Is the right to LIFE an inherent right?

I wasn't talking about the bear's right to life.

 

What do you mean? Did you not say beings that cannot recognize rights for others do not deserve rights?

 

No, I said the bear couldn't care less about your right to life. A bear may indeed recognize the right to life but just doesn't care especially when it comes to eating.

 

And you believe that lack of caring means it should not be given a right to life?

 

The bear was merely a vehicle to present the notion that 'right to life' (as characterized in this discussion) is a human, societal construct. Bears have been observed killing their own offspring mainly due to lack of resources. Much like those women who abort.

 

Well then, judging from this definition from Oxford Dictionary, a right is "a moral or legal entitlement to have or do something", which is a human construct. Morality and legality are both human ideas that dont actually exist. Thus, they do not really exist; there is no proof of their existence. You could claim that numbers are also human constructs and dont exist, but numbers are something that can be expressed without humans being there to express them, while rights are not. We can all believe that something is a "right" but that doesn't make them real. Just like we can all believe in a God, but that doesn't make him real. Now, I'm not bashing religions here, but if you dont believe in a God, then you dont have a religion to follow. If only one or two people believe in the God, it is less credible. However, if it is believed in by 1.2 billion people, then you have some say. And with things like this, you have the give it the benefit of the doubt, we cant prove they aren't real. But rights and religion are very tied, if rights were not natural or God given, then they lose their credibility substantially. So if religion is wrong, then rights dont exist, but if religions exist, rights do. Because we cannot prove either, we should come to the pessimistic conclusion that rights and religion does not exist because optimistically thinking about it makes for a greater downfall.

 

Baseball is a human construct. Does it exist?

 

An accurate rebuttal. Just because something is a "human construct" such as a house doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Even ideas that are human constructs exist.

What we do know is that the "right to life of the person" has existed throughout recorded history. There have also been rationalizations for the violation of the right to life of the person. For example wars of aggression, including so-called "pre-emptive" wars, are based upon political rationalizations that result in the premeditated taking of life of the life of the person. We also make rationalizations based upon the motive of revenge when it comes to capital punishment where there is the premeditated taking of the life of a person. There have also been rationalizations based upon religious beliefs for human sacrifice historically that involve the premeditated taking of the life of the person. All of these violated the "right to life of the person" based upon nefarious rationalizations.

We can also note that historically we had the first arguments for the "natural/inalienable right to life of the person" based upon the "right of self of the person" just prior to the age of enlightenment and, in fact this was the precursor to the age of enlightenment establishing the foundation for it.

So we have the documented history of civilization that established that the "right to life of the person" did exist and since roughly the 1600's where it was established as a "Natural/Inalienable Right of Self of the Person" based upon compelling arguments. We can also note that the definition of the "person" always started at birth (and effectively ended at death) based upon every civilization in recorded history but that there was a change in 1973 where the "protections of the right to life of the person" were extended in Roe v Wade based upon "potential personhood" of the fetus at natural viability. The arguments by the Supreme Court that protections of the "right to life of the person" should be extended to a "non-person" based upon "potential personhood" were very persuasive. As the Supreme Court argued in it's decision there was no real foundation for establishing "non-personhood" based upon a few millimeters of human flesh when the fetus, without any human assistance, could survive as a person outside of the womb. Extending the Constitutional protects to the "potential person" was the most progressive part of the Roe v Wade decision and without that progressive interpretation all laws limiting the abortion rights of the woman would have been struck down.

That's a fact that many anti-abortionists (and Republicans) seem to fail to understand. It was a progressive interpretation that allowed any infringements upon the rights of a woman to have an abortion while a strictly conservative interpretation of the Constitution would have struck down all laws restricting abortion because the woman was the only "person" that had any protected rights.

 

There is no such thing as an inherent right.

There are only the rights which we create.

And even if they did exist, we don't have a good track record with the whole "right to life" thing anyway. Most humans feel it is a spotty law, applied when convenient, ignored when it's not.

 

Baseball only exists if we all agree it does, am I wrong? Like a structure or a house of some kind has tangible existence, even if the human was not there, the house would exist. But baseball cannot exist if people dont know what baseball is. If you eliminated the person from the equation, baseball would cease to be a thing, it wouldn't be baseball. Rights are the same way, if you took away the human aspect, the concept of a right would no longer exist.

 

I think you misunderstand. A human/social construct is something that cannot continue to exist if the human aspect is removed. You can kill every person on earth, but the houses they built wont disappear with them. However, if you killed off all humanity, then baseball and rights would cease to exist. My question to you is, where do rights come from? they surely are not "natural", or else we would be violating a lot of other beings' rights. Well, say God gave them to us. We dont even know if theres a God, we assume there is, but we dont necessarily know. Ok, so lets say the law says we have rights, therefore we do. Well, the law only has value if we follow it. So essentially what we have is something that really doesn't exist unless we all claim that they do.

 

There is no RIGHT to life.

There is only Nature and Survival in all their forms.

AA

 

In this reality humans do exist. The question is: Does baseball exist? Yes or no?

I say that baseball does exist. Your position is that since baseball is a human construct, it does not exist. I have that correct, yes?

If so, your logic is fatally flawed.

I went to a Cubs game last summer. According to you, Wrigley Field (tangible) existed, the bat, ball, and every other piece of equipment (all tangible) existed. It makes one wonder why these tangible things exist at all if there exists no use for them. Something is amiss.

Furthermore, is this idea of yours, that human constructs don't exist, purely Homo sapiens-centric? What about other animals? If you killed off all canines, then dogfights would cease to exist...but it would be an illogical leap to go from that statement to say that dog fights therefore do not exist. They do exist even though they are 'dog-constructs.'

Before I break this all the way down past the periodic table, I'd like to pin you down on your answers to the above so I can better understand exactly what your argument is. So, does baseball exist? And is your theory applicable only to humans?

 

In point of fact the "right to life" exists for all species based upon a pragmatic necessity because there is an inter-dependency of all species. If the lion kills all of the prey then the lion dies. While we address this based upon the "right to life of the person" the arguments actually go much further. Even John Locke, one of the foremost recognized authorities on the natural rights of the person, established that man did not have a right to destroy nature. By necessity animals kill other animals while killing solely for the sake of killing is never acceptable and if that killing results in a reduction in nature it's not acceptable.

A perfect example of this is tuna fishing. Through technology man has destroyed about 80% of the natural tuna stocks of the ocean and this is a violation of the "natrual right to life" of the tuna. We've violated natural law by overharvesting of the tuna stock and we cannot use the "natural right of survival" to justify that violation of natural law. We rationalize it but can't justify it. This same violation of the laws of nature would exist if killer whales were responsible for the decimation of the tuna stocks even though they would be unaware of the fact that they were violating natural law.

As the old legal saying goes, "ignorance of the law is no excuse" and that applies the the lion and man equally when it comes to natural law. The fact that man knows makes man's actions nefarious but the natural law is still being violated by the lion that kills all of the prey.

That is where I think some make a mistake. They believe that natural law only affects humans when, in fact, it affects all species because of the inter-dependency of nature itself.

 

True, true. However, I think the claim that a lot of people make is that no person should die due to their right to life. Even if an abortion is beneficial to everyone, it is their right to life. Which eliminates natural selection and violates natural law in a different sense. Because the prey that the lion kills will have been less apt to survive, then this is natures way of supplying for other animals by getting rid of the inferior in every species. However, we have eliminated that reality. We can care for everyone regardless due to our technology. So we have effectively eliminated natural selection. I totally agree with the fact that natural law applies to more than just humans, but as for natural rights these dont exist.

 

Baseball only exists if the human is there to make it exist. Of course, this is just a crude analogy to rights, but the reality is that if humans just vanished, baseball would cease to exist. Dog fights cease to exist if there are no dogs to fight, but the difference between dog fights and baseball or natural rights is that dog fights merely describe something that happens between two dogs; the dog fight. A fight exists even without the human or the dog, it applies to life as a whole, the fact that the fight is between two dogs is irrelevant. While you can use tools and tangible items to play baseball, you can use those tools to do completely other tasks. The tools dont define baseball, they are simply used in baseball, but baseball wont exist if humans didn't exist, so they simply remain as tangible pieces of matter that have no real use unless everyone believes they do. For example, say we all held the bat the wrong way, and just started playing baseball that way. But then someone decides to change the way the bat is held, and play baseball that way. How the bat is used is irrelevant, only what you are using it for. If we all think that the bat should be held the wrong way, and we all believe that, then who's to say that that's not the way the bat is held? The concept of baseball is so susceptible to change due to that underlying fact, constituting it as non-existant if humans do not exist. The concept is tied to humanity.

 

Back to square one.

Does baseball exist? Yes or no? I'm not asking if baseball would continue to exist if all human beings disappeared tomorrow. I'm asking you if baseball exists or not in the actual world that we live in. Yes or no?

 

I would think that what you defend is your life itself or way of life

 

Well, I believe I already answered your question. Baseball exists as a concept. However, because it is just a concept that cannot be expressed without human involvement, it is not a tangible thing. Which brings us back to our debate. Rights are not something people inherently have. We can say that everyone should have them, but they are things people can actually hold or use. We can guarantee that everyone gets a certain benefit, like the right to free speech, but that doesn't necessarily mean that every human, regardless of where they live or where they were born, has the right to free speech. The concept only exists if people believe that it does. You can say anything you want, but if no one believes you or nothing supports you, you have no credibility. Don't debate whether baseball exists or not, debate whether rights exist or not. I think we can both agree that rights are a little more important than baseball. If every living creature in the world was born with the rights that we say they do, and that holds true through nature, then you can make the claim that natural rights exist. But the fact is, they do not. If a dog wants to kill something, it can and it will, there is not "right to life" for the dog's prey. And you see it in early man too. If a child wasn't strong enough to survive, parents would kill it. Because having a weak child was a liability. While that may not be true today, the fact is natural rights are not something you find in nature, nor are they something that we all actually have, we just say that we do, and because enough people believe that we do, the concept holds true In certain countries.

 

Natural law establishes the natural rights of both people and all other forms of life but one must understand the foundation established by logic and reasoning. It's a philospophical understanding based upon logical deduction that requires a dedication by those that seek to understand but few of us take the time or perhaps even lack the intelligence necessary to understand the logic and to extrapolate it into a comprehensive understanding.

By way of analogy it's like the theoretical physicist attempting to defined the "unified field theory" that even Einstein was unable to accomplish. This is not to impune or disparage the intelligence of the average person but, once again by analogy, few of us can even grasp an understanding of the "theory of relativity" that Einstein established almost 100 years ago and virtually none of us could follow the mathmatics behind that theory.

So it is when we attempt to address natural law and the natural rights that are based upon natural law. I have a basic knowledge because I've literally spent decades dedicated to attempting to understand the arguments, and the foundation for those arguments, that were presented centuries ago by intellectual pillers like John Locke but even they didn't fully explore the extrapolation of the logical arguments. They presented us with only a snapshot of their understanding and even that is challenging to understand.

From an intellectual perspective I'm concerned. We experienced an increase in our understanding of natural law and natural rights through the 17th and 18th Centuries as people explored and provided the logical and compelling arguments but since then we've been in decline. People know less today than they did 200 years ago on the subject of natural law and natural rights. It reminds me of the TV series "Ancient Discoveries" or "What the Ancients Knew" because much of what we think is relatively new was actually discovered thousands of years ago and then that knowledge was lost.

We can actually witness that based upon history. In 1690 John Locke addressed the natural right of property arguing agianst the established ownership of property established by "title" granted under the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings. In 1176 we adopted the principles of "natural" (unalienable/inalienable) rights in the Declaration of Independence but we never changed our laws of property that still, to this day, remain based upon "ownership established by title" as opposed to "title being granted based upon the natural right of property" as addressed by Locke. Jefferson, Madison, and many of the other founders knew and understood the "natural right of property" because they were the progressive intellectuals of their era but they hit a brick wall when it came to revising the laws of property in the United States because the "conseratives" of the day could potentially lose ownership of property "established by title" where they had never established a "natural right of property" as addressed by John Locke.

Returning to the "natural right of life of the person" as previously noted personhood always began at birth throughout recorded history but is that correct? Arguablly the US Supreme Court addressed this in Roe v Wade that many anti-abortionists disparage but we need to look at it based upon logical and compelling arguments which is exactly what the Supreme Court did in 1973.

We could establish new precedent related to the preborn granting "personhood" prior to birth based upon a Constitutional Amendment but there is a paradox that must be addressed. Natural/Inalienable Rights do not exist if there is a conflict and so that must be addressed if we grant personhood to the preborn. If it comes down to preserving the life of the fetus or woman which one has precedent because we can't ensure both. Logic dictates that the woman has precedent because of "seniority" as she established her "right of self" first.

Logical argument also establishes that the fetus, prior to viability, does not have a "right to life" because it cannot live outside of the womb as a person. We can establish that the woman could have the fetus removed "unharmed and intact" which would not violate any "rights of the fetus" but the fetus prior to natural viability (based upon natural law) can't survive so we don't impose the condition of "removal unharmed and intact" on abortion as it serves no purpose.

Roe v Wade actually addressed this by breaking down the pregnancy into the three trimesters and that breakdown is fundamentally based upon arguments of natural law. During the first trimester the woman can have an abortion without any restrictions because her "right of self" takes precedent. During the 2nd trimester it requires concurrence from a medical professional because the "natural rights" of both the woman and fetus are about equal. During the final trimester the natural rights of the fetus overwhelmingly take precedent where only "harm to the woman" established by a medical diagnosis allows an abortion.

This is actually a well argued philosophical extrapolation of our understanding of "natural rights" even though we have not established explicitly that "personhood" is established prior to birth.

 

Again though, how did John Locke justify natural rights? They were "God-given" natural rights. So, while I am not claiming to be atheist, if we dont know if there is a God, then how can we assume that there are natural rights?

 

I am an athiest and Locke arguments hold true if we apply "mother nature" in place of "god" in all of his arguments.

We also need to understand the context of John Locke's arguments which were arguments against the "Divine Right of Kings" and arguments and "god" was the foundation of the Divine Right of Kings. The Divine Right of Kings was based upon the monarch's claim that god granted the monarch exclusive power over the land, natural resources, and people and Locke had to argue against that. In doing so he had to invoke "god" in his arguments but the arguments alone, without reference to god, stand on their own.

Trust me if Locke's arguments were actually based upon religious belief, as an athiest, I'd be the last one arguing that they have validity. It's the fact that "god" isn't really the foundation for the arguments that makes them valid. It's sort of like Thomas Jefferson creating the "Jefferson Bible" that removed all references to god and all references to supernatural events and addressing only the "Philosophy of Jesus" as a person and not that of a demigod like Hercules or Perseus. It's because Locke's arguments are valid without any belief in god or religion that makes them compelling.

 

In organized human societies rights [even if inherent] can be limited or denied [temporary or permanently] according to laws.

Laws, in Republics and other democratic kinds of state, tend to follow lay principals, overall of social necessity, social advantage and the notorious social minor damage [this is why in many countries abortion is legal].

Life is an inherent right for who is alive, but a state can deny it [think to states where the death penalty exists, or to abortion, as mentioned above].

Less extreme is the case of freedom. Personal freedom, in democracy, is a right recognized to the citizens [it's not properly inherent, it's a developed, conquered, right, with a long history of evolution, think to when there were free men and slaves ...].

But prisons exist: law allows the state to private you of your personal freedom because of social advantage. A socially dangerous individual loses [temporary or permanently] his right to personal freedom going to jail.

So, yes, life is an inherent right for who is alive.

 

So mother-nature offers us rights? Since when does nature guarantee the right to life? In the natural world, rights really dont exist. Unless you think that somehow, Sapiens is just better then the rest of the animal kingdom and deserve special rights, but again, you are still have this problem of who justifies natural rights.

 

Logical argument justifies natural rights.

Natural law and natural rights apply to all life on the planet and the only thing that makes human's "special" is our superior intelligence that allows us to understand and apply natural law. Unfortunately even though we have the intelligence to do so for nefarious reasons we often don't apply natural law that establishes natural rights in our actions.

It is ironic, for example, that generally speaking the Native-Americans had an inherent understanding of the natural rights of property, and applied it in their lives, more so than the Western Europeans that immigrated to America. The Native-American did not "own" land, for example, but instead used land which is more aligned with Locke's arguments than the Western European's granting of "title" that establishes ownership regardless of whether the land is used or not. Locke's argument related to land was basically "use it or lose it" but that's not what our laws of title related to land are based upon. The Native-Americans only took from nature that which they required always leaving "enough, and as good as" for everyone else, that Locke embraced in his arguments, which is a principle not followed by European economic philosophy.