A Really Simple Theory of Moral Rights
What are moral rights? Where do they come from? How do we know what moral rights there ought to be and for whom?
These are potentially complicated questions, which I will dispense with characteristic ease:
Moral rights exist to give the intellectual proletariat a way to participate in debates.
Let’s say you think Charlie should be allowed to do something, but society wants to prevent him from doing it. You are unable to come up with an actual reason as to why he should be allowed to do this thing.
Among the rhetorical tactics at your disposal is to assert that Charlie has a moral right to perform his action. This seemingly shifts the required work to your opponent to show that either the right ought not to be a right (which probably makes your opponent a meanie) or that the right ought not to be given to Charlie (also mean). This bit of verbal kung-fu is available to everyone.
You might object that moral rights are real. And they might be, but to actually convince anyone that the rights you say ought to be rights are rights requires you to answer the questions that opened this post. For you to convince someone that a moral right is real, you must provide some sort of argument. And the arguments provided are typically less than compelling.
Legal rights are not moral rights. Legal rights can exist without justification. In the US, these are determined by the Constitution and interpreted by secret courts issuing secret rulings. Legislators may have had their own senses of what moral rights there ought to be and made them legal by writing them down, but that doesn’t make them any less made up than when you and I do it.
God-given moral rights are similarly problematic. In fact, it makes the whole problem worse, because now instead of merely needing to convince me of the right, you now have to convince me that there is a God, that you are accurately reporting what God says the rights should be, and that God ought to be trusted.
Another rationalization rests on one’s “humanity”. If you’re with fancier company, you’ll hear words like “consciousness” and “sentience” used. “Soul” might come up. But you still need to identify what about a person’s humanity or what about sentience or consciousness or a soul merits a certain right. You have to make clear whether small children, large fetuses, smart monkeys, self-modifying AIs, and the brain dead qualify for these rights and why for each. Even scholars who have dedicated most of their adult lives to forming theories of rights seem to give short shrift to such questions.
The universe doesn’t care about sentience or humanity. Humanity and sentience predate any notion of rights; rights stem from minds, not from the universe. It is incumbent on you to explain why a right should be provided. And if you have to do that, you’ve taken the small problem of whether Charlie ought to be allowed to do something and made it a big problem about the nature of humanity and what it entails. That is the opposite of progress.
I should note that none of this mean that really are no moral rights. There are, indeed people who have attempted to go through the inferential steps necessary to determine what moral rights are. I just haven’t met any. (Peter Singer comes closest that I’ve yet read.) Rather, I assert that most people who assert moral rights assert them in lieu of actually making an argument for whatever they are supporting. Instead it functions as a conversation-stopper the same as answering “magnetism” when asked why a magnet attracts iron. The illusion of an answer is provided, not the illumination of an answer.
Raden Saleh’s Lion attacking a horse
Of course, you should not just apply this dismissal of lazy claims to rights to assertions of the moral rights you don’t like. The assertion that people have a right to health insurance without further justification is just as empty as the assertion that people have the right to free speech or the right to keep a majority of their income or the right to not be punched in the face. Don’t keep the shortcut available for just the rights you like while sending this post to those who advocate for rights you disagree with.
I love this post.
I am expecting vehement dissent.Report
Don’t keep the shortcut available for just the rights you like while sending this post to those who advocate for rights you disagree with.
I have a moral right to do just that! The (God(s)/Goddes(s) of my choice) said so!
(sorry, too busy to be anything more than pithy on this, others will have to offer more substantial comments).Report
Nice post, Vikram.
Just to get some of the language debate out of the way — moral rights (legally) refer to copyright law, and the moral right to control their work. Another definition, probably more appropriate for this discussion, places it as a synonym for natural law.
This is a nice graphic of what ‘moral rights’ might be.
http://www.isu.edu/~baerralp/MoralRights.pdf
I am not proponent of natural law; I believe ‘moral rights’ evolve from those with power in a culture to those without through agitation and social change; they are not fixed. The moral right perceived to be natural in one time (for instance to own other humans) will be perceived as immoral in another; which is why your definition of the right to debate is quite wonderful.Report
Ah, that was an excellent link. I’ve come across most of what’s there, but it’s nice to see it aggregated in such a concise way.
The link does mention “possession criteria”, which I claimed was neglected by most of those who assert rights, even when given the space to expand on their ideas in books. (Perhaps if I read more technical works of philosophy, I’d see that others have addressed these problems.) I also find it interesting how matter-of-factly they dismiss the notion of “human rights”.
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Natural law, shares many of the same problems as God-given law. We humans tend to see purpose in nature where there is none. Nature isn’t happy when a person gets access to clean water or sad when someone is gunned down in the street.Report
I think you should read a spread of natural law philosophers; I think you’d find that a lot of them do ground their theories a lot better than you think they do.Report
Any suggestions on who to pick up first?Report
In all philosophical matters, my first stop is Aquinas, after reading a little Aristotle for context. Agree with him or not, you can’t complain about a lack of rigor. Adler is a good starting point for context about both of them. From what I understand, contemporary Catholic philosopher Robert George has built a natural law philosophy based solely on reason. It’s been said that during the Enlightenment there were as many theories of natural law as there were publishers; Locke had the greatest impact on the US, but his writings were in large part a response to Hobbes. There are a lot of people you could read before writing off all natural law theory as “just so” stories.Report
I am a big fan of Calvin and Hobbes.Report
@pinky
The problem with natural law theories is that they are just prehistoric versions of rule utilitarianism with very bad modal categorisationsReport
I suspect the concept of moral rights probably made more sense in 17th or 18th century England and the United States than they do in 21st century England and the United States. Arguably there more of a united Christianity ruling back then even if many American colonies did make early stabs at Freedom of Conscience/Religion.
I think when people talk about moral rights they are just merely expressing their own internal ideas of what should be considered an axiomatic right. I’m guilty of this. I can express why I believe in Universal Health Care more than my idea of public transport or paid vacation as a human right. But I feel very strongly on FDR’s economic Bill of Rights and why they should be enacted.
What I’ve also noticed over the past few years is liberals getting fed up and pushing back on the idea of what counts as moral. We have been dealing with decades of social conservatives using morality to mean stuff of the bedroom and private lives. Since around 2004, I’ve seen liberals push back and talk about how their morality is about the welfare state and the right of people to have health care, food, safe and non-harassment workplaces, adequate wages, life-work balance, shelter, clothing, etc. Basically a life of dignity and decency. I suspect that a large increase in language on moral rights is to push back against conservatives for claiming a monopoly on the words moral and morality.Report
@saul-degraw you last graph reminds me of this (surprisingly) awesome post by Clive CrookWhat it means to be a liberal. It’s a review of Edmund Fawcett’s book, Liberalism: the Left of an Idea, (which I have not read.) Crook enjoyed it, and says:
Seems to go far toward my definition of moral rights; including the disenfranchised in the conversation, rooting out tyranny where it takes root, not matter if it’s government, market, or church; and understanding that it will take root, like a noxious weed.Report
I think when people talk about moral rights they are just merely expressing their own internal ideas of what should be considered an axiomatic right.
Yep. From the Elizabeth Stoker link: “Basically nobody has a moral system. People are generally creatures of moral sentiments.”
If it were me, I’d have revised “moral sentiments” to “moral urges”, but I think she’s more charitable than I am.Report
V,
I approach this from a different place. You said “Let’s say you think Charlie should be allowed to do something, but society wants to prevent him from doing it. You are unable to come up with an actual reason as to why he should be allowed to do this thing.”
I’d say, Charlie wants to do something, but society wants to prevent him from doing it. Come up with a reason why society should be permitted to prevent him from doing it.Report
If I go with the sense of your idea, I think you feel the default should be that Charlie can do whatever he wants, unless there is a reason not to. If no argument is provided on either side, Charlie should be permitted to do what he wants.
I don’t disagree, but I would note that this isn’t how many people would view the situation. They’d say that if the majority want to stop Charlie, they should be allowed to vote on it, and Charlie should be stopped, even if no reason is provided. Of course, that takes us away from morality and towards theories of governance.Report
“I think you feel the default should be that Charlie can do whatever he wants, unless there is a reason not to. If no argument is provided on either side, Charlie should be permitted to do what he wants.”
This was Teddy Roosevelt’s interpretation of presidential powers. It’s how we got the national parks.Report
@vikram-bath
Yes, but you already brought up governance when you talked about “but society wants to prevent him from doing it.” Society, acting as a group.Report
“Among the rhetorical tactics at your disposal is to assert that Charlie has a moral right to perform his action. This seemingly shifts the required work to your opponent to show that either the right ought not to be a right (which probably makes your opponent a meanie) or that the right ought not to be given to Charlie (also mean). This bit of verbal kung-fu is available to everyone.”
This.
I’m going to put on my partisan hat here and make the generalization that a lot of liberals are guilty of this, though they like to substitute ‘universal’ for ‘moral’ (I suspect because the latter sounds a bit too religious).Report
I’m going to put on my partisan hat here and make the generalization that a lot of liberals are guilty of this, though they like to substitute ‘universal’ for ‘moral’ (I suspect because the latter sounds a bit too religious).
My understanding of ‘universal rights’ (as used by groups like the UN) is that they are rights (though not legal rights) that should apply to all individual people, no matter the social mores of any particular culture that might deny certain groups those same rights.Report
The UN declaration of Universal Rights:
http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/Report
@vikram-bath
This is why we need political philosophers.
Some of this stuff is difficult. But there is a lot of good political philosophy out there and your casual dismissal of any justification for rights claims does not do justice to the theories out there. Of course, not all of them work. Perhaps none of them work, but it is not clear that you are equally willing to train the scepticism required to refute those arguments on matters that you are more confident about.Report
casual dismissal
I think that’s a fair way of putting it. I have two outs though. (1) Ido admit that I haven’t read everyone who might have done a sufficient job of articulating a theory of rights. (2) I am largely focusing on how the bulk of people talk about moral rights. Highly technical political philosophers will necessarily make up more than 99% of all the references to rights that the average non-political philosopher will come across.
it is not clear that you are equally willing to train the scepticism required to refute those arguments on matters that you are more confident about.
Yes, that is always a concern, and I have found myself guilty of it more than once.Report
Mike, if you were magically transported back in time a few millenia, to a society where “slavery is wrong” was not axiomatic, how would you go about demonstrating the rightness of that statement? How helpful would it be for you to call freedom from enslavement a “moral right” or “human right” without a pre-existing consensus for that belief?Report
oops, obviously meant to reply to Mike Schilling below…Report
All theories of rights, and moral theories in general, ultimately rest on baseless assertions. The reason you can’t bridge the is-ought gap is that ought is a logical impossibility.Report
Exactly. Between the right of the slaveholder to his property and the right of the slave not to be property lies only a difference of opinionReport
I’m aware you mean that sarcastically, but I know for a fact that you can’t disprove it.Report
You believe that I can’t disprove it. You certainly can’t prove that I can’t prove it.Report
Did slaves have a moral right not to be enslaved?
Obvioulsy, the law did not protect them but allowed them to be enslaved.
A right is just the converse of a duty/obligation. If I have a duty to take care of my chlld, my child has a right to be taken care of.
You might want to read some philosophy.Report
I conceive of rights very differently than this. A “right” may be considered a zone of autonomy, a realm of activity in which I, the holder of the right, may act as I choose. It is an expression of power: the power of the right-holder to act, the lack of power of someone else to do anything about the right-holder’s choice.
For instance, I have a right to speak my mind about politics, at least as against the government, my right corresponds with a lack of power on the part of the government to (legitimately) punish me for speaking. I may not have a right to speak freely in a private sphere, however; my employer may punish me for saying something it does not like (typically, something contrary to the employer’s business interests, like recommending a competitor).
If a “right” necessarily implies a corresponding “duty” on the part of another, then might not that duty be expressed as a duty to do nothing? If so, that’s not much of a duty.Report
Highly technical political philosophers will necessarily make up more than 99% of all the references to rights that the average non-political philosopher will come across.
I hope you mean the opposite of this because it seems to me that the average non-philosopher comes across rights talk from political documents (like the declaration of independence or his or her own country’s constitution or UNDHR or some hack on TV or on an Op-Ed page, or at best, from polemicists*
*who do not care about reasoning rightly, only about saying the right sort of things to convince other people.Report
Sorry, this was in reply to @vikram-bath I don’t know how it ended up hereReport
“This bit of verbal kung-fu is available to everyone.”
This is the only even vaguely apposite statement I can find in the whole piece. The rest seems to be a lot of consensus-obscuring dust raising, centered around the the old sophomoric standby: “you gotta make a good argument to convince me. I am not easily convinced, ergo most arguments are not good.”
Yep, verbal kung fu is easy.Report
AKA No True ScotsmanReport
I confess that I’m not sure I get your point… probably too meta for me.
But. Wasn’t this the gist of MacIntyre’s _After Virtue_ (and other subsequent works)?Report
I’ll say about moral rights the same thing I said about natural law arguments:
“Not everyone who supports Natural Law advocates for disenfranchisement, obviously. Nonetheless, each person who argues for Natural Law unwittingly passes along the seeds of disenfranchisement.”Report
Depends how you see natural law. To my thinking, everyone who doesn’t support natural law unwittingly passes along the seeds of disenfranchisement. Without recognition of a universal right, how do you argue for the right to vote?Report
Another stellar OP Dr. B.
A quote you might recognize:
Mises This book argues that our civilisation depends, not only for its origin but also for its preservation, on what can be precisely described only as the extended order of human cooperation, an order more commonly, if somewhat misleadingly, known as capitalism. To understand our civilisation, one must appreciate that the extended order resulted not from human design or intention but spontaneously: it arose from unintentionally conforming to certain traditional and largely moral practices, many of which men tend to dislike, whose significance they usually fail to understand, whose validity they cannot prove, and which have nonetheless fairly rapidly spread by means of an evolutionary selection – the comparative increase of population and wealth – of those groups that happened to follow them. The unwitting, reluctant, even painful adoption of these practices kept these groups together, increased their access to valuable information of all sorts, and enabled them to be `fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it’ ( Genesis 1:28). This process is perhaps the least appreciated facet of human evolution.Report
My fundamental argument was that morality, if it exists, resides in the whole ability to make choices. Can you choose between X and Y?
I mean, if you ask me “do you want olives on this?”, that’s not a choice at all. The answer is, and will always be, “barf-a-roo”. Given that this is not a choice, it’s silly to argue that it’d be a moral choice (even above and beyond the fact that it’s a matter of taste). It’s a stimulus followed by a response. No choice. No morality.
If, however, you give me the choice of “would you do this thing that will benefit you a little in the short term and also benefit others *OR* would you do this thing that will benefit you a lot in the short term and also harm others”, then I might find myself weighing options. This or that. This or that. How much benefit? How much harm? How many others? That sort of thing.
Now, the conclusion that I reached was that the conclusion that resulted in the ability of more people to make more moral choices was the conclusion that increased morality (and was, thus, more moral). That means, of course, that the immoral choice would be the conclusion that decreased the ability to make choices (in the aggregate).
Of course, this assumes that I am capable of choosing between the two and not just responding to a much more complicated set of stimuli and responses.Report
Good post!
I definitely agree with the position that “rights” are intellectual constructs based upon shared emotional and moral dispositions within humanity that are designed as “conversation stoppers.” My term in previous discussions is that rights are the areas that we have carved out as being “sacrosanct” or beyond discussion. Lines nobody should cross (or fail to fulfill.)
Just to add though, I believe conversation stoppers play an extremely useful role in social life*. An essential one, actually. Rights are a useful construct which play an essential role in coordinating human activity.
Oddly, some of the philosophers who have written on the subject also note that “conversation stoppers” only really work when they are not seen as being conversation stoppers. Daniel Dennet and Richard Joyce both espouse something similar. My take-away from this is that the reason rights and taboos and are so powerful is also why they seem so mysterious.
* alternatively it could be destructive to make rights too broad as it stops too many conversations.Report