From: ghudson@athena.mit.edu (Greg Hudson)
Subject: Re: The society analogy and rights (Was: Re: Essay Time for Felix)
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 22:30:32 GMT

jgm@ais.org (jim miller), <C1DyyM.6v5@ais.org>:
>For the n^zillionth time, a right is NOT a guarantee.  Expecting that
>someone will respect my rights is expecting that they will *try*
>to act in a decent manner and that they recognize my right.
>
>Make this notation in your notebooks:  R ~= G

Very well; as I stated, you can use the word 'right' in whatever
context you feel like, but the more loosely you use it, the less
seriously people will take it.  Moreover, you may find yourself
criticized for using loaded words to talk about trivial subjects.

"Right" is a pretty heavy word for most people.  When Amnesty
International talks about human rights violations, they're not talking
about someone being rude to me in the subway.  When people say they
have a right to something, they generally *are* asking for a guarantee
of it; violations of their rights are not merely inadvisable but
unconscionable.  Even when we're talking about rights such as the
"right to medical care", you hear lots of people talking in incendiary
terms about how immoral our society is for turning poor people away
from hospitals.

jgm@ais.org (Jim Miller), <C1GLxw.MqC@ais.org>:
> Let's say there are no universal rights, and let's say we
> assiduously apply that rule in all our doings, as Felix does here.
> How do things get decided, Bryant?  How do organizations and
> governments decree that such-and-such will be tolerated behavior and
> other behavior will not be?  A rather necessary, but impossible
> thing to do if we avoid the language of rights, because at the root
> of all codes of behavior is a recognition of a consensus belief.

The core of your question here is, "How do things get decided?"  While
it's rather vaguely stated, it appears to be the circular question:
"If no ethics are universal, how ought we to make decisions?"  The
answer is, of course, that there is, again, no universal way in which
we ought to make decisions.  People and societies act the way that
they act.

That's not to say that values play no role in making decisions.
Although Felix doesn't believe his ethics to be objective, he is
perfectly comfortable with emitting moralistic rhetoric about
apartheid, and presumably acting on his beliefs if he feels so
impelled.  Or perhaps Felix is really a closet idealogue, and does
think that his ethics are objective; it's really not terribly
different.  It doesn't have much bearing on whether his ethics really
are objective, and either way, his values play a part in his own
decisions and perhaps in others' as well.

Finally, it is not at all difficult to come to a consensus about
subjective ethics without using the language of objective ethics.  It
helps, of course, if you can say, "I believe that X is right" to refer
to your subjective beliefs without having Ken Arromdee nitpicking that
it's technically an appeal to an objective ethics system if you strip
off the allegedly meaningless "I believe".

I watch discussions all the time about politics and about everyday
behavior that don't make any reference to objective ethics systems or
such universal concepts as what is "really" right or wrong and what
"rights" people have even when nobody else thinks so.  The normative
content of these discussions relies on shared subjective values, never
stated as objective truths.  Most of the controversy in debates in our
society--with some notable exceptions--is over factual information and
predictions.

Naturally, I also often watch conversations where people fight back
and forth about what's really right and wrong.  But those
conversations tend to be much less productive.

Now, back to the issue at hand.  Am I correct in stating that,
avoiding such terms as "rights" and "ethics", your basic position is
that people should try to treat each other decently and, in
particular, mud administrators should try to treat players decently?

If that is correct, I ask you: who do you think is going to disagree
with you?  And if anyone does--really disagrees that administrators
should treat players decently, and not just disagrees about whether
certain borderline things are decent treatment or not--then what do
you intend to do about it?  If you feel you've already answered this,
then I apologize, but it seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle of
arguments over the appropriateness of such loaded terms as "rights".

--GBH

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