I’m trying to think of any semi logical argument why people shouldn’t have human rights, and I’m struggling. Best I can think of is the kind of Aristotlean argument against democracy and in favor of hierarchical society.
Goes something along the lines of, if we have enshrined “human rights”, if we have human rights as a concept, then that draws attention to the fact that we have them. It would be better to have it be the case that what we call “human rights” are so defaulted to, as a concept, that we need not even refer to them at all semantically. We should get rid of the term “human rights”, get rid of the conceptualization of it, but then still have the thing itself while not thinking of it at all. We have the concept so ingrained, that there is no reference to it. It would be better, if it were so ingrained, as so it couldn’t possibly be contested.
I think probably supporting arguments would be something along the lines of like, you only really need human rights when you create situations in which you are presented with a detestable action in the first place which must be opposed. A state of affairs which must be defined and then opposed. Or, a state of affairs which must be kind of withheld, and then human rights are to be defined as a default. Sort of like, ancient society encounters slavery as a concept, then they need to define their contract of human rights and build it around slavery. Is it the right of all people to not be slaves, or only the right of some people to not be slaves? Contrast that with a society which hasn’t encountered slaves ever, or has no need for them, and then that question doesn’t make any sense, and so the idea of having a “human right to not be a slave” doesn’t really make any sense to implement, in that situation. It’s a superfluous concept.
Then you would argue that the society whose conditions will lead them to exist naturally without slaves, is a better society, even if it’s only by happenstance, than the society that kind of has to deal with the question of slaves because they’ve naturally been led to a path where they’re even having to make that decision to begin with.
Which possibly makes sense, and points towards root causes as maybe being the things to be combated in the overarching state of affairs, rather than like, just kind of slapping “everyone should have these human rights” on things and then pretending they’ll be okay, or trying to work that backwards into the situation without having solved the root causes, right.
But more realistically I think it’s probably not something you can predict in advance, the situation of, slaves or no slaves. To slave or not to slave. A society encounters that by happenstance, it’s really hard to predict, and even if a society were to predict that as a future set of conditions, they’d still have to grapple with the question and create a value set that either says, full slave society, or, no slave society, but we kind of just stay right here and don’t change too much, or we change the minimal amount, or like. Okay, how could we change it to avoid slaves. It still requires a value set and a grappling with that question, even if you could possibly see it coming. Probably you’re not even able to fulyl process the consequences of that question, because those things haven’t really happened yet. You might just hear slaves, in a pre-slave society, and be like “oh yeah that’s probably fine” and not realize how bad it is, or whatever.
and this is the reason why we question why people should have rights. Because it turns out, people should. And there are a lot of rights people don’t currently have.
Questioning why you should, often leads to instances where an existing non right, is brought up, talked about, and then people may decide it should actually be a right, the right to die for example. Medically assisted death.
And besides, it has the benefit of forcing you to think for yourself, which often forces you to think about the underlying reasons as to why you believe something, which pushes you to find a reason to believe it, and if done sufficiently. Leads to a very stable principle base, leading to very consistent, and fair beliefs. Though unfortunately this requires you to think about particular things most of the time, trans rights for instance. But like i said, it leads to me believing that people should be able to do what they want, because having more options at your disposal, leads to a happier more complete life, that you will be capable of getting more out of.
I’m trying to think of any semi logical argument why people shouldn’t have human rights, and I’m struggling. Best I can think of is the kind of Aristotlean argument against democracy and in favor of hierarchical society.
I have an argument, but it’s kind of a dumb one.
Goes something along the lines of, if we have enshrined “human rights”, if we have human rights as a concept, then that draws attention to the fact that we have them. It would be better to have it be the case that what we call “human rights” are so defaulted to, as a concept, that we need not even refer to them at all semantically. We should get rid of the term “human rights”, get rid of the conceptualization of it, but then still have the thing itself while not thinking of it at all. We have the concept so ingrained, that there is no reference to it. It would be better, if it were so ingrained, as so it couldn’t possibly be contested.
I think probably supporting arguments would be something along the lines of like, you only really need human rights when you create situations in which you are presented with a detestable action in the first place which must be opposed. A state of affairs which must be defined and then opposed. Or, a state of affairs which must be kind of withheld, and then human rights are to be defined as a default. Sort of like, ancient society encounters slavery as a concept, then they need to define their contract of human rights and build it around slavery. Is it the right of all people to not be slaves, or only the right of some people to not be slaves? Contrast that with a society which hasn’t encountered slaves ever, or has no need for them, and then that question doesn’t make any sense, and so the idea of having a “human right to not be a slave” doesn’t really make any sense to implement, in that situation. It’s a superfluous concept.
Then you would argue that the society whose conditions will lead them to exist naturally without slaves, is a better society, even if it’s only by happenstance, than the society that kind of has to deal with the question of slaves because they’ve naturally been led to a path where they’re even having to make that decision to begin with.
Which possibly makes sense, and points towards root causes as maybe being the things to be combated in the overarching state of affairs, rather than like, just kind of slapping “everyone should have these human rights” on things and then pretending they’ll be okay, or trying to work that backwards into the situation without having solved the root causes, right.
But more realistically I think it’s probably not something you can predict in advance, the situation of, slaves or no slaves. To slave or not to slave. A society encounters that by happenstance, it’s really hard to predict, and even if a society were to predict that as a future set of conditions, they’d still have to grapple with the question and create a value set that either says, full slave society, or, no slave society, but we kind of just stay right here and don’t change too much, or we change the minimal amount, or like. Okay, how could we change it to avoid slaves. It still requires a value set and a grappling with that question, even if you could possibly see it coming. Probably you’re not even able to fulyl process the consequences of that question, because those things haven’t really happened yet. You might just hear slaves, in a pre-slave society, and be like “oh yeah that’s probably fine” and not realize how bad it is, or whatever.
and this is the reason why we question why people should have rights. Because it turns out, people should. And there are a lot of rights people don’t currently have.
Questioning why you should, often leads to instances where an existing non right, is brought up, talked about, and then people may decide it should actually be a right, the right to die for example. Medically assisted death.
And besides, it has the benefit of forcing you to think for yourself, which often forces you to think about the underlying reasons as to why you believe something, which pushes you to find a reason to believe it, and if done sufficiently. Leads to a very stable principle base, leading to very consistent, and fair beliefs. Though unfortunately this requires you to think about particular things most of the time, trans rights for instance. But like i said, it leads to me believing that people should be able to do what they want, because having more options at your disposal, leads to a happier more complete life, that you will be capable of getting more out of.