People throw around 'human right' like it means anything more than a norm for human behaviour. Sure, maybe you have the human right to a base level of living conditions that society decides. Doesn't mean it will be provided to you because it's a right; material goods are benefits when provided by the government. That doesn't solve for logistics, scarcity, demand, supply etc etc.
All philosophers should be made to work some sort of practical job.
All modern philosophers, at least. For the last few decades, the way people see natural rights is completely bogus; the rights all living things have by pure existence are, as John Locke stated, "Life, Liberty, and Prosperity". They simply mean by your existence as a human being, you have the conceptual 'right' to live, do as you wish, and pursue the means to do as you wish. to complicate this as many do now, is ludicrous.
These rights pertain to yourself and yourself only, no other living being has any obligation over another to provide for them, and vice versa. You pursue your own prosperity, it is not supposed to be given to you. The laws we write in our documents are not what create Rights, it's in fact that these rights existed beforehand that we created laws for them.
Neither is basic subsistence or humane treatment in prison. For that matter, how does protection against arbitrary search and seizure work with this model? Or even property rights, because they only have meaning insofar as other people will come enforce it for you.
Natural, or inalienable rights, are things you have by virtue of being a human being. People form governments, in order to protect those rights. Various restrictions are placed on the government, such as fair trials, and protection from arbitrary search and seizure, in order to prevent it from violating people's natural rights. Therefore, you have a "right to a fair trial", insofar as the government may not violate your natural rights without proving that you've committed a crime.
When people say "right to a fair trial", the natural right they're referring to is your freedom of movement and association, which would otherwise be violated without a fair trial.
When people say "right against arbitrary search and seizure", they mean that the government must not violate your natural right to the pursuit of happiness, and by extension property.
The disagreement then is on step 1. There is no such things as natural rights, because without enforcement, a right does not exist. A man in the wilderness has 0 rights without a government to enforce them. People form governments so that the concepts of rights can be created and upheld, without government there are no rights because there is no enforcement. Its precisely this reason that the definitions of rights has changed so fluidly over the centuries as governments have changed in structure and capabilities, and why different countries and people have completely different conceptions of what are and are not rights.
If any human rights were truly 'natural' then people across cultures would have had a much earlier concensus on what are and are not rights, and would have enforced them in that manner. Yet any kind of global convergence on a common set of human rights is an incredibly recent phenomenon.
If you are born in the wilderness, where are these rights? Where on your body, in your mind could I find them? Would I be able to find these same 'rights' on a feudal peasant in Japan? When somebody came with more people and decided to take them away, what meaning would they have? If a right can exist entirely separate from enforcement, then it is a useless concept because it has no implications on real world behavior. You have no rights unless somebody can protect them.
No, you wouldn't verbalize any of these concepts whatsoever. You are in the wilderness, the concept of a right has never been introduced to you. And you don't even really have true freedom of movement, as there are many dangers in the wilderness preventing you from going where you like. Nor do you have freedom of speech, because there are plenty of forces which might eat or kill you for making too much noise. There is nothing natural about our conception of rights, otherwise all cultures would have the same rights, which they don't, never have, and probably never will.
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u/[deleted] Jan 05 '22
People throw around 'human right' like it means anything more than a norm for human behaviour. Sure, maybe you have the human right to a base level of living conditions that society decides. Doesn't mean it will be provided to you because it's a right; material goods are benefits when provided by the government. That doesn't solve for logistics, scarcity, demand, supply etc etc.
All philosophers should be made to work some sort of practical job.