tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post114940377285759576..comments2023-10-29T10:32:36.914-04:00Comments on Philosophy, et cetera: Positive and Negative RightsRichard Y Chappellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16725218276285291235noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-1149624217922466142006-06-06T16:03:00.000-04:002006-06-06T16:03:00.000-04:00I guess the negative rights argument doesn’t rest ...I guess the negative rights argument doesn’t rest on that sort of point.<BR/><BR/>If you instead work in the other direction and say "to improve society we need rights", "we need the minimum amount of incidences of enforcements of rules" and “we need simple rules” you will probably end up with almost all negative rights automatically. (Or would you?)<BR/>Then as an indirect philosopher you could argue that the fundamental principle is “negative rights” and any diversion from that will most probably be you just misjudging (and screwing up the lovely world).Geniushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11624496692217466430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-1149623270812816712006-06-06T15:47:00.000-04:002006-06-06T15:47:00.000-04:00Do we provide great effort to make that person's l...Do we provide great effort to make that person's life better? what if (lets say) upon becoming richer he sqanders his wealth and then returns to unbearable torture?<BR/>Or is the solution to teach him to be reasonable?Geniushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11624496692217466430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-1149592808198215062006-06-06T07:20:00.000-04:002006-06-06T07:20:00.000-04:00Hi Alex! I'd missed that embarrassing typo -- than...Hi Alex! I'd missed that embarrassing typo -- thanks.<BR/><BR/>I find it pretty hard to imagine the person who finds a merely relative lack of wealth to be "unbearable torture". But I certainly do think that allowing people to escape the experience of unbearable torture is pretty important! So if allowing someone to have relatively unhindered access to material property <I>really was</I> the only possible way to achieve this, then that would seem pretty important too. (They should try to get a job before taking from my holdings, of course. But if all else fails, I could hardly begrudge them for taking those steps necessary to end their torture. The harm done to me is minimal in comparison.)<BR/><BR/>The CRP is fairly vague, as you note: exactly <I>what</I> counts as "reasonable" here? There will certainly be unclear or even indeterminate cases, as I conceded to Fiona in class. But so long as the extreme case of basic subsistence is clear enough, that should suffice for my core argument. It might not establish that everyone has the right to be joyously well-off. But even a positive right to the most basic subsistence is a pretty significant result, it seems to me. So I'm happy enough to establish that for now.Richard Y Chappellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16725218276285291235noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-1149577814142075762006-06-06T03:10:00.000-04:002006-06-06T03:10:00.000-04:00Oh sorry, by the way, it's me, AlexOh sorry, by the way, it's me, AlexAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-1149577757622352482006-06-06T03:09:00.000-04:002006-06-06T03:09:00.000-04:00Hi Richard -- see I am posting on your blog. All i...Hi Richard -- see I am posting on your blog. All in all your essay reads very well. Where you have:<BR/><BR/>> So we are naturally lead from a minimal commitment to negative rights to a more substantial commitment to positive duties. <BR/><BR/>You mean 'led' not 'lead', right? I imagine you might have already picked that up.<BR/><BR/>I can't really think of many right-libertarian counterarguments to this. It seems to be the point where somebody like Nozick resorts to economic history and the failure of most redistribution schemes. Perhaps I am unjust to him. Most libertarians would probably like the idea that you have just enough redistribution so that nobody has to exercise their freedom to be Robin Hood. <BR/><BR/>Mightn't there might be a problem in your conflict resolution scheme, though? You say that subsistence rights are a precondition for a legitimate system of property rights. But 'subsistence rights' mean we have to provide the poor with enough to make it unreasonable for them to think it just to steal. Some might say: How much poverty is it reasonable to endure without resorting to theft? Could the ignominy of poverty be near to unbearable for somebody? Could you imagine somebody perfectly reasonable who was simply biologically or psychologically consituted so as to find being even a little less rich than his or her peers an unendurable torture? You might then say you have to leave out differences in subjective experience and base the system on what the average reasonable person could expect. And libertarians might set the benchmark for what the 'average' person should expect in welfare very, very low indeed.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-1149564186620904582006-06-05T23:23:00.000-04:002006-06-05T23:23:00.000-04:00Yeah, I treat rights and duties more or less inter...Yeah, I treat rights and duties more or less interchangeably. My core argument is essentially that duties of non-interference entail duties of positive rectification for the inescapable harms we all do.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-1149515682139950032006-06-05T09:54:00.000-04:002006-06-05T09:54:00.000-04:00I've never understood how a positive right isn't j...I've never understood how a positive right isn't just a renaming of a duty, an attempt to translate deontology into rights-based talk.SteveGhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12340421785402103210noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-1149477929107310232006-06-04T23:25:00.000-04:002006-06-04T23:25:00.000-04:00"the only way to show that they are harming me and..."<I>the only way to show that they are harming me and owe me redress is to first show that I had a positive right to the thing they possess</I>"<BR/><BR/>No, it suffices to show that they performed an action which made you worse off than you would have been had they refrained from so acting. That's a plain definition of "harmful interference" -- no need to presuppose "positive rights" here.<BR/><BR/>Anyway, misreadings aside, I take it you accept the actual argument as clarified in my above comment?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-1149465049656326672006-06-04T19:50:00.000-04:002006-06-04T19:50:00.000-04:00Yes, your initial acquisition argument does need s...Yes, your initial acquisition argument does need some clarification. As it stands, somebody has stopped me from becoming a major shareholder in Microsoft. Bill gates aint selling! Any person possessing something is stopping me from possessing it, and the only way to show that they are harming me and owe me redress is to first show that I had a positive right to the thing they possess, which is the one thing the libertarian is very unlikely to accept.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-1149441849628815982006-06-04T13:24:00.000-04:002006-06-04T13:24:00.000-04:001) [ J.P. Sterba] technically - can you use terms ...1) [ J.P. Sterba] technically - can you use terms like "poor" and "rich" on opposite sides of universilizable statements?<BR/>Maybe this sort of nit picking can destroy the whole principle. <BR/>2) And the other question I guess is how does one determine "surplus" and "basic". careful defining could get any result you wanted.<BR/>Maybe it is just colloquial.<BR/><BR/>> The Conflict Resolution Principle thus establishes that the poor cannot be morally required to make such a sacrifice.<BR/><BR/>this becomes part of your conclusion I would have thought. (ok it probably undermines the confidence of the article but personally I like lacking confidence)<BR/>given one accepts "The Conflict Resolution Principle" then...<BR/>The problem being many people don't seem to care about that principle. And that may even "work" for example it is in a sense unreasonable to expect a man to go quietly to the lethal injection chair - but many people do expect that and many prisoners do it.Geniushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11624496692217466430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-1149427540613181932006-06-04T09:25:00.000-04:002006-06-04T09:25:00.000-04:00Hi Beretta, thanks for the feedback.You'll notice ...Hi Beretta, thanks for the feedback.<BR/><BR/>You'll notice that I accommodate your first point after introducing H&S's claims by qualifying them with the clarificatory quote from Gewirth (“the ground or justification for the positive assistance in question is to see to it that potential offenders refrain from the prohibited actions”). So I do acknowledge that H&S merely establish the positive duty to protect negative rights. That's why I need the arguments in the rest of my essay ;-)<BR/><BR/>I may need to clarify my section on initial acquisition. Note that libertarian entitlement theory <I>depends upon</I> having a story about how unowned resources mightly justly become owned in the first place (however far back in history this may have occurred). Otherwise there is no just title for the present owners to inherit. It would be like owning stolen goods -- even if the original thief was someone else, the illicit origin still undermines your present claims of rightful ownership. Now, I argue that there can be no such "story". Any act of original appropriation would harm others. How? By taking away what they had access to. Simple. I don't see your Microsoft analogy -- nobody <I>stopped</I> you from becoming a shareholder, I take it? But if I claim all the food on our island as my own, then I have stopped the other inhabitants from using what they previously had free access to. They may well starve to death. Clearly, I would be harming them by doing this! If it weren't for my appropriating action, they would have had access to the food. Because of my acquisitions, they instead <I>don't</I>. Isn't that then a clear case of harmful interference?Richard Y Chappellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16725218276285291235noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-1149425024697302902006-06-04T08:43:00.000-04:002006-06-04T08:43:00.000-04:00I daresay you start to veer off the tracks when yo...I daresay you start to veer off the tracks when you say "Hence Holmes and Sunstein observe that “all legally enforced rights are necessarily positive rights.”" They <I>claim</I> this, but to say that they observe it suggests that it is a fact, when this has certainly not yet been established.<BR/><BR/>Legally enforced rights are not positive rights just because they are enforced. Force is used to protect negative rights, otherwise the state fails to protect the rights of its citizens. Enforcement is the only positive thing it does, according to the libertarian view that favours only the recognition of negative rights. The right to not be killed is still a negative right because it is still the right to not be imposed upon. In that libertarian view, the state merely represents the people in protecting those negative rights.<BR/><BR/>For a philosopher like Holmes or Sunstein to say that a legally enforced right is not only a positive right, but "necessarily" a positive right is hardly to be expected. The acts of the state are seen as a duty, namely a duty to uphold negative rights. But such hardly converts those rights into positive ones.<BR/><BR/><BR/>Further problems rear their head when you discuss "first aquisition." - <I>"By depriving others of what they would otherwise have access to, the appropriating action constitutes a kind of harmful interference, and so – by the libertarian’s own lights – the actor ought to recompense them accordingly."</I> But this is like saying that since you have fifty dollars which, under different circumstances, I could have had, you are depriving me by having it. But what are you interfering with? An state of affairs that never existed, it would seem! And how can such a thing be interferd with? It's a bit like accusing a person of stealing an imaginary porsche. had things turned out differently, I cold have been a major shareholder in Microsoft. Does it follow - by libertarian lights - that the person who is the major shareholdr in Microsoft owes me something?<BR/><BR/>I'd suggest a much more accurate representation of libertarian philosophy on your part. It's not that I care for libertarianism, but I do care about presenting a case as best you can, and presenting charicatures is never a persuasive way to go.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com