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Do You Believe In Natural Rights?

Do You Believe in Natural Rights?

  • Yes

    Votes: 36 41.4%
  • No

    Votes: 51 58.6%

  • Total voters
    87
You can't....

What? Justify mass killing? It depends. If one country invades another and citizens of the target nation are at risk of losing their lives they have every right to defend themselves.
 
It depends on how you define the question. The poll question asks the respondents whether they believe in natural rights. I responded that I did. I was then asked to provide objective proof to support my belief. I responded I had no "proof" in the sense that I've never had a right hit me in the head. On the other hand, I've seen no objective proof to disprove the theory even though some have maintained categorically that there is no objective basis for natural rights. What I have said is human intellect has given us the ability to reason, and reason tells us that a being that has the ability to reason, experience living, and feel thoughts and emotions has value beyond mere existence. I'm still waiting for the counter-argument.

Is their moral sense different, or do they just violate what they know to be true? If someone does something for you because he wants to from his free will while another does something for you because he's forced to would it be "reasonable" to give each circumstance the same moral worth? Why would this ever be true?

Was it? I wonder. How many Germans knew about the death camps and the scale of the Final Solution? How many of them just kept their mouths shut because if they opened them they'd end up on an eastbound train? How many of them had a sense that what they were doing was wrong but grudgingly participated? And how many of them had an absolutely amazing moral epiphany between 1940 and 1945 when national shame set it?

There are a boatload of people who do wrong because they believe it was right. Because given their knowledge and the circumstance that is the sensible moral decision to come to. When the aztecs sacrificed children they didn't have some moral sense suggesting 'oh this is wrong we shouldn't be doing this'. They genuinely believed what they were doing was morally right.

The exact same situation can have different moral outcomes depending on your knowledge of it. We all share the same knowledge of the genocidal events now so we can make a common judgement on the morality of it, but objectivity is an illusion.
 
What? Justify mass killing?
Using nukes on Japan was the lesser evil because it stopped the conflict with far fewer casualties.

There, mass killing justified.
 
Using nukes on Japan was the lesser evil because it stopped the conflict with far fewer casualties.

There, mass killing justified.

I'm sure the Japanese viewed it (and still do now) as immoral.

Subjective morality justified.
 
There are a boatload of people who do wrong because they believe it was right. Because given their knowledge and the circumstance that is the sensible moral decision to come to. When the aztecs sacrificed children they didn't have some moral sense suggesting 'oh this is wrong we shouldn't be doing this'. They genuinely believed what they were doing was morally right.

The exact same situation can have different moral outcomes depending on your knowledge of it. We all share the same knowledge of the genocidal events now so we can make a common judgement on the morality of it, but objectivity is an illusion.

Philosophy is not the study of what people believe to be true. It's an attempt to discern what IS true, to offer a method of determining what people should do when faced with a particular set of circumstances and fully cognizant of the facts. So from that standpoint I can excuse behavior that is conditioned or based on ignorance. For me, a big part of determining the morality of an act is the person's intent. Is it malicious? Is it compelled? Or is the behavior offered of his own free will in a benevolent way, with love and compassion?
 
I'm sure the Japanese viewed it (and still do now) as immoral.

Subjective morality justified.

I'm sure they do, too, but then sometimes a leader is faced with a Hobson's choice in which there is no moral or "right" answer. Even the Air Corps general in charge of the bombings said:

"Killing Japanese didn't bother me very much at that time... I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal.... Every soldier thinks something of the moral aspects of what he is doing. But all war is immoral and if you let that bother you, you're not a good soldier."

American Experience . Race for the Superbomb . General Curtis E. LeMay, (1906 - 1990) | PBS

So where is the subjectivity here? Incinerating kids who know nothing of warfare is wrong. Nonetheless, I can't fault Truman for dropping the Bomb.
 
Using nukes on Japan was the lesser evil because it stopped the conflict with far fewer casualties.

There, mass killing justified.

That's why I can't fault Truman. I've heard all of the arguments against the bombings: They were immoral. The Japanese really wanted to surrender. Truman's terms were unreasonable. We should have demonstrated it. Blah. Blah. Blah. The fact is each day that war carried on more people were dying throughout Asia--American, British, Australian, Chinese, Filipino, Indian, Japanese.... The Japanese could have ended it, but it took a second bomb and almost a week plus the intervention of the Emperor to stop it. These people were fanatics, and it took virtually their annihilation and destruction of their will to fight to bring them to heel.
 
by saying there is no natural rights, you reject all law in america, because all law is built on the foundation of our organic laws.

That is patently ridiculous. One does not have to believe in mythic gods in the sky handing out our rights like so much Halloween candy to costumed toddlers in October to have a respect for law.
 
Using nukes on Japan was the lesser evil because it stopped the conflict with far fewer casualties.

There, mass killing justified.

That is a very good point. To one extent or the other - a declared world war is the essence of mass killing regardless of the details of how it is sometimes carried out. It all has the same point and same goal and involves the intentional killing of the other side or at least the acceptance of massive deaths on the other side as a result of your actions even if the specific intent may not have been to kill that particular person.

We can argue about the tactical decision from a strategy perspective - but the idea that it was somehow less "moral" or less "ethical" than the fire bombing of Dresden or any other such attack is rather pointless.
 
That is patently ridiculous. One does not have to believe in mythic gods in the sky handing out our rights like so much Halloween candy to costumed toddlers in October to have a respect for law.

It's a myth that one has to believe in gods wearing white togas hurling lightning bolts from their perch atop Mt. Olympus to believe in natural rights.
 
It's a myth that one has to believe in gods wearing white togas hurling lightning bolts from their perch atop Mt. Olympus to believe in natural rights.

They could be wearing green togas or blue or madras. Perhaps they are clad in levis and T-shirts? Or perhaps they simply cavort in the natural without benefit of being clad in any covering - which may be where the term "natural rights" comes from?

Barring any other viable explanation - its as good as any for those who believe in believing for the sake of having a belief to believe in.
 
I'm sure they do, too, but then sometimes a leader is faced with a Hobson's choice in which there is no moral or "right" answer. Even the Air Corps general in charge of the bombings said:

So where is the subjectivity here? Incinerating kids who know nothing of warfare is wrong. Nonetheless, I can't fault Truman for dropping the Bomb.

So you're saying that because there are often no right answer morality must be objective? If anything, it strengthens the suggestion that morality is subjective. A subjective morality is one that can evolve as we progress as a species, which is important as we gain more knowledge about the world around us. As we learn that the child sacrifices are not necessary to appease the volcano god the idea of sacrificing them shifts from moral to immoral.

300 years ago, slavery was not considered morally wrong, now it is. I am assuming that in your 'objective morality' slavery is wrong. Are there things that we consider moral now that in 500 times may be considered immoral? What would objective morality say about those things? If we as a species are slowly moving towards the state of being objectively morality, have we yet reached it, can or will we ever reach it?
 
That is patently ridiculous. One does not have to believe in mythic gods in the sky handing out our rights like so much Halloween candy to costumed toddlers in October to have a respect for law.


oh, let me show your the error of your ways

An organic law is a law or system of laws which forms the foundation of a government, corporation or other organization's body of rules. A constitution is a particular form of organic law for a sovereign state.

The Organic Laws of the United States of America can be found in Volume One of the United States Code which contains the General and Permanent Laws of the United States. U.S. Code (2007)[1] defines the organic laws of the United States of America to include the Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776, the Articles of Confederation of November 15, 1777, the Northwest Ordinance of July 13, 1787, and the Constitution of September 17, 1788


try reading them for a change.

Organic law - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
My ownership can't be bought or sold. The entire concept of owning another human being is flawed. You can force someone into labor for you, but you can't own them like you can a car or piece of land.

Ummm .... Wha? Were you asleep during history class or something? I'm pretty sure chattel slavery in the US was exactly like owning a piece of land or a car.
 
Ummm .... Wha? Were you asleep during history class or something? I'm pretty sure chattel slavery in the US was exactly like owning a piece of land or a car.

My point is that you can't give up ownership of yourself. You can claim you sold yourself into slavery and someone can claim they have ownership of you, but in reality a transfer of ownership never happened. The only way it could happen is if you could transfer control over your own body, but as it stands that is not possible.
 
My point is that you can't give up ownership of yourself.

That isn't required for you to become somebody's property. Dogs don't give up ownership of themselves. Neither do cars, neither does land. People appropriate those things just like they do human beings. The notion that they aren't owned like any other piece of property is contrary to that which is taught in any history class or even basic historical evidence.
 
That isn't required for you to become somebody's property. Dogs don't give up ownership of themselves. Neither do cars, neither does land. People appropriate those things just like they do human beings. The notion that they aren't owned like any other piece of property is contrary to that which is taught in any history class or even basic historical evidence.

Everything I said would apply to animals as well. A dog is in control over it's own body and they can not freely give it up nor can anyone take it from them. A car doesn't own anything as it's an inanimate object, and a piece of land is just a bunch of dirt of rocks that have no abilities of their own.
 
Everything I said would apply to animals as well. A dog is in control over it's own body and they can not freely give it up nor can anyone take it from them.

That's nice Henrin, however becoming somebody's slave does not require you to willingly give up control over yourself. It is the forceful appropriation of another human being. This is a pretty simple concept, why are you having so much trouble with it?

A car doesn't own anything as it's an inanimate object

Neither does a dog.

and a piece of land is just a bunch of dirt of rocks that have no abilities of their own.

That's great, but none of that is required for you to become somebody's property.
 
That's nice Henrin, however becoming somebody's slave does not require you to willingly give up control over yourself. It is the forceful appropriation of another human being. This is a pretty simple concept, why are you having so much trouble with it?

Even if I was going to agree that people can in fact be property it would still require ownership to be transferred to the slave owner. Since the slave can not transfer ownership the slave owner can never own them, and thus all we are dealing with here is robbery.

Neither does a dog.

You will have to remind my dog of that.
 
No, but they couldn't be permitted to infect the general populace. They'd have to quarantined, even if that meant indefinitely in a controlled environment.

Quarantines don't work. Filters don't work to keep the virus out. So, are people wrong to kill them as a potential threat? Are they, the people who cause the infection wrong to try to survive even if that means others might come into contact with them and die? Who gets to decide?
 
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oh, let me show your the error of your ways

An organic law is a law or system of laws which forms the foundation of a government, corporation or other organization's body of rules. A constitution is a particular form of organic law for a sovereign state.

The Organic Laws of the United States of America can be found in Volume One of the United States Code which contains the General and Permanent Laws of the United States. U.S. Code (2007)[1] defines the organic laws of the United States of America to include the Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776, the Articles of Confederation of November 15, 1777, the Northwest Ordinance of July 13, 1787, and the Constitution of September 17, 1788


try reading them for a change.

Organic law - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A vegetable

veg·e·ta·ble
ˈvejtəb(ə)l,ˈvəjədəb(ə)l/
noun
1.
a plant or part of a plant used as food, typically as accompaniment to meat or fish, such as a cabbage, potato, carrot, or bean.
"fresh fruit and vegetables"




can be found in the fruit section of most any market. One should eat several each day to help maintain proper nutrition.

http://www.healthyeating.org/Healthy-Eating/All-Star-Foods/Vegetables.aspx

some are even organic you are willing to pay a bit more.

Try eating more of them.
 
oh, let me show your the error of your ways

An organic law is a law or system of laws which forms the foundation of a government, corporation or other organization's body of rules. A constitution is a particular form of organic law for a sovereign state.

The Organic Laws of the United States of America can be found in Volume One of the United States Code which contains the General and Permanent Laws of the United States. U.S. Code (2007)[1] defines the organic laws of the United States of America to include the Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776, the Articles of Confederation of November 15, 1777, the Northwest Ordinance of July 13, 1787, and the Constitution of September 17, 1788


try reading them for a change.

Organic law - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So what? Those found in the first volume were added by Congress for "historical purposes only".
 
My point is that you can't give up ownership of yourself. You can claim you sold yourself into slavery and someone can claim they have ownership of you, but in reality a transfer of ownership never happened. The only way it could happen is if you could transfer control over your own body, but as it stands that is not possible.

Well, you can be forced to give up self-ownership "in part"...sort of.

For example:

The government imposing taxes is like forcing one to labor without being fully compensated. Yes? No? That Libertarian belief is based on the concept of self-ownership and the ownership of our labor.

But this begs the question: Is the individual's privilege to share highways built with taxpayer money a form of compensation for the taxpayers?
 
Even if I was going to agree that people can in fact be property it would still require ownership to be transferred to the slave owner.

That is absolutely absurd. You don't need to be owned by somebody first in order to become a slave. You're made into a slave through force. The same way that land is made into property, the same way that dogs are made into property, the same way in which anything else is made into property. It is made into property through force.
 
That is absolutely absurd. You don't need to be owned by somebody first in order to become a slave. You're made into a slave through force. The same way that land is made into property, the same way that dogs are made into property, the same way in which anything else is made into property. It is made into property through force.

Again, dogs like human being own themselves and such ownership can not be transferred. The control and ownership of a piece of dirt and rocks, a car, a couch, a plane or some other inanimate object can easily be shown to be transferable. I can't control people because I can't truly assume control over them. It can never truly be a transferable object to the fullest extent of the word.

There are things that are simply not transferable, and other things that are not able to be owned at all, like for example, an idea.
 
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