Prelude
Previously, I discussed the first five axioms for reality, upon which my continuing proofs will be based. This essay will delve into the axioms concerning the concepts of human rights.
Bear with me, as rights are significantly more complicated than reality is conceptually. Rights are difficult to correctly comprehend, or even express logically, and their potential for abuse is very high. We all probably think we understand what rights are, but from observation, most people really don't get how they work.
If one's interpretation of rights is incorrect, or logically inconsistent, it creates serious issues in making rights viable in society without the use of aggression. Correctly interpreted, however, these are the best tools we have today to manage our interactions with others, and without them no civil society, let alone a free society, is feasible. So to that end, we must understand them as consistently as possible.
The Logic of Human Rights
Traditionally, rights were evolved via our religions. We had rights because God created us differently from all other beings. However, I wanted to make this a purely logical argument that is not reliant on any faith based systems. Such systems are problematic to argue logically one way or the other, mainly because both arguments for and against the existence of God can and do presume their premise is built on a null hypothesis. So, in order to begin, we need to decouple the concept from an religious or faith based perspective (including statism).
In order to provide this concept logically, we need to establish the following:
- What are rights, in abstraction?
- How are rights expressed in an objective reality?
- How does one gain or have rights?
- How does one lose rights?
- What right is most important, if any?
- How can I gain more rights than someone else legitimately?
So, lets begin at the beginning of that list.
RIGHTS AXIOM 1: All Rights are Virtual Constructs
What are rights, in an abstract sense? Well, rights, like mathematics, are entirely a virtual concept. They have no explicit existence that we do not give them as individuals. You cannot see or touch the right of association, nor can one physically sense the right to own property, but the existence of those rights allows for society to function. Just because something is virtual, does not mean it doesn't or cannot exist.
This document is technically virtual - a bunch of ones and zeroes stored on a cloud and interpreted by the platform of choice. And yet you are reading it. All ideas are virtual until someone finds a way to make them a reality. Mathematics works to explain physics, economics, and form the basis of all properly scientific fields, but it is technically a virtual construct as well. Rights are the virtual tools that allow us a peaceful coexistence with other people & their subjective realities. Just because they are a construct does not mean they do not function in reality.
RIGHTS AXIOM 2 - All rights are Claims.
How do we express our rights? At their core, all rights are claims we make. A few are exclusive claims, which no one else can do for us without consent, while others are inclusive claims, and require external support to realise the claim. This distinction inherently creates two types of right - exclusive rights (liberties), and inclusive rights (privileges).
Exploring Negative Rights/Liberties
The former are often known in philosophy as "negative rights" because they are usually expressed as what others may not do to you. However, for the sake of brevity, I use the term "liberties" in discussion to describe such exclusive claims, and will do so in this essay as well.
To give some examples of negative rights phrasing, we need only examine the US Bill of Rights (a sorely overlooked and abused historical document, from my perspective). It words all the rights we currently have as ones that the government may not infringe. This wording shows how negative rights are applied linguisticly. Your right to associate with others shall not be infringed by the state, because of the first amendment, just as your right to defend yourself cannot be infringed by the state because of the second amendment. Of course, the government ignores these rules and bindings, but that is a tangential issue.
The List of Liberty
Because all liberties are exclusive claims we make, they can be relatively well defined, but only for what we are capable of individually today. Liberties (at present as of March 2018) include:
- The right of association (you may not decide whom I choose to interact with)
- The right of speech ( you may not stop me from speaking my mind if I choose to)
- the right of property (you may not stop me owning outright myself & what I buy with my labour)
- the right of trade (you may not stop me selling stuff I make/offer)
- the right of consumption (you may not stop me purchasing things, or putting what I choose to inside me)
- the right of self defense (you may not stop me from protecting myself)
- The right of belief (you may not stop me choosing what God(s) to follow, if any)
- The right to live peacefully (this is an inferred right, based on the combination of property and self defense. Best expressed by "you may not assault me"/the NAP)
- The right to move (you may not to prohibit my travel on property you have no claim over)
- The right to a fair & impartial trial (you may not accuse me of doing something wrong to another, without proving it in an agreed upon court)
- The right to privacy (you may not spy on me without my permission)
- Any other EXCLUSIVE CLAIM (if I can do it for myself, and it affects no one else by my doing it for myself, you have no right to stop me doing it, whatever "it" may be.)
That last one is a catch-all clause, as we cannot perceive what will be a liberty in future if we break the current limits of our reality. The founding fathers of the USA attempted to do this with the 9th amendment:
The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
It is a necessary clause, as we cannot perceive that which we know nothing about. The founders of our nation could never have imagined the radio, let alone the Internet as it exists today. We may find ways in the near or distant future to completely alter the reality we exist in, and on that day, our list of claims we can exclusively make will likely also change.
An Intro to Positive Rights /Privileges
The other type of rights in existence are positive rights. These are positive claims we make on others. They can be valid claims, but only when they are consensually agreed to. There are invalid claims as well (like those made by the state), but these require extensive levels of coercion or aggression to enact, and often are provided via literal extortion.
The Logical Concept of Privilege
In order to distinguish these types of right from liberties, I use the term privilege. A privilege classically meant to grant special rights to a group or individual. Government driven positive rights are exactly that - a privilege based on your location of birth. In a modern sense, the term has almost the same meaning, but around identity and race instead of geography.
However, every service contract & purchase you make is also a kind of privilege. The only difference between these and public services those privately paid services are privileges you have legitimately earned via your labour. The public ones are given to you merely because of your existence and the modern birth lottery all humans deal with.
The differences and requirements for each of these two types of rights will be delved into in detail further on, but first let us determine how rights evolved.
RIGHTS AXIOM 3: The Only Conditions for having a full body of rights, either positive or negative, is a) Sapience and b) Reciprocity.
How does anything gain or have rights to begin with, and how can they lose them? In order to have any rights, there are two preconditions. One is a status the species as a whole must achieve to begin with, the other is something every individual must do.
The former condition is sapience, or the ability (within a species at least) to use reason. This is a vital prerequisite, as the species itself must have the ability see and comprehend a viewpoint other than their own to be sapient & have rights. You need to be able to understand, at some basic level, the views of others to come to any kind of agreement with them, and make valid claims on them or their labour.
If entities within a species have proven they are capable of reason, then the whole species must be afforded the opportunity to demonstrate the second condition & obtain their full rights as a result.
The second prerequisite to having rights is the concept of reciprocity. You cannot logically have liberties or privileges that you are not willing to give others. For instance, I do not have the privilege to murder anyone, and this is because because I would not & do not want to be murdered myself. Conversely, if you claim another has no liberty to speak their mind because you might get offended, then neither do you in the presence of that individual for the exact same reason.
If a being is sapient, and is willing to reciprocate your own rights, then you must reciprocate those rights back unto them, or face having losing those rights in their eyes. It is what civilised societies are truly built upon. This also can be inferred to mean species like dolphins, arguably some breeds of dog, and eventually some AI may & should be afforded rights, provided they can accept them among us humans, of course.
RIGHTS INFERENCE RESULT 1: All liberties are reciprocally held by all sapient individuals.
So, lets do a quick recap. Provided you agree with my subjective interpretation of reality from part 1, and can see how rights are evoked, and how they evolved logically, we can now define who and what has rights logically.
- Rights of any kind exist if the following is true:
1.1 You are sapient and can make the claim of having rights.
1.2 You reciprocate their existence in others. - Liberties require only your existence in order to exist for you.
- Privileges require other people to exist in order to exist for you.
- One loses a specific liberty with another person if they refuse to reciprocate it in that person.
- One loses a privilege if they renege on the agreements made with the other party (which are simply voluntarily agreed conditions of reciprocity)
We can now make the statement that because liberties are exclusive, everyone can have them for themselves, provided we also accept their existence in others (reciprocity principle). Your existence as a sapient being, who is willing to reciprocate those rights in others, is how your liberties logically exist. Failing to reciprocate those rights in others logically causes them to be lost within you for each one you fail to reciprocate.
You can choose to neglect or use your liberties as you see fit, and can choose to abolish them altogether by not reciprocating any of them in others, but regardless of those actions, they must exist for society to be functional & peaceful simultaneously. Without liberties, someone's subjective interpretation of reality will be forced upon the masses they can enact coercive control over, either through violence or deceit. By recognising their existence, we are forced to accept a mode of behaviour that is both beneficial to us and those around us.
Now, let us discuss how rights work to define what is and is not a liberty, and how liberties work with each other.
RIGHTS AXIOM 4: No liberty is more important than any other liberty.
What right is most important? None or All of them (it amounts to the same thing). Negative rights are equal, and must be respected equally. This also means that no liberties you hold invalidate the liberties you afford in others. Therefore your right to speak may not logically be used to violate or prohibit someone else's right to defend themselves, and vice versa.
The Right Not to Be Offended Does Not Exist as a Liberty
Liberties only can be liberties if what you can claim and action them wholly yourself, and "offense" implies the existence of others as a prerequisite. You also cannot claim a liberty exists for not being offended, as any opinion you express may be considered offensive to someone in the world. The probability is almost guaranteed, given the sheer volume of people today. There is no surefire way to know what will cause offense to some one either within a society. Sleeping on the job in the west for instance is culturally offensive - it is a sign of laziness and failure to be responsible. Conversely in Japan, it is a sign of one's sheer diligence and dedication to one's job. People could misunderstand your position easily, and be offended by the innocuous or humorous.
I myself find political correctness deeply offensive, despite the fact it is supposed to be entirely unoffensive. This is because:
- I find it the grossest form of pandering to date in society, and
- When it comes to organising society, & defining its rules, I don't care about intentions. I care about what empirically works to provide everyone the chance to succeed without any impediments they didn't create for themselves.
Political correctness makes it harder for those less eloquent to be viable in society all for the sake of the feelings of others, and worse, it now is being used in places like the UK to deny people's liberty (#freedankula). You can't even poke fun at Nazis because that is somehow anti-Semitic now. This is literally the case, despite the good intentions from the courts.
The Right to Life - A Misnomer
This concept of equitable rights also means that, logically, there really is no "right to live" as many socialists conceptually perceive it. There is a right to live peacefully, to live without being subject to aggression. But life is a state of being, not act action or a claim we make.
We can claim factually that we are alive, but we cannot logically claim we inherently must live continuously, or at least not at present (who knows what the future may bring). We are designed to die, like all things in the universe. From bacteria to stars, everything dies. To claim we have a right to not die is the same as claiming a right to live, and to be frank, no one has a right not to die today. At best we have a right not to be murdered, but that's simply living peacefully, not living continuously.
RIGHTS AXIOM 5: Positive rights are only valid when voluntarily agreed upon under contract, and only between those the contract is between.
How can one gain more rights than someone else legitimately? This is where positive rights as privileges come in. Positive rights can only be valid with an agreement between parties. They are an expression of an objective reality between two or more individuals. A need or want that is subjective to each individual can be met objectively by many subjective providers. If the needs of A are not met by B, someone else may, at any time, offer to replace B.
The terms of the agreement can be verbal, if both parties feel they can sufficiently trust each other for such an agreement not to cause conflicts. However, for stability, I do recommend any positive rights one desires be under a written contract between individuals. Regardless, those who agree to those terms must abide by them, but no claim is valid to those who do not agree to the terms.
Why Public Services Violate this Axiom
Any other solution besides actual contract driven agreements requires violating the axioms of reality around aggression. Aggression forces a subjective reality onto others without consent, which does not make it viable for an objective reality. States will claim the "social contract" is the agreement to provide critical services to the citizenry, but said contract isn't by any reasonable definition a contract. There is no way to say no to paying or receiving the state's services, and that means there isn't a choice to make anymore. There is no agency allowed by the individual in that circumstance. This removal of responsibility from the individual is the key reason why western societies today cannot be logically considered truly free.
It also means several of your inherent liberties are constantly violated now by the state. If you are a US citizen, you have lost the right of privacy to the NSA and ESCHELON, are losing free speech on big social networks, and are fighting hard to keep your right to self defense in court. Meanwhile, here in the UK, the right of speech & defense are restricted to a significant degree, and our privacy is about the same as the USA. One can hardly claim these services are free, even at point of sale, given the amount of liberty we lose to gain them & their price under taxation, and no person can claim those losses were voluntarily agreed to. Remember, there logically is no such thing as "tacit consent".
RIGHTS INFERENCE RESULT 2: No positive right claim can logically be used to violate negative rights, without a voluntary contract between involved parties stating as such.
This is what makes many government enabled positive rights invalid conceptually as liberties. In order to make positive rights liberties, one must mandate either the usage or provision of services or goods, or in the most extreme cases both simultaneously. This will inherently violate the liberties we have, by claiming a obligation exists to the group itself by virtue of it being that group.
The only time a negative right can be rescinded is if a person voluntarily agrees it will be, usually in return for something else. This is how the right of property can supersede other negative rights. Its the age old argument of "our house, our rules, but you'll get food and shelter here". It may be done by agreement, or via a defined and objective obligation in a free society.
Conclusion
I hope this essay provides you with some understanding of rights, at least as I perceive them. I recognise my interpretation of reality is unique, just like all other interpretations are, but hopefully this dissertation shows logically why the following disputes I've had on rights are inherently flawed:
- That any one liberty is more important than any of the others
- That liberties are evolved from the state itself, and are not present in the individual conceptually.
- That privileges can be given via the state, without violating liberties.
- That privileges are equal to liberties.
This essay should cover all the questions that need to be answered regarding rights and their functions within society. My next work on this subject will be on the principles of freedom, which will be the final set of axioms we must explore before any hypothesis on how society can or should function.
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