Comment by foobarbazqux | Hacker News Reader

Comment by foobarbazqux | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Thanks for explaining, that was quite thorough. I don't understand the distinction between intrapersonal and interpersonal here. Are you essentially saying at least two people have to agree upon something before it's a right, either legal or n/h? But that can't be, because although you can take away my food, clothing, and shelter, you can't take away my belief that I have a human right to those things (i.e. I deserve them), regardless of whether or not anybody agrees with me. Or does it have to do with morals being about my behavior with respect to others, whereas n/h rights would be about others' behavior with respect to me (and others)?

I do understand that it's the absolutists who harp on about n/h rights, I'll try to be more careful about that in the future. It is somewhat absolutist of me to believe that everybody on the planet deserves food, clothing, and shelter in that it's a belief that applies universally, but I won't go so far as to say that you should adopt my beliefs simply because it's somehow incorrect for you to have other beliefs, nor do I expect that our laws will ever satisfy this ideal.

While I can't take away your belief in a human right to something, I can take that something (given sufficient capacity for force). Belief in n/h rights can exist independently of whether or not the rights exist, in the same way that belief in Odin can exist independently of Odin himself.

Though, through morally-guided action you can possibly cause the n/h rights which you believe in (but which don't exist) to be reified as legal rights. Now, given sufficient capacity for force, I may still subvert those rights, but through their codification they have nonetheless gained existence.

The second part of your second paragraph actually closely matches my stance. And, it's precisely the prevalence of (implicit) absolutists who continually frame arguments founded on the assumption that some n/h right or another exists that leads to my irritation when these terms are used (relatively) carelessly. Such arguments are fundamentally flawed and, yet, continue to dominate most discussions concerning politics and economics.

My claim is simply that much as force causes legal rights to exist, belief causes n/h rights to exist. Since you cannot take away my belief (except through brainwashing, but even then I can recover it), you cannot take away my n/h rights.

Or, might makes legally right, belief makes morally right.

It's interesting, because if you look back far enough you'll see I had the opposite argument with somebody else, where I was explaining that force was the only thing that caused legal rights to exist, and he was accusing me of immorality on that basis.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com