I think rights are simply about resource limitations. If the island had an abundance you would never use, why not share. The only reason we want to claim stuff for ourselves is so we don’t end up being the one without.
I would also say that the definition of how rights work depends on the society or 2 families on an island who have to decide it. Otherwise, rights to things would work the same everywhere.
Ah. So you have been learning about Americans from the TV. Yeah, that happens. I am embarrassed to say that I used to think most Botswanians run about the Kalahari half naked. Cultural stereotyping can be hard to overcome.
So you think Americans go around pointing guns at each other?
Uh… no. That’s a pretty serious felony, I’m pretty sure.
We have courts here. We have restaurants where waiters get our orders wrong. We don’t point guns at them. We just talk it out.
Well, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone point a gun at someone else, except on TV. So you seem to be arguing against a thing which I have never actually experienced.
Right. The rest of you who’s holding the biggest gun.
That’s what I’ve been saying.
My own view is that there are better ways to appproach political philosophy than through Locke’s conception of rights. I do therefore have some sympathy with some of the scepticism expressed.
However, Locke’s views stll have an influence on political philosophy so its reasonable to discuss them here on the political philosophy section of the Forum.
Lets me start therfore with the various objections that there is nothing of substance to discuss.
The question does not ask you to believe that rights are objective facts. It may be that they are not mind independent.
However the fact that people define rights doesnt mean that we cannot provide reasons for and against them.
People “made up” “money” the “comstitution” and “law” but philosophers lawyers and economists are still able to discuss the consequences of the differing conceptions.
There may be some truth in that but it doesn’t prevent us discussing the nature of rights.
Rights do often depend on the state for enforcement but they do not generally originate in the state.
Locke made the point that governments can be renoved if they are not able or willing to support people’s natural rights. He was referring to the execution of Charles I but that was not the last time despotic states were overthrown.
That’s not what Locke believed. He thought rights predated Government.
They may point to deeper facts about human nature. Including facts about what people regard as fair. In which case, they are not entirely dependent on the prevailing social conventions.
Yes, so much of it is cultural and–as you say–resource allocation.
I think there are all sorts of different attitudes toward property right all around the world, but I haven’t studied them closely.
I don’t really see anyone arguing that rights don’t need to be talked out. It seems what most everyone is saying.
This strikes me as analogous to those christians who only do what is good because they are afeared of hellfire and damnation. So you only respect property rights because you don’t want to go to jail. Righto. Pretty simplistic, but if that is what keeps you from taking my car without asking, that’s ok by me.
This is close to the point of Locke’s proviso, and the point of the OP. Property Rights are not inalienable. The right is undermined if it harms others.
Free Market Libertarians quote Locke at length on property but generally ignore his qualifications to property rights
Don’t get me started on the Christians. I have watched many TV programs about them.
Really? What an odd thought. So you can only imagine doing good because someone might punish you otherwise?
But why not try to work out some kind of usable morality on your own? Imagine if everyone thought like that. How could a society work?
Me? Well, this is confusing. You are the one who came up with this idea of only obeying because of coercion. It’s disturbing to my own sensibilities.
We try to be civilized on this side of the pond and get along by listening to the concerns of others and trying to work things out.
Yeah, ask a government with an eye on a new airport or freeway whether your property right are inalienable. 
(And, yep, the sheriff has got a gun.)
That deep confusion you showed in your own thread is coming to the fore here.
Yes, it does seem so to me, but I am available for any questions you might have to help clear things up. I want to help.
I don’t know what you mean by “outside of us”. I asked, is it like unicorns? Or, if you prefer, fictional characters?
Not a human artifact?
But again, I am not sure what you want to say by that. In one sense, it’s like unicorns; there is no “ought to be”. In another, there is an “ought to be”; it’s just determined by what humans think. I think that you don’t think there are moral facts, but it’s not clear.
Enforcement as a grounding for rights? It makes more sense for rights to come before enforcement, at least in my mind. Are rights defined by what is enforced?
Many people have proposed many things. I think ethical naturalism might be one of those proposals. Religions might have proposed things too; I don’t know.
I am not claiming anything of the sort. I am trying to understand why you are talking about “having the biggest guns”, and I thought you were like those people who don’t understand the distinction between ought and is, such that usually in a discussion about what ought to be, what is (i.e., having the biggest gun) isn’t very relevant (except insofar as it helps to know what the moral theory says for a particular case).
Isn’t this really about competition for resources? I mean, if you’re a Lakota out on the plains before Europeans came, you don’t need rights.
Where there is competition, there are few alternatives to some sort of central authority to maintain order. One variation is the traditional Russian mir, where the father of the household is in charge, but the community just spontaneously shares resources. Dostoevsky thought this format would solve a lot of the world’s problems. I think these communities were out in the middle of nowhere though. Not sure.
That would depend on the ‘right’, itself.
If a ‘right’ is absolute, then it would have to be ultimately universal. Any theory or argument about some having ‘a right’ to property is NOT universal at all.
Also, a ‘theory’ is essentially just a guess, and what people try to ‘argue’ for, or against, are just their preexisting beliefs or presumptions only anyway.
No one has such a thing as a so-called "strong historical claim to something’, except to thy Self, of course.
It is a False belief to believe that anyone can claim or own land.
No one can justify owning land. What “locke” was ‘trying to’ do was justify its belief that some people can take and then own land.
There is no strength nor legitimacy of ‘a right’ here.
We either live ‘with’ the land or we do not. No one can ‘own’ land legitimately, unless, of course, they have given “themselves” some own perceived ‘right’.
No.
If ‘they’ want to deal with this peacefully, then do NOT imagine that anyone ‘owns’ the land, and JUST SHARE.
It really is not that hard nor complex.
While some to know and have the answers. But, then again, some people believe, absolutely, that because they do not yet know, “we do not or cannot know”.
There is, however, one universal Right, or one Lore. All of the other so-called ‘rights’ or ‘laws’ are just human being made up constructs.
‘Oughts’ are just like ‘shoulds’. There are none. Either an individual is doing what is Right, in Life, or they are not. The reason why they are not is because of a very specific reason. And, that reason cancels out all ‘oughts’ or ‘shoulds’. As this will soon become recognised and common knowledge.
There exists objective morality, but like all objectivity, it comes through or is understood through subjectivity.
And there is no separated authority. Authority exists universally.
I mean, is there some kind of cosmic moral code accessible to humans?
Or is morality contingent on human minds, figuring and talking it out?
Yeah, and I still can’t figure out exactly what that’s about. I don’t see a comparison between human rights and fictional characters.
So I suppose I will answer No. Rights are not like fictional characters, not in my mind. At least we can put a hat on a fictional character.
Well, I hardly believe in facts at all. But a moral fact would be even mushier. I mean, it would have to exist as a proposition or something, and propositions themselves are ephemeral things. Someone’s always moving a comma or substituting a different noun and calling it synonymous.
Try cornering a literalist Christian on the true meaning of Thou Shalt Not Kill/Murder.
Yeah, I don’t see how enforcement could be done unless someone claimed a right had been offended.
Well, let’s hope not in the immediate sense, but ultimately, yeah.
Your family has been living on the same land for a thousand years, and some guy walks up and says God gave his granddaddy that land. And he’s got a bigger gun, so….
You’re a churchman on the east coast of England—with your rights actually verified by God—but the Vikings have bigger axes.
The aliens attack and violate the hell out of human rights. We might scream at them, “Our rights! Our rights!”, but they will consult their warrant and determine that they are indeed working perfectly with alien law. Of course they have the right to exterminate us.
So you would agree that rights are agreements between people then?
So I’m not sure what we’re arguing about. (I’m not objecting. It’s fun. Just saying.)
Because I often jump right to the chase, and the biggest guns ultimately settle human rights. Ask the native Americans.
Also, I have a real problem manipulating Big Words, such as were presented in the OP.
I’m not sure what that means, really. You’d have to expand it for me.
Ought is an opinion by humans, sometimes well-argued, but I don’t think there is a God who stamps it.
The OP talked about rights. I simply pointed out that for all the talk that can be done about rights, it eventually comes down to guns.
Ask the West Bank Palestinians.
I’ve met many hundreds of people who know all sorts of contrary stuff.
It is easy for people to know. A single prophet can even know everything.
I just remain skeptical that their knowledge is a perfect mirror to whatever is outside of us.