(July 5, 2014 at 3:34 pm)rasetsu Wrote:(July 5, 2014 at 3:04 pm)Irrational Wrote: I don't think you're getting me. For example, is the right to save a child from drowning a legal right or a "made up right"?
That's covered by the right of bodily autonomy.
I don't care if you draw examples from different nations, but it's patently ridiculous of you to invent examples out of thin air to prove a point at issue with respect to the real world. That's arbitrary, begs the question (by asserting what you need to prove), and does nothing to illustrate your overarching point that, in your view, some rights supercede the rights of conscience and bodily autonomy which Cthulhu mentioned. Not only are such ersatz rights readily dismissed as bollocks, they do nothing to advance the question of whether rights recognized in national law are susceptible to the same objection. If not, then your "made up right" becomes an irrelevant exercise.
(And for what it's worth, I think all rights are indeed "made up." Unfortunately, the majority position is that "rights" refers to a class of objectively existing moral facts about the world. Your entire diatribe about the arbitrariness of rights may be interesting speculation, but it belongs in some other discussion. The only reason we're even discussing it is because you couldn't think up a defensible real world example of a recognized right that supercedes the rights of conscience and bodily autonomy with justification. Even if I admitted your hypothetical "rights" ex hypothesi, they would then fail to justify themselves as being both worthy of recognition and of elevation over these other recognized rights; it isn't as if the entire world has somehow "overlooked" the brilliance of positing such things as rights -- they've been discussed and disregarded previously. Those that made the cut are now law; those that didn't, aren't.)
Right of bodily autonomy is a right I consider to be one of the top important rights. Are you strawmanning me? Or do you say that because you consider the mind/conscience to be part of the body?
Objectively existing moral facts? No, hold on. You're assuming there are objectively existing moral facts. Actually, there aren't any because morality stems from human thought rather than from from nature. As you said, they are all initially "made up".
Also, rights that have been considered and dismissed by certain nations are not necessarily dismissed by other nations. It is also possible they may be considered in the future by the same nations that currently don't consider them as legal rights.
So there's some good thinking in your post, but I think you need to reconsider some of the points you've made.
