist because you "ought" to, you have the moral authority to exist because no one else has a morally superior claim of authority to remove you from existence. Your life belongs to you... Its one of those "self-evident truths" identified in the Declaration of Independence.

 

[Yeekim]

the logical conclusion is that totalitarian hierarchies are humanity's destiny.

Hierarchies? Yes. Totalitarian? Don't know, why?

And since you believe the State has the power to take away a person's life if it should so choose, logically, you must also believe the State has the power to do anything with a person's life; if murder is assigned a value of one in terms of just how badly it infringes on human liberty and dignity, any other act imaginable has a value less than one.

The bolded part is the one which does not follow. I am sure you can imagine worse things than having to sit an electric chair yourself.

Anyway, that "logic" of yours is pretty strange. It should word backwards too, right? And since you believe the State has not got the power to take away a person's life if it should so choose, logically, you must also believe the State has not got the power to do anything with a person's life; if there is no justice done by the State then each individual is his own judge, jury and hangman - the anarchist's ideal, I understand. Which, ironically, is the situation I would first describe with the aphorism "might makes right".

 

[Bei1052]

There are other formulations of rights that do not involve invoking natural right theory.

I would like to hear them. I really would.

 

[Ecofarm]

Obviously, no rights exist outside the social contract, but the social contract can/may/does (in the case of the US) include inalienable rights.


If natural rights existed, we would have rights that, literally, noone could take away under any circumstance; that's nonsense.


Inalienable rights exist not because a god or nature demands it, but because we want them.

 

[Berzerker]

Obviously, no rights exist outside the social contract, but the social contract can/may/does (in the case of the US) include inalienable rights.

So the millions of Germans killed by the Nazis had no right to live?

If natural rights existed, we would have rights that, literally, noone could take away under any circumstance; that's nonsense.

Natural rights are - depend on - claims of moral authority, how do you take that away? You cant...

Inalienable rights exist not because a god or nature demands it, but because we want them.

We did not create existence, rights emanate from that which is responsible for life. But I'd agree with that if we defined "we" as ~universal, ie ~everyone of sound mind would agree. Why is murder immoral? Because no one wants to be murdered. Thats universal, and the fact there are hypocrites in the world who would murder others doesn't change that reality.

 

[lovett]

The right to liberty, therefore, is logical from a scientific standpoint because it ensures a better standard of living for humanity.

Liberty is inalienable ethically.

These two positions seems incompatible. Surely if the right to liberty derives from generally better standards of living that right could be breached were such an action to increase living standards even more. That is to say, ethically such an action would be justified. If it is conceivably ethically justifiable to revok liberty than surely one can't say that liberty is inalienable ethically.

Inalienable rights exist not because a god or nature demands it, but because we want them.

I assume you agree that, on this basis, it is perfectly reasonable to revoke liberty if we have wants over that of liberty.

What I'm saying really isn't a defence of natural law. As I said, I believe these values evolved, as humans and human society evolved (which is mostly the very early notions of human society, as the last few thousand years are insignificant in evolutionary time). And in this case the "is" and the "ought" do, infact, combine - these basic values are the foundations for human morality.
Had humans evolved differently, we would've had a different set of values - perhaps we wouldn't be as nice to each other and when seeing a homeless guy in the street the socialy accepted behavior would've been to kick him. And perhaps we wouldn't be as xenophobic, or had the same desire to live after having children, or wouldn't need social interaction as badly.
In any case, I don't think there's a need to justify natural law by saying that it's "right" - these laws are not just "right", they're the ones who defined what "right" is in the first place, and as such are justified (for us humans) by their very existence.

This still fails to explain why we should act in a way conducive to these 'basic values'. The fact that doing so makes us more moral just begs that question. The very fact that we could have different values indicated that there is no obligation to live by those values. Indeed, one wonders what 'obligation' even means in this sentence. I think by dispensing with moral rightness as a justification for natural law we are just redefining natural law as implicitly morally right. That doesn't really tell us why we should follow natural law.

You quoted the answer
You dont have the moral authority to exist because you "ought" to, you have the moral authority to exist because no one else has a morally superior claim of authority to remove you from existence. Your life belongs to you... Its one of those "self-evident truths" identified in the Declaration of Independence.

It seems we accept 'morally superior claim' to remove someone from the world of the living all the time. For example, if that person is about to shoot you; self-defence. Moreover it does not follow from the simple fact that we exist that our life 'belongs' to us. 'Belongs' is a word that has meaning in a legal or social contractarian framework. I don't see how it has any meaning outside of that. We couldn't say that something belongs to anyone.

I'd like to see you elaborate on what moral authority is, where it stems from and why people implicitly have a certain measure of it. It seems rather like an assertion of natural rights and it can't do to justify natural rights through an assertion of natural rights.

 

[G-Man]

This still fails to explain why we should act in a way conducive to these 'basic values'. The fact that doing so makes us more moral just begs that question. The very fact that we could have different values indicated that there is no obligation to live by those values. Indeed, one wonders what 'obligation' even means in this sentence. I think by dispensing with moral rightness as a justification for natural law we are just redefining natural law as implicitly morally right. That doesn't really tell us why we should follow natural law.

There is no "obligation" in the sense that we CAN live differently. What the idea of natural law says is that we SHOULD live according to these laws. Natural law and morality are the same, and just like we can live immorally but shouldn't, we can do the same regarding natural law. And while positive law draws its obligatory force from its creators (who themselves draw the authority from another source, such as being elected by the people), natural law is obligatory simply because it's moral. Infact, many supporters of natural law would say that any law which contradicts it is simply not a law at all and shouldn't be followed.
The best example (and one which is widely used by supporters of natural law) is Nazi Germany. I think we can both agree that its laws were immoral (racist, violent and oppressive). In other words - they chose to live differently from what natural law dictates. And as a result, not only did the country act immorally, but so did its citizens. According to natural law, its citizens shouldn't have acted according to the country's positive laws, and would've avoided immoral acts.

 

[Ayatollah So]

This appears to me to be a completely 'social contract' view of rights. That is, rights are formed through the negotiation and interaction of different interested parties. It follows that such rights are artificial insofar as they are man-made and certainly not self-evident.

Rights aren't just formed through interaction of the parties, they're discovered as well. That is, certain broad outlines are discovered, while the details are given form. Some basic principles cannot be other than they are given the species that is doing the discussing, but many details can go one way or another with equal rationality.

 

[Ecofarm]

So the millions of Germans killed by the Nazis had no right to live?

Noone has a right to live beyond a social contract. Try to get a good one... (personally, I endorse the US constitution) I bet in the woods only it keeps you alive v me if I need to eat. Natural law, as far as I can figure, is I feed.