Are rights absolute, or are they contingent on considerations of fairness?
Consider Locke’s theory of property. Locke argues that an individual can acquire a legitimate property right by mixing their labour with previously unowned resources. Yet this right is constrained by the requirement that there must remain “enough, and as good” for others.
Thus, even where an individual has a strong historical claim to something—because they have acquired it legitimately through their own labour—that claim remains subject to the circumstances and interests of others.
Imagine, for example, that a person is shipwrecked on an uninhabited island and spends years cultivating the land and breeding goats. A second family subsequently arrives. The first person’s claim to the land may have been entirely legitimate when it was acquired, but circumstances have changed: continued exclusive control may now leave the newcomers without access to comparable resources.
Does this suggest that rights are inherently contingent—that the strength or legitimacy of a right depends not only on how it was acquired, but also on whether its exercise remains compatible with principles of fairness?
More generally, can a person possess a genuine right while nevertheless being required to limit, surrender, or modify the exercise of that right when circumstances change and the continued exercise of it would impose an unfair burden on others?
Well, they can work it out or else they need a judge with a gun.
I’m uncomfortable thinking of rights as existing as a noun, is what I’m trying to say. It gets gooey fast. So I’m glad I’m not a philosopher of rights. Not a sociologist. Not a lawyer. Nobody should offer me a job at the UN, especially on a human rights panel.
I am suspicious of language, so often finding myself lost within it.
And one step further: I often suspect that most everyone else is also lost but just doesn’t want to admit it.
I see this sometimes, but I don’t understand you people. Is it that hard to imagine that there is an ought and an is, and both are totally independent, such that the is has no influence on the ought?
Assume the guy with the biggest gun gets what they want. What does that tell us about what ought to have happened? Nothing.
We can discuss whether there actually is an ought, of course, but if that is the objection, be more direct: “Rights don’t exist, so the questions about rights are nonsensical.” This just seems like talking about something irrelevant.
Well I’d say Rights are a concept which people have made up, they don’t exist outside of us as something we can point to and check if the first of second islander has the ‘genuine’ Right to the land.
In that sense Rights are inherently contingent.
As Suny points out, the under-girding of Rights lies in the realm of Morality, of Oughts. They’re used as a category of Oughts which generally trump less significant morality related issues. So you might talk of God-given Rights being inalienable, or secular Human Rights which ought to be protected no matter the flavour of passing governments changing laws.
I suppose if you believe in objective morality, you could try to make a case for Rights not being contingent because of an objective moral grounding of some sort (perhaps ‘God-given’ would fit there).
Otherwise I think we’re stuck with creating our own moral grounding for Oughts, which Rights might be a component of.
Property is a communal convention. You only own stuff because the folk around you say you do.
Even if you have a gun, there are more of them than there are of you. And they make the ammunition.
Of course you don’t find rights alongside the rocks and trees. We decide them, then work towards them. That doesn’t make them contingent, it makes them communal. They are what we as a community want. Again, you are free to disagree. But what do you want?
Hi, Suny. I’m unsure what you’re meaning exactly. But that’s why we’re here, so all is right.
I have a quibble to your claim that the is has no influence on the ought. I have watched people absorb the way things are and mistake that for the way things ought to be. Drugs make a good example. Since ‘drugs’ are illegal, many think that drugs are immoral. In reality, there is no great difference between marijuana and alcohol, and yet many think otherwise. It’s changing now, but I have lived through times when regular folk morally recoiled from grass while pouring themselves a glass of vodka. Not legally recoiled. Morally recoiled.
So I think laws can definitely affect our moral thought. In fact, I am hoping that that very thing might save us. Our moral assumptions, I mean. It would be hard for a wicked administration to re-instate slavery—because we all assume it is evil now. It is hard for us to think otherwise, even if we wanted.
Well, that certainly seems true. Did you think someone was arguing otherwise?
I haven’t seen anyone here suggesting that questions about rights are nonsensical. I love to discuss morality. I just don’t see rights as existing outside of human skulls. Something like that.
Where did you get that idea? No, but the US is one of a very few places were a gun is considered a good response to a disagreement about ownership; where the immediate response is “I’ve got a gun!”, as in your comment. It’s a cultural oddity amongst the countries of the world; but we don’t need yet another thread about gun ownership.
Yep. It’s odd that someone think property is real, but not rights.
It won’t do to say property is “inside a skull” - it takes more than one skull. It is an aspect of communal life.
Same with other rights.
This is the root absurdity of the libertarian individualism seen in some pop culture, the failure for folk to notice that they are part of a community.
While we are here, I should point out that these rights are more about how we manage to live together comfortably, than about fairness. “Contingent” is not a helpful word here; rights are not random, or arbitrary; they’ve developed over thousands of years, as how we interact with each other, a way to avoid unpleasantries. That’s no small thing. The realisation that they are what we say they are, if anything, makes paying them attention more precious. Yes, things could be otherwise, to the detriment of all.
Well, you seemed to want to talk about Americans and guns. I have no idea why, but you brought it up, so I tried to go with your flow. Let me know if I’ve misinterpreted you somehow.
Oh, I see. You’ve just gotten a little confused. It wasn’t me that said “I’ve got a gun.” Perhaps read back up the thread and find who said it. I didn’t see it myself, or I would have joined you in your concern.
In my usage “gun” means “physical force.”
It’s a compression. I could have used ‘army’ or ‘sheriff’ or any number of such compressions, but I assume the readers here are comfortable with such shortcuts.
OK. I’m not much interested in guns myself. So I just don’t talk about them much.
Would you be more comfortable if I use ‘army’ instead of ‘gun’?
And you are a 'mercan, it seems; and that does seem to be a cultural response amongst your folk; to reach for the gun before talking to your neighbour. Or it might just look like that from your movies and television shows.
The clincher is not that you have a gun, but that you have to buy your ammunition from someone. Like it or not, you have to work with other people. You could try making them do what you want by pointing a gun at them all the time, but you are not going to get much sleep.
A different approach might be preferable.
Back to the topic: property is not what you can hold on to at the point of a gun, but what the rest of us allow you to hold onto.