How, for example, (and to keep it relevant to the thread) do you reach the conclusion that no discrimination is better than discrimination? In the absence of anything else, they're just two choices on how a society can behave.
I agree with that article that natural rights tend to be weighed down with a lot of rhetoric and general BS. Confusing rights with what is physically possible is daft, and leads to all sorts of nonsense. And confusing them with what you want or what you think ought to be leads to shifting standards and subjectivity.
The article says little that I can see however about establishing rights in general. It warns against assuming that there are natural rights, but does not discuss any means by which a system of right might be produced without referring to natural rights. Being that the thread is about discrimination and rights, maybe you can educate me on your method of establishing rights.
I don't believe in a natural right to life. Life happens. It doesn't happen because it deserved to, it happens. I'm just going to talk about
human life here, we know that humans aren't averse to ending lives from other species if they constitute a threat to human life (viruses, alligators in swimming pools, Piers Morgan). I accept that it's right to end lives in that way because I share a common property with all life; I have a will for my species to survive.
Let's say you and I are alone on the planet with a finite amount of food resources. One of us will eventually kill the other. I will actually kill you early to make sure I have more food for a longer time. Pretend you didn't read that, just in case.
Do we care about each other's right to life? No, it doesn't exist in that setting because it is you and I simply surviving. That is what Life is. It will eradicate, consume and breed. That was predetermined in the first sparks of DNA and hasn't changed right through its evolution into a Human host.
Right now I shudder at the thought of killing you but I know that when the time comes it will be something that needs to be done and that my natural programming will take over from my social programming. Faced with the ultimate choice humans are capable of anything including murder and cannibalism. Wasn't going to mention the C word
The very concept that there might be a "natural right to life" is, imo, purely driven by a
personal survival instinct. It doesn't become recognised as a right until you and I agree that we share that right and will observe each other's right. Until then we will compete punitively to be The Survivor. All life will.
Large social groups need to negotiate power in order to remain cohesive. Let's say that you and I happen upon more post-apocalyptic GTPers and eventually there are 10,000 of us. We're going to need to organise ourselves pretty well, and agree some ground rules. The first rule is going to be something about not killing, (we need the people, we need to breed, we need workers to turn the fields and build the houses and raise the children and to organise it all). We're going to say that people have a right not to get killed. Bob kills Dave in an argument over who spilt the mead. Bad luck, Dave.
We either do something about it or we don't. If we
don't then we don't observe the right to life that we as a society have decided on. We need some people to sit, listen to Bob's story, the story of the witnesses, and decide if what Bob did was right or wrong. Soon that process becomes more and more refined and becomes a process of law that is due to every person named by the society. We'll have ways of gathering statements, preserving evidence, allowing appeals... and all to simply enforce protection of the rights that we have agreed are
Not slaves, they're not entitled to due law. Or women.
We all agree on the human right, but only because that right can be catalogued and exercised in law (otherwise it's a wish)
There's the problem, the rights are only a "should" unless society holds breaches-of-right to account. Rights are a product of the minds of humans in organised groups, they do not exist outside that. There are no 'natural' rights.
The society of which I am a part believes that all Humans have a right to life and that they are all born equally. I concur and am happy that my country is a signatory to the UDHR. The effect of that signing is that our courts must observe the agreements therein as part of their own judgements thereby informing our own case law in line with the philosophy and wording of the Declaration.
I'm not sure if I said that "no discrimination is better than discrimination" but in this context I'm clear that discrimination is actually required in order to form societies or to identify 'categories' of people for any reason. As I said at the beginning, all life is punitive, it is not naturally peaceful. Discrimination and force are required to even reach the position where rights are identified.
Morals are also a social construct. I shouldn't steal from you. Why not? I'm hungry and need to survive. If I have a natural right to life then you have no right to hamper me. I keeeel you.
I might be doing something that I don't think is immoral but you do. Where's the lookup of morals? We normally say that a moral instinct is just knowing when something is wrong, or that it feels wrong. That feeling is the basis of us agreeing what our society's rights should be. The law is the system of ensuring that everyone follows The New Way.
If a 16 year old boy has consensual sexual intercourse with an underage girl, it's a crime. But is it immoral? At what age would you say the border between morality/immorality is. It depends on the country you're from, some countries have much lower ages of consent and have a significant number of citizens in support of that. These aren't all tinpot third-world countries, there are some upstanding 1st world democracies amongst them, all reasonable decent people who just take a differing moral view as a result of their social 'contract' with each other.
Shared social views of right and wrong are expressed as morals which are listed as rights and protected by law. There are no natural rights or morals.
The only reason that global society is now discussing morality and right is because we can.The most successful societies set standards for others to follow (we refer to those societies as Civilisations). As communication spreads into more and more of the globe we see more and more societies rebelling against their leaders in order to attain the same democratic standards that we hold.
Because there's no natural moral or righteous standard, societies evolved very differently from each other up until mass communication really grew. Try asking for a breadcake in Manchester if you don't believe me.
