flink@umcp-cs.UUCP (Paul Torek) (08/24/84)
I love answering rhetorical questions! From Brian Peterson: Laura, please tell us how you determined that there are absolute rights. Please tell us where to look to learn what these rights are. [...] Laura finally says that rights are NOT made up, that they are merely recognized, codified, and protected. I want to know where one finds a right. I don't know which sense of "absolute" is intended here, so I'll ignore it. A somewhat technical definition of rights is as follows. A has a right against B to have/do X iff B ought, out of respect for A, to provide/allow X for/by A. Suppose, as I think most of us believe, that at least some of the things one ought to do, one ought to do out of respect for another. Then there are rights. It may be objected that I have not answered the "where to look" question. No problem. Whether or not a specific, concrete action ought to be done is an empirical fact about it, as are how long it takes and how many calories it expends. An action is right iff it would be done if the agent were epistemically rational (knew the relevant facts) and free (from compulsive desires or outside interference). (The last sentence is not a definition of right action, just a test. The action would be done if ... *because* it is right, not the other way around. An action is right *because* it is best. The value of an action is its intrinsic value plus the value of its consequences. Both of these are found through experience: value judgements are synthetic a posteriori.) How d'ya like them apples? --The aspiring iconoclast, Paul Torek, umcp-cs!flink p.s. Followups to net.philosophy, please.