Human Rights

[allhart]

People talk about Human Rights a lot on CF - Christian and non-Christian alike. Even the most staunch moral non-realist seems to feel uncomfortable about questioning the notion of Human Rights. Yet I find myself utterly bemused by them. I'd be grateful for an explanation.

What are Human Rights?
How did we get them?
How do we know what they are?
Why are we obliged to respect them?

Human rights in Question? On what bases do we question. Morality, integrity and life. What is it that gives us common ground in humanism. Look at Proverbs 28 : 2 Here is a thought , As a parent we can say. I wont be like my parent; I wont discipline. Lowering the standard.Generational this has happened and as for ACLU everyone has rights. Meaning what! A 2 year old needs privacy in a locked bathroom and with no supervision. Able to create chaos, but if the child hurts them selves its the parents fault. Molesters have more rights than the child or its the parents fault for letting them go to the bathroom and lock the door. The world says parents rights are equal to the children. Funny! Knowledge needs wisdom to put human rights together. If everyone's has equal rights and everyone wants there rights held up or comes first you have everyone wanting to rule. There is no rule of law. only chaos!!! no comradery. As for society's human rights. I believe in God's and I live to a high order. This also gives common ground as well.

 

[Nooj]

There exists in Latin (universally known by the educated then) a verb form known as the gerundive, used in the passive periphrastic construction. The significance of this verb form and construction was to say in a word what was proper, what ought to be done. A good example is the final word in the phrase abbreviated Q.E.D. used at the end of proofs -- the full phrase is quod erat demonstrandum -- "which was (properly set) to be demonstated."

Aren't gerundives technically passive verbal adjectives? Thus demonstrandum in QED agrees with the neuter quod?

 

[The Nihilist]

Human rights in Question? On what bases do we question. Morality, integrity and life. What is it that gives us common ground in humanism. Look at Proverbs 28 : 2 Here is a thought , As a parent we can say. I wont be like my parent; I wont discipline. Lowering the standard.Generational this has happened and as for ACLU everyone has rights. Meaning what! A 2 year old needs privacy in a locked bathroom and with no supervision. Able to create chaos, but if the child hurts them selves its the parents fault. Molesters have more rights than the child or its the parents fault for letting them go to the bathroom and lock the door. The world says parents rights are equal to the children. Funny! Knowledge needs wisdom to put human rights together. If everyone's has equal rights and everyone wants there rights held up or comes first you have everyone wanting to rule. There is no rule of law. only chaos!!! no comradery. As for society's human rights. I believe in God's and I live to a high order. This also gives common ground as well.

You know that no one ever knows what you're talking about, right?

 

[cantata]

Human rights in Question? On what bases do we question. Morality, integrity and life. What is it that gives us common ground in humanism. Look at Proverbs 28 : 2 Here is a thought , As a parent we can say. I wont be like my parent; I wont discipline. Lowering the standard.Generational this has happened and as for ACLU everyone has rights. Meaning what! A 2 year old needs privacy in a locked bathroom and with no supervision. Able to create chaos, but if the child hurts them selves its the parents fault. Molesters have more rights than the child or its the parents fault for letting them go to the bathroom and lock the door. The world says parents rights are equal to the children. Funny! Knowledge needs wisdom to put human rights together. If everyone's has equal rights and everyone wants there rights held up or comes first you have everyone wanting to rule. There is no rule of law. only chaos!!! no comradery. As for society's human rights. I believe in God's and I live to a high order. This also gives common ground as well.

Uhuh.

Anyone got anything coherent to say?

 

[quatona]

Uhuh.

Anyone got anything coherent to say?

Coherent?
Your standards are pretty high.
I´d already be glad if I would understand it, at least in parts.

 

[billwald]

The Declaration of Independence was the greatest advertising copy ever written.

Legal rights are, for the most part in most parts, tribal/cultural social contract. GB is the greatest example of social contract. They have done just fine without a Constitution.

 

[Robbie_James_Francis]

I think you're right to question human rights because I think absolutely everything ought to be questioned, even if it's just briefly and even if we don't get an answer at the end.

I guess human rights at their most basic, imo, would be the basic 'do unto others...' principle. I don't want to be persecuted for arbitrary things like my height or eye colour, so I don't want others to be persecuted because of their race, gender, sex, class, sexuality etc. I think human rights' basis can be summed up as simply putting yourself in someone else's shoes and imaging what you'd want.

There is not such thing as "rights" except legal rights.

But if your legal rights are ignored by the authorities and you're wrongly imprisoned or otherwise abused illegally that doesn't mean you're rights have changed, just you're reality. So even if our human rights are ignored and some are yet to be put into the law books, they still exist.

 

[TeddyKGB]

But if your legal rights are ignored by the authorities and you're wrongly imprisoned or otherwise abused illegally that doesn't mean you're rights have changed, just you're reality. So even if our human rights are ignored and some are yet to be put into the law books, they still exist.

They are abstractions. And, like other abstractions, rights exist insofar as they are useful or can be associated with something concrete. But the transgression of rights does not upset some cosmic order.

 

[Robbie_James_Francis]

They are abstractions. And, like other abstractions, rights exist insofar as they are useful or can be associated with something concrete. But the transgression of rights does not upset some cosmic order.

I don't believe in any sort of cosmic order, but I don't think an abstraction necessarily has to be associated with a material reality. It seems to me that if someone feels or thinks something it is just as real as anything that physically happens. So if our basic instinctual concept of our rights is violated, then it has upset a human order or social contract of some sort.

 

[TeddyKGB]

I don't believe in any sort of cosmic order, but I don't think an abstraction necessarily has to be associated with a material reality. It seems to me that if someone feels or thinks something it is just as real as anything that physically happens. So if our basic instinctual concept of our rights is violated, then it has upset a human order or social contract of some sort.

Do we have a "basic instinctual concept of our rights"? I don't think I implicitly know that all people have abstract things related to their humanity which cannot be violated. And I think the history of society speaks to the fact that rights are, at most, conditional.

 

[cantata]

The fact that the notion of human rights is a relatively new one should indicate that there's nothing instinctive about them. We have a natural empathy, that's certainly true - and that seems to make us feel that anything other than the Golden Rule stated in the negative is unfair or unjust - but I think that's as far as moral feelings can be traced to our biology. Does it really make sense to try to argue that human rights as we know them today existed throughout human history, but we've only become aware of some of them in the last few centuries?