What are Natural Rights?
I
This is a subject I have not researched at all, though it must have an enormous literature. Not knowing this literature, however, may actually be an advantage, since so much of that literature must inevitably consist of self-important bafflegab. The reason I say this lies in my “naturalism.” The familiar meaning of “naturalist” is that of a person devoted to the scientific study of nature. I’m clearly not one of those. The second, rarer, use of the term is for a philosopher who believes that there exists nothing beyond nature. I am one of those. So, what, in particular, does this metaphysical view entail.
The first and obvious entailment is that there are no “super”-natural entities, and this, sadly, includes God. I’m not sure, though, that faith in the form of non-rational belief does not still allow God to be non-rationally believed in. This is a difficult question and requires much time and reflection. The genuine benefits of civilized God-belief to an evolved culture make me wish quite fervently that room can be made within the modern “first” world for a benevolent God (which, to make my biases clear, I take the Judaeo-Christian one to be). Is it possible that only bad faith can allow both rational and non-rational belief to exist within the same person? I suppose so, but in all honesty I’m simply not sure. Thus, following the Cartesian principle, I choose to suspend both rational and non-rational belief on this question, at least for the moment.
The second, and possibly more important, entailment is that there are no non-natural moral properties!
That there are such properties has been held by philosophers as eminent as G.E. Moore and the German Nicolai Hartmann. The view is usually called “Moral Intuitionism” because it necessarily holds that since there are “non-natural” properties, human beings must be endowed with a special faculty (“Moral Intuition”) for perceiving them. On this doctrine, human actions have characteristics or properties not accessible to our commonly agreed-upon sense-organs, but do, however, possess, in addition to those sense-organs, the ability to perceive the (non-natural) properties of “goodness” and “badness.”
Our ordinary language seems to support such a view. We do, for example, speak of a “sense” of humor and it is true that like color or smell it is impossible to explain to a person without the requisite sense what the property in question is like. It isn’t a long reach to making a similar argument for special moral qualities (and special associated “sense”) or aesthetic qualities or, for that matter, religious ones.
Notwithstanding, I’m not convinced that these facts force us to conclude that there are “qualities” in actions which are not a part of nature. What, you might well ask, does it take to be a “natural” quality?
I suggest that that it means that a quality is causally linked to the entire system of objects and properties a large part of which human beings share perceptually. Perceived “redness,” for example, is a “natural” property because it has a physically definable correlate in the form of wavelengths of light between 5000 and 7000 angstroms, and those wavelengths of lights are capable of being affected by other physical existents. “Redness,” thus, is a member in good standing of the community of causally linked natural existents. “Goodness,” in contrast, has no physically definable correlate, and is thus not a “natural” property.
We can conclude from this one of two things: either 1) there are more things in heaven and earth (or at least earth) than we literally perceive, or 2) that while we speak as if there are, this is at most metaphorical speech. I lean to the latter option, thinking that what is actually occurring here is no more than an expression of some common human psychological traits rooted within a tiny disposition towards benevolence. I follow Hume on this matter. It is in this sense that I am a “naturalist.”
II
It also follows from this position that there are no “natural rights.”
The reason is that “rights” are not matters of fact, they pertain to the world of obligations. We usually express this in classes on ethical theory as a distinction between “is” (fact) and “ought” (obligation). Facts are said to be “objective,” i.e. they “hold” independently of human perception or judgment, while obligations are, at the very least, undecided as to status. Being a “naturalist,” I hold that they are not objective in the above sense, that they are fictions, often useful fictions, but fictions nonetheless. They are objective, of course, as fact about what human do in their societies, but this does not make them objective as facts that contain our obligations (outside the scope of a society).
So, what is a right?
To the best of my ability to define, a right seems to be no more than a contractually based promise of service from a society to individuals, whether citizens or others. It resembles, to some extent, the promise that is made by an Insurance company when, for example, one purchases automobile insurance. The company pledges to do something specified in the contract should something else specified in the contract happen to one’s car. Insurance is a promise to perform under certain circumstances; rights are promises to perform under certain circumstances. Understood as promises, rights necessarily involve a promissor and a promissee.
“Rights” are conferred on individuals, the promissees, by a state, the promissor. While the State is not a person and there might be a cavil about a non-person making a promise, we need only remember Louis XIV’s famous remark, l’etat c’est moi. In at least that case, the state was personified in a single person, and it would appear there was no problem with the State promising.
In the most common cases, rights are conferred only on adult citizens, but there is no reason in principle why a state should not confer rights on non-adults or non-citizens as well. Not long ago, children were extended the right to sue and, indeed, Left-wing loons have been recently suggested that rights be conferred on non-humans as well as humans. The animal rights people have been suggesting that animals also be given the right to sue. I don’t know whether they intend the right to extend to insects and/or microbes. Time will tell.
Rights as such seem to emerge directly from social contract theory, the idea that societies gain their cohesion and legitimacy from a contract made within a long forgotten “state of nature” in which every man’s hand was against every man, and “the life of man was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” The original “deal” is thought as having been an agreement to give up individual clubs and pointy sticks in exchange for centralized protection. I guess that’s where the cosa nostra got the idea of selling protection.
Most people are pretty sure that that fabled meeting never actually took place, though I do imagine it vividly as happening in a sun-dappled, wooded clearing, with neanderthally looking people emerging slowly and suspiciously from the surrounding shadows, clutching their pointy sticks. If it didn’t happen, it sure should have. It would make a great movie, and I have some great suggestions for the casting (for another time).
The point, however, is that that protection deal (whether it happened or not) is, as it were, the first right: You have a right not to be poked with a sharp stick or bludgeoned by another. WE, the State, promise you this!
But in that beginning there was another promise made as well, more important than the non-poking promise, and that was the promise that promises would be kept: You have a right to receive whatever another promises to deliver to you. WE, the State, promise you this. Without this promise, no one would have had a reason to believe the protection promise.
The more perceptive among you will notice a bit of circularity here, but fortunately for history, the original assembly of founders in the forest did not include a logician and the deal still went through. The circularity is that the State's guarantee of promises is only as good as the State's own promise.
Now, in marketing the rights that were initially granted someone thought it important to claim on their behalf that they “really existed,” that they were there in the woods the whole time, and that they just needed a deal, a social contract, in order to be “activated.” The PR advisor of the time seemed to think that it would be harder to sell the whole thing if all that could be said for the initial rights was that they were the best that the lawyers could think of. So they claimed that those rights were “natural,” which entailed that they had been “discovered,” not invented.
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
What could be meant by claiming that these are rights that would exist even in the state of nature?
When Oooog jabs his pointy stick into Mooog and kills him, taking LaaLa for his very own, was Mooog’s natural right to life violated (not to mention his natural right to LaaLa)? Perhaps, but no more so than his right to be a lot handsomer than he was, a homo sapiens rather than a Neanderthal, and to be living on a yacht moored off Corfu with a Swiss account of 800 million euros at his disposal.
III
In conclusion, one can say that just about anything exists, but, as we used to say in the
Simplicius,
ReplyDeleteThank you for this follow up post. Your usual eloquence has got me carefully considering the issues. However, I have now known you for a pretty lengthy time and have had many years to consider some of these general propositions.
I still think, notwithstanding everything you've put forth, that there can be objective morality/rights (at least at the very fundamental level), and that while these rights are not "things" that we can sense, they are nonetheless present. To perceive them admittedly requires a leap of faith.
Though, I would also maintain that intuiton does point toward rights just as it does toward perceiving colour. I do think that there are objective facts in the real world that correspond with obligations, and this is where I think Hume was partially mistaken. There is nothing RED in Wave Lengths between 5000 and 7000 angstroms. It just so happens that when this wave length is produced, we happen to see red. Perhaps other species see what we would describe as blue. Perhaps other species still see unicorns, who knows. But I do know that I see red, that some people only see gray, or some variant thereof. Other humans see nothing at all. But when all is said and done, that wavelength is producing redness. I know it, you know it, and the lefties might even know it.
Similarly, while Hume maintains that there are no "vice" molecules inside an act of brutal murder, he acknowledges that observing murder creates a passion in us. Would Hume not agree that the passion it creates will generally be the same time and time again? Could we not say then that just as red has its corresponding wavelength of light, the feeling we call "immorality" has corresponding circumstances?
I grant of course that much of immorality is fluid and relates far more to socialization - but there does seem to be a core set of experiences that are, have always been an will always be objectively right (maybe because we are just made that way, and maybe because God willed it to be so). And of course, I grant that I can't prove that God has given us our basic disposition and morality (and flowing from that morality, basic rights), and so I suppose, I feel silly saying this, but again, it does require a leap of faith.
Should we make this leap of faith? I think so. Because along with the belief in natural rights comes the belief that Man is autonomous and independent, meaning that he can take care of his own affairs for the most part, and does not require the help of the state, other than to provide him with a rule of law so that he may live his life in peace as he pleases.
This belief, it seems to me, is a necessary pre-condition for any free society. For if Man is not autonomous, then there is no longer any good reason why he should be left alone to his own devices. He should be controlled and manipulated, either for his own sake, or for the sake of others. But certainly, he is no longer to be treated as an end unto himself.
The great problem that individualism continually faces is that, once we eliminate the notion of God and natural rights, it becomes increasingly more difficult to justify human independence. Why? Because now we're just animals. We don't have a soul, let alone free will. We have sociologists and behaviourists and materialist historians, each of whom can demonstrate empirically that more often than not, we act in predictable ways. We're all insecure and we're all vulnerable. There is no longer any reason to grant us our rights, and indeed, no reason any longer to deny animals theirs. The contract between the state and the individual becomes one of mostly positive, rather than mostly negative obligations - provide me with health care, education, housing, etc. In other words, give me all the things that any animal would enjoy - comfort.