2019-08-24T14:41:25+01:00

Last updated on: August 24, 2019 at 2:41 pm   By

The Perverted Faculty Argument (PFA) is a strand of Thomistic (Thomas Aquinas) thinking that is intertwined with Natural Law Theory (NLT)  of which I have been blogging lately. I was challenged by Vincent Torley recently to, if I was going to attack the PFA (as I have done here and here), attack the best form of the argument. The claim was that Hsiao’s defence was the best. It can be found here.

Hsiao introduces the argument as follows:

There is an old argument rooted in the classical natural law tradition that says that the “perverse” or “unnatural” use of a human faculty is immoral. This short essay offers a derivation, overview, and brief defense of this “perverted faculty” argument (PFA). I shall argue that the PFA is entailed by some commonsense theses about the nature of goodness.

I take as my starting point a claim famously defended by Peter Geach in his paper “Good and Evil.”1 Geach argued the meaning of “good” and “bad” depends on something’s nature or function. In other words, we cannot know whether something is good or bad without first understanding its nature or function. This account of goodness does not originate from Geach, but dates back to Aristotle and has recently been the subject of renewed attention amongst recent philosophers.2 The contention of this paper is that the Aristotelian thesis entails the PFA, or at least something very much like it.3

If I am right, then advocates of eudaimonistic ethics should take the PFA a lot more seriously.

The Argument

The PFA can be derived as follows:
(1) For any x that is a K, if x is good, then x is a good K.
(2) If x is a good K, then x is good by being as Ks ought to be.
(3) Therefore, if x is a good human action, then x is good by being as
human actions ought to be. (From 1–2)
(4) Human actions ought to be aimed at human goods that are proper to
them.
(5) Human goods are that which fulfills human faculties.
(6) Therefore, human actions ought to be aimed at that which fulfills
the human faculties that are proper to them. (From 4, 5)
(7) Therefore, if x is a good human action, then x is good by aiming at
that which fulfills the human faculties that are proper to it. (From
3–6)
Although the PFA is best known for its implications in applied ethics, my focus will be mainly on whether the PFA can be derived from an Aristotelean conception of goodness, and not so much its practical applications. Others have addressed its significance for specific moral issues elsewhere.4

In this piece, I will lay out Ficino’s initial thoughts on the paper. He, a regular commenter and contributor here, has something of a deep interest in Thomistic thinking and critiquing it. His notes are as follows. I hope to make my own comments on it in due course. There will be talk of sex and sexuality – don’t be prudish!

1. One organ can be an instrument for more than one faculty (e.g. Aristotle talks about this in De Anima), and Ari says nature is economical. I see no reason to accept e.g. the following of Hsiao”s: “An act that, for example, involves the use of the faculty of procreation must respect its function by directing its use toward a goal that is fitting for the end of procreation” (p. 212). This assumes that every use of our naughty bits is an actualization of the faculty of reproduction. I don’t think he’s given reason to accept this. It’s not obvious that, say, a woman stroking her clitoris and experiencing pleasure and relaxation is directing her faculty of reproduction at all.

2. Our higher natural faculties, spirit/emotion and intellect, as Hsiao acknowledges, can override lower ones in directing use of organs: e.g. your hands instead of your mouth when you are speaking American Sign Language. You use your hands for an end toward which they are not intended (speech) and restrain your mouth from serving one of its natural faculties to achieve a natural end for humans (speech).

3. He doesn’t consider activities that are ends in themselves vs those that serve ends, and higher ends of higher parts of soul trumping lower ones, e.g. intercourse to serve a relationship of love AND done so as to achieve the natural end (cf. Politics VIII.5-6) of limiting family size together trump the end of pumping out another kid.

4. Hsiao equivocates on terms like “ought.” cf. p. 212 “That is, the term “ought” in the fourth premise should be understood as expressing both a teleological and moral ought.” I think his attempts to support this cobbling together amount to assertion more than demonstrating that his “ought” is legitimately derived from his “is.”

5. He tries to stitch deontology into his eudaimonistic ethics, e.g. p. 213 “There is a difference  between failing to realize a goal toward which you are already aiming, and failing to aim toward a goal that you should be attempting to pursue,.”  or p. 214 “It is wrong to misuse our faculties.” Eudaimonistic ethics would come at an issue from whether you harm or care for your soul, rather than from what rule you are obligated to follow. Hsiao’s analysis seems to blend these in a confused and perhaps sophistical way.

Thanks to Ficino for these intitial thoughts. More to follow!

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2019-08-18T19:50:18+01:00

Last updated on: August 18, 2019 at 7:50 pm   By

I have recently been posting quite a bit on Natural Law Theory due to the fact I am presently editing a book on the subject by another author.

Natural Law Theory, in a nutshell:

NLT states that behaviours that are rationally chosen by an agent that do not fit the remit of the final cause of the agent or part of the agent (i.e., a body part) are morally bad. In the same way a kettle that doesn’t work well to boil water is a bad kettle, if the supposed final cause or purpose of a penis is to urinate and procreate, then any behaviour that falls outside of the remit of excretion or reproduction (procreation) is morally bad.

The term that Edward Feser, natural law theorist, uses is “frustrate” such that if the activity frustrates the final cause, then it is morally bad. In the case of sex, where the final cause is reproduction, wearing a condom “frustrates” reproduction. Having sex exclusively for enjoyment (i.e., wearing a condom) is therefore morally wrong. This is different to saying enjoying sex is morally wrong, since it is actually at least neutral if having sex for the primary purpose of reproducing.

Sheila C. made some great, succinct comments on the topic on the various pieces:

I brought up gastric bypasses the other day. Isn’t that deliberately making digestion work less well- frustrating the end of nutrition while continuing to eat?

The Catholics responded that the negative side effects would adequately punish anyone who used the surgery to be gluttonous.

But doesn’t that reveal that natural law has nothing to do with anything? The gut sense Catholics have is that it’s all okay *provided you aren’t having any fun.*

And

Here’s another one: why do Catholics get their pets neutered? Natural law is supposed to be for everyone

And

None of these arguments seem to address homosexuality. When a woman has sex with her wife, they may both foresee that conception won’t result, but they’re not deliberately frustrating anything. Through no fault of their own, neither of them produce any sperm.

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2019-08-18T19:39:46+01:00

Last updated on: August 18, 2019 at 7:39 pm   By

Natural Law Theory, in a nutshell:

NLT states that behaviours that are rationally chosen by an agent that do not fit the remit of the final cause of the agent or part of the agent (i.e., a body part) are morally bad. In the same way a kettle that doesn’t work well to boil water is a bad kettle, if the supposed final cause or purpose of a penis is to urinate and procreate, then any behaviour that falls outside of the remit of excretion or reproduction (procreation) is morally bad.

The term that Edward Feser, natural law theorist, uses is “frustrate” such that if the activity frustrates the final cause, then it is morally bad. In the case of sex, where the final cause is reproduction, wearing a condom “frustrates” reproduction. Having sex exclusively for enjoyment (i.e., wearing a condom) is therefore morally wrong. This is different to saying enjoying sex is morally wrong, since it is actually at least neutral if having sex for the primary purpose of reproducing.

Here is a claim from Edward Feser:

“Where some faculty F is natural to a rational agent A and by nature exists for the sake of some end E (and exists in A precisely so that A might pursue E), then it is metaphysically impossible for it to be good for A to use F in a manner contrary to E” (Feser, Edward. Neo-Scholastic Essays. South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine’s Press, 2015. Page 398)

To which LastManOnEarth stated:

This argument has an unstated assumption that a rational agent must act to achieve End E at all times. If E is not obligatory at all times then the agent is justified in frustrating E via F at times when E is not required, or else the restriction isn’t really about E but rather about F.

Furthermore, the argument is only concerned with acts of commission with facility F, further demonstrating that the argument is about F, not E. Abstaining from F frustrates E just as surely as misusing F.

Finally, the argument restricts it’s focus to a single F, yet any E worth discussing depends on the use (or abstinence) of multiple facilities F. Any coherent system of ethics that valued achieving natural Ends would need to account for all the myriad Facilities involved. Focusing on a single F while ignoring the entirety of E betrays the underlying intent of the argument.

Natural Law does not take the idea of Natural Ends seriously, and neither should we.

And Jayman, a Christian commenter, replied:

This argument has an unstated assumption that a rational agent must act to achieve End E at all times. If E is not obligatory at all times then the agent is justified in frustrating E via F at times when E is not required, or else the restriction isn’t really about E but rather about F.

The NLer rejects the claim that you must act to achieve E at all times because he notes the distinction between abstaining from using F and using F in a manner contrary to E. You need an additional premise to connect (1) E is not obligatory at all times and (2) the agent is justified in frustrating E via F at times when E is not required.

Furthermore, the argument is only concerned with acts of commission with facility F, further demonstrating that the argument is about F, not E. Abstaining from F frustrates E just as surely as misusing F.

F and E cannot be easily separated. What makes a faculty this faculty and not that faculty is its power to bring about this end instead of that end. The PFA is about both F and E. NLT does not value achieving natural ends by any means necessary. You’re falling prey to either-or thinking and the-ends-justify-the-means thinking. Plus, you keep speaking of “facilities” instead of “faculties”.

Finally, the argument restricts it’s focus to a single F, yet any E worth discussing depends on the use (or abstinence) of multiple facilities F.

The basic principle is kept simple with the use of one F and E. It’s not as if the PFA is denying people have multiple faculties.

I’m not sure that Jayman is right here. I would see the final cause of a human agent as the successful completion of all the things that parts of the agent have as final causes. Let’s, for the sake of ease, boil all of these down to three things: sex, eating and breathing. These are the final causes of the sex organs, the digestive system, and the breathing system.

Now, if we breathed all the time, what would happen? We would survive (unless underwater or eating). Essentially, though, this process is one that should happen at all times. If we ate at all times, we would become obese and cut our life expectancy. In other words, we should do it to the optimal amount. But, if you are going to argue that eating all of the time (in other words, eating has the final cause of nutrition for survival, and that is what we are morally obliged to do under NLT) is not demanded under NLT, then surely you must say that it should be done to the optimal amount for longevity. That is to say that all agents should be eating to the scientifically advised/proven degree (by diet and amount) to promote life or longevity. If Edward Feser eats even a little badly of a night –  too much cheese/wine/sweet stuff – then he is actively frustrating the final cause of effective nutrition.

This is morally bad in terms of his digestive system.

Sex is an interesting one since it has no, let’s argue for simplicity, health effect for the life of the agent per se (I’m sure there is data to suggest there is an optimal amount of sex for longevity). But, in the same way that it is morally good to refrain from stabbing or shooting people on a daily basis, one can argue this in reverse for sex. We literally should be having sex as much as possible for the moral good it brings about – life. Again, to simplify, let’s keep this within marital partners so as not to get onto other NLT subjects of debate.

I would agree with LastManOnEarth in saying that not having sex, intentionally, is synonymous with having sex with a condom. The intentions are identical – I don’t want to undergo a process whereby the end result is pregnancy. I don’t see that Jayman is correct in saying: “The NLer rejects the claim that you must act to achieve E at all times because he notes the distinction between abstaining from using F and using F in a manner contrary to E. You need an additional premise to connect (1) E is not obligatory at all times and (2) the agent is justified in frustrating E via F at times when E is not required.”

This appears to be nothing more than an assertion, or a rejection without any justification. There might well be some in depth justification of this – I simply haven’t done the reading or heard it.

If, as in my last post, the life outcome trumps other outcomes (enjoyment) then the NLer should be morally obligated to engage in procreative sex over and above personal enjoyment at all times.

In other words, sex for enjoyment frustrates the agent’s final cause of reproduction in exactly the same way as watching a film at the cinema does.

The NLer has to engage in mental contortion to get around this problem. We know, from an evolutionary and biological standpoint, that the final cause of ALL organisms is to survive to reproductive age and reproduce. The final cause for a human is arguably not enjoying oneself in the cinema, or even enjoying oneself in general, as an agent. That is not a primary final cause (though it may be a secondary one that enables, say, living longer to reproductive age in a society). Thus under NLT, I would argue, we are indeed morally obliged to have reproductive sex as much as possible and those who don’t are morally bad. going to the cinema, watching TV, playing a game or going to the beach are all morally wrong because they are intentionally frustrating the agent’s sexual system.

What NLers will do is appeal to a more complex set of outcomes for humans, and more nebulous metrics: Aquinas’ cardinal virtues or a “good and happy life” or similar. This will allow them all those opportunities to be morally bad on different occasions in light of some greater good. There is a tension her between an ascetic who is defined wholly by such righteous behaviour and, well, a normal person And this is the problem – the lack of clarity in defining the final causes unequivocally and discerning what trumps what when these rights and causes intersect. For a theory that seems on first look to have a great simplicity and clarity, like any moral theory, it gets very complex and unwieldy pretty soon.

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2019-08-18T19:39:24+01:00

Last updated on: August 18, 2019 at 7:39 pm   By

Yesterday, I posted on the subject of Natural Law Theory (NLT) in the context of the enjoyment of sex. NLT states that behaviours that are rationally chosen by an agent that do not fit the remit of the final cause of the agent or part of the agent (i.e., a body part) are morally bad. In the same way a kettle that doesn’t work well to boil water is a bad kettle, if the supposed final cause or purpose of a penis is to urinate and procreate, then any behaviour that falls outside of the remit of excretion or reproduction (procreation) is morally bad.

The term that Edward Feser, natural law theorist, uses is “frustrate” such that if the activity frustrates the final cause, then it is morally bad. In the case of sex, where the final cause is reproduction, wearing a condom “frustrates” reproduction. Having sex exclusively for enjoyment (i.e., wearing a condom) is therefore morally wrong. This is different to saying enjoying sex is morally wrong, since it is actually at least neutral if having sex for the primary purpose of reproducing.

In the book I am editing (The Unnecessary Science), the author (who blogs as Gunlord500 here) states:

One problem with Feser’s argument here, which other critics have noted, is that Natural Law would seem to condemn heterosexual sex between infertile people, even within marriage, or even in a fertile couple when the woman is pregnant! Feser addresses this as well, saying “[f]oreseeing that a certain sexual act will in fact not result in conception is not the same thing as actively altering the relevant organs [i.e., attaching a condom or diaphragm to one of them] or the nature of the act [same-sex intercourse, masturbation, bestiality, etc.] in a way that would make it impossible for them to lead to conception even if they were in good working order.”[1] That would seem to wrap things up nicely for the Natural Law theorist, but the perceptive reader can see it raises even more problems in the attempt of solving one.

Is “actively altering” the sex act always inherently wrong? There seem to be several scenarios when most people would say it is morally licit. Imagine a loving heterosexual married couple where one partner, through no fault of his or her own, has contracted a venereal disease. Perhaps, through great misfortune and shockingly lax procedure, one of them received a tainted blood transfusion, or an untrained nurse at a hospital took a blood sample with a re-used needle rather than a new, sterile one. Afterwards, the afflicted partner insists they use condoms whenever they have relations, in order to keep the disease from infecting the other. This would obviously also prevent conceiving any children, but since the disease would then pass on to the couple’s offspring, public health demands their nest remains empty. Under the circumstances, then, it would be a hard sell to condemn the couple for using at least one form of contraception, if no others.

Feser might argue that the pair would be morally obligated to remain celibate until the infected partner has been cured, or indefinitely if the disease is non-curable. But this would strike most as both draconian and impractical. If such a couple would be denied the joys of parenthood due to an unfortunate incident they could not foresee nor be blamed for, it seems manifestly unjust to compound their misfortunes by forbidding them to have sex, especially when a simple technological solution would allow them that small pleasure. More likely Feser would allow them an exception based on their intent. They may be “actively altering their relevant organs” with a condom, but since their intent was to protect the healthy partner rather than “frustrate the function” of the act per se, the endeavor wouldn’t be morally wrong.

Unhappily for Feser, this would seem to lessen, if not entirely negate, the moral wrongness of other kinds of non-procreative sex. When a man masturbates, he is not necessarily consciously intending to “frustrate” the end of his sexual faculties. He might be overcome with lust, desperately lonely, or just looking for a little fun, but those sorts of direct intentions would seem to be morally neutral rather than good or bad, using Feser’s definitions of good and bad as facilitating or frustrating a bodily function. The same applies to homosexual behavior. Two men having sex might be lustful, looking for fun, or looking to bond, but not necessarily consciously intending to “frustrate” the function of their faculties, even if they would be able to “foresee their behavior would not lead to conception.” If it is licit for a couple to “actively alter the sex act/relevant organs” if their intentions are praiseworthy, it ought to be licit for a couple to do the same if their intentions are merely neutral. The only time non-procreative sex would be truly “bad” in Feser’s sense would be if it were undertaken for the explicit purpose of contraception—a man using a condom or having same-sex intercourse for no other purpose than to prove he could, or a man masturbating even when given the opportunity for sex with a willing and eager partner. Those are apparently the only situations which fulfill Feser’s criteria for moral wrongness, “[using one’s sexual faculties] for the sake of actively frustrating the realization of [their ends].”[2] Given the rarity of such situations, a blanket condemnation of non-procreative sex in general seems unsustainable.

Or does it? Feser believes that “[a]n act can in fact actively frustrate the end whether or not one has such frustration consciously in view, just as an act can in fact be free of such active frustration whether or not avoiding such frustration is consciously in view.”[3] But even with this consideration, Feser’s argument remains unconvincing. First off, it would seem to disregard the importance of intent in moral action. It is fairly uncontroversial that an act can be morally better or worse due to its intention. If you run a man over with your car because you hate him, you’ve obviously committed an evil act, but if you run him over accidentally, you’re less culpable, and if you run him over because he himself is doing evil (carrying out a mass shooting, say), you have actually done good. If we can agree on that, we can agree that gays and lonely straights are not committing quite as much evil as Feser might have it, so long as their intents are mere pleasure rather than spitefully frustrating final causality for the sake of it.

[1] Ibid, 400.

[2]NSE, 399.

[3] Edward Feser, “Foundations of Sexual Morality,” Edward Feser, February 7, 2017, comment at February 10, 2017, 9:40 AM, last accessed March 25, 2018, http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2017/02/foundations-of-sexual-morality.html

I think the last paragraph (and indeed, the author continues on from here) demands some discussion because I wonder whether having sex for enjoyment only (wearing a condom) only frustrates the final cause in the short term. In this way, there is no intention from either agent to frustrate the ability to reproduce in either agent, such as intentionally dismembering oneself would.

Take, for example, the aforementioned kettle. Someone breaks into my house and shoots me with a gun. I pick up the kettle and use it to block the bullet, which ricochets off the kettle, damaging the button. The kettle was used in a way that now renders it a bad kettle. The kettle was used in a way that actively frustrated its final cause (you could add a layer of complexity by saying I knew, in the split second, what would happen and decided to save my life by intentionally damaging the kettle). However, in the long run, I fix the button easily and can use the kettle again to intentionally and soundly bring about its final cause.

Here, you could say that saving my life trumped the (for the sake of argument) moral negativity of using the item in frustrating its final cause.

The difference with the sex scenario is that sex brings about life and therefore (NLT proponents would say) has a high moral value, and frustrating it for the sake of enjoyment, I imagine, is not a morally good trumping.

But to use a condom is only to frustrate the final cause in that single instantiation of sex, not with any permanence. Should this be taken into account?

At the end of the day, God does this every time, as an OmniGod, he allows (indeed, designed into the system) fertilised embryos to fail to implant or naturally abort, to the tune of billions of human “lives” over time already. This frustration of the final cause must be trumped by a greater good every single time, though one wonders what this might be. It also shows how, in that context, NLT is itself trumped by some kind of consequentialism.

Of course, I fundamentally see NLT failing on a whole bunch of other criteria outside of this (it doesn’t even get past the barriers that conceptual nominalism poses, and ideas of subjectivity (see the RELATED POSTS below).

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2019-08-16T10:33:49+01:00

Last updated on: August 16, 2019 at 10:33 am   By

I am presently editing a book with the working title “The Unnecessary Science” that is a robust critique of Thomism, Natural Law and Christian thinkers such as Edward Feser. I (and fellow contributor Ficino) have written a number of times about Natural Law Theory (NLT) – see “Related Posts” below. It has reminded me of how problematic NLT is and I wanted to touch again, here, on NLT and sex.

Just to remind people, NLT states that behaviours that are rationally chosen by an agent that do not fit the remit of the final cause of the agent or part of the agent (i.e., a body part) are morally bad. In the same way a kettle that doesn’t work well to boil water is a bad kettle, if the supposed final cause or purpose of a penis is to urinate and procreate, then any behaviour that falls outside of the remit of excretion or reproduction (procreation) is morally bad. I am simplifying matters here for expediency.

I think this has some really interesting ramifications. If I was to debate Edward Feser (a major modern proponent of this theory), I will be seriously tempted to ask him, “So, you have six children? I presume you have had sex only within the range of 6 to 60 times (assuming your wife and yourself are reproductively fertile)?”

What is at stake here for such believers is that masturbation, contraception and sex exclusively for enjoyment are morally bad. These believers have to adhere to the behaviour of abstinence outside of procreation of the sole purpose of giving birth to a child.

Of course, I wouldn’t ask such an impertinent question in a public debate, I don’t think. But it is interesting to wonder whether such believers really do adhere to their own moral proclamations.

In evolutionary terms, sex is enjoyable precisely because, for genes to have their genesis in other organisms and therefore continue their existence, a sexually reproductive organism such as a human needs to have sex as often as possible. Enjoyment means a greater chance of procreation. If sex was truly horrible, we would be less inclined to have it and would have less chance of passing on our genes.

Aware that enjoyment appears functional (in terms of evolution) for passing on our genes, proponents of NLT will argue that enjoyment is either not functional (some kind of random collateral?), or functional as a not-quite-final cause for the final cause of procreation (or, arguably, gene transference).

There is an interesting question as to why God would have made sex enjoyable given the moral paradigm. If it was to increase the chance of procreation then there is a tension here between the mechanism (the enjoyment if sex in promoting the desire to have sex) and the final cause with regard to moral behaviour. If it is morally bad to have sex outside of the purview of procreation then God has designed into the system of sexual reproduction a seriously effective temptation to be morally bad.

God appears to be saying, “Sex is enjoyable because I want you to desire to have sex in order that you fulfil the purpose of procreation. But if you do this enjoyable thing without the intention of procreation then you are morally bad [even though there appears to be no real negative consequences, prima facie, of doing so].” Or, “I am going to seriously tempt you and then punish you for being tempted!”

Arguably, a man and a woman (for purposes of simplicity since I don’t want to talk about homosexuality and NLT here) having sex within marriage is actually really positive for their relationship. Building up sexual pressure within both the partners is unhealthy for a sustainable relationship unless there is an easy and healthy way to have 50-odd kids.

Given that the initial process of sexual reproduction is so enjoyable, should this mean that people should be trying to have children as much as possible? The old idea that, tapped into by Monty Python, Catholics should have as many children as possible and that every sperm is sacred is kind of entailed in this.

Of course, we could enter the rabbit hole of population problems that come about from such a problem. We could no doubt come up with some optimal number of children human couples should have in terms of sustainability of the human race and the planet as a whole. This would again act as a constraint against the fact that sex is generally enjoyable. God has again designed into the system a tension concerning sex and procreation.

And for more light-hearted entertainment:

 

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2019-08-10T20:00:56+01:00

Last updated on: August 10, 2019 at 8:00 pm   By

I have talked several times before about the Netflix show, The Good Place. It’s a great show that popularises philosophy and packages it for the mass market. This can only be a good thing, in my eyes.

As the show comes to an end, the shows creator talks about the evolution of the idea for the show:

“I pitched this show as an investigation of what it meant to be a good person and found over the course of working on it with the writers and the actors and the entire crew that that’s an even more complicated question than I thought it was,” Schur said. “I thought in the beginning that the show could, if given the chance, describe what it meant to be a good person. That was my hope. And that didn’t mean do this and not that, it meant, ‘Here’s what a good person looks like in the world. Here’s how a person can feel like he or she led a good life.'”

But Schur’s intentions for the show shifted as he and the writers studied the work of philosophers who have expounded on what it means to be good. “What we found as we discussed it and wrote it and executed it is some very, very smart people over the last 3,000 years have had a lot of opinions about that question,” he said.

So the show’s true message evolved. It became: “We’re going to give you a bunch of options, and by the way, there are plenty more that we didn’t describe, but what’s important is that you try one of them,” Schur said. “That was sort of my internal shift over the course of making the show, a sort of newfound belief that the important thing wasn’t actually — and it’s counterintuitive to say this — being good. The important thing was that you’re trying. Because it feels like the huge problem, from my point of view, is that not enough people are trying. And trying means failing. Everyone fails all the time, even the people with the best intentions will fail. It doesn’t matter whether you follow this theory that or that theory or this belief or whatever — you’re going to fail a lot. We all fail all the time at this. And so, this is a long-winded saying: At the beginning, I pitched it as ‘what it means to be a good person,’ and at the end, I think I would describe this as a show that makes the argument that we all ought to try harder than we are, and as long as you’re trying, you’re on the right path.”

If you haven’t watched it, definitely check it out.

Morality is a massively complex field about which I have written a huge amount. If you have seen my recent pieces on conceptual nominalism with regard to rights (qua morality), you can guess where my feelings lie.

H/T C Peterson.

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2019-07-30T12:28:35+01:00

Last updated on: July 30, 2019 at 12:28 pm   By

The rights debates raging on a number of recent comment threads have been pretty embarrassing for many of the people (gun advocates) taking part because they have simply not engaged with the conversation at the level it should have been. In fact, these haven’t been “rights debates”, they have been long lists of assertions followed by the spinning of guns stats. This is a philosophical blog, at heart, and the articles are mainly written to stimulate philosophical conversation, sometimes overtly and explicitly so. In the recent cases, this concerned the ontology of rights.

This is a rerun of the same article. Except, this time, if your comment is not pertinent to the ontology of rights in any meaningful way, it will be deleted. I want a discussion about whether conceptual nominalism holds, here, and what the implications are for the basis of rights in general if ontological realism is shown not to be coherent.

You have been warned. This will be philosophy on this thread, nothing else. I apologise for the two people on the previous thread who actually engaged (Luke and 3lemenope?). Perhaps copy and paste again here?

Mind Independence

Conceptual nominalism would say that rights, as abstract objects, only exist in the mind of the conceiver. If all sentient animals that conceived of rights were to die, then the concepts of rights would die with them.

This is defended by the following issues that arise when trying to claim that rights/abstract objects have ontic/min-independent existence, for example, in saying that rights exist innately in humans. If this were the case:

  • What would rights (/abstract objects) be made of?
  • Where would they be located? If they are innate in humans, where in the human body do they exist?
  • How would they causally interact with the physical world?
  • How do we know what those rights are? How do we know if our ideas of what our rights are map directly onto what those “real” rights are? (John Locke might call these nominal and real essences).

We know of things that really are innate. Take a predisposition or behaviour to do X. This would be coded into our genes (if shown to be genetically caused and not behaviourally learned based on interaction with the environment). X is innate insofar as society does not enforce X, somehow, on the agent and that the agent is born with it; it is not environmentally derived (assuming a simple understanding of genetics).

We can also see innate characteristics with blue eyes, dark skin or red hair, or any other genetically defined property.

But rights? Where and how are these encoded into a human? In what way could they be innate? Really, what does this mean?

We, as a society, ascribe rights to humans. This is why those rights differ across time, across societies and people. We used to think keeping slaves was a right. Many now see same-sex marriage/relationships/parenting as rights. But, ironically, many who argue for gun rights argue that these other rights are not, indeed rights.

One criticism of natural rights (and there are many I am not detailing here, see many of the linked articles below) is, as mentioned, knowing that we have a correct idea of what these supposedly innate things are. This is similar to issues with divine command theory as pointed out in the previous piece. There is an epistemological problem as much as an ontological one.

Locke

I could, for example, claim that eating ice cream on a Tuesday is a right. An innate right. I could claim anything is. How would we know? What I think has happened, over time, is that thinkers have tried to think of catch-all rights that cover all the bases rather than individualised rights. Of course, these bases are merely benchmarks of moral philosophy, and I would argue that rights supervene on pretty standard moral philosophising rather than have a fundamental and properly basic existence.

It appears that John Locke did this catch-all approach in claiming that there are three basic rights: rights of life, liberty and property, all somehow innate in humans. As great as many libertarians and American Constitutionalists think he was, he was a little contradictory, supporting the Bank of England, setting up military conscription in Carolina (this is a balanced piece on his involvement there), becoming the Commissioner on the Board of Trade (imposing tariffs and restrictions) and so on. (See here and here for property issues). I would certainly take issue with some of his claims:

We should not obey a king just out of fear, because, being more powerful he can constrain (this in fact would be to establish firmly the authority of tyrants, robbers, and pirates), but for conscience’ sake, because a king has command over us by right; that is to say, because the law of nature decrees that princes and a lawmaker, or a superior by whatever name you call him, should be obeyed. (Locke, 1663–64, Essays on the Law of Nature, in Goldie (ed.) 1997, 120)

Locke believed that having no property meant no injustice, and government was necessarily an infringement on liberty. True liberty is doing what one pleases. He saw moral laws as certain and discoverable as Euclidean geometry…

The problem for Locke is that he didn’t appear to do any ontological philosophy to support his claims of rights; he just asserted this, and this is then asserted by guns rights advocates in an attempt to sound lofty and thinking they are then rationalising their position. This is a really important point to emphasise. Thus all the issues with natural rights remain. This paper (“A paradox in Locke’s Theory of Natural Rights“) really sums up my thoughts on Locke and those (for example, in these threads) who quote and idolise his claims on natural rights:

There are certain recurring objections to Locke’s theory of legitimate government and the conception of natural rights on which it is based. These objections generally take the form of showing that most of Locke’s claims in the Second Treatise stand largely as ad hoc assertions, defended—if at all—not by philosophical argumentation but by appeals to theology or intuition. These criticisms might be called external criticisms of Locke’s theory because they focus, not upon the coherence of the theory or the perplexities which prompted Locke to adopt it, but rather upon the justifications (or lack of them) for that theory. [my emphasis]

Quite. He really doesn’t justify his claims, as far as I can see, on natural rights by dealing with ontological issues.

Let’s look at these rights, and forget the massive ontological issues that obtain in terms of what they are made of. You could say that eating an ice cream on a Tuesday is indeed a right because it falls under the rather nebulous right of freedom.

Indeed, most things do.

Aha. But what if your right to do something impinges on someone else’s right to their freedom, or indeed life? And this is where we get into a whole minefield of rights that is simply unsolvable. I might demand something that means someone is confined to a sweatshop; or it could be that I demand something that contributes to climate change and infringes on everyone’s right to life (okay, so must gun advocates probably deny climate change, but you get the point). Rights of property: what happens when people amass so much propertynto the detriment of others, affecting their rights?

…the top wealthiest 1% possess 40% of the nation’s wealth; the bottom 80% own 7%; similarly, but later, the media reported, the “richest 1 percent in the United States now own more additional income than the bottom 90 percent”.[8] The gap between the top 10% and the middle class is over 1,000%; that increases another 1,000% for the top 1%. The average employee “needs to work more than a month to earn what the CEO earns in one hour.”[9] :[source]

How does this affect rights? Especially when we know that money begets privilege and gives untold opportunity advantage to those who have it.

Locke was actually pretty progressive, which is amusing since many modern Americans who idolise his natural rights position are clearly not:

The Civil Rights movement and the suffrage movement both called out the state of American democracy during their challenges to the governments view on equality. To them it was clear that when the designers of democracy said all, they meant all people shall receive those natural rights that John Locke cherished so deeply. “a state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another” (Locke II,4).[43] Locke in his papers on natural philosophy clearly states that he wants a government where all are treated equal in freedoms especially. “Locke’s views on toleration were very progressive for the time” (Connolly).[44]Authors such as Jacob Connolly confirm that to them Locke was highly ahead of his time with all this progressive thinking. That is that his thought fits our current state of democracy where we strive to make sure that everyone has a say in the government and everyone has a chance at a good life. Regardless of race, gender, or social standing starting with Locke it was made clear not only that the government should provide rights, but rights to everyone through his social contract. [source]

These triple rights are also seriously challenged by the idea that libertarian free will does not exist – either philosophically and logically or empirically, as according to the overwhelming majority of philosophers (86% – metadata shows that those who don’t are invariably Christian thinkers who require it for their understanding of a judgemental god, heaven and hell, but they have yet to give a cogent account of how contra-causal free will can possibly work).

A right to bear arms is a freedom, but the probability of this leading to the infringement of someone else’s rights is what is the battleground here.

So even if we can establish another realm of reality where abstract objects can exist independent of the mind, we still have an absolute quagmire to negotiate. Of course, under conceptual nominalism, all of these issues simply evaporate; they are not a problem, because rights are conceptual, and so only exist in our thought, and don’t have real boundaries When they conflict, it is only because we have invented these fuzzy ideals that come with all of the issues that invented things do.

But realists have to solve these problems.

The funny thing is, they appear not to be bothered.

Immigration

Take the right to freedom. Libertarians (and I mean true libertarians) get this absolutely right (if you believe in these Lockean rights). The right to movement is about the most basic right of freedom – to move, with your body, from one location to another. Thing is, we’ve invented borders and nationhood – abstract ideas that we have codified into laws and maps. We’ve made them up and we don’t like people from that made-up country coming to this made-up country. In short, people don’t like immigration. Libertarians, taking into account Ayn Rand as a Russian illegal immigrant herself, actually defend migration and free movement of people amongst a whole suite of other things, and presumably based largely in the thinking of Locke:

1.5 Abortion

Recognizing that abortion is a sensitive issue and that people can hold good-faith views on all sides, we believe that government should be kept out of the matter, leaving the question to each person for their conscientious consideration.

3.4 Free Trade and Migration

We support the removal of governmental impediments to free trade. Political freedom and escape from tyranny demand that individuals not be unreasonably constrained by government in the crossing of political boundaries. Economic freedom demands the unrestricted movement of human as well as financial capital across national borders. [my emphasis]

In other words, every gun rights activist should be a free movement of people advocate. They should be welcoming people across the Mexican border in the US and should be decrying Trump, his rhetoric and his wall.

In reality, of course, they don’t (in the vast majority of cases), post hoc rationalising and cherry-picking their freedoms to suit their own little bubble.

They like the idea of a right to bear arms, but they seem to want to have a right to stop other people moving, infringe the rights a woman has over her own body (whilst not caring about the rights of the born baby they fight so hard to get born, after it is born), deny the right to life of countless others through a clean environment (air, water, climate change), so on and so forth. The morass of contradictions and conflicting ideals is almost funny had it not so many nefarious implications. How do we know how to solve these problems? In what way can we tell that one right trumps another with any sort of epistemic certainty?

Easy. Because, you know, guns and abortion. These trump everything. This is identity politics at its best, with all the virtue signalling we have seen on the latest threads. Irony is delicious (though sometimes differentiating between irony and flat out hypocrisy is tough).

If people vomit their comments all over this thread without dealing with the ontology of rights, then they are doing their position a disservice. They are building their entire edifice of politics and thought upon air, on empty or hollow foundations.

Locke appeared to do the same, and repeating his mantra as a justification of their position, or bringing up human-conceived documents (Bill of Rights, the Consitution etc.) is no justification. You cannot bring up the conclusion of a strain of thought as justification for the conclusion of a strain of thought.

Please do not hijack this thread to try and scattergun your thoughts about gun ownership; I couldn’t care less here and now. This is a philosophical post about rights, their ontology and the contradictions inherent. This is my blog, my article, and my thread. Don’t opportunistically herd here like a pack of rabid dogs trying to upvote each other in competing as to who can comment the most, shout the loudest and champion gun rights to those gun control nazis and libtards that we supposedly are. I would hope we’re usually a bit more mature here in hoping for some more nuanced conversation.

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2019-07-25T00:17:37+01:00

Last updated on: July 25, 2019 at 12:17 am   By

The rights debates raging on a number of recent comment threads have been pretty embarrassing for many of the people (gun advocates) taking part because they have simply not engaged with the conversation at the level it should have been. This is a philosophical blog, at heart, and the articles are mainly written to stimulate philosophical conversation, sometimes overtly and explicitly so. In the recent cases, this concerned the ontology of rights.

Mind Independence

Conceptual nominalism would say that rights, as abstract objects, only exist in the mind of the conceiver. If all sentient animals that conceived of rights were to die, then the concepts of rights would die with them.

This is defended by the following issues that arise when trying to claim that rights/abstract objects have ontic/min-independent existence, for example, in saying that rights exist innately in humans. If this were the case:

  • What would rights (/abstract objects) be made of?
  • Where would they be located? If they are innate in humans, where in the human body do they exist?
  • How would they causally interact with the physical world?
  • How do we know what those rights are? How do we know if our ideas of what our rights are map directly onto what those “real” rights are? (John Locke might call these nominal and real essences).

We know of things that really are innate. Take a predisposition or behaviour to do X. This would be coded into our genes (if shown to be genetically caused and not behaviourally learned based on interaction with the environment). X is innate insofar as society does not enforce X, somehow, on the agent and that the agent is born with it; it is not environmentally derived (assuming a simple understanding of genetics).

We can also see innate characteristics with blue eyes, dark skin or red hair, or any other genetically defined property.

But rights? Where and how are these encoded into a human? In what way could they be innate? Really, what does this mean?

We, as a society, ascribe rights to humans. This is why those rights differ across time, across societies and people. We used to think keeping slaves was a right. Many now see same-sex marriage/relationships/parenting as rights. But, ironically, many who argue for gun rights argue that these other rights are not, indeed rights.

One criticism of natural rights (and there are many I am not detailing here, see many of the linked articles below) is, as mentioned, knowing that we have a correct idea of what these supposedly innate things are. This is similar to issues with divine command theory as pointed out in the previous piece. There is an epistemological problem as much as an ontological one.

Locke

I could, for example, claim that eating ice cream on a Tuesday is a right. An innate right. I could claim anything is. How would we know? What I think has happened, over time, is that thinkers have tried to think of catch-all rights that cover all the bases rather than individualised rights. Of course, these bases are merely benchmarks of moral philosophy, and I would argue that rights supervene on pretty standard moral philosophising rather than have a fundamental and properly basic existence.

It appears that John Locke did this catch-all approach in claiming that there are three basic rights: rights of life, liberty and property, all somehow innate in humans. As great as many libertarians and American Constitutionalists think he was, he was a little contradictory, supporting the Bank of England, setting up military conscription in Carolina (this is a balanced piece on his involvement there), becoming the Commissioner on the Board of Trade (imposing tariffs and restrictions) and so on. (See here and here for property issues). I would certainly take issue with some of his claims:

We should not obey a king just out of fear, because, being more powerful he can constrain (this in fact would be to establish firmly the authority of tyrants, robbers, and pirates), but for conscience’ sake, because a king has command over us by right; that is to say, because the law of nature decrees that princes and a lawmaker, or a superior by whatever name you call him, should be obeyed. (Locke, 1663–64, Essays on the Law of Nature, in Goldie (ed.) 1997, 120)

Locke believed that having no property meant no injustice, and government was necessarily an infringement on liberty. True liberty is doing what one pleases. He saw moral laws as certain and discoverable as Euclidean geometry…

The problem for Locke is that he didn’t appear to do any ontological philosophy to support his claims of rights; he just asserted this, and this is then asserted by guns rights advocates in an attempt to sound lofty and thinking they are then rationalising their position. This is a really important point to emphasise. Thus all the issues with natural rights remain. This paper (“A paradox in Locke’s Theory of Natural Rights“) really sums up my thoughts on Locke and those (for example, in these threads) who quote and idolise his claims on natural rights:

There are certain recurring objections to Locke’s theory of legitimate government and the conception of natural rights on which it is based. These objections generally take the form of showing that most of Locke’s claims in the Second Treatise stand largely as ad hoc assertions, defended—if at all—not by philosophical argumentation but by appeals to theology or intuition. These criticisms might be called external criticisms of Locke’s theory because they focus, not upon the coherence of the theory or the perplexities which prompted Locke to adopt it, but rather upon the justifications (or lack of them) for that theory. [my emphasis]

Quite. He really doesn’t justify his claims, as far as I can see, on natural rights by dealing with ontological issues.

Let’s look at these rights, and forget the massive ontological issues that obtain in terms of what they are made of. You could say that eating an ice cream on a Tuesday is indeed a right because it falls under the rather nebulous right of freedom.

Indeed, most things do.

Aha. But what if your right to do something impinges on someone else’s right to their freedom, or indeed life? And this is where we get into a whole minefield of rights that is simply unsolvable. I might demand something that means someone is confined to a sweatshop; or it could be that I demand something that contributes to climate change and infringes on everyone’s right to life (okay, so must gun advocates probably deny climate change, but you get the point). Rights of property: what happens when people amass so much propertynto the detriment of others, affecting their rights?

…the top wealthiest 1% possess 40% of the nation’s wealth; the bottom 80% own 7%; similarly, but later, the media reported, the “richest 1 percent in the United States now own more additional income than the bottom 90 percent”.[8] The gap between the top 10% and the middle class is over 1,000%; that increases another 1,000% for the top 1%. The average employee “needs to work more than a month to earn what the CEO earns in one hour.”[9] :[source]

How does this affect rights? Especially when we know that money begets privilege and gives untold opportunity advantage to those who have it.

Locke was actually pretty progressive, which is amusing since many modern Americans who idolise his natural rights position are clearly not:

The Civil Rights movement and the suffrage movement both called out the state of American democracy during their challenges to the governments view on equality. To them it was clear that when the designers of democracy said all, they meant all people shall receive those natural rights that John Locke cherished so deeply. “a state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another” (Locke II,4).[43] Locke in his papers on natural philosophy clearly states that he wants a government where all are treated equal in freedoms especially. “Locke’s views on toleration were very progressive for the time” (Connolly).[44]Authors such as Jacob Connolly confirm that to them Locke was highly ahead of his time with all this progressive thinking. That is that his thought fits our current state of democracy where we strive to make sure that everyone has a say in the government and everyone has a chance at a good life. Regardless of race, gender, or social standing starting with Locke it was made clear not only that the government should provide rights, but rights to everyone through his social contract. [source]

These triple rights are also seriously challenged by the idea that libertarian free will does not exist – either philosophically and logically or empirically, as according to the overwhelming majority of philosophers (86% – metadata shows that those who don’t are invariably Christian thinkers who require it for their understanding of a judgemental god, heaven and hell, but they have yet to give a cogent account of how contra-causal free will can possibly work).

A right to bear arms is a freedom, but the probability of this leading to the infringement of someone else’s rights is what is the battleground here.

So even if we can establish another realm of reality where abstract objects can exist independent of the mind, we still have an absolute quagmire to negotiate. Of course, under conceptual nominalism, all of these issues simply evaporate; they are not a problem, because rights are conceptual, and so only exist in our thought, and don’t have real boundaries When they conflict, it is only because we have invented these fuzzy ideals that come with all of the issues that invented things do.

But realists have to solve these problems.

The funny thing is, they appear not to be bothered.

Immigration

Take the right to freedom. Libertarians (and I mean true libertarians) get this absolutely right (if you believe in these Lockean rights). The right to movement is about the most basic right of freedom – to move, with your body, from one location to another. Thing is, we’ve invented borders and nationhood – abstract ideas that we have codified into laws and maps. We’ve made them up and we don’t like people from that made-up country coming to this made-up country. In short, people don’t like immigration. Libertarians, taking into account Ayn Rand as a Russian illegal immigrant herself, actually defend migration and free movement of people amongst a whole suite of other things, and presumably based largely in the thinking of Locke:

1.5 Abortion

Recognizing that abortion is a sensitive issue and that people can hold good-faith views on all sides, we believe that government should be kept out of the matter, leaving the question to each person for their conscientious consideration.

3.4 Free Trade and Migration

We support the removal of governmental impediments to free trade. Political freedom and escape from tyranny demand that individuals not be unreasonably constrained by government in the crossing of political boundaries. Economic freedom demands the unrestricted movement of human as well as financial capital across national borders. [my emphasis]

In other words, every gun rights activist should be a free movement of people advocate. They should be welcoming people across the Mexican border in the US and should be decrying Trump, his rhetoric and his wall.

In reality, of course, they don’t (in the vast majority of cases), post hoc rationalising and cherry-picking their freedoms to suit their own little bubble.

They like the idea of a right to bear arms, but they seem to want to have a right to stop other people moving, infringe the rights a woman has over her own body (whilst not caring about the rights of the born baby they fight so hard to get born, after it is born), deny the right to life of countless others through a clean environment (air, water, climate change), so on and so forth. The morass of contradictions and conflicting ideals is almost funny had it not so many nefarious implications. How do we know how to solve these problems? In what way can we tell that one right trumps another with any sort of epistemic certainty?

Easy. Because, you know, guns and abortion. These trump everything. This is identity politics at its best, with all the virtue signalling we have seen on the latest threads. Irony is delicious (though sometimes differentiating between irony and flat out hypocrisy is tough).

If people vomit their comments all over this thread without dealing with the ontology of rights, then they are doing their position a disservice. They are building their entire edifice of politics and thought upon air, on empty or hollow foundations.

Locke appeared to do the same, and repeating his mantra as a justification of their position, or bringing up human-conceived documents (Bill of Rights, the Consitution etc.) is no justification. You cannot bring up the conclusion of a strain of thought as justification for the conclusion of a strain of thought.

Please do not hijack this thread to try and scattergun your thoughts about gun ownership; I couldn’t care less here and now. This is a philosophical post about rights, their ontology and the contradictions inherent. This is my blog, my article, and my thread. Don’t opportunistically herd here like a pack of rabid dogs trying to upvote each other in competing as to who can comment the most, shout the loudest and champion gun rights to those gun control nazis and libtards that we supposedly are. I would hope we’re usually a bit more mature here in hoping for some more nuanced conversation.

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2019-07-20T23:55:42+01:00

Last updated on: July 20, 2019 at 11:55 pm   By

A thread has recently exploded when I posted about the Second Amendment and drawing the line between acceptable and unacceptable weaponry. On the thread, one particularly obvious common denominator sprung up with all of the gun advocates, the idea of “rights”:

A right is no less a right just because time goes by and technology changes.

I’m not an expert, but I believe the idea behind natural rights is that they can, and do exist outside of any social construct. For example, if attacked by a bear on a deserted island, one does not need law to grant her permissions to stick a spear into the bear’s belly. Nor does one need law to grant one the right to construct said spear.

People have the right to guns. Period.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
That you say the preceding is hogwash tells us all we need to know about you. You’ve no right to life according to your own statement.

Sorry, but no.
People have inalienable rights. No other person has the moral authority to grant you a single right.

In America we do have inalienable rights and it does not matter if the majority “feels” Citizens should not own certain weapons like fully armed Tanks and Machine Guns, government still will never have the legal,moral or the Constitutional power,nor the means of force, to ever disarm the American people of our right to be armed with modern weapons of war and self defense.That is an inalienable right and affirmed by the US Supreme Court!

Yes the right to be armed with modern weapons of war and self defense including guns is an inalienable right and affirmed as such by the US Supreme Court. See DC v. Heller,MacDonald v. Illinois ,Caetano v. Mass. and US v. Miller for factual references.

Gun rights are not negotiable.. We really don’t need to have a conversation about our rights to keep and bear arms. They’re rights. There’s nothing to talk about.
The 2nd Amend is a RESTRICTIVE admendment. It states such in the Preamble to Bill of Rights. the 2A does not grant nor convey any right, but RESTRICTS and PROHIBITS the government from infringing upon this enumerated,
pre-existing, God given right.

my rights don’t come from a document.
my rights were bestowed by my creator.
Americans have been exercising their rights for longer than we’ve been a country. longer than we’ve had a president or judges to tell us we couldn’t do so.

my right to self defense with arms is over 7,000 years old. It transcends government and in truth, the ONLY thing that the 2nd amendment does is limit the legal right of the government to interfere with my right to self defense.

when it stops doing that, I will change my government.

Inalienable rights are inherent to the human. No other human has any right or moral authority over another.
Those rights limit societal action.

I am admittedly going to include previous writing here in answering this before relating it to gun rights advocacy.

And, before any of the gun advocates from the previous thread or otherwise comment here, please can they think about not repeating the mantras above and establish what human rights are, how abstracta exist, where they exist, and how they are binding? I will not accept mere assertions.

Human Rights Don’t “Exist”

Human rights don’t exist. By this, I mean, as I so often state, they do not have ontic existence – they do not exist outside of our minds. Like all abstract ideas, for a conceptual nominalist (please read this, or linked posts below, to fully understand this post) like myself, the existence of such mental entities (labels, morality and so on) is entirely in our minds.

I, and most other humans, often talk about human rights as if they exist as objective entities. This is what the people above have done, and they can be excused for this as it is ubiquitous in our everyday language. However, this is lazy language. These ideas of rights, like any aspect of language itself, are arrived at by consensus. When we agree on the meaning of any word, we codify that by putting it in a dictionary.

Actually, it’s even more descriptive than that. When humans use language – words and whatever spelling we choose often enough – dictionary compilers recognise a certain level of frequency and deem a word and its spelling common enough to be included in the dictionary. For example, the word “gamification” recently made it in after being coined and utilised enough that it reached a tipping point of acceptance into codification.

It’s similar with abstract concepts like human rights. We think and observe and take part in society and then we make moral proclamations. I don’t know, something like these generic ones:

  • The right to life
  • The right to liberty and freedom
  • The right to the pursuit of happiness
  • The right to live your life free of discrimination
  • The right to control what happens to your own body and to make medical decisions for yourself
  • The right to freely exercise your religion and practice your religious beliefs without fear of being prosecuted for your beliefs
  • The right to be free from prejudice on the basis of race, gender, national origin, color, age or sex
  • The right to grow old
  • The right to a fair trial and due process of the law
  • The right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment
  • The right to be free from torture
  • The right to be free from slavery
  • The right to freedom of speech
  • The right to freely associate with whomever you like and to join groups of which you’d like to be a part.
  • The right to freedom of thought
  • The right not to be prosecuted from your thoughts

You might want to get more specific still. Like the right to bear arms and so on.

If I thought up these ideas but no one else did, or no one else agreed, they are not really human rights in any pragmatic sense, and they certainly aren’t universal. You could argue that there is a set of human rights that exist in some kind of ether or Platonic realm of truth. Perhaps in God as many commenters above specify. Of course, the Bible contravenes even some of the most basic human rights of, say, the UN (that seems infinitely more sensible and moral in its/their proclamations). So there is a problem of the observable data of the holy book of the Bible. Let’s scrap that book as a source of information about human rights.

Indeed, this whole post is equivalent to my writings on the ontology of morality since human rights are merely moral proclamations that many assume are objective and that somehow transcend time and culture.

Over time and thought and society, people tend towards agreement on moral matters. Unless you’re in America right now. In fact, the States is a great example of how, in reality, human rights are conceptual, how they aren’t written into the ether. The country is divided on abortion, and the right of a woman to their own body and the right to life of a foetus. I have discussed this, with connected ideas, in terms of personhood (as a word ascribed to a set of properties, and how this is subjective) in “What Is Personhood? Setting the Scene.“

Advocates, like those above, need to establish what abstract objects, under which rights fall, are; what they are made of and how they work. In short, they need to philosophically establish (Platonic) realism of sorts. Human rights sound lovely, but until we do something with them, they are meaningless, or they have no ramifications.

Human rights, therefore, are the philosophical underpinnings of moral thought that form the foundations to law. As we grow into a global society, the term “human right” takes on a more transcendent quality that dismisses borders in favour of the human race: it becomes a universal term. This is why it is often connected to the UN, an organisation that sets to unite the world and see humanity as one. This international law, it is hoped, somehow trumps the national and parochial laws of individual countries.

Legal Rights

Until we codify human rights into law – first into local and national laws, but more usefully into more universal, border transcendent laws – the thinking, the philosophy, behind those human rights is ineffectual and pragmatically impotent.

In short, “human rights” is a term that signifies “moral philosophy”, but the “right” part of it only means something when there is a legal framework to make the moral proclamation binding. We all know what a legal right is:

1a: a claim recognized and delimited by law for the purpose of securing it

b: the interest in a claim which is recognized by and protected by sanctions of law imposed by a state, which enables one to possess property or to engage in some transaction or course of conduct or to compel some other person to so engage or to refrain from some course of conduct under certain circumstances, and for the infringement of which claim the state provides a remedy in its courts of justice

2: the aggregate of the capacities, powers, liberties, and privileges by which a claim is secured

3: a capacity of asserting a legally recognized claim — compare LEGAL DUTY

4: a right cognizable in a common-law court as distinguished from a court having jurisdiction in equity

The law works to enable an entity within its jurisdiction the capacity to do, have or be something. Without that, you just have one person or people making moral claims to another person or people. Law makes these things binding.

To mention God, theists often claim morality is only binding when objectively embedded within the entity of God. Binding, though, simply means stuff happens when you don’t obey or adhere. Heaven and hell are mere promises from any given denomination of religion that believes in them, and for which there is approximately no evidence. And you can’t just claim that (human) rights are based in God: what does this actually mean. It is similar, if not identical, to saying God underwrites morality. So what? Even if we can know, somehow, that our understanding aligns with God’s, so what? Even if there is an objective ideal, is it knowable? And we still have to subjectively interpret it anyway. This is what Kant said about ding an sich – things in themselves – we cannot know them, at best we can interpret them in our own, subjective, phenomenal way.

This claim of rights being based in God is patent nonsense and is at very best a promissory note. Secular, legal rights that are binding in light of legal organisations such as law enforcement and jurisprudence, as well as prison services and suchlike, are far more tangible than what is claimed within the theistic notion of binding morality. There are real-world ramifications to not adhering to such rights as laid out in any given legal code.

In conclusion so far, then: set out your human rights as a philosophical endeavour (after arguing about them, and knowing that there will rarely be universal agreement) and then write these into law, preferably international law that transcends borders so that they become, as much as possible, universal. The reality will be that we arrive at these agreements by consensus. Hopefully, the consensus utilises the tools of logic and reason, observation and data analysis.

And the Second Amendment?

It’s pretty obvious how this all pertains to the Second Amendment – the right to bear arms. That is a mere declaration at a particular time, in a particular place, of a right. But it only means anything if it is interpreted in such a way that it is written into law and enacted. The claims above by the commenters on the other thread are meaningless. These rights, sadly for them, only exist in their heads. Well, actually no. They exist meaningfully in the laws of the US that still allow its citizens to bear arms. But no more than this. Laws can be changed; indeed, the Second Amendment and the Constitution as a whole can be ratified or rejected entirely. In my country, it’s wholly irrelevant.

The Constitution and Declaration of Independence are merely documents written in a particular time and a particular place. They are nothing more. The Consitution is only worth anything when valued by the people under whose influence it stands, and in the way it is interpreted and codified into law. The Constitution has been amended because it lacked completion at the time. It can always be amended. It is not concrete and is open to interpretation (often by the Supreme Court, but ostensibly by anyone).

Here are three quotes from the thread that sum up the views on the Consitution. As you can see, they are contradictory:

The Constitution is the FOUNDATION of law – a foundation upon which all laws rest…. Look to the Constitution – the foundation and authority for ALL laws.

The Constitution grants no rights. All the Constitution does is affirm the preexisting inalienable rights of all freemen and deny government the power to ever even infringe upon those rights! The interpretation that the Second Amendment protects an individual inalienable right has been affirmed as “settled law” and will never be changed. Just because you do not believe in inalienable rights does not mean millions of others do not believe in them and that they do not exist!

In America we have had inalienable rights recognized before the Constitution was even written. What rights do you think the Colonists had on April 19, 1775 when British General Gage tried to violate those rights by seizing the Arms owned by the Minutemen? Both the US Constitution and the Declaration of Independence affirm our inalienable rights as do the Constitutions of all 50 States. Inalienable rights are Birthrights that can never be taken away by government without due process.Your bizzarre claim about feeling you have the inalienable right to injure someone’s eyeball is both obtuse and a strawman’s argument.You have the right to injure yourself but not others.

The first comment claims the foundational aspect of the Constitution from which ALL laws supposedly find their authority. But then the third quote states that inalienable rights existed before the Consitution. These are directly opposed. At least one of these comments is obviously wrong.

So the problem here (one amongst many) is that, if there is a claim that rights exist prior to the Constitution, then the Constitution is nothing special – something of an interim document (given the Amendments). How do you know that the Consitution actually aligns with the “real”, pre-existing rights? This is exactly the same problem that exists with Divine Command Theory (DCT) – how do we know what God’s commands really are, and that we have aligned our rules with God’s? See the previous link to see how many of the issues with the Second Amendment advocates are involved in DCT.

Let’s see another few comments:

Next you will be claiming there is no inalienable right not to be enslaved! Read Locke and get educated! Humans are born with rights.

Slavery and gay rights are interesting examples. A few hundred years ago, American citizens would have argued that keeping slaves was a human right. Now, citizens have a right to same-sex marriage. I wonder how many of these same people would disagree with that human right. And with slavery, we can see adaption and change within our understanding and establishment of rights. We disagree and argue about rights precisely because they are not inborn, written on the “soul”, or whatever. They are conceptual and people require some philosophical discussion to either arrive at a consensus, or continue with disagreement. We disagree with what a hero might be – Gandhi, Rosa Parks, Luke Skywalker, Superman… The same scenario exists for any conceptual idea, rights included.

Every human being possesses fundamental human rights – rights that are NOT with the purview of government to limit. Even the Founders understood this…. The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the writings of the Founders are evidence [of this].

When pressed for evidence that rights are not merely conceptual, human inventions, the commenter gave human documents as his argument. Oh dear. When properly pressed, the commenters did one of three things:

  1. Continued to merely assert the primacy of rights without substantiation.
  2. Claimed they were natural rights/law.
  3. Claimed they were somehow embodied in God.

None of these positions cut the mustard. (See my extensive writings eviscerating natural law and morality as based in God).

We might agree, or not as the case may be, on the right to bear arms. But this right is utterly meaningless unless action about it takes place: when it is codified into law and enacted. Don’t go telling me the right to bear arms is inborn and inherent in us, or I will tell you we have the right to drive forklift trucks over babies, or forqwiblex on Tuesdays whilst elongating scenapsofils.  Go prove those rights aren’t inherent. Or the right to marry someone of the same sex, or adopt within a same-sex relationship, or keep slaves, or keep Jews or immigrants in concentration camps. These are tricky territories where we have to use our finest philosophical training to navigate and argue over which rights obtain, and which don’t. And which are nonsense.

Inalienable Rights

The concept of “inalienable” rights is another thing that keeps coming up. This rather assertively means:

Personal rights held by an individual which are not bestowed by law, custom, or belief, and which cannot be taken or given away, or transferred to another person, are referred to as “inalienable rights.” The U.S. Constitution recognized that certain universal rights cannot be taken away by legislation, as they are beyond the control of a government, being naturally given to every individual at birth, and that these rights are retained throughout life….

These fundamental rights are endowed on every human being by his or her Creator, and are often referred to as “natural rights.” Only under carefully limited circumstances can such natural rights be taken away as people have the freedom to exercise them as they choose.

Of course, natural law is a thoroughly problematic position that falls apart precisely on concepts of realism, essentialism and (conceptual) nominalism (see related posts below and follow further links). The whole idea that humans are inborn with birthright rights is nonsense and a bare assertion at best. Where are they located? To the right of the pituitary glands? Below the kneecaps? What, as abstracta, are they made of?

Moreover, the rights as set out in the Constitution cannot be inalienable because they only exist in that fashion for citizens of the United States. They are not universal or transferable across borders or even time. The claim “The U.S. Constitution recognized that certain universal rights cannot be taken away by legislation, as they are beyond the control of a government, being naturally given to every individual at birth, and that these rights are retained throughout life” is obviously wrong, since they only apply to a small area of the world – the US – and can be removed or amended through democratic (or non-democratic) means. They don’t apply to me, and nor do I want them all. The right to bear arms? Meh. I don’t want firearms in the UK. I have not seen a gun in public for something like 15 years when I saw some armed police once, and that is the sort of society I prefer. I prefer the right not to have citizens around me armed.

When rights overlap and contravene other rights, which rights win? These issues cause endless debates because there is no objective list of evaluated rights that prioritise one above another. I can make up all sorts of rights and claim they are universal, embodied in God, inherent in humans and all such other nonsense. But claiming so does not make it so and does absolutely nothing to show how it could be so.

The language of rights and inalienable rights is everywhere, but it doesn’t make it cogent or objectively true as an idea. Because abstract ideas do not have objective, ontic existence. Unless these people can show me otherwise. Show me that if all sentient creatures, all humanity were to die, and with it, all concepts and ideas, the right to bear arms would still exist. Out there. Somewhere. In some Platonic aether.

Until they establish this, the 1000 comments on that other thread are wasted and meaningless; philosophical castles in the air, built with no foundation whatsoever. (N.B. Assertions do not make foundations).

 

RELATED POSTS:

2019-06-29T09:36:47+01:00

Last updated on: June 29, 2019 at 9:36 am   By

Natural Law Theory (NLT) is an ethical theory derived from the thinking of people such as Thomas Aquinas that attempts to establish that humans, for example, have an ideal form or essence that dictates how they should act. The form of a particular species of bird is that it has feathers, a beak, two eyes, can fly, has a particular colouration and so on. The essence of a bird can be described by listing, one assumes, its properties. There is, in reality (so they would say), some objective notion of what these properties are.

For all of these thinkers, literally everything has this kind of essence, though those essences will differ between things. The idea that homosexual humans (I use this as an example, many other properties could also be used) are morally wrong is derived from the notion that they have an essence, a natural form, to which they should adhere, but do not. A good badger is a badger that most resembles the essence of a badger. A good human is a human who most resembles the nature or essence of a human. Homosexuals or some other group of supposedly morally bad people are morally bad because homosexuality is not a property of the human essence, or essential property.

To confuse matters, we could subcategorise humans in terms of male and female as well. In fact, one of the problems with essentialism and Thomistic philosophy is that you could subcategorise anything further and further to create more and more essences until you eventually have an individual instantiation of a thing. For example, you could subcategorise humans into males and females. But why not continue with other categories? Age, hair colour, size, geographical distribution, skin colour and so on but each of these categories could be sliced and diced even further. Who gets to define the categories? Of course, such advocates of NLT or Thomism would say that God gets to define this, but how do we know what those categories are? We can look around us at the natural world, but as I have at length set out before, categorising the natural world in light of evolution is utterly problematic.

In terms of categorisation, it appears to me that Thomists are not bothered about hair colour or skin colour (although I am sure many of them could be!) and they are happy to allow this variation in light of an overarching human essence. However, they are employing a double standard. They seem to allow variation in physical characteristics but not in mental characteristics. Let’s take homosexuality. Someone who has homosexual tendencies is seen as morally bad because they are not adhering to the essential form of a human. But homosexuality isn’t just a decision that people make. There is a huge amount of research to show that there are very real material bases for homosexuality, particularly in men. Whether it be genetic or biological in nature, there is a clear parallel with other genetic and biological differences between humans that can apparently show a massive variety of physical difference and this does not invalidate them as being a “good” human. However, as soon as they diverged from a very strict mental or rational blueprint, they are deemed as “bad”.

To look at this further, then, we have a set of mental properties that fulfil the criteria of the essence of a human. Again, we have the problem of defining and categorising exactly what these are. Because this appears not to be the case of employing moral reasoning to define moral goodness, but adhering to the essential form of a human. We could have a circular argument where the essential form of a human includes moral behaviour and properties that are good, and these are themselves defined as behaviours that are essentially human. And round and round we go. This is a dilemma paralleled in the Euthyphro Dilemma.

One of the properties of the essence of a human is the property of rational thought. But defining what this is ain’t easy, and falls into the same traps as any property that sits along a continuum as can be seen in the image above. There are humans that have different levels of rationality and at different times, and there would have been an evolution of this over our biological history. Was there a single point in time where two “non-rational” hominids gave birth to a “rational” hominid that finally qualified as “human” in terms of its essence or form?

NLT supposedly allows Christians to claim homosexuality or homosexuals are morally bad because there is a prescriptive human essence from which such urges or biology or behaviour diverges. Homosexuality is not the “function” of humanity, so to speak (what Aristotle called the final cause). Of course, we have the whole debate around libertarian free will: if it can be argued that an individual doesn’t have the power of volition over these urges or biology or behaviour, then what does this say about such a moral framework as NLT?

The whole project appears doomed to confusion and arbitrary delineation.

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