This is a logically incorrect statement. The Cheetah has no choice but to kill something to survive. It lacks the tools or the conciousness to find alternatives to hunting other animals thus it has every right to kill the baby Thompsons Gazelle if that is what it has to do to survive. Humans are a completely different matter. We don't need to kill something else to survive (There are many alternatives). That ability to choose is what gives us merely the right to eat something. We can have a steak or a salad or tofu if we like. The metaphor doesn't logically follow the human experience. I do agree with your analysis of a "right" on an abstract level of thought but in a realistic level one can't look at the world in said manner or else civilization collapses. Just out of curiosity, have you read Starship Troopers? Your logic is very similar to Heinlein's man drowning in the ocean analogy.
I disagree. Giving the cheetah the right to take down the gazelle is anthropomorphizing the situation. The cheetah does not, and could not understand the concept of right. Therefore the idea does not exist in the world of the cheetah or the gazelle for that matter. The concept of rights exists only for humans because we have created it. It does not exist autonomously outside of our construct. The cheetah has no more right (or lack thereof) to hunt than the gazelle has to run. There are no rights (or wrongs) in the animal world. Rights are an artifact of man. Remove us and they do not exist.
That would still negate the metaphor. Since we are talking about changing the world from the human perspective rights as humans see them must be taken into account. Even if the cheetah has no rights the fact that humans construct rights for themselves gives them to us thus rights and choice must be taken into the equation of changing to world. You can't force a change you can only propose the change and see how many choose to abide by it.
Nope. I continue to disagree. The metaphor stands, because the human experience is only one infinitely small sliver of reality. The cheetah’s reality is also infinitely small, but significantly more representative. Rights change from time to time and from place to place and with situation. Murder is the most heinous of crimes, but killing someone in your own defense is pardonable and often lauded. Hence the construct is amorphous. Even in physics, we argue whether human perception has anything to do with the way the universe works. Does an infinity of new universes split off every time we make a decision? It is the latest argument in the theory of the multiverse. I say that this is egotistical rubbish. Rights do exist within the equation of the human experience, I will give you that. But only within that extremely limited equation, and that equation is ephemeral at best. We too shall pass one day. And our coming and going will have been so quick that the universe will not have noticed. Hence everything that we think is real will go with us and only the autonomously real will remain.
I agree with just about everything your saying but I fail to see how that makes rights "rubbish." The possibility every choice we make spawns a new universe would not negate the right to choose but only makes it much more important as that would support the human ability choose as having a great deal of meaning. Besides we are talking about changing the world from the human perspective not the fundamentals of the universe. We're talking world peace or ending hunger all of which are human problems thus tied down by our preceptions. The only point I try to make is that if one had the ability to completely change the human experience (Which is what I took this thread as meaning) doesn't mean one has the authority or the right to decide the rights of everyone else. We aren't talking abstract philosophy about changing quantum physics or the universe just the human experience. We define our experience and no one individual has the authority to force his/her definition on everyone else.
Lord of Hats, I do hope you realize that I am only arguing this point as vehemently as I am because you argue well, and I appreciate your skill. The original question concerning whether we have the right to do such-and-such just because we can do such-and-such caused me to break the equation down to its constituent parts. I have often found that in arguing a point, we (the greater we) focus on what I call peripheral issues. Example: Is abortion a problem, or is the real problem the fact that adults have a difficult time talking to their children about sex and we have allowed the media industry to bombard us with the message that if you ain’t boinkin’ yer’ brains out, then you are a spaz, followed up with the natural urge to procreate that does kick in just around the time that teens start to get into trouble. What is the real core issue? Abortion? There are precursors to the problem/question that make me say no, it is not the problem; it is the end result of other issues which we either ignore or choose not to tackle. (for the love of all things holy, no one continue the above train of thought; it is an academic example of cause and effect only) Back to the original question… The right to do something depends on so much subjectivity that it becomes a pointless argument. It is as much philosophy and metaphysics as it is mass hallucination. Yet, the question seems pertinent and often asked. So what gives? I say take apart the dynamic of what a right actually is in the greater scheme of things. In the universe larger than we wee humans, does a right actually have autonomous reality? Does it exist if you pluck us out of the equation? I argue that no, it does not. From a purely mathmatical perspective, this one negative response proves the equation false.
As do you Wreybies, and I also appreciate your skill. Its always fun when you can have a real logical debate with someone who really knows their stuff without it devolving into an insulting contest . You're methodology is certainly a good way to look at issues and I do understand your logic. The reason we go in circles is most likely that we're operating on two different thought lines (only slightly different let me say). We both dissolve issues into their parts but like an abstract thinker you choose to ignore factors that are irrelevant to the grand scheme of things (Nothing wrong with that. In many cases its most likely a better method of thinking of issues.) I like to break things down like a Java Program (Nerd Warning XD). We got the public superclass "Universe" and underneath universe we have many subclasses that take things from universe that apply to them and adding more things to themselves. For me, Humanity is a subclass of a subclass of a subclass of the superclass. Humanity itself then has its own parameters, one of which is the public class Human Rights. Human rights has no effect on anything but Human and all its related subclasses. It goes down and only down and can't leave the human class to effect anything else as everything else is unrelated to humans directly. (Sorry i've been waiting to get a Java metaphor into a debate for ages XD. I really do have the mind of a programmer.) As such I take issues break them down and only look at those things that directly involve the issue. In that matter I take anything remotely related to humanity as being vital to the question of changing the world as it relates to humanity. So i find it impossible to consider the situation without considering the construct of human rights. I think we're following the same line of thought but organizing thought in two different directions which end with different logical conclusions. Hence why we go in circles. You do indeed argue well Wreybies which is a rare thing in the world today.
Yes, I do think we were arguing similar points from different perspectives. One of the things I dig about this forum is the well mannered nature in which an academic argument can actually take place. Go to any other forum and give a provocative point of view and watch how quickly the whole things turns into a massive F-bomb assault. I also realize that I have a habit of being that guy who comes into the argument and tries to point out that no party is correct because the question being asked is fundamentally flawed and can thus have no conclusions that have any meaning. I’m a Pisces, what can I say. I hate answers, I love questions. Honestly, I can appreciate the logic of your argument as well. Would that life could so cleanly fit into either of our systems of logic, aye?
I think it's the main attraction of this forum. I have yet to see thread in this forum degenerate to anything but dead. @lordofhats: I apply programming logic to everything too. Just a different language.
lol. Programmers ftw XD. Which language may I ask? I know C/C++, Java, and a we bit of Unix. That's a 100% true statement XD.
Lots of flaming (not major flaming but a little more than usual for wf.org) and heated arguement. Boy you should have seen people go at it XD (including myself before i really mellowed out about the subject last year).
I find it's always a bad idea to get into a discussion about religion unless it is with another person that shares the same views as you. In my experience it always becomes chaotic. It's an endless argument that doesn't have a winning side so people get worked up and things go down hill from there. Talking about God is risky business!
Exactly lol. That's why I prefer to just not talk about it. I like a good stimulating debate - but religion is a topic with a bottomless pit. You just keep falling and falling without ever hitting the ground. Discussions about God are like the vomit from the motion sickness that comes back and hits you in the face -- sour lol. And thanks I'm quite fond of it as also. Well, obviously. o_o
But can you, in fact, prove that anything has autonomous reality? Can you prove that anything exists independently and exoteric of yourself? While rights may be a human construct, could it not be argued that our world is a human construct? To say that something exists autonomously requires the existence of a static universe/reality. How can a static reality be proven through the distortion of preconception, perception, and the human mind? Are they truly distortions, or is reality merely a subjective experience, a creation of the mind? Does the mind exist? At the heart of all accepted facts lie requisite assumptions. Can you say, without a doubt, that change exists autonomously--that it is not merely a product of your higher consciousness? Consensual reality can be entirely stripped away through the exploration of consciousness and the transgression of conventional awareness. How do we explain this? How do we explain experiences that seem more palpable than "reality" itself? These questions are not those of rhetoric, but merely those of contemplation. Your world is a product of perception. Color (as you know it) does not exist in the "physical world" (assuming that there is such a thing). There is only electromagnetic energy. Color is the fabrication of your mind's interpretation of a sliver of the electromagnetic spectrum. Of course, even these statements come with the basic assumption of a static reality extrinsic to myself. If we are to say that some things are nothing more than a social/human construct, whilst others exist autonomously, we must make the assumption that this consensual reality is not a mere collective phantasm. This is fodder for thought. All that is left, is the ineluctable "running in circles." But "in the end" (if there is an end), maybe we all are just running in circles.
If it is, would it be different? Effectively, whether reality exists or not it's irrelevant. Like free will, the illusion of existing is in itself sufficient for humans.
I also have to say I believe our world... or said 'reality' is made up of our perception. Although I'm way too tired and frankly lazy to really get into it. So I'm just going to say "I agree". I know, I'm so deep.
If we are to argue that rights are nothing more than a subjective human construct, then we must consider the possibility the our world is nothing more than a subjective construct. If nothing truly exists, nothing is relevant, but nothing is irrelevant. If you remove us, does anything exist? Does our perception of existence come to fruition through our conscious awareness? The history of the universe beyond ourselves would suggest otherwise, but is history (as we know it) not a human construct?
I think our 'rights' are a human construct of something that already exists within us. An identification that we can emotionally connect with. Human beings as thinking intelligences need to be able to identify with the things around them. We have to put a label on everything and make it as if it were solid. Our emotions... our soul, human nature. That is our existence. Our mind is merely the perception of it. Everything within the mind and outside of it is a construct of that. I think. Something like that. I'm really too brain-dead to be allowed to even be having a discussion such as this one right now. I'm probably sounding ridiculous or high on something.
Without our conscious awareness, our minds perpetually assign properties to our external world in an attempt to create order out of entropy.
