Biden to nominate Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to Supreme Court
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@Larry said in Biden to nominate Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to Supreme Court:
@jon-nyc said in Biden to nominate Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to Supreme Court:
I was speaking Greek to you apparently. You misunderstood every single sentence.
Maybe we arent using the same definition of "natural rights".
Then reread my original post maybe you’ll agree with it. It seems objectively true.
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@jon-nyc said in Biden to nominate Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to Supreme Court:
Well I don’t know how you conceive “inalienable” rights in anything but a normative framework.
Because obviously they are all quite alienable and were alienated for most of humanity for most of history.
"Do exist, and ought to be enforced". There, done.
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@jon-nyc said in Biden to nominate Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to Supreme Court:
Natural rights are not granted by society (government) but inhere to the individual. So what rights inhered to people 30k years ago?
Or, as I suggested, are “natural rights” to be understood in an “ought” rather than an “is” framework? Something they should be granted?
The way I see it: You can of course not look at our touch natural rights. You cannot discover them with science.
That does not mean they don't exist.
My somewhat Schopenhauer-esque take on the issue is that we can "will" natural rights into existence. Each of us makes a choice of whether natural rights exist or not. That's not the same as "should exist".
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@jon-nyc said in Biden to nominate Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to Supreme Court:
Ok, then feel free to correct me. What natural rights did Homo Sapiens possess on the savanna 30,000 years ago?
@jon-nyc said in Biden to nominate Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to Supreme Court:
Natural rights are not granted by society (government) but inhere to the individual. So what rights inhered to people 30k years ago?
The same natural rights as all human have. Rights are principally grounded in moral responsibility, since the moral agent must be free to act morally in respect of one's obligations.
Obviously systems of governance and law and philosophy have developed which better understand, recognize, and uphold the rights of man than whatever occurred on the plains of Africa 30,000 years ago. But the rights have always inhered in the human person as a moral agent.
Or, as I suggested, are “natural rights” to be understood in an “ought” rather than an “is” framework?
As the law is ordered to the common good as a matter of justice, and the recognition of natural human rights are required for a just society, the State (those in charge of the community) have the moral obligation to establish laws which respect the natural rights of the members of the society. This is necessary that all members of the society might be able to fulfill their moral obligations to self, family, and society.
Something they should be granted?
Yes, not only should but the State morally must uphold the natural rights of the members of the society. The validation of the authority, as the raison d'être of the State, is found in the ability to establish, promote, and maintain the common good. The common good is the very order of society which allows for human flourishing.
Or am I speaking Greek to you?
It's easier in Latin, if you prefer.
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Again that seems obviously false.
I mean, how much sense does it make to go to the landfill near an abortion clinic in California and dig up a fetus and tell him he has and had the right to life, it just wasn’t enforced. But - and this is important, Mr Fetus - do rest assured that the right was inalienable.
“Inalienable rights are alienable rights” is nonsense. This topic is purely normative.
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It’s that we recognize that it’s normative. But even in your example it is societally contingent.
Again, imagine 30kya Horace with 4 male relatives waiting patiently for a lion to tire of his kill, so you and your friends could get the scraps. You enjoy it for 30m only to be chased off by hyenas.
What does it really mean to say you had “inalienable rights” granted by your creator?
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@jon-nyc said in Biden to nominate Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to Supreme Court:
It’s that we recognize that it’s normative. But even in your example it is societally contingent.
Again, imagine 30kya Horace with 4 male relatives waiting patiently for a lion to tire of his kill, so you and your friends could get the scraps. You enjoy it for 30m only to be chased off by hyenas.
What does it really mean to say you had “inalienable rights” granted by your creator?
It means God will not judge you for your failure to not get eaten, and it means that in time, you would contribute your ideas and energies to creating a social framework in which the lion would be prevented from eating you.
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@jon-nyc said in Biden to nominate Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to Supreme Court:
It’s that we recognize that it’s normative. But even in your example it is societally contingent.
Again, imagine 30kya Horace with 4 male relatives waiting patiently for a lion to tire of his kill, so you and your friends could get the scraps. You enjoy it for 30m only to be chased off by hyenas.
What does it really mean to say you had “inalienable rights” granted by your creator?
I don't think that is an argument against inalienable natural rights. A hyena will do what a hyena will do by instinct. There is no moral act on the part of the hyena. There is no inalienable right to not be eaten by a hyena. There is a natural right to defend yourself from being eaten by a hyena. No one can morally prohibit you from defending yourself against being eaten by a hyena.
Furthermore inalienable rights are not granted by the creator in any positive sense. Rights are said to inhere in moral agents in respect of their moral obligations. As we have both personal and corporate/ social/ civic responsibilities so we have both personal rights and civil rights.
Civil rights might be socially contingent, and obviously admit of a lot of variation in various ages and cultures. Civil rights are generally considered as positive law, though grounded in the natural right the members of the society have toward participation in the good of the society.
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@jon-nyc said in Biden to nominate Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to Supreme Court:
@Larry said in Biden to nominate Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to Supreme Court:
@jon-nyc said in Biden to nominate Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to Supreme Court:
I was speaking Greek to you apparently. You misunderstood every single sentence.
Maybe we arent using the same definition of "natural rights".
Then reread my original post maybe you’ll agree with it. It seems objectively true.
No, the more you say the clearer the problem in your logic becomes to me, and the more i disagree with your entire premise. Youre not speaking Greek to me at all. In fact, it is you that lacks understanding. Im just not sure if i want to invest the time and effort into it.
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@jon-nyc >I mean, how much sense does it make to go to the landfill near an abortion clinic in California and dig up a fetus and tell him he has and had the right to life, it just wasn’t enforced. But - and this is important, Mr Fetus - do rest assured that the right was inalienable.
Well, apart from the nonsense about talking to a corpse, it seems the same as rescuing a kidnap victim who was sold into slavery and telling them that the kidnappers violated their inalienable to not be enslaved.
Do you really think that people don't have actual rights to not be kidnapped and sold into slavery, but that this is just some sort of normative social accommodation?
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Surely we all recognize that in casual speech. Everybody here would generally say 'people don't have the right to free speech in China', rather than 'of course people in china have the right to free speech, but it isn't recognized by their government' or whatever.
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@jon-nyc said in Biden to nominate Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to Supreme Court:
Surely we all recognize that in casual speech. We would generally say 'people don't have the right to free speech in China', rather than 'of course people in china have the right to free speech, but it isn't recognized by their government' or whatever.
Did native americans have a right to live, even if they were slaughtered by colonists? Of course in casual speech you can find support or contradiction for anything you please, but a claim that rights are necessarily enforceable is absurd on its face. Murdered people had a right not to be murdered, QED.
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@Larry said in Biden to nominate Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to Supreme Court:
@jon-nyc said in Biden to nominate Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to Supreme Court:
I was speaking Greek to you apparently. You misunderstood every single sentence.
Maybe we arent using the same definition of "natural rights".
Endowed by their Creator...
Jon doesn't believe in that. Biologically speaking, people have no more worth than a pig, an elephant or a hummingbird. Man is not made in a Divine image, for nothing is Divine. Man is just a mass of cells, making up tissues, organs, systems and melding into a single human. Life is ephemeral and in a historical sense, cheap.
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Aren’t you being a little tribal here?
Or does Horace 2.0 actually believe in a creator god that granted us “inalienable” rights which for some reason have been alienated from us for almost the entirety of our existence as a species?