From: Brett Paatsch (paatschb@ocean.com.au)
Date: Tue Nov 19 2002 - 21:23:05 MST
Lee wrote:
> Brett writes
>
> > > Oh, just a couple of things pushed my buttons. Practically
> > > any sentence that suggests there are "rights" beyond legal
> > > ones makes me want to speak up and dissent.
> >
> > Good point.
> >
> > I've heard quite a bit about rights and responsibilities at times and
that
> > they are "two sides of the same coin", "reciprocal" or whatever. Until
> > recently I didn't really have cause to dig too deeply into it. It became
> > more of an issue for me with the stem cell debate. I was trying to sort
out
> > what was wrong (if anything) in the notion that an embryo as a "human
life"
> > had rights. Intuitively I place embryos somewhere between sperm and
fetuses
> > along a continuum of human life forms that are increasing "warranting"
of
> > moral recognition. I think many others do too. But in political debate
> > intuition alone doesn't cut it, so I tried to come up with a way to
answer
> > the often only implied question "what is the moral worth of an embryo?".
>
> Well, if you ever come up with anything that doesn't depend on
> intuition, please let me know!
I've been running over this problem, or a superset of it, as a background
job, for years. That is, whether it is actually possible to put values and
ethics on a rational basis.
(I'm pirating from my own post on another list now). It seems to me that one
of the biggest challenges around is still either to come up with an ethical
system that picks up where traditional religions fail, or, alternatively to
determine how society can progress in the absence of such as system.
Dostoyevski said "if God is dead than everything is permitted".
Bertrand Russell was apparently quite frustrated - (History of Western
Philosophy) that he could find no greater basis for saying what the Nazi's
did was "wrong" than that he personally did not like it. As I understood he
was arguing that "values" were a matter of taste. I think he would have
liked to have been able to show that their actions had arisen as a result of
logical error, but their value system, however obnoxious he found it was not
apparently illogical per se. So far as I am aware no one has ever succeeded
in finding a _logical_ basis for arguing that something is inherently right
or inherently wrong.
To try and ground ethics on rationality alone may be akin to searching for
the perpetual motion machine, but maybe a more "universal" ethical system
can be grounded on rationality plus some fundemental human traits like
sociability. I don't know whether this later goal is also impossible or just
extremely difficult.
> Now I *do* have faith that my
> own values are consistent enough that they can be "objectified"
> and that (like you) embryos can be placed on a continuum between
> sperm and fetuses, and also embryos qua embryos (forgetting their
> potential) can be placed somewhere on a continuum between cockroaches
> and dogs. This objectification would consist in showing quantitative
> differences in complexity and processing ability.
I think that feeling that one's values are at least consistent is important.
And as chance or perhaps culture would have it mine probably resemble yours.
But a number of different continuum can be laid out. You nominate complexity
and processing ability. So presumably more complexity and processing ability
is to be valued over less. How then would one value "a new born" against say
Deep Blue or Fritz. The newborn is probably more complex synaptically (and
potentially) but I'm not sure about processing ability? Also what the value
of "kindness" or sociability or friendliness? Also dogs maybe "only animals"
but if I have a dog, my pet is valued by me above its status as mere dog. To
a woman in IVF the embryo resulting is extremely valuable. Value is
multidimensional.
>
> > Or "what 'rights' should society afford with respect to say
> > a healthy or sick adult" to whom we have a "duty" of care?
>
> None, in my opinion. Individuals, families, clubs, and
> churches can take care of their own, and no one is coerced.
Do you mean no rights for the embryo (unless individuals, families etc want
to assume the resonsibility to underwrite rightsfor their own embryos) or no
rights at all such as constitution ones, free speach, free association etc
etc as citizens of the USA?
I wonder if it might actually be counter to a societies interest (and
thereby to the interest of its members) to "acknowledge" no rights at all
for those who are not its members.
A couple of examples: giving animals limited rights - such as a right to
protected from cruelty probably benefits the members of the society (and
perhaps it is for this point and not because of any inherent value of the
animal that its rights are respected).
And acknowledgement of human rights: not to be tortured, not to starve to
death, not to work in conditions hazardous to health - these don't exist yet
internationally. Society is not yet international and those in the outgroup
don't get the same priviledges as those in the ingroup.
Maybe this is a root problem. Maybe the world is too full of people with too
little to lose for the safety of those in the US and in the West.
Anders pointed me towards a good artcle by Greg Burch that seats the "tit
for tat"/prisoners dilemma model in an extropic context. (Greg Buch's text
about extrosattvas http://users.aol.com/gburch3/extrostv.html).
The idea of tit for tat works well between individual "players" likely to
encounter each other again but I think it may be too simple for larger
groups. For instance Bin Laden or a previous Japanese Emporers or cult
leaders may use something like a "pawn sacrifice" strategy avoiding the tit
for their tat by administering the tat through proxies or pawns that they
are willing to sacrifice.
>From the standpoint of self-interest it may be that we in the west will need
to come to the recognition that we need to remove the number of "pawns"
available to be sacrificed in the most efficient manner. This may involve us
sacrificing some of our own rights, accepting higher taxes etc, to get us
greater security (which incidently gets them say better education - to the
level where they are less likely to play kamikazi or suicide bomber).
Perhaps the best point to attack those who use pawn sacrifice as a strategy
is to educate the pawns. If the pawns have nothing to lose you can probably
keep cutting of the heads of the leaders indefinately only to see one of the
more innovating pawns get promoted into the vacancy.
>
> Yeah, one of the most insidious facets of "rights" is that to
> acknowledge a wide range of beings or classes of people as
> having certain inalienable rights---that is, that it is simply
> *unacceptable* for them to not enjoy those "rights---, is to
> warrant the intercession by force of a powerful government to
> guarantee those "rights". Thus it becomes a tool of those who
> wish to regiment and regulate society.
Given that to compete or to cooperate seems to be a fundamental choice open
to any sentient agent at almost any time, and that people can choose to be
traders or thieves doesn't it necessarily follow that if we are not to spend
all our time warding off raiders we need to have some sort of regime to
spare us the personal trouble? I guess I'm saying I think we are more free
in Western societies with governments and armies and a policeforce than we
would be without these things. Even though the amount of freedom we might
achieve has probably not peaked it seems we are mostly moving in the right
direction.
Maybe we are nearing a "local peak" though in terms of freedoms, in that
maybe we can't push the global capitalist system too much further without
getting a global society underneath it because there are getting to be too
may prospective "pawns" and raiders who can see over the fence and think
they want some of what we have (they have almost nothing to lose their hopes
are all in the next world anyway) and so they'll take what they can if we
don't share. Maybe we should share not because its right but because its
smart.
>
> > I wonder if you'd agree with the notion that in
> > secular societies there are no rights except that
> > which are underwritten by society's members to
> > accept responsibility to uphold them.
>
> Yes.
>
> > Of course in large secular societies the means of underwriting
> > or formalizing the agreement to protect each others right is
> > the law. I would add it is not enough for society to want to
> > uphold rights of its citizens it must have some realistic
> > capacity to do so.
>
> Absolutely correct. Yet how is that capacity to be determined?
> Right away we enter into the intractability of calculating
> societal eventualities. (In a recent thread on socialism, for
> example, Anders and others discoursed on the incalculability
> of social planning.)
I'm not sure. But if money is not a universal currency valued by all,
perhaps life is. IE. Perhaps instead of gross domestic product we should be
measuring something like gross domestic health.
Or better put another way perhaps one can only value things while one is
alive. So life is the first value. Yet we are born dying. Resources (such as
money) which are directed toward extending life (and shoring up the first
most fundamental value which is necessary for a person to have others) are
measurable. But more money doesn't map exclusively to a society having a
greater capacity to bestow longer (quality) life on its citizens. Smarts
count too. Education. Efficient systems like FDA (or not).
The value to support is the one we have in common. That we each value our
lives.
In relation to social planning either we do it (with varying degrees of
skill and accuracy as we are able) or we wash our hands of it deeming it all
too hard and impossible. Although we can recognize that certain aspects of
life are chaotic and virtually impossible to model, I don't think anyone
really chooses the second option of not planning or modelling at all. We all
live in societies that engage in planning and modelling to some extent or
degree already.
>
> Evolution supplies the answer. It is beyond human ability,
> even with the aid of arbitrarily advanced AIs to foresee
> the trajectories of societies which contain as elements
> those very humans and AIs. But experiments can always be
> done in exploring the landscape of possibilities. The U.S.
> has a marvelous set-up in that in principle 50 experiments
> can be carried on at the same time without too much
> variation in culture.
>
> > From this I'd extrapolate that whilst we may grant animals,
> > fetuses, embryos certain rights, we can't realistically grant
> > them the same rights as full social citizens
>
> Yes. One of few the admirable qualities of the United
> Nations is that its architects understood power. It was
> designed so that the most powerful countries would be
> able to veto actions it takes. This hardly sprang from
> idealism, but, on the contrary, from a recognition of
> practical necessity. Again, I return to the theme that
> granting enormous rights to animals or trees is not in
> accord with the realities of power, and such a program
> really only serves to reallocate power to certain elites
> or governments who can rule in the name of the voiceless
> "masses" of animals, trees, or other classes of beings,
> e.g., proletarians, that the elites in reality look down
> upon.
>
> > we can't realistically grant them the same rights as
> > full social citizens because if we do what results
> > is a situation where to honor those rights more needs
> > to be drawn from the social reservoir of responsibility
> > than the societies citizens were able to put in, and as a
> > consequence, the honouring of some rights like treating
> > spare IVF embryos, or animals as the equivalent to persons,
> > undermines the social contract because society will not
> > have the capacity to underwrite its promised rights
> > to persons.
>
> Quite so.
>
> > This is what makes me uneasy about the notion of secular
> > societies talking of god given rights. Secular societies
> > cannot yet underwrite the size of the payments that are
> > promised in god given rights.
>
> Ah, but that is part of the plan.
The plan?
>
> > Secular societies don't have gods in their membership
> > empowered to put up the resourcing for such rights. So
> > perhaps what happens is that they, secular societies,
> > try and fail and as a consequence are worse place to
> > underwrite those rights that are human sized rights.
>
> Well, that's what's always happened in the experiments
> tried so far. Programs to entitle "the masses" with
> vastly more rights than they've ever had before---or
> as you would write, with more than can be sustained---
> end up depriving everyone of power except those at the
> very top, of course. Their urges to "remold" society
> proceed apace.
>
> > Increasingly I'm seeing questions of rights and
> > morality not as where do we draw the line but
> > around whom do we draw the circle. If we caste
> > the circle too widely and try and bring animals
> > into it, for instance, not just humans, then
> > perhaps we have less resources to back the rights
> > of people. Sort of how much should we spend
> > protecting white rhinos sort of argument.
>
> It stands to reason.
Heres a scenario then. There has always been in-groups and out-groups and
frictions at the borders that seems be a fact of life. But there seems no
reason why we could not have concentric circles with the innermost having
the most societally underpinned rights and the outermost having the least.
In these outer circles are animals who have a right not to be treated cruely
but not not to be eaten if they not somebody elses property etc. The merit
of conceptualising in circles is that circle are bound space of finite
volume just as rights are limited freedoms that are underpinned by a finite
(albeit growing) capacity of a societies members to assume responsibility to
underwrite them. We can conceptualise increaseing the size of the circle
(with greater resourcing, better technology etc we create more wealth and
democracy disperses it but to its citizens - the in-group not the out-group
unless it deliberately choose to allocate some "rights" resourcing). Point
is at all times whilst the diametre of the circles have the capacity to
expand or contract they are finite. There are concentric circles (arbitray
number) because not all creatures (nor all forms of human life - cells,
sperm, embryo, fetus etc) have the same rights.
The rationale for placing some creatures in the outer circles say animals
(sperm, embryos etc) that don't contribute to the societies capacity to
underwrite rights is that they can therefor only receive rights at a net
loss from the inner circle which makes creates rights through creating the
capacity to underwrite them. Similarly humans outside the society that don't
contribute do not get parity with the society members but they are (in the
interests of the society) afforded some rights. The books always balance
though. That would be the whole point. No rights are asserted or recognized
unless its clear that the rights are underpinned by real capacity to be
responsible. And the allocation of rights, the number of concentric circles
etc would be negotiated rationally.
I have not considered how this would work practically, I've been thinking
about fixing what doesn't work currently, that is rights such as so called
god given or inalienable rights that are not underwritten (or underwritable)
by responsibility.
>
> > One thing though, if we only acknowledge rights in
> > law, then that would seem to beg the question 'Was
> > the principle legislated not a moral "right" before
> > it was given legal form?'
>
> "Acknowledging" might be the wrong word. But I like
> "conferring" even less. I do like the default condition
> to be *maximum liberty*, and so don't like the idea of the
> state "granting" rights, but you've pointed out a problem
> with it "acknowledging" rights too.
You probably get more liberty with a well run state (that protects you from
bandits and predators) than without it. Within it you can improve it.
Possibly we could see the state "granting" rights like a central bank
issuing money. The state doesn't own the rights the rights are collectively
owned by the citizens of the states who provide the resources and assume the
responsibility for underwritting them. The state administrates things.
>
> > And, if so, don't moral rights exist?
>
> That seems ontologically incorrect. No one can show
> you a "right", even the most partisan enthusiast.
True. But I think of rights more as a sort of credit note of a mutual
promise with the responsibility being the payment. And the books have to
balance (not always for individuals - we can choose as a society to carry
our sick and wounded (or not), to be charitable to animals or not, to those
outside our society or not - but the books of the society as a whole must
balance or there is no credit behind the rights. And then the social
contract is broken and individuals cease to trust the society in which they
are a part and the basis of the society is undermined.
>
> > I guess I'm saying I accept there can be no rights
> > without responsibilities but that I'm not sure that
> > to have rights you always have to have formal laws.
> > Perhaps agreements are enough?
>
> Yes, certainly agreements are enough. Just consider
> for example very small societies. But I think it wise
> to avoid talk of "rights" entirely.
I have a similar feeling about words like faith and belief. However society
uses the word rights quite a lot. If the word "rights" is too poorly
grounded in general discourse but relates in some contexts to real problems
worth solving perhaps we should try to ground it.
How about a right is "something" a member of a society receives as a result
of his/her membership in the society and his/her contribution to the
reservoir of social responsibility from which such rights are drawn.
Brett
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