From: jgm@ais.org (jim miller)
Subject: Re: The society analogy and rights (Was: Re: Essay Time for Felix)
Organization: Ann Arbor Information Society -- Toledo Annex
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 12:29:18 GMT


ghudson@athena.mit.edu (Greg Hudson) writes:

>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.

Nonsense.  People talk about having rights all the time in situations
where it is unlikely that they will be respected.  People *want*
their rights to be respected, but the fact of whether those rights
exist or not is utterly independent of the likelihood they will be
respected, or the power applicable to enforce them.
You, and Felix, and most of the other people opposed to the
concept of a mud user's rights belittle it over and over by
contrasting the actual harm that can be done in that situation,
and the harm of much more extreme situations where physical
violence and a lack of power to overcome the problem or remove
oneself from it are characteristic.  That's just meaningless
ridicule, underlining the fact that you don't indeed recognize
the emotional harm that can come to people by various types
of behavior on a mud.

>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.

You said it above -- "it's really not terribly different", and that's
what this issue comes down to.  Like Ken, I am perfectly willing
to stick with the language "morally wrong" instead of "objectively
ethically bad".  The relevant characterisitics of both wordings
are that, the wrongness of a situation exists despite the power
of the wronged party to undo the wrong; and that there is an
an underlying belief that the behavior involved is inappropriate,
not just for the person with the moralistic belief, but for all
people.  A belief of the form "I believe it is wrong to do X
to someone, but I do not hold other people to this" is not
only useless, it's inconsistent.  A person believes it is
wrong to treat people in a certain way because of some
perceived common characteristic of people, that anyone
suffers if you do this or this or this to them.  Not because
that particular person is somehow more accountable than
other people.  Felix and everyone else must ultimately
appeal to a rights or rights-equivalent reasoning in order
to form moralistic beliefs.

-- 
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