Talk:Rights/Archive 1

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


History of the concept of 'rights'

This long rambling essay really has little to do with rights. If no one objects, I'm going to delete this entire section.--JW1805 02:21, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Actually, there is very little in this article concerning the concept of rights. It is largely a series of essays describing contributors' views on topics related to the concepts of rights. It is not appropriate for Wikipedia. Much of it—particularly the history section and the section "Rights portrayed in drama and media"—is effectively original research. Other parts (e.g., "The inaction problem") simply express contributors' opinions on a topic related to rights. Many of those parts discuss the concept of human rights or natural rights (which already have their own articles), not rights in general.
I think much of this article needs to be deleted. In fact, I think it might be best if it was deleted and re-started from scratch, with someone doing some actual research and backing up their statements with citations. — Mateo SA | talk 02:36, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
I agree, I'm going to delete the History, Media, and Inaction sections. The others are workable, I think. --JW1805 02:59, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

fr interwiki

I have been told that the interwiki of this page to French language actually points to the page about Law. Checking the en interwiki of the page fr:Droit, it points back to Law. So this should be fixed. I couldn't help as I don't know any French. -- Lerdsuwa 16:17, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Since languages are different, you can't always get a one-to-one correspondence between articles. I have seen some cases where articles had more than one interwiki for the same language. THe French word "Droit" would cover both. So the only way to "fix" it I know of, would be to make a second interwiki link on the French article, on e pointing here and one pointing to "Law"... ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 16:38, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps fr:Droits de l'Homme would be more on the mark? - Jmabel | Talk 18:32, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Bias to discussion of negative rights

The article currently says things like:

Most modern conceptions of rights are universalist and egalitarian; in other words, equal rights are granted to all people. Such rights may be defined in terms of the Golden Rule ("do unto others as you would have them do unto you"). An individual agrees to respect the rights of others in exchange for the assurance that the others will respect the same rights for him in turn.

This appears to be talking solely about negative rights! Is that satisfactory? Dealing with positive rights at the same time makes the writing task much harder but is very necessary for teaching our readers about the subject properly. -- pde 00:40, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't see how that remark is specific to negative rights. Could you expand on your remark? - Jmabel | Talk 18:39, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Possibly poor example

"Property rights provide a good example…" Yes and no. It's a matter of an example of what. I think we would do better to give two examples, one of rights that are recognized as truly universal, and property as the other, because property rights, by their nature, are in some respects particular: they pertain to the owner of specific property. Freedom of thought or of speech might be good examples of truer universality, at least in the realm of theory if not in practice (since they are abridged by some governments). That is, my having certain thoughts or uttering certain speech doed not deprive anyone else of thought or speech, but my owning particular private property is precisely at the expense of anyone else's claim on that property. - Jmabel | Talk 06:21, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

individual/group rights

I see that there is a seperate individual rights article. I guess that means this article needs to include talk of both individual and group rights, so it needs some modifications. Maybe individual rights should be merged into this article? RJII 01:28, 16 May 2006 (UTC) I created a group rights article, if anyone wants to work on that. RJII 01:35, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Really tangled paragraph

The conception of a right to something that implicitly creates an obligation on someone else to provide that thing (a positive right) is widely challenged. You can not enforce your wish for something (under the auspices of a right) if it implicitly constitutes an obligation on another to do something for you. However, one person's right to something creates a negative right in that you have the right for that thing not be interfered with by another, and that other is obligated not to interfere with your right to it. The obligation test is widely used to determine what constitutes a right. To illustrate: You have the right to own an axe, but you do not have a right to an axe. If you do own an axe, others have an obligation not to steal it.

I've got a post-graduate education, and I had to read practically every sentence of this paragraph more than once to parse it. And it has a lot of problems beyond that:

  • Normally we avoid second person. I don't see why it is needed here.
  • "widely challenged" with no citation: I have almost never seen this challenged except by liberatarians. I'm pretty confident that most people, for example, consider that the right to life extends to the point of creating an obligation for a government or society to attempt to rescue victims of a natural disaster. I would doubt that there is a "widely" held belief that a person dying of thirst while someone next to him had abundant water could be reasonably expected to die respecting his neighbor's property rights.
  • By the second sentence, this has switched to imperative (or, more precisely, hortatory) mode, which is entirely inappropriate. It becomes a statement of a narrowly libertarian conception of rights, in the article's narrative voice.
  • Again "widely used" without citation. I cannot name a country where this, in general, has the force of law. Certainly not the U.S., one of the more libertarian countries in the industrialized world, but one which recognizes a right to a publicly financed primary and secondary education.

In short: poorly written libertarian cant.

I'll allow at least 48 hours (and probably more) for someone to rewrite this in a way that belongs here, but if it hasn't been substantially fixed by then, I intend simply to remove it. - Jmabel | Talk 22:35, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

It is the the right to pocess an axe that is the right not the owning of an axe. I have the right implies that it is something that has been granted which can be denied. A right is that which can be described but cannot be denied. It simply exist as a law of nature. To grant a right implies to that which cannot be denied ever again. Hence the quandry and misuse of the word and that to which it implies. All rights are priviledges because they can and will be denied. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.86.16.187 (talk • contribs) 16 December 2006.

As far as I can see, this addresses none of the issues I raised. - Jmabel | Talk 06:06, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

perhaps a discussion of views in other systems?

It's my understanding that the distinction between law and right is quite different in some other languages, such as French and German using droit and Recht respectively to cover both, and that this partly reflects their legal systems' different conceptions of the underlying ideas. Of course this article shouldn't go off on linguistic tangents, but insofar as the language reflects a different conceptual viewpoint, it might be worth discussing how universal and/or controversial the law vs. right distinction is, and how it relates to philosophy of law and so on. --Delirium 23:59, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Small grammar change

I changed "a right on a thing" to "a right to something". Although it's a trivial change, I note it here in case there's something I'm missing. Mujokan 06:26, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Removed 'privilege' sentence

I removed the sentence:

Compare with privilege, or a thing to which one has a just claim.

This was in the introduction, but I don't think that's really the definition of a privilege, and if something else is meant by it, I don't understand it, and it would be helpful if someone could rephrase it so it is simpler. Thanks, Drum guy (talk) 21:10, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps a better way to phrase that concept is that a right does not require permission and a privilege does require permission. A simplified definition of right may be in order: "A right is an action that an individual can do, that does not require permission, and that is generally accepted or condoned (for example, not prohibited by custom or law)".

I am not going to modify the main body text without some feedback as there are many opinions as to what is or is not a right. For example, the bill of rights outlines many rights but it has been argued that the bill of rights is a blueprint of how to convert rights into privileges and then to limit them. A specific example is the right to keep and bear arms. Can you carry an unlicensed firearm in the United States of America and not be subject to arrest when that firearm is discovered upon your person? James thirteen (talk) 20:06, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

rename to Rights?

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was move. JPG-GR (talk) 18:09, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Shouldn't this article be called "Rights" instead of "Right"? RJII 01:07, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

I'd agree with that. Mujokan 06:27, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

  • Comment — mostly we have articles on the singular thing, not the plural (e.g. thought not thoughts). — Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 23:52, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Support move: all other rights are rights not right. E.g. Claim rights and liberty rights, ... human rights. Sebastian scha. (talk) 02:11, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
    • "Foo is a human right" sounds normal to me. As for the titles of the other articles, they represent a class being discussed as a group, whereas this article discusses a general concept that need not be plural. Dekimasuよ! 02:17, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Support at first I was skeptical, but I see the merit—rights are usually mentioned in the plural sense. — Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 20:01, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose per WP:NC#Prefer singular nouns: "Convention: In general only create page titles that are in the singular, unless that noun is always in a plural form in English, such as scissors or trousers, or concerns a small class, such as Arabic numerals, polar coordinates, Bantu languages, or The Beatles, that requires a plural." As shown in the first sentence of this article, it is perfectly acceptable and not at all awkward to speak of a particular right. Dekimasuよ! 02:17, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
In the lead of this article – in the second sentence – is stated:

... Rights are of vital importance in theories of justice and deontological ethics.
The contemporary notion of rights is universalist and egalitarian. Equal rights are granted ...

I don't think the singular in the very first sentence has any weight at all, it should be changed. I think this article is about rights not a right, act or law. Greetings. Sebastian scha. (talk) 02:29, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Support. This is probably a unique case and a peculiarity of English grammar, but the article is clearly about rights, and is the primary meaning of rights. On the other hand (sic) there is no clear primary meaning of right, so it should be a disambiguation page, now at right (disambiguation). Andrewa (talk) 04:19, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Support, per all the above reasons. (I'm the one who requested the move of this article, but never formally registered my support here on the talk page. Doing so now). -Pfhorrest (talk) 05:09, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Weak support Strong Support, As I see it, there are two conflicting principals at work here; WP:NAME#Use the most easily recognized name, which is clearly "rights". While the singular is perfectly acceptable, the usual use without qualification is in the plural; usually the particular right is specified if it is used in the singular - "right to life", etc.; it is not natural to talk about an abstract right – which is what this page does – in the singular without specifying it. The second principal as mentioned above, is WP:NC#Prefer singular nouns, which in this case is in direct opposition. As it is in a section marked "general conventions", while the first is unqualified, I tend to the view that natural naming is more important than use of singular, hence weak support. --Rogerb67 (talk) 01:13, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
Having reviewed Andrewa's comments above, I agree, this article is the primary meaning of rights, not right. Thus I change my vote to strong support. --Rogerb67 (talk) 23:07, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose The article about dogs is called dog per WP:NC#Prefer singular nouns. A right as used here is naturally and concisely defined as something that one may properly claim as due.[1] Blackworm (talk) 18:34, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Support (if I'm not too late). Just seems better, less confusion with right/left etc. PRtalk 17:55, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

So discussion here seems to have died down, with support generally in favor rather than against (7 out of 9 votes by my count). When/how does this move happen (or if not, what next?). -Pfhorrest (talk) 00:56, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

The admins at WP:RM should pick it up. There's a backlog at the moment, so given it's not unanimous, there may be a delay. --Rogerb67 (talk) 01:28, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Support less confusion with left right, plus the broader subject is rights. The subject right has to be extrapolated to the many rights that exist. No need to have an article about a verb. 199.125.109.99 (talk) 01:03, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Golden Rule

From the article:

Such rights may be defined in terms of the Golden Rule ("do unto others as you would have them do unto you"). An individual agrees to respect the rights of others in exchange for the assurance that the others will respect the same rights for him in turn.

Clearly a well-intentioned explanation, but not necessarily on the mark. It does get at one thing: a moral injunction to treat others as one wishes to be treated oneself. If we are getting that into the article, I would think that it should be by way of the concept of social contract.

The Golden Rule and the categorical imperative do not lead directly to a set of rights: they lead to a system of moral obligation, which can be translated into a theory of justice, from which a concept of rights can be derived.

Anyway, I think we need to get something like that into the article rather than the sentences just quoted, but I know that my wording here is too academic. I'm open to ideas. - Jmabel | Talk 03:19, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Following that up: we should probably mention the School of Salamanca, who were (as far as I know) the first to clearly articulate anything resembling the modern, universalist theory of human rights (16th century), rooting a theory of popular sovereignty in the concept of natural law. There might be precursors of which I'm unaware in the Muslim world or in Asia; I'm pretty sure there was nothing comparable (and comparably articulated) in Classical times, nor in Asia before that time. Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, which we quote in the article, was in no small measure a defense of slavery based on the different nature of the slave. - Jmabel | Talk 03:26, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
I've just removed the following sentence from the article because it is out of context (belongs more in the History section of Natural rights) and unsourced. Don't worry, I'm not being prejudiced against this line in particular... I'm in the process of making major overhauls to this page, others part of it will suffer similar treatment.
The redacted sentence: "The concept of natural right developed in the School of Salamanca in the late 16th century, and first gained widespread acceptance nearly 200 years later, during the Age of Enlightenment."
-Pfhorrest (talk) 06:52, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

The golden rule is a religous edict that has been put under scrutiny for years. There is even a history of Jewish Christian conflict over this rule. The rule is an example of the Ethic of Reciprocity and has been found to be flawed on the basis that it does not take into account the wishes of others and would mean that people have to accept what others like regardless of their individual preferences, or that others have the right to force their preferences on you. Simply put the golden rule if turned to establish rights would indicate that because I like getting tatoos or sodomy I have the right to give others tatoos and anything else I like. For obvious reasons this logic is flawed and it has been stated that the rule should be amended to, "do unto others as they would have done to them". Regardless the golden rule deserves not palce in this article concerning rights and I move to have it removed. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Stratvic (talk • contribs) 26 September 2006.

Major cleanup

I've just more or less completed a major cleanup, reorganization, and expansion of this article. I've excised a large chunk of text that I find to be of very poor quality; I am going to attempt to work what of it I can back into the article, but for now I've moved it here to the talk page. The excised text follows:

It is not generally considered necessary that a right should be understood by the holder of that right; thus rights may be recognized on behalf of another, such as children's rights or the rights of people declared mentally incompetent to understand their rights. However, rights must be understood by someone in order to have legal standing, so the understanding of rights is a social prerequisite for the existence of rights. Therefore, educational opportunities within society have a close bearing upon the people's ability to erect adequate rights structures.

Property rights provide a good example: society recognizes that individuals have title to particular property as defined by the transaction by which they acquired the property granting the individual free use and possession of the property. In many cases, especially regarding ideological and similar rights, the obligation depends on the legal system in its entirety, or on the state, or on the generical universality of other subjects submitted to the law.

Societal rights or civil rights are bestowed to its citizenry by society and are a set of obligations that are purported as a social contract. Societal rights are a privilege of membership and the benefits are limited to its members though may be extended to temporary guests. Access to societal rights is dependent on government grants and on the citizen fulfilling their obligations e.g. complying with laws and paying taxes.

The right can therefore be a faculty of doing something, of omitting or refusing to do something or of claiming something. Some interpretations express a typical form of right in the faculty of using something, and this is more often related to the right of ownership of property. The faculty (in all the above mentioned senses) can be originated by a (generical or specific) law, or by a private contract (which is sometimes exactly defined as a specific law between or among volunteer parties).

Other interpretations consider the right as a sort of freedom of something or as the object of justice. One of the definitions of justice is in fact the obligation that the legal system has toward the individual or toward the collectivity to grant respect or execution to his/her/its right, ordinarily with no need of explicit claim.

Aristotle, in the Nicomachean Ethics (book five), claims that there is a large difference between written (generalized) justice and what is actually right for the (specific) individual.

But what obscures the matter is that though what is equitable is just, it is not identical with, but a correction of, that which is just according to law.

The reason of this is that every law is laid down in general terms, while there are matters about which it is impossible to speak correctly in general terms. Where, then, it is necessary to speak in general terms, but impossible to do so correctly, the legislator lays down that which holds good for the majority of cases, being quite aware that it does not hold good for all.

The law, indeed, is none the less correctly laid down because of this defect; for the defect lies not in the law, nor in the lawgiver, but in the nature of the subject-matter, being necessarily involved in the very conditions of human action.

— Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics (10-3) (Peters' translation)[1]


With reference to the object of the right, a common general distinction is among:

  • Real rights (from the Latin word "res", thing), which include:
  • Personal rights, as a credit.

I know I'm still fairly new around here and I'm not entirely certain this is an acceptable move to make, but some of these rights pages are in serious disrepair and I am trying in good faith to fix them up the best I can. Apologies is anything I do is inappropriate - please feel free to notify me and I will refrain in the future. -Pfhorrest (talk) 07:59, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Libertarian view

I've just undone the following contribution by User:Simultaneous movement, which was placed in the "theoretical distinctions" section, because it is not a theoretical distinction, and because it seems to talk specifically about negative, natural, claim rights, and so better suits one of those pages (said user has also recently made a similar contribution to Natural and legal rights) than this page on rights in general. However, if anyone would like to discuss better ways of working this or something similar into this or another article, I'm including it below for posterity:

The libertarian view is that "a right is a principle which morally prohibits men from using force or any substitute for force against anyone whose behavior is non-coercive. A right is a moral prohibition; it doesn't specify anything with regard to what actions the possessor of the right may take (so long as his actions are non-coercive) – it morally prohibits others from forcibly interfering with any of his non-coercive actions."[2]

-Pfhorrest (talk) 06:56, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Piratejosh's edits

I've just partially reverted the recent edits by User:Piratejosh85 (retaining Zodon's intermediary changes), and I'm here to explain.

First, I've removed this passage:

Legal positivism denies the existance of natural rights, saying all rights are constructed.

The article on Natural and legal rights already discusses the concepts of natural law vs positive law, and we don't want to go into too much detail on each particular distinction here. Also, mentioning legal positivism without its contradictory position (which doesn't seem to have a proper name, much less an article, as far as I can tell) seems a bit biased against natural rights.

Second, regarding claim rights, I've replaced this passage:

[...] serve at least two functions: first to ensure one's access to a given resource. Second, claim rights dictate and constrain others actions, preventing them from interfering with one's persuit of their claims [...]

with the older phrasing:

[...] entail constraints and obligations upon the actions of other individuals or groups [...]

Claims rights do not all serve to ensure access to resources, and that is certainly not the primary sense of the term; only a subset of positive claim right regard the provision of resources. The second meaning in the reverted passage seems dependent on the first meaning: the "claims" in question are not claims against resources, but claims against people; thus the non-interference in the second meaning is what one has a claim to, not something enabling one to have something else that one has a claim to.

I've also reinserted the word "simply" regarding liberty rights being called simply liberties; it just sounds better to my ear, since the sentence is about whether to call them "liberty rights" or just "liberties" simpliciter.

I reverted the sentence defining group rights because the alteration oblitterates one of the possible senses of group rights. the article on group rights is itself ambiguous on what exactly "group rights" means - are rights held individually by members of only a select group "group rights" too, or must the rights be held by the group collectively? The text here was copied verbatim from there, and until that gets clarified this article should probably mirror that ambiguity.

I'm not entirely certain that the example of group-individual conflicts is the best, but I can't articulate a particular complaint against it at the moment so I'll leave it.

I'm likewise uncertain about the new Explicit and unenumerated rights section. I do like bringing that attention to this distinction, and I've even wikilinked to the article on unenumerated rights. But this distinction is a subset of the legal division of rights - there is no such thing as an explicit or unenumerated natural right - whereas none of the other distinctions are subsets of each other. That is, you can have negative natural individual liberty rights, or positive legal group claim rights, or any combination of the four earlier distinctions; which is not true of the distinction between explicit and unenumerated rights. I'm not sure what to do about this.

Finally, I've reworded Piratejosh's addition to the Areas of concern subsection to read "legal or moral issues" rather than just "legal issues", so as to include natural rights as well as legal rights. --Pfhorrest (talk) 09:50, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Great Changes, One Suggestion

All of these make a great deal of sense. I would still advocate noting that some people do not believe in natural rights. If a great deal of respected people don't believe something extists, that should be noted in a place like this. I, therefore, advocate the reinsertion of the objection to natural rights via legal positivism.Piratejosh85 (talk) 18:55, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

I would not object to its inclusion if we could figure out some balancing statement to pair it with. Without that, it comes of as "this is the concept of natural rights; this is the concept of legal rights; some people dispute that natural rights exist at all"... and then what about people who dispute the validity of legal rights? (i.e. the position that 'only natural law is normatively valid, positive law is just opinion backed by force'). While there are articles on both natural law and positive law, there seems to be only an article on legal positivism and no corresponding article on... well I'm not sure what you'd call the opposite of legal positivism, maybe some form of anarchism I suppose, but that's more a political philosophy than a legal philosophy per se. I'm open to suggestions on a more balanced way of summarizing this controversy, both for this article and for the natural and legal rights article itself. --Pfhorrest (talk) 08:39, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
I understand what your trying to get at. What I hear you saying is that, as a non-biased source, Wikipedia needs to present information that doesn't favor either one side or the other. Entries need to ballance the oppinions of experts, expressing all relevant distinctions in a fair way. By citing the fact that some experts don't believe in natural rights, you claim, that would unfairly bias the article in favor of legal positivism. This objection is an important one, but I think it should be reconsidered on the basis of one thing: there is no other side to the claim, but this does not bias the article, it's just saying some experts don't believe in natural rights. Let me give an example as to why it wouldn't bias the article: to these experts, natural rights are like unicorns, immagined. And, just as there is no opposite claim from "unicorns don't exist," there exists no opposite claim from natural rights don't exist. The furthest logical oposite you could get it that other experts disagree (believing in unicorns). That is, of course, implied in the "some experts," though. Therefore, I believe it an important point to note under the natural and legal rights section. Piratejosh85 (talk) 20:47, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
Except that in your unicorns analogy, unicorns aren't being contrasted with something else. To extend that analogy to something a little better, say that we had managed to genetically engineer some horses with horns sticking out of their foreheads. We could then contrast "magical unicorns" versus "genetic unicorns". Then, just as some people would say "magical unicorns don't exist", there are some people who says "your 'genetic unicorns' aren't really unicorns at all, they're just genetically engineered horses with horns growing out of their heads".
The analogy, of course, is that genetic unicorns are to legal rights as magical unicorns are to natural rights. Just as some people would say "genetically engineering a horse with a horn does not a unicorn make, and we'll either find real unicorns out there or not", there are anarchist and libertarian positions which claim that governments cannot grant or create or remove or in any other way alter anyone's rights, they can only discover (or not), respect (or not), and enforce (or not) the rights that people naturally have (or not). That is the position I would like to include to counterbalance legal positivism; it's just doing so in a succinct way that is difficult. Various articles on natural law, natural rights, anarchism, libertarianism, etc, cover this position in different degrees, but there doesn't seem to be a concise term (and corresponding article) for that position like there is for legal positivism. Though... I suppose philosophical anarchism comes close. --Pfhorrest (talk) 21:09, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
I also found the examples of group-individual rights conflict questionable. Particularly the unions vs. workers. The history of the labor movement is complex, with lots of different cases, some where unions improve the lot of workers, and some where they may have been at cross purposes, or where longer term gains may have been achieved at the expense of short term considerations. The mention is too vague. Removed until we can cite a clear more concrete example.
The example on class action vs individual suit may be better, but I am less familiar with that area. A citation would help. Zodon (talk) 20:35, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Rewording

I find a problem is the phrase, "The contemporary notion of rights is universalist and egalitarian." There are a few things wrong with this. First, there is no such thing as an egalitarian notion. Notions cannot discriminate. What this phase seems to be trying to say is that rights should be distributed everywhere (universally) and equally (egalitarian). There are problems here. First of all, the article needs to point out that not everyone believes these things: it is therefore inaccurate to simply say, "The contemporary notion or rights is..." That may be true in the US, but not everywhere. Take the contemporary caste system for example, where rights are neither distributed everywhere nor in equal amounts so to say. Still another problem is that "universal" or "unversally" might be appropriate, the word "universalist" currently links to the world religion and philosophy which has innappropriatly little to do with the meaning given to the word here. I therefore believe the phrase needs to be reconsidered.

The second phrase I believe needs reworking is, "For instance, compare Manifest destiny with Trail of Tears." One of the introduction paragraphs talks about times two or more philosophies of rights come into conflict. Manifest destiny is a good example of a philosophy of rights, but the trail of tears is not. Supposedly the philosophy of whites would need to be compared to the philosophy of the non-white colonized (in this case Native Americans, though not always). The trail of tears is not such a philosophy; it is, factually, a very long march. I believe rewording is then in order. Piratejosh85 (talk) 18:17, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

You make good points. I've just made some edits, qualifying "contemporary rights" with "many", giving the intended impression that notions of rights are more commonly universalist and egalitarian today than in yesteryears, rather than the incorrect assertion that all contemporary notions of rights are universalist and egalitarian. I've also fixed the wikilink for "universalism", and removed the reference to the Trail of Tears entirely; it doesn't really seem necessary to cite an example there in the lede.
However, I don't think there is a problem with calling a notion of rights universalist or egalitarian, and we certainly aren't trying to make the normative claim that rights should (or should not) be universal and equal. Rather, we are trying to say that (many of) the contemporary notions of rights are that rights are (in the case of natural rights) or should be (in the case of legal rights) universal and equal; or in other words, that (many) contemporary people are universalists and egalitarians with regard to rights, and thus that their conception of rights is that of universalists and egalitarians. Thus, "many contemporary notions of rights" - that is, the notions of rights held by many contemporary people - "are universalist and egalitarian" - that is, notions in accordance with the universalist and egalitarian principles of said people. --Pfhorrest (talk)

Natural rights excluded?

The very first sentence of the article "Rights are legal or moral entitlements or permissions." effectively excludes the concept of natural rights. Natural rights are not entitlements or permissions. The word "right" as used in the U.S. constitution doesn't refer to an entitlement or permission. The words entitlement and permission imply that they would not exist without being "granted" by government. The word right as used in the constitution assumes pre-existence.

This entire article seems to be about entitlements, not about rights, as the word has been historically used to describe the liberties that man is universally born with, and that exist whether or not they are protected by government.

I realize that the word is used today in lieu of the word entitlement, mostly for political purposes, but should the very first sentence of the article effectively exclude the concept of natural rights? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.110.227.11 (talk) 09:59, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

The lead sentence says nothing about the source of such rights (governmental, natural, divine, etc.) (i.e. does not imply grant by government).
What does it refer to then in the US Constitution? It occurs once in the original Constitution (where "control" would appear to be a suitable replacement word), plus several times in the bill of rights.
The "liberties man is universally born with" would be human rights (i.e., a different article).
Do you have suggestions for other phrasing? Zodon (talk) 11:43, 25 January 2009 (UTC)
The phrase in the lede "...legal or moral..." is meant to explicitly include natural rights in the discussion. Likewise "permissions" was added explicitly to include liberty rights in the discussion as well. An older version of this article read something like "rights are legal entitlements..." and I took exception to that for the reasons you cite and modified it accordingly.
Also note in the body of the article the summaries of Claim rights and liberty rights (discussing the difference between rights as entitlements and rights as permissions) and Natural and legal rights (discussions the difference between, well, natural rights and legal rights). --Pfhorrest (talk) 00:02, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Notable people?

Why does the Notable People list only seem to include mostly modern left-wing heroes and/or anti-war activists? Shouldn't Jefferson precede Jimmy Carter? That list is a joke. 76.194.214.56 (talk) 23:39, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Please feel free to expand it with people you feel are notable, or to contest any that you feel are not. That list is from a very old version of this page. --Pfhorrest (talk) 02:59, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

I think the notable people section should be removed, or needs more specific criteria to focus it. (It would be easy to expand it to whatever size one wanted by grabbing contents from various lists or categories). As a "see also" style of thing, links to lists of various rights activists, or rights activist categories would be far more inclusive.
Could replace with links to things like List of women's rights activists, List of civil rights leaders, List of suffragists and suffragettes, List of opponents of slavery, List of LGBT rights activists, List of disability rights activists, etc. (or even better, is there already a list of rights activists lists?)
Or if we can come up with a more focused purpose, that would be fine too.
For the moment I have removed the expand tag, since it isn't clear how it should be expanded. Zodon (talk) 02:13, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
Addition - I don't object to the list that is here as such, and some of the areas of rights may not have lists, so leaving notable folks in areas where aren't lists is okay by me. But where there are lists, think need clear reason to single this person out. Zodon (talk) 02:32, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Some recent edits

Pirate Josh recently made some edits which I partially reverted, and I'm here to discuss this at his request.

My main contention with most of these edits was their essay-like style and uncited nature in conjunction: had they been cited I would have attempted to clean up the style instead, or likewise if they had been in a more encyclopedic tone I would likely have just added some {{fact}} tags.

Anyway, my point by point thoughts on the content of the edits:

  • The change of the intro to say that rights "stem from a particular value system" and the following section on "Non-legal or moral rights" seems somewhat biased toward a relativistic POV: a natural rights theorist would not say that rights are "granted" by any "value-system", as that implies that they are somehow human constructs rather than objective, naturally occurring things. Perhaps a compromise could be rephrasing the intro to "'Rights are permissions or entitlements of a legal, moral, or other nature." This might actually be a good road to go down anyway, as now that I think about it, Josh does have a good point about "rights" in an etiquette sense being neither strictly legal or moral in nature, and there is already the article on social rights discussing another (or perhaps the same?) neither-moral-nor-legal sense of "rights". Though I worry a bit that going down that road would require, for the sake of consistency, splitting Natural and legal rights back into Natural rights and Legal rights...
    • On a slightly tangential note, maybe the "vital importance" phrase in there could be turned into something like "of vital importance in the fields of law and ethics, especially theories of justice and deontological ethics", somewhat mixing Josh's version and mine.
  • The section titled "Denotion" is one of the most essay-like part of Josh's edits, and is rather tangential to this article which is an overview of rights topics. I do like the calling of attention to the absolute vs conditional rights distinction (hence I left that addition in there under "Theoretical distinctions"), but a longer treatment of it belongs on a page like Moral absolutism or something instead of here. We do need some citable sources for it though.
  • Regarding "Rights vs privileges", that is a good topic that should probably be discussed here somewhere, but the section Josh added was both very essay-like and also biased toward a relativistic POV again, and I'm not so sure its content was factually correct either. A quick search for other, cited wiki content regarding privileges vs rights turns up the article on Privilege, which seems to draw the distinction as between universal and non-universal entitlements (claim rights), and Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld in whose analysis "privilege" meant what is elsewhere here called a liberty right.
  • I like the moving of the paragraph(s) about different conceptions of rights in different time periods being moved down with the various legal rights documents, and that being renamed to focus on the history of rights. Although, if we are going that route, we ought to include various purely philosophical treatises on rights in there along with all those legal documents.

I think I'm going to make some of the compromise changes I suggested above just now, mostly to the intro. Please discuss. --Pfhorrest (talk) 02:03, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Pfhorrest, Thanks for the attention paid to this article. I appreciate the work you've done. Here are my thoughts and ideas. I've added them in response form to what you posted. I hope this system is agreeable. I think we both have our ideas on the table and I don't believe anyone else is going to object to changes. So, would you be willing to make the changes you see as commensurate with both our ideas? Again, thanks for you work and I'm looking forward to seeing this article as good as it can get. Piratejosh85 (talk) 01:13, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

The change of the intro to say that rights "stem from a particular value system" and the following section on "Non-legal or moral rights" seems somewhat biased toward a relativistic POV: a natural rights theorist would not say that rights are "granted" by any "value-system" as that implies that they are somehow human constructs rather than objective, naturally occurring things.
You said, “a natural rights theorist would not say that rights are ‘granted’ by any ‘value-system’”. However, I think what you might mean is that a natural rights theorists would insist that some rights are not granted by a value system, i.e. exist in nature. But, he would not deny, I believe, the existence of other rights that do stem from other, posited, systems, such as the rules of manners.
Perhaps a compromise could be rephrasing the intro to "'Rights are permissions or entitlements of a legal, moral, or other nature."
I really like this. It’s good. The fact that there are so many other systems which might confer rights merits them mention in the intro, which is done in the possibility just given.
This might actually be a good road to go down anyway, as now that I think about it, Josh does have a good point about "rights" in an etiquette sense being neither strictly legal or moral in nature, and there is already the article on social rights discussing another (or perhaps the same?) neither-moral-nor-legal sense of "rights".
Regarding "Rights vs privileges", that is a good topic that should probably be discussed here
I definitely agree that the majority of “ink” was devoted to what you’re referring to as a realistic POV, my point was only to point out that the argument could be made. On the other hand, I agree that fair treatment means devoting equal amount of space to opposing arguments. And to the accusation that I did not do that, I am definitely guilty. I, though, also think that there should be a section talking about the differences between rights and priv. And, consistent with the content that I added, I think the point should be raised that some might argue that there is, in fact, no difference. I however, acknowledge that a more fair and explained discussion is in order.

Piratejosh85 (talk) 01:13, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Unenumerated Rights

I saw that unenumerated rights needs expansion and documentation, and I don't have time or inclination to do it, but to those who would, the prototypical unenumerated right, which is encapsulated in the fourth and ninth amendments (and particularly the ninth, which is essentially all about unenumerated rights), among others, is the so-called Right to Privacy. In order to properly defend the unenumerated rights claim that was made in the article, one could reference (appeals, supreme) court cases in which the majority opinion made reference to the unenumerated right to privacy. Of course, there are many others, but privacy seems to be the poster child for the topic. 147.105.3.11 (talk) 22:34, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Freaking Vandals!

RAAWRR! Just had to get that out there. Why is this page vandalised so much? I hate it and it is so anoying. Piratejosh85 (talk) 04:49, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Note about page history

Some old page history that used to be at the title "Rights" can now be found at Talk:Rights/Merge. Graham87 10:53, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Problems with this article

From my viewpoint, it looks like the article focuses exclusively on legal/philosophical parts of rights, when I think the whole concept of rights is simpler, more expansive, and more basic. After two terse sentences in the lead paragraph without doing (in my view) a good job of explaining what the concept of "rights" is, it breaks off into subdivisions. This article is poorly sourced. It needs good references. I'll be working on this article soon and if people wish to revert my edits, please provide substantive reasons why on this talk page.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 01:01, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Hi Tom. Sorry I didn't write a more extensive explanation for my reverts, I got pulled off onto something else. I welcome your help on this article, especially if you can pull in more references, and I think your contributions were certainly in good faith, but had some problems, which I'll elaborate on more now. If you don't mind, I'm also going to copy your comment on my talk page here, and reply to it at the same time.


Regarding your first edit, the addition of the sentence "A right is a power to act in the future which is recognized by others in advance as being within a person's the proper sphere of action." to the lede, I wrote "redundant with permissions and exclusive of both claim rights and natural rights". I take the "permissions" in the lede to refer not necessarily to specific grants of permission from specific people or organizations, but in the more general sense where "it is permitted to do X" = "it's not wrong to do X", which in turn depends on your understanding of "wrong" (be it a universal ethical or moral sense, or a relative cultural or legal sense). That's an intentional ambiguity so as to remain NPOV on the topic of natural rights vs legal rights, or universalism vs relativism more generally. In contrast, I take "entitlements" to mean likewise a sense where "P is entitled to X from Q" means "it is wrong for Q not to give X to P"... again, whatever you take "wrong" to mean. Thus, by "permissions or entitlements" in the lede I meant to capture the distinction between claim rights and liberty rights, and give both types equal weight. Your addition, in contrast, seems to speak only of liberty rights: actions which are not (considered to be) wrong to take. That's what I meant when I said it was "redundant with permissions and exclusive of [...] claim rights". Furthermore, your mention of "recogni[tion] by others" seems to limit rights to social constructs, precluding a natural rights point of view, which we don't want to do, again, for NPOV reasons.
That said, it's evident that the concise phrase "permissions or entitlements of a legal or moral nature" didn't get across those two nuances to you, since I'm here explaining it now; and as you are undoubtedly more savvy than the average high-schooler reading wikipedia, the lede could probably use some expansion to make that more clear. If you'd like to attempt such an expansion, please do so; I should have no objections so long as it maintains NPOV on those two issues (claims vs liberties, and natural vs legal/social/etc rights).
Regarding your second edit, where you added the semi-paragraph "The concept of rights can vary depending on political orientation; persons with a left-leaning political agenda tend to identify rights with equality of outcome, while persons with a right-leaning agenda tend to identify rights with equality of process. Accordingly, left-leaning thinkers think in terms of a "right to medical care" while right-leaning thinkers think in terms of a "right to a fair trial"." I have no real objections to that on a content basis, but it was a bit of a non-sequitur where it was placed, and seemed to pretty much recap the subject of negative and positive rights, with the right-leaning being more about negative rights ("you can't do that to me"), and the left-leaning being more concerned with positive rights ("you have to do that for me"). If you'd like to reintegrate that somewhere, I think it'd fit better on the Negative and positive rights page than here. UPDATE: Or PirateJosh's integration of it into "Rights and politics" works well too.
Thanks, --Pfhorrest (talk) 01:47, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

The concept of "rights"

I appreciate that you're trying to explain your sense of "rights" here, but my sense is you're going too deeply, right away, into details which might better belong in some abstract philosophy class, with letters P and X and stuff, and trying to get technical with distinctions about rather arcane intellectual distinctions about "natural rights". And in a basic definition of such an important concept, I don't think "nuances" are welcome. What I'm suggesting is the essence of the term "rights" is simpler, and more profound, and the lead (or lede?) misses chunks of it. "Permissions" is a part of it; "entitlements" is part of it too; but there's more to the concept that just these things, and I don't think most people get it, and it's important not to leave it packed up in these words, but to flesh it out. And qualifying these two terms with legal/moral nature doesn't cut it, in my view; I'm not clear in my head exactly what a "legal/moral" means. So often I read definitions that talk about "rights" and then USE the term rights in it, which indicates to me that even dictionary definition writers don't grasp what this is all about.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 04:19, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
Here's my sense of what a "right" is all about, so let me share it with you, and I'm interested in what you think.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 04:19, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
  • First, it's about humans. It's not about nature. When people speak about "natural rights" they're talking about what humans can or can't do to other humans, and use nature as a reason, but it's still about humans. Not just a single human, but two or more in some kind of society.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 04:19, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
So would you say the notion of animal rights is a manifest contradiction, then? And that any potential nonhuman people (artificial or alien intelligences, say) would, by definition, have no rights? Certainly, we, being humans living in human societies, are mostly concerned about human rights, but humans aren't part of the definition of rights. People, maybe, but then there are plenty who argue for the rights of animals which they don't consider people per se but still objects of moral consideration, and we have to remain neutral to that point of view. --Pfhorrest (talk) 04:57, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
Yes, the term "animal rights" is somewhat nonsensical, since animals do not have the power to do things like behave like citizens, vote. Like, it's apparent if you ask an "animal rights" activist to clarify exactly what is meant by these so-called "animal rights"? And, what they're point of view is, essentially, don't torture animals; don't kill them. Treat them nicely. What they're saying is treat animals as if they're human. But what we're really talking about is how humans treat animals; animal rights groups have adopted (and abused in my view) the term "rights" to advance a specific agenda, and like it or not, this perspective needs to be included in any discussion of rights (I agree in that). And there's much to be said for being nice to animals. But what I'm saying is the essence of the general concept of "rights" is about stuff which happens between humans. There's kind of a fifth element in this, but I've left it out -- it's the idea of "equality"; that is, on some level (and it varies) rights presumes some kind of equality. But the term equality has different meaning (equality of process vs equality of outcome) so I've kind of left it out of the basic definition; but, do animal rights activists TRULY see animals as "equals"? I agree about being kind to animals. But, can animals type messages on a computer? Can they think about the term "rights"? And they can't. Animals (dogs, cats) aren't humans.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 05:34, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
The relevant issue is whether a significant number of people out there believe that animals have rights. The question is undoubtedly complex. However, the notion of animal rights is not w/o merit. The argument can be made from naturalism (that we are all animals and sophistication shouldn't matter), or from kantian ethics (that our moral status depends on our ability to made free choices, which animals can), or from other arguments. The important issue is that there is a real and important contingent of people believe in animal rights as real rights. Piratejosh85 (talk) 05:47, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
Josh's last sentence is the most important one. The important issue is that there is a real and important contingent of people believe in animal rights as real rights. Likewise if we substitute "natural rights" or any of the other nuances I'm trying to preserve in the article. We're not here to argue about what claims about rights are correct; we're here to document what claims about rights have been made. And so our article can't be worded in such a way as to effectively declare wrong a notable position on some controversy. --Pfhorrest (talk) 11:29, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
I agree that a substantial chunk of people think that "animal rights" is a valid term. And I agree with PirateJosh's take on it. And I think discussion needs to be part of the whole topic of rights. But as to the core concept of rights, I don't think the whole animal-vs-human distinction (ie non-human animal vs human animal) is part of the core concept; it's a side issue. Or, another way of thinking about it is like this: it's injecting the animal rights' POV into a basic concept to say that the essence of rights includes animals. For me, again, the basis of the concept is understanding of permitted spheres of possible future action, agreed on in advance, and there's no way that a dog can have an "understanding" in the same way that a human can. My sense is that "rights" is a human construct and that interpreting it differently to include animals is to take the animal-rights' peoples' POV and inject it into the definition at its core level. And I don't think that's accurate.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 13:23, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
I disagree, and I think the reason why gets to the core of our disagreement here. I'm not advocating that we say that animals have rights, or that natural rights exist, or any of these other positions I'm trying to maintain neutrality on: that would be POV in favor of those positions. I'm only trying to keep language out of the article that would be POV against those positions, so as to remain NPOV about them. In other words, I don't want to say "humans and other animals have rights" or "rights are social rules reflecting inherent moral truths"; I simply want to avoid saying "only humans have rights" or "rights are only social constructs". I'm trying to keep the article silent as to which side of various controversies is correct, so as to remain NPOV on those controversies.
The article right now neither claims that only humans have rights, nor that any non-human animals have rights; it is silent on the issue, other than mentioning very, very briefly (a single word in a list) that some people are concerned about animal rights, with a link to that article for further discussion. Likewise, the article does not say either that rights are inherent, universal, natural moral truths, nor that they are purely social constructs; it simply mentions the controversy and links to that article for further discussion. My objection to your proposed edits is that it makes the article come down on one side or another of the controversy, thus violating WP:NPOV. --Pfhorrest (talk) 02:25, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
Also, as regards equality being part of the definition of rights, the existence of claims of things like the Divine right of kings, which is about as unequal as you can get, means that that position (that equality is part of the definition of rights) is not uncontroversial, and so can't be a part of our definition of rights. Besides which, if equality were inherent to the very concept of rights, then phrases like "equal rights" would be pure redundancy, cause if they weren't equal, then they wouldn't be rights. --Pfhorrest (talk) 11:29, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
Generally agree; this is why I left out the concept of equality. And while I think there are exceptions, the concept of equality does in many instances undergird what we think of as fair regarding "rights" in most instances -- and it's one reason why non-human animals such as dogs I see the argument as dubious that dogs have "rights", since they're not the equals of humans.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 13:23, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Second, a foundation of any kind of right is the concept of power. Before any discussion of rights makes sense, there has to be a human who has the power, or physical ability, to do something. Like, it doesn't make sense for me to talk about a "right" to physically hop to the moon, because I don't have the power to do so; we're talking actual capabilities here not hypothetical possibilities. But I have the power to, say, raise my hand.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 04:19, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
Rights and abilities (or "powers") are completely separate things. I may not have the ability to physically hop to the moon, but I might still have the right to do so; as in, I'm free to try to do so, and free to do so if I can manage it. (Though in fact I do not have such a legal right; air traffic control would take issue with me jumping to the moon, or jumping any higher than a certain elevation). --Pfhorrest (talk) 04:57, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
Disagree here. I agree that "rights" and "powers" are separate concepts, but that the concept of "rights" is based on a presumption of "power". The reason nobody talks about your having a "right to hop to the moon" is that you don't have the power to do so. If you DID get huge springs in your shoes that DID allow you to hop to the moon, then the question of your having a "right" to hop to the moon would become an issue, possibly, with the FAA. What I'm saying is that underlying the concept of "right" is a power to do something. Remove the power; and the whole idea of "rights" falls apart, becomes nonsensical.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 05:34, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
The notion that rights depend on power disregards negative rights, the right to be free from imposition. Seperatly, why is it necessary (not just common) to talk about rights stemming from power? Piratejosh85 (talk) 05:47, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
You raise an excellent point. But I still think the term power applies, but it applies in both directions. A person might have a power to do something, but be possibly restrained by others (positive right). Or, a person might wish to be left alone, and others might have a power to bother him or her (negative right). I think both are valid. So, I think the term power belongs in the understanding of what a right is. To exclude it, for me, means missing the boat.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 13:23, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
If I may make a somewhat vulgar example, for the sake of clarity: the US supreme court has ruled that laws about what kinds of consensual sexual behavior people engage in in private are unconstitutional. In other words, I have the right to have whatever kind of sex I want with whoever will have sex with me, so long as they're willing and it's in private. This pretty uncontroversial applies to masturbatory practices as well. The point I'm making is: I have a legal right to perform autofellatio; in spite of the fact that I do not have the power or ability to do so. QED. --Pfhorrest (talk) 11:29, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
Interesting counter-example. (And I don't think vulgar=bad btw.) But let me ask you this: has there ever been any significant discussion about the "rights of autofellatio"? I bet there are few, if any, court cases involving any serious discussion, because the "right" of auto-fellatio doesn't really exist because you (and most people except possibly very lithe acrobatic types) don't have the power to do it. To talk about such a "right" is nonsensical, irrelevant. But when we talk about relations between humans, then the whole subject of "rights" comes into play.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 13:23, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
The ninth amendment explicitly protects unenumerated rights, so in the US at least, just because no court or legislature has named a "right to X" doesn't mean that we have no such right; in fact, the US constitution is written on the premise that we have rights to everything except those things we have (collectively, via legislation) waived. So I stand by my point: I have a right (albiet unenumerated) to perform autofellatio despite my lack of ability to do so. --Pfhorrest (talk) 02:25, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Third, there are others (neighbors, police, lawyers, businesses etc etc) who might interfere with a future action. (and I think of the possible future actions as a "sphere" of possibilities, but there may be other ways to say this.) Others have the power to block things, to stop things, to prevent a possible future action from happening, to stop me from, say, raising my hand. If there were no people who could interfere, then it doesn't make sense to talk about a "right", now does it; if I live alone on a desert island, there's no need for "rights", and it doesn't make sense for me to talk about a "right" of raising my hand, but that's just a power, or a capability; but with others who could stop me, then the whole issue of whether I can raise my hand might become a matter of "rights".--Tomwsulcer (talk) 04:19, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Fourth, there's an understanding in advance that it's acceptable for me to do the proposed action in the future, such as raising my hand. Others agree, in advance, that raising my hand is permitted. I know this; they know this; this common understanding, this agreement in advance about what a person is permitted to do, before doing it, is, in my view, what constitutes a "right". That's it's essence.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 04:19, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
These both presuppose that rights are social constructs, and as such represents a non-neutral point of view; there are many people out there who argue that rights are grounded in universal moral facts, and do not depend on anybody's belief or understanding about anything. We have to remain neutral with respect to that issue on this article. --Pfhorrest (talk) 04:58, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
What I'm not clear about is what your sense of "right" is which isn't a social construct. I can't think of a good situation in which the term "rights" is used without some kind of social structure. Please give an example. And I'm not talking about how people argue for a basis of "rights"; that's a different subject. Suppose a person argues that rights are grounded in "universal moral facts". Okay, but what "rights" are they talking about that are grounded in universal moral facts? And, you'll find if you think about it, we're talking about (1) humans (2) with powers (3) possible interference by others (4) understanding/agreement about what's permitted. Some think this has a moral basis; great; but it doesn't alter the premises of the definition of "rights".--Tomwsulcer (talk) 05:34, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
There are plenty of people who think of rights as not stemming from social constructions. St. Thomas Aquinas is the one who comes to mind first. He believed rights were handed down from God, regardless of society. Piratejosh85 (talk) 05:47, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
St. Thomas Aquinas is talking about the origins of rights. But what about the rights specifically. What were they? What was his sense about what they meant? And he's talking about "rights" meaning how humans treat each other, that is, his sense of "right" involves a social construct.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 13:23, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
And plenty of others who see rights as not even dependent upon some non-human authority like God; in fact most metaethicists these days would consider divine command theory a form of moral subjectivism. See for example Kant or any other proponent of deontology, who see rights as deriving from pure reason; i.e. statements of rights are 'logical' truths, of a sort, as universal and independent of both man and god as mathematical truths. (Of course, there are philosophical camps which hold that mathematical truths are divinely created or socially constructed too, but the point is there is significant contingent who hold that rights are not). --Pfhorrest (talk) 11:29, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
I'm not disagreeing here about origins of rights, or their logical aspects. I'm trying to focus on the term "rights" in an of itself. What does it mean? And my sense is that going too deeply into metaphysics or Kant or deontology is a distraction. Like, we're here in 2009. What does "rights" mean? What is the essence of the concept? And I don't think going back several centuries to trace how metaphysical thinkers related the term to other terms will help us understand the core concept of "rights" today.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 13:23, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
Like I said above, I'm not trying to inject any discussion about the metaphysical (more strictly metaethical) nature of rights into this article; there are other articles discussing that already. I'm just trying to keep this article from making a stance on the issue at all. Your suggested edits imply a position on the metaethics of rights -- that they are social constructs -- and thus you are injecting a position on it into the article. I'm not trying to inject the opposite position; I'm trying to not take either side at all, per WP:NPOV. --Pfhorrest (talk) 02:32, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
For me these principles are the essence of the concept, and yes there are different types of rights, contingencies, political rights, labor rights, different ways of looking at rights (right to work etc) but what I'm saying is pretty much all of the accepted senses of right have these four aspects above in them in differing proportions perhaps; and if they don't, they're not mainstream or shared, or we're talking with someone with a confused understanding. And it depends on context; if I raise my hand at an auction, I might inadvertently buy something; if I raise my hand in a classroom, I might be called on to answer a question; etc.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 04:19, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
But fleshing out the essence of the concept of rights is important. Because the concept of "rights" is the building block (in my view) for so much in Western civilization -- law, politics, culture, history, contracts, business. And if you understand what I'm saying, above, but somehow think that it's okay to leave all of this in the twin terms "privileges" and "entitlements" supplemented with the vague terms "moral/legal", I think this is insufficient. It's important to get the concept of "rights", well, right. And if you can find a way to make a better definition, then I'll support you; there are many ways to word things. But the quickie way I use to think of the term is this: a "right" is a power to act in the future that others (who could block our acting) acknowledge that we have.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 04:19, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
I agree that the concept of rights is important, and they it underlies many other topics, and not only in Western civilization. And as I said before, I'm fine with expanding or elaborating on it to make it easier to understand without already grasping the precise technical meaning of every word used in the lede as it stands now. But whatever we expand it into, we need to be accurate and neutral, and not say unilaterally that rights are just one thing when there are many controversies over what rights are or are not. --Pfhorrest (talk) 04:57, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
Oh and just FYI, what I mean by "of a legal or moral nature" is to say that rights are generally construed as either what the law of the state says you are permitted or entitled to (the law says "you may do this", "they must do this for you", "they may not stop you from doing this", etc); or what you are morally permitted or entitled to (the latter of which may vary in meaning based on what you take the nature of morality to be, and which may be exactly the same as the former in some people's concepts of morality, but vastly different in other peoples'). --Pfhorrest (talk) 05:03, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
I agree generally with morality and legality being related here, but this is a wording issue here; in my view, "moral/legal" doesn't flesh it out.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 05:34, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
Pfhorrest will note that I too have always had a problem with this construction. I have never thought that it made much sense. Piratejosh85 (talk) 05:47, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
The origin of the current "of a legal or moral nature" phrase was a very old version of this article which said, roughly, "rights are legal entitlements". As part of my big revision of this article a while back, I changed that to "legal or moral" so as not to bias the article against natural rights views right off the bat. Josh and I have discussed whether "legal or moral" is exhaustive -- are there rights which are neither legal nor moral in nature? -- and that's where the current phrasing came from, a compromise between my phrasing which claimed they were exhaustive and Josh's long listing of all the different areas besides law and ethics where the language of 'rights' comes into play. I wouldn't object to the complete removal of that phrase, except that it would leave the first sentence of the lede unreasonably terse. Josh, do you think the word 'social' would capture all the other classes of rights you were trying to work in before? E.g. "Rights are permissions or entitlements of a legal, social, or moral nature."?
On that subject, how's this for an expanded lede? Further elaborating on the "permissions or entitlements" part, and incorporating that "legal, social, or moral" bit I just suggested:
How does that work for everyone? --Pfhorrest (talk) 11:29, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
I like the above. Piratejosh85 (talk) 00:58, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Continuation of discussion but with new section for editing ease

I'm thinking permissions and entitlements are somewhat the same thing; an entitlement is essentially a legal permission, isn't it? So I'm thinking the "entitlements" part is unnecessary, or an entitlement is kind of like an expanded legal permission. But I still think the issue of understanding in advance is a key, as well as it being a social construct in which we're talking about possible future actions which can be prevented. Maybe we need to start simple, and work outwards.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 13:43, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

As I said earlier, the point of saying "permissions or entitlements" was to capture the distinction between claim rights and liberty rights. They can both be stated in terms of duties or obligations:
  • You are permitted to do anything that you are not obliged not to do.
  • You are entitled to be done-unto however others are obliged to do unto you.
So permission equals lack of obligation on you, which entitlement equals obligation on others towards you. Take vacationing, for example. That you have legal permission (or a legal liberty right) to vacation means that there are no laws forbidding you from vacationing; but you may still have to arrange your own time off work, pay your own travel expenses, etc etc etc. That you have a legal entitlement (or a legal claim right) to vacation means that there are laws obliging your employer to give you time off work, obliging taxpayers to fund your travel expenses, etc etc etc. This isn't the same thing as negative and positive rights; both of the above examples are positive rights, but one is a positive liberty right and the other is a positive claim right. A negative claim right to vacation would be something like, others are obliged to refrain from interfering in your ability to vacation. A negative liberty right to vacation wouldn't make much sense, because a negative liberty right is permission to not do something, so that would be something like permission to not refrain from vacationing, which is just the same thing as permission to vacation.
But really, this is all very tangental to the point of our discussion here. Just read claim rights and liberty rights (or the original source, Hohfeld's "Fundamental Legal Conceptions"), which is all about this subject. --Pfhorrest (talk) 04:10, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

How about something like this:--Tomwsulcer (talk) 13:43, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

  1. Rights are permissions to act in the future.
  2. Rights usually involve people (exception: some see non-human animals as having rights).
  3. Rights usually involve a social situation in which one person can block the action of another. (exception: some disagree that it's a social situation.)
  4. Rights involve an understanding by both parties (possible actor, and possible blocker), in advance, that a possible future action won't be blocked.
  5. Rights have moral and legal components.
  6. Rights are important in many areas of study, such as law and ethics.
  7. Rights, as a term, has numerous connotations, and its meaning changes depending on the context.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 13:43, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

It might be that the concept is too big for a single sentence, but perhaps a paragraph?--Tomwsulcer (talk) 13:43, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

My thoughts on your points, point by point:
  1. Rights aren't only permissions, see above. Also, "in the future" seems either redundant of trivially false, because it's not possible to act upon the past (for the redundant interpretation) unless someone invents a time machine, and rights claims are often applied to acts which have happened in the past (for the trivially false interpretation), rather than just actions people plan to take in the future. (e.g. someone complains about me acting in some way last week; I assert that I have every right to act that way, not meaning that I'm going to act that way in the future, but that there was nothing wrong with me having acted that way in the past).
  2. I'm perfectly content to agree that rights concern regulating the actions of people, so long as we bear in mind that (1) "people" does not equal "humans" (this is just a minor lingual nitpick), and that (2) while there is generally consensus that only people are moral agents, and thus only people have duties or obligations, there is controversy over whether only people are the objects of such duties or obligations, and as such, whether only people have (claim) rights. (Remember above, if you have a claim right then someone else has a duty toward you, so if I have a duty toward something that's not a person, like my pet cat, or the environment, or whatever, then that thing has a claim right against me).
  3. This seems to confuse right and ability still, which seems to me an instance of a deeper conflation between facts (what is) and norms (what ought to be). If for example Superman was going around being a dick and generally upsetting everybody, and no one had any power to stop him, plenty of people might still complain that he had no (liberty) right to act in that way, or that they had various (claim) rights not to be acted upon thusly. There are some who do claim that might makes right, and thus that said peoples' claims against Superman would be incorrect, since he obviously has the might, and thus the right, to do those things; but that is far from uncontroversial and so implying it would be POV.
  4. This still seems to be implying a social constructivist view of rights, which is POV. A natural rights theorist could argue that if understanding or agreement is necessary, then it makes no sense to complain that someone is violating your rights unless they previously agreed to respect those rights (e.g. an anarcho-socialist can't violate your property rights by stealing from you, because he never agreed that you had any such rights) arguing ad absurdum against social constructivism. Some social constructivists in turn would say that that's correct, and, for example, black people in America prior to the abolition of slavery weren't having their rights violated, because until the abolition of slavery they had no rights to be violated. But again, that's a controversial position, and we can't come down on either side of it without violating WP:NPOV.
  5. This, as phrased, is oddly POV in two different ways; it implies both that there are necessarily moral aspects to something being a right, which a strict social constructivist would disagree with; and that there are necessarily legal aspects to something being a right, which a strict natural rights theorist would disagree with. I'd say instead that there are legal and moral interpretations of the concept of rights.
  6. This is fine.
  7. This is also fine.
If I had to phrase a neutral concept of rights in language as close to yours as possible, I would say something like "Rights are about the ways that people are or are not permitted to act or refrain from acting" (although the phrasing "rights are about..." seems somewhat ungrammatical and childlike to me).
  • "Ways people are permitted to act" = people's positive liberty rights;
  • "Ways people are permitted to refrain from acting" = people's negative liberty rights;
  • "Ways people are not permitted to act" = someone or something else's negative claim rights against people; and
  • "Ways people are not permitted to refrain from acting" = someone or something else's positive claim rights against people.
The latter two are what "entitlements" in the current lede is talking about. The "legal(/social)/moral" bit is not strictly necessary for accuracy, but is just extra information about the different ways that the nature of rights can be construed. --Pfhorrest (talk) 04:10, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Continuation of discussion (but editing break)

Wow, this is an interesting discussion. I'm learning stuff from you guys. So I appreciate it. And I'm beginning to apprciate how complex this can become. At this point, what I'm thinking of doing is taking a step back, and reading over some of the other articles about rights, and thinking about things some more.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 14:15, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

But I was thinking, afterwards, after reading your intelligent comments, which I'd like to share at this point, briefly, was this. That possibly what's happening, overall, is the whole concept of "rights" has never been nailed down; the concept of what it means has always been in flux; it's been understood by different people in different contexts so long, as well as having deliberately been manipulated by people for progaganda purposes, that the term itself doesn't have solid meaning any more? The term "rights" is like taffy stretched in many directions, that it doesn't look like taffy any more. And people have been eating the stretched taffy and thinking that's what taffy is, but it's something different.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 14:15, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Another analogy: suppose the real term of "rights" is like brewed fresh coffee. Suppose that's what the concept is really about. But tea makers promote tea as "rights", Tea with milk, too, is "rights". Plus, hell, new people come along and assert that any beverage is "rights". But these many uses get popularized, so now what do we have: "rights" is any liquid.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 14:15, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

That is, the weirdness of everything screws up our ability to offer an adequate definition?--Tomwsulcer (talk) 14:15, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

So, I'm kind of coming around to thinking that the best we can do here is offer a watered-down view of rights, that is, abbreviated only to "permissions" and "entitlements", and that's that, oh and maybe the legal/moral stuff. I still think the concept of rights SHOULD be more than this minimalist (it's a liquid!) view, that is, I think my construct would adequately fit almost all other peoples' constructs, like a big enough house to fit all kinds of weird furniture (even the animal rights furniture, negative rights furniture, positive rights furniture, etc), but you're saying the house isn't big enough? I'll keep stewing over this stuff and possibly get back in a week or so, if I have time; right now I'm working on an article about Lies told by US presidenyts. Best.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 14:15, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

will look forward to what you come up w/ Piratejosh85 (talk) 16:34, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
I'd say your assessment of the ambiguity of rights is fairly accurate, though I wouldn't put it in quite so disparaging terms. Most philosophical concepts have ambiguous meaning like this, because much of philosophy is about pinning down the meaning of concepts, which get thrown around in natural language in vague, imprecise, and mutually contradictory ways. Often times the result of this is carving up the "one" concept that everyone thought they were disagreeing about into numerous sub-concepts with certain features in common; thus, "rights" got carved up into positive or negative, claim or liberty, natural and legal, etc etc, and the thing they all still have in common is having to do with permissions or entitlements (or in a single word, "duty", and the lack thereof). Each different usage of the term "rights" has a legitimate history to it, so they're all different kinds of rights, or more accurately they're all using the term "rights" in different, but legitimate, senses; so if you want to be precise and unambiguous about what you mean, you sometimes need to quality which sense of "rights" you mean, if it's not obvious from context. --Pfhorrest (talk) 21:05, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
Addendum: I just came across this article on Rights at Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the second top-level link on Google (this very wikipedia article is first). It looks very well-written; perhaps we can use it as a model/inspiration for improving this article. --Pfhorrest (talk) 22:20, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
Interesting. I looked over that article briefly, but I think it's a good idea, to take it and flesh it out, perhaps try to get at the essence of what it's saying, and see if we can say it better? I'll stew about this for a while, and if anything gels, I'll come back perhaps with some wording proposals on this talk page. I'm working on other stuff now.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 23:04, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Update about article revamping

I stewed over this stuff for about a week. And what I'm kind of realizing is that I didn't know earlier how complex this topic was, with so many different senses. And I read the article to the Stanford Encyclopedia carefully, as well as some of the other Wikipedia articles on things like claim rights or negative-positive rights. So I'm getting up to speed. So I thought the current Pfhorrest summation of rights is the best, although I thought I'd tweak the wording somewhat. But basically I'm kind of appreciating how much you guys know and how little I knew. But also that my lack of knowledge is good, since it allows me to relate to what other Wikipedia readers might want in an article like this.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 23:10, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

I propose a redraft of the article. Right now it's on my sandbox page, please have a look, and if you have changes, please go ahead and make them. Proposed revamping of "rights" article And let me know what you think.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 23:10, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

But basically I kept the format as it was, but added new stuff, with a few more references, especially using the Stanford stuff. One concern I had was that the article offered a bare bones summary of the basic concept, and then immediately launched into rather difficult-to-grasp distinctions (ie negative vs positive rights), almost assuming most readers would be interested in some of the finer philosophical/logical points. I was afraid that the article would intimidate most readers. That is, I wanted to keep the article focused on the essence of the concept of "rights", and at the same time not abandoning the cool stuff that's here already, like the neg-pos distinctions. So, what I did was try to slow down the philosophical/logical stuff, give more examples (hopefully correct ones!). and keep the distinctions, but have them more as article pointers. In one case, where I thought the material was way too difficult (like I couldn't quite grasp it after several passes), I just omitted it, and it's still reachable if someone clicks on one of the links to the more specific articles. The pictures added were for visual beauty, to make the subject less intimidating, and hopefully to explain some of these concepts.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 23:10, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm very impressed! You've obviously put a lot of work into this, and the pictures and citations are very welcome. There are some changes here and there I would make to it, but I think it's good enough that I won't object if you update the main article to reflect it, and I'll make my modifications there and we can discuss it further. Thanks! --Pfhorrest (talk) 01:09, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
Wow, thanks, but I'm the one who's been doing all the learning. Thanks for your help and also PirateJosh. I'll put the revamp in and please make changes as you see fit. I'm working on Foreign policy of the United States for the next day or so.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 02:16, 22 December 2009 (UTC) Also, the Miranda warning text came out too small; if you decide to keep it, I can re-upload it with bigger size text if necessary.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 02:19, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
Like changes. One thing to watch out for: the Stanford stuff which was in the quotes which had reference notations. The quoted material remains, but the quote marks are gone along with the reference. Just don't want to trigger any copyright problems, speaking of "rights".--Tomwsulcer (talk) 13:30, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
Oh... it looked to me that the quoted bit was not supported by the citation that followed it, and that the quotes were just there for decoration, so I removed them. But I was judging that based on the bit quoted in the cite itself; were you trying to cite the entire Stanford article, and not just the passage quoted in the citation? If so, I should restore a lot of "unsupportive" cites I removed in my revamp. Sorry. --Pfhorrest (talk) 22:30, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
I copied verbatim several quotes from the Stanford article. But I put the footnote, and put the copied portions in quotes so I wouldn't get finger wagged by the copyvio types. If you need me to put back in the references let me know I think I have it in my word processing file. --Tomwsulcer (talk) 00:25, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
That would be great, thanks. --Pfhorrest (talk) 01:42, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
 Done--Tomwsulcer (talk) 02:41, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
Article looking better; getting clearer, more accurate, good choices for the examples and such. But only a "C"? Eh, I would have thought a B- but I really don't know how those scales work. What could be done to improve this article further? I'm kind of drawing a blank how to improve it. Oh, on another subject, my article Presidential prevarications is nominated for deletion, and probably will be axed soon the way the voting is going. But if interested, it has great links to presidents of both parties fibbing on YouTube; suggest enjoy the YouTube videos before it disappears. My favorite is still Clinton's!--Tomwsulcer (talk) 19:14, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Etymology

I think this article could perhaps do with an etymology section; I think the etymology of the word "right" is quite interesting: originating ultimately from an Indo-European root ("reg-") meaning roughly "straight", which actually derives from the same root, as do words such as "correct", "rex" (Latin for "king") and thence "regal" and thence "royal", also thence "regular" and "regulation", and in different senses "right angle" and thence "rectangle" - the shifts of meaning are fascinating, IMO. And there are similar developments with roots such as "norm" (e.g. "normal" behavior, surface "normals", "normative"), and "ortho-" (e.g. "orthogonal", "orthodox"), and "rule" (e.g. "ruler" as in leader, "ruler" as in straight-edge, "rule" as in law, "rule" as in lines on paper), with meanings of both right as in correct and also as in straight, rigid (also deriving from PIE "reg-"), upright, etc, as in geometry.

It would probably also be a good place to talk about how "right" and "law" are the same word in many languages, such as French "droit" and German "recht".

I'll do more on this myself later; this is mostly a note to myself. Sources to start looking through for citations: [2] and [3] --Pfhorrest (talk) 22:52, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Who'd da thunk. Excellent thinking Phorrest. You mazing. You shammmart. But I'll have to be more mentally with it than I am at present. Will try to look into later. If you start writing stuff let me know if I can contribute. Good thinnin, as Ricky Ricardo might say. Meanwhile I'm coming around to thinking I want to nuke my own article about the Presidential Prevarications. There's a joy in creating BUT there's also a joy in destructing, isn't there? So cool; both aspects of the same thing, n'est-ce pas? Best --Tomwsulcer (talk) 23:36, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

category

So I removed the category, because philosophy concerns things that happen naturally, things that aren't doesn't occur naturally usually belong to the information science or sociology. (evidence: philosophical method is provable through neuroscience)

  • action (theory of cause and effect)
  • power (ability to control)
    • will
    • concept of gratis vs libre
      • concept of free vs open source

they are no scientific evidence nor computer simulation to prove this, there Original Research (WP:OR). (aka — there is no established theory on whether or not is a right is considered something that is natural, artificial or a concept derived from political ideology nor ethics. --173.183.102.184 (talk) 03:11, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Your grammar is atrocious so I'm not entirely clear on what you're even trying to say, but what bits I can pick out are either blatantly false or irrelevant.
For one, philosophy doesn't only concern things that happen naturally; natural philosophy does, and that went on to become the modern natural sciences. There's a whole other branch of moral philosophy aka ethics which deals with things that aren't the concern of the natural sciences, as well as philosophical positions explicitly opposed to various forms of naturalism. In short, philosophy is much broader than you construe it, and rights are certainly within the purview of moral philosophy. --Pfhorrest (talk) 06:39, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

OR

I have removed this addition [4] on the grounds that is OR and improperly sourced. It is sourced, but in a very misleading and inappropriate fashion that is the very paradigm of skilled POV-pushing. Specifically:

  • Code of Hammurabi: The only source given is a link to an English translation of the code itself. This is inadequate. What we need here is an expert on the subject of either Rights or Mesopotamia telling us that the Code is an example of a charter of rights. A code of law and a charter of rights are two different things. For example, a code of laws could simply be a list of punishable offenses that does not list any rights. Using the Code itself as a reference is a violation of WP:OR and WP:PSTS.
  • Cyrus Cylinder: The claim that the Cyrus cylinder is a bill of rights is a well-known hoax started by the Pahlavi Dynasty of Iran. This has been discussed ad nauseam in the community and the consensus is clear. I also note the dubioud sourcing provided: A name and a year. No publication title, pusblishing house, or page number. This makes it impossible to verify and is NOT how do citations.
  • Edicts of Ashoka: Same here. Just a name and year, nothing else. I also note Amartya Sen is an economist, and hardly an authority on this.
  • Constitution of Medina: I suppose this can stay for now, however, further verification is needed.

In light of the above, I am going to perform a partial removal of the added text. Athenean (talk) 02:18, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Agree and Add

Thanks for the detailed analysis. I agree with everything here. I especially agree w/ you about your insightful analysis of the Code of Hammuabi. I also think that the requisite interpritation could be found though. It might stay down until a good source is found, but I don't want to foreclose that option. Thanks Piratejosh85 (talk) 02:28, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Vandalism

With all the vandalism this page recieves (one ever two or three days it seems like), I would have hoped for more creative abuses. Not that I'm encouraging it; it's annoying as... well. Other pages get interesting vandals, but we get [5]. I feel that the worst of both words is to be a vandal and a boring one. Couldn't it be at least a little more interesting? Piratejosh85 (talk) 07:28, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Fundamental rights

I've partially reverted these recent edits by User:Stevertigo because I don't believe that the subject of Fundamental rights is (no pun intended) fundamental enough to the concept of rights to belong in the lede of this article. However it could be worth a mention somewhere, but I'm not sure where would be best, so I'm here to discuss. The redacted passage is:

For example, a "fundamental right" is a moral principle which has been expressed through a framework of laws as being "basic," "inalienable" or "universal," and is therefore fundamental to said framework.

This topic seems similar to Unenumerated rights inasmuch as both are subtypes of legal rights. Unenumerated rights are also not presently mentioned on this page, though perhaps they should be. The latter are mentioned briefly in passing on the main Natural and legal rights article, but not in the summary thereof here. Perhaps both could be mentioned briefly in the "Legal rights" paragraph, linked to their respective articles for more information? I'm open to other thoughts though.

Oh also, I've likewise reverted the addition of Fundamental rights to the Rights sidebar "theoretical distinctions" section, as it's not really a theoretical distinction. But, again like Unenumerated rights, maybe it should be on there somewhere... but where exactly? --Pfhorrest (talk) 04:45, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

agreed on the removal from lede. Creates bias in favor of. Piratejosh85 (talk) 07:27, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
Pfhorrest, I think you had best be clear that you are not simply reverting my edits wholesale. You redacted more than just the addition of "fundamental rights"[6]. I added "fundamental rights" as an example, and I perhaps went overboard with that. But I had just worked on that article and found it of passing grade to use as an example.
As far as your other edits, I appreciate your attempt at writing something better, but:

Rights are normative principles of freedom or entitlement, variously construed as legal, social, or moral in character.

...doesn't look like it improves upon what I wrote. Is a "right" a "normative principle" or is it rather a social and legal "construction" which is "based in principle?" Is it legal, social, or moral "in charachter?" Or is it framed within "legal, social, or moral" context? Is a right a "principle of entitlement?" An entitlement is rather a "provision ostensibly based in principle" rather than a "principle" itself. (I just worked on the entitlement article too, if you want to follow more of my edits). I agree that the word "norm" may belong in there somewhere, but rights are not just "social norms" are they?
Piratejosh, I don't understand what "bias in favor of" I "created." -Stevertigo (w | t | e) 23:12, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
The way I read it, it seems to create a bias in favor of a notion of rights which recognizes the existence of "fundamental rights." Not all systems recognize such rights and including them in the lead creates a bias in favor of those systems, at least in my readin. Piratejosh85 (talk) 01:24, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
So, you are saying there are no such thing as "fundamental rights." Perhaps you don't understand the meaning of the term, and simply dislike how its used in certain contexts. What "rights" actually do "exist", would you say? -Stevertigo (w | t | e) 22:44, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
I think Josh isn't denying the existence of fundamental rights himself; rather, he is saying that the article should remain neutral on the topic of whether or not they exist. I agree heartily with the neutrality sentiment in general, but I'm not sure it's warranted here in particular, since fundamental rights are a subtype of legal rights and so their existence isn't really a subject of controversy. A given legal system either has some rights fundamental to it or not;it's not really an issue of philosophical debate, we just consult the law books of the jurisdiction in question to see. So I don't think the neutrality of the subject is an issue here, only the weight given to it by being in the lede. --Pfhorrest (talk) 23:59, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
Pfhorrest, I believe Stevertigo is not just saying that fundamendtal rights exist only in law. I believe his point is that fundamental rights have ontological existence. I'm not taking a possition over whether rights ontologically exist. I am saying that there are plenty of people who don't think they do. Plenty of people out there think that rights are mere fabrications, and exist only to the extent that they can be enforced. Or, to put it other ways, there are people who believe that no rights exist at all except those we agree on/to. Putting them in that place create a bias in the opposite direction, that fundamental rights do in fact exist. Piratejosh85 (talk) 00:44, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
Ahh, well that's interesting, because my argument against his use of the word "constructed" was that it seemed to introduce the exact opposite bias: it seems to claim that rights are mere fabrications. His use of scare-quotes around "exists" in the reply to you above seems to indicate the same bias I am concerned about. (As well as a conflation of ontology with universality, as many do. Some people, myself included, affirm the "existence", in a very loose non-literal sense, of some sort of universal moral framework, including rights, but understand this "existence" to be in a non-ontological sense, the same way that mathematical proofs can be said to "exist": e.g. "a proof exists that X implies Y" can be reworded as "X can be proven to imply Y", and "everyone has a right not to be murdered" can be reworded something like "it is always wrong for someone to be murdered", without making any "existence" claims. But, that's a huge tangent).
Looking at both the phrase he introduced into the lede, and the lede he wrote on the Fundamental rights article itself, it sounds like he is claiming fundamental rights to be merely legal rights which are considered fundamental within the legal system in question. The lede from the Fundamental rights article:

The term fundamental rights generally refers to a set of entitlements in the context of a legal system, wherein such system is itself said to be based upon this same set of basic, fundamental, or inalienable entitlements or "rights.

And his lede addition here again:

For example, a "fundamental right" is a moral principle which has been expressed through a framework of laws as being "basic," "inalienable" or "universal," and is therefore fundamental to said framework.

Of course, I suppose that that may just be his bias against (and apparent unfamiliarity with the concept of) natural rights showing through again there, but if "fundamental rights" just meant "rights which are basic, fundamental, or inalienable" without qualification to a particular legal system, then they're just the same thing as natural rights (which you seem to be interpreting them as) and that article should be merged. But it looks from the article that that might not be the case? I'm not really sure, but there appears to have been a debate on the talk page of the Fundamental rights article about whether the term is synonymous with human rights (which is nearly synonymous with natural rights already) or not.
Anyway, my real point was that I don't think Stevertigo is claiming that there "exist" (in a literal sense or otherwise) any universal, inalienable rights; quite the opposite, all signs indicate to me that he believes rights are purely legal or social constructs, and rights are only "fundamental" within a given legal system and inasmuch as they are the core principles which said legal system is based upon. --Pfhorrest (talk) 04:18, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
Okay, well, all I wanted to do was point out that there should be no bias. Regardless of motive, It should read in a way that's neutral. As long as that's accomplished, I'm happy.
On a side note, it doesn't seem clear that fundamental rights are necessarily natural rights. A legal positivist believes in fundamental rights, but obviously is no natural rights thinker. Just thought it was worth noting. Thanks for your work; you're doing great, Piratejosh85 (talk) 16:39, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
But certainly a legal positivist believes in fundamental rights in the sense that I interpreted Stevertigo as defining them: rights considered fundamental by a legal system. In that sense of them, what controversy can there be? Just consult the laws (including judicial precedent) of that legal system to see if that system has fundamental rights or not. --Pfhorrest (talk) 20:41, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
I agree, but at the same time, just because they come from the books, are essentially posited, doesn't mean that they don't occupy a special place. I think a legal positivist would say that such "fundamental" rights can and do occupy a place just as sacred by virtue of the fact that society agrees to treat them as such, than if they exist as part of the ontological furniture of the universe. Piratejosh85 (talk) 22:27, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
  1. ^ The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle. Frank Hesketh Peters (trans.) (5th edition ed.). Kegan Paul, Trench, Truebner & Co. 1893. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help)CS1 maint: others (link)
  2. ^ "Man and Society". The Market for Liberty. p. 11.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Rights/Archive_1&oldid=1052812500"