RE: The United States has not spent $ 300 million a day on war in Afghanistan.
August 26, 2021 at 3:29 pm
(This post was last modified: August 26, 2021 at 3:30 pm by HappySkeptic.)
(August 26, 2021 at 1:51 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Yes, it's very easy for people to get things wrong - for me but not for thee - but...again, do you believe that absent some creator there are no human rights? If you don't, then what sense does it make to say that liberal democracies are predicated on the truth of that untrue claim? Is the universality of human rights a useful fiction?
There are no human rights in a Platonic sense. There are feelings and desires that we may agree on, as human beings. If you believe that our wants for ourselves constitute "human rights", then I won't disagree - but I think everyone will have a different list (some very long). For instance "gay rights" likely won't be on it, as most people aren't gay, and yet I believe in it strongly. We have got to gay rights only recently (although being gay has been accepted in cultures of the past), and they don't exist in many countries.
Every category of philosophy we use is a fiction, in the sense that we created it. We tell ourselves a story about how the world is, and how it ought to be. That "myth" of our culture determines what we will fight for and become. Human rights is definitely a "useful fiction", though I think it is rooted in our common humanity.