How May the Principle of 'Justice as Impartiality' as a Foundation for Ethics be Evaluated?

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Re: How May the Principle of 'Justice as Impartiality' as a Foundation for Ethics be Evaluated?

Post by Stoppelmann »

Other rights that had to be fought for

Women's right to higher education, and in particular the right to obtain a degree of equal quality and content at a university as a man, is in many ways a very recent right. Women's pursuit of an equal, sound and quality education as adults has encountered many obstacles over the centuries: inferior (or even lack of) educational standards for young girls, the belief in women's intellectual inferiority and the fear that an education in non-domestic subjects would not adequately prepare women for their "natural" role as wives and mothers. For the women of a century ago, the fact that 11.7 million women entered university in America in 2016 - the majority of all university entrants - would seem like a miracle. Until the 19th century, women were effectively barred from higher education.

The 19th century saw the flowering of higher education for women around the world. In 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell became the first female doctor in the USA. On her way to medical school, Blackwell received 10 rejection letters and a suggestion to disguise herself as a man in order to be admitted. She rejected the recommendation and wrote: "For me it was a moral crusade. It must be conducted in daylight and with public approval to achieve its goal."

Dozens of women doctors soon followed. Rebecca Lee Crumpler was the first black woman to graduate from medical school in 1864. She then moved to the South to treat freed slaves with her medical knowledge. In 1873, Emily Davies and Barbara Bodichon founded Girton College in Cambridge, an all-women's college, but it was not officially affiliated with the university until 1948. In 1833 Oberlin College was founded, which was mixed-sex from the first class, and in 1871 the first co-educational college course was held at University College London in Political Economy, attended, as the professor in charge noted, by "five ladies who evinced a very intelligent interest in the subject and evidently studied it with care."

Despite these breakthroughs, women continued to face barriers during and after their education. In the 1870s, the University of Edinburgh refused to grant medical degrees to seven women who spent years studying at the medical school. Women who wanted to study in the UK were often referred to, with some sarcasm, as "blue stockings", in reference to the "blue stockings", a group of intellectual women who had banded together in the late 1700s to pursue their studies on their own. In the UK and across the pond, there were a number of activists in the 18th and 19th centuries who argued about how to properly educate women and what higher education was actually for.

Racial segregation through Jim Crow Laws is a dark point in American history that ended far too recently. The slaves were freed in 1873, yet black and white Americans were segregated in living memory. Segregation in the sense of Jim Crow Laws and the physical separation of races in facilities and services ended in 1964. After almost 100 years of increased tensions and racial inequality, President Lyndon B Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in response to the growth of a powerful Civil Rights Movement in the United States.

With only natural rights, this wouldn't have happened.
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Re: How May the Principle of 'Justice as Impartiality' as a Foundation for Ethics be Evaluated?

Post by Belindi »

Natural rights don't exist. GEMorton claimed the Declaration of Independence states that there exist natural rights. But all rights are fiat rights.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are not natural states; life, liberty, and happiness are the norms of some cultures. The newborn animal is more 'natural' than at any subsequent stage of learning. The newborn is frequently killed at birth or soon after. Frequently the newborn is born into slavery. Frequently the newborn is unhappy when deprived of oxygen, nutrition, or relief of pain. American cultural norms follow Xian norms, and Xian norms can be traced and dated as
originating in Greece and Palestine about two and a half thousand years ago.

Reason, and ethics are fragile and will succumb to fear and barbarity. Religions at their best support reason and ethics, but religions at their worst are vehicles for barbarity. Justice is evaluative and depends on which version of God is the dealer of justice. Similarly man's justice depends on which judge, which legal system, deals the justice. If there is one thing that is 'natural' in all this that thing is man's responsibility to what is other than himself as individual and as species.
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Re: How May the Principle of 'Justice as Impartiality' as a Foundation for Ethics be Evaluated?

Post by GE Morton »

Stoppelmann wrote: December 17th, 2022, 4:37 am
I think that the problem you are having lies in the fact that the declaration is stating a willingness to secure more than just the skin on the back of people. It should be clear from the progression of civilisation that, to a certain degree, we have emerged out of a situation of widespread poverty to include more people in a degree of comfort that was before (and after 1776), which goes beyond life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
How do you think that "emergence" occurred? By 1900 the USA had become the wealthiest nation on Earth, and the first in history in which a majority of its people were not poor. That "emergence" didn't occur by virtue of government welfare programs; it occurred because people were largely free to "pursue happiness" as they defined it and by any means they chose, as long as they violated no one else's (real) rights.

There is nothing wrong with a desire to "secure more than the skin on the back of people" as long as the means chosen to do so don't involve tearing the skin off the backs of other people, i.e., enslaving them or seizing the products of their labor and talents.
The natural rights beg the question how a life is to be sustained if you possess nothing but the skin on your back.
The answer to that is obvious --- by acquiring some skills, exercising some talents, exerting some efforts to produce whatever you need to sustain the lifestyle you desire, just as most of your neighbors (and indeed every animal on Earth) must do. The other humans in your vicinity are not your slaves or your parents; they're not responsible for your welfare. Forcing Alfie to support Bruno immediately establishes a master-slave relationship between the enforcer and the person forced, contrary to the UN's declarations of equality and freedom from slavery.
Still, even afterwards, African Americans have faced severe restrictions on their political, social, and economic freedoms. Those that have are keen to protect what they have from those that need more than they have.
Chattel slavery (which was a ubiquitous practice around the world when the USA was founded), ended 150 years ago --- largely due to the nation's commitment to the natural rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" and to "equal protection of the law." The solution for those who "need more than they have" is for them to produce more --- not to steal what others have produced at the point of a government gun.
Thus, the objection to the Human Rights declaration is a capitalist ploy to keep people “in their place” and constitutes bigotry.
Egads.
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Re: How May the Principle of 'Justice as Impartiality' as a Foundation for Ethics be Evaluated?

Post by Stoppelmann »

"By 1900 the USA had become the wealthiest nation on Earth, and the first in history in which a majority of its people were not poor."

1900 USA
Life expectancy for white Americans was just 48 years and just 33 years for African Americans--about the same as a peasant in early 19th century India. Today, Americans' average life expectancy is 74 years for men and 79 for women. The gap in life expectancy between whites and non-whites has narrowed from 15 years to 7 years.

In 1900, if a mother had four children, there was a fifty-fifty chance that one would die before the age of 5. At the same time, half of all young people lost a parent before they reached the age of 21.

In 1900, the average family had an annual income of $3,000 (in today's dollars). The family had no indoor plumbing, no phone, and no car. About half of all American children lived in poverty. Most teens did not attend school; instead, they labored in factories or fields.
https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_ ... r%20fields.
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Re: How May the Principle of 'Justice as Impartiality' as a Foundation for Ethics be Evaluated?

Post by GE Morton »

Belindi wrote: December 17th, 2022, 7:41 am Natural rights don't exist. GEMorton claimed the Declaration of Independence states that there exist natural rights. But all rights are fiat rights.
You're clearly not paying attention to the definitions of "rights" and "natural rights" I gave above, Belindi. Please go back to those, re-read, and then reconsider your claim above.
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are not natural states; life, liberty, and happiness are the norms of some cultures.
Huh? Life is a "norm of some culture"? There could be no life on Earth without "culture"? And, yes, liberty is the natural state of all animals; they are all born free to exercise whatever abilities and capacities with which nature has endowed them. Among humans "culture" is what imposes constraints on that freedom.
American cultural norms follow Xian norms, and Xian norms can be traced and dated as originating in Greece and Palestine about two and a half thousand years ago.
Oh, no. American "cultural norms" --- at least those advocating respect for the natural rights to life, liberty, and the equal moral status of all persons --- derived from the liberal tradition beginning with Hobbes and Locke, and are antithetical to the norms of the Greeks and Christianity, both of which countenanced aristocracy (the "Divine right of Kings"), theocracy, and slavery. The concepts of freedom and equality were utterly absent from Christian theology, and opposed, often brutally, when advocated by others.
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Re: How May the Principle of 'Justice as Impartiality' as a Foundation for Ethics be Evaluated?

Post by Belindi »

GE Morton wrote: December 17th, 2022, 12:46 pm
Belindi wrote: December 17th, 2022, 7:41 am Natural rights don't exist. GEMorton claimed the Declaration of Independence states that there exist natural rights. But all rights are fiat rights.
You're clearly not paying attention to the definitions of "rights" and "natural rights" I gave above, Belindi. Please go back to those, re-read, and then reconsider your claim above.
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are not natural states; life, liberty, and happiness are the norms of some cultures.
Huh? Life is a "norm of some culture"? There could be no life on Earth without "culture"? And, yes, liberty is the natural state of all animals; they are all born free to exercise whatever abilities and capacities with which nature has endowed them. Among humans "culture" is what imposes constraints on that freedom.
American cultural norms follow Xian norms, and Xian norms can be traced and dated as originating in Greece and Palestine about two and a half thousand years ago.
Oh, no. American "cultural norms" --- at least those advocating respect for the natural rights to life, liberty, and the equal moral status of all persons --- derived from the liberal tradition beginning with Hobbes and Locke, and are antithetical to the norms of the Greeks and Christianity, both of which countenanced aristocracy (the "Divine right of Kings"), theocracy, and slavery. The concepts of freedom and equality were utterly absent from Christian theology, and opposed, often brutally, when advocated by others.
I and others like me learned freedom and equality from Xian culture and Xian theology.
The right of an individual to continue his life is a normal ethic of Abrahamic cultures. The Biblical story of Abraham and Isaac is an illustration of how Abraham's God intervened to preserve the life of a helpless child.
Hobbes and Locke are products of Xian culture plus scientific Enlightenment values and rationale. Xian theology itself is a mixture of mostly Greek and Palestinian Axial Age ethics.

Human societies do impose limits and freedoms. These are malleable and depend ultimately on means of subsistence. The post- Socratic Greeks belonged to a developed economy as did the OT prophets.
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Re: How May the Principle of 'Justice as Impartiality' as a Foundation for Ethics be Evaluated?

Post by GE Morton »

Stoppelmann wrote: December 17th, 2022, 12:19 pm "By 1900 the USA had become the wealthiest nation on Earth, and the first in history in which a majority of its people were not poor."

1900 USA
Life expectancy for white Americans was just 48 years and just 33 years for African Americans--about the same as a peasant in early 19th century India. Today, Americans' average life expectancy is 74 years for men and 79 for women. The gap in life expectancy between whites and non-whites has narrowed from 15 years to 7 years.

In 1900, if a mother had four children, there was a fifty-fifty chance that one would die before the age of 5. At the same time, half of all young people lost a parent before they reached the age of 21.

In 1900, the average family had an annual income of $3,000 (in today's dollars). The family had no indoor plumbing, no phone, and no car. About half of all American children lived in poverty. Most teens did not attend school; instead, they labored in factories or fields.
https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_ ... r%20fields.
Looks close to accurate. Key statement: " About half of all American children lived in poverty." So about 1/2 did not. Throughout most of history, in most countries, that rate was 70-90%.
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Re: How May the Principle of 'Justice as Impartiality' as a Foundation for Ethics be Evaluated?

Post by Leontizkos »

(A bug from the forum emailer has deactivated my old account...)
GE Morton wrote: December 11th, 2022, 11:20 pm
Leontiskos wrote: December 11th, 2022, 6:39 pm
GE Morton wrote: December 9th, 2022, 8:03 pm[Justice] (classically) has a specific meaning, one involving merit.
No, you are hijacking a classical concept with your own idiosyncratic predilections, as you so often do. Merit is an essential part of justice for capitalists and some libertarians, but this is a novelty which does not extend to the classical conception of justice. On that classical conception one’s right (ius) can be generated by merit, but need not be, and often is not.
Oh? What classical conception would that be? The "classical conception" of justice is usually that articulated by Justinian, " . . . where justice is defined as ‘the constant and perpetual will to render to each his due’. "

[Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]
Ah, you seem to have missed the point already. "What is due" and "what is merited" are two different things, two things which you carelessly conflate again and again.
GE Morton wrote: December 11th, 2022, 11:20 pm
Leontiskos wrote: December 11th, 2022, 6:39 pmEven your own posts in this thread are full of holes. In your first post you began your argument on the basis of two dictionary quotations, only one of which mentioned merit:
GE Morton wrote: December 8th, 2022, 8:30 pm"1a: the maintenance or administration of what is just especially by the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or the assignment of merited rewards or punishments"

[Merriam Webster Website]
You then went on to make a remarkably broad and inaccurate statement, one which in fact contradicts the Merriam-Webster source you pretended to rely upon:
GE Morton wrote: December 8th, 2022, 8:30 pmJustice is inextricably intertwined with the concept of merit --- what a person is due is what he has earned, deserves...
But the Merriam-Webster quote said that justice was A or B, not just B.
Sorry, but the first definition cited "what one is due." What one is due also depends upon merit, upon some action taken by the subject (you're late to the party; we've covered this in previous comments).
Apart from what I already said above, it seems I must repeat myself yet again. Merriam-Webster gives two possibilities of justice, call them A and B: "1a: the maintenance or administration of what is just especially by (A) the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or (B) the assignment of merited rewards or punishments."

After citing Merriam-Webster you erroneously collapsed the definition into B, entirely ignoring A, "Justice is inextricably intertwined with the concept of merit." Yet MW gives no indication that the "impartial adjustment of conflicting claims" is based on merit. Indeed, later in the thread you admitted that it is in fact not based on merit in the case of contracts. You are not even paying attention to the sources you pretend to follow.
GE Morton wrote: December 11th, 2022, 11:20 pm
Leontiskos wrote: December 11th, 2022, 6:39 pmYou yourself identified the inadequacy of your own definition of justice later in the thread:
GE Morton wrote: December 9th, 2022, 3:19 pmPersons are also due, of course, whatever has been promised to them via some contract or agreement, provided they have fulfilled their own commitments under it. But if there is no explicit agreement then the relative merits (value, efforts, investment) of each person's contribution determines what each is due.
Now of course your claim here is still false, for commutative justice is not merely contractual (as your Merriam-Webster quote signifies), but nevertheless you rightly note that contractual desert is something which is due apart from merit. Justice is not “inextricably intertwined with merit,” even on your own reckoning.
Wrong again. Contractual deserts are entirely dependent upon merit, i.e., upon the claimant having fulfilled his own obligations under the contract.
No, the terms of a contract (as well as the deserts that accrue) are in no way based on merit. They are based on consensual agreement. If we write a contract which says that you will give me five pigs for one horse, then I am due five pigs and you are due one horse, and this is based on consent and will, not merit. To claim that contracts are reducible to merit is a rather silly and inaccurate extension of the definition of 'merit' beyond its bounds. The reachings of an ideologue.
GE Morton wrote: December 11th, 2022, 11:20 pm
Leontiskos wrote: December 11th, 2022, 6:39 pm
GE Morton wrote: December 9th, 2022, 8:03 pmJustice is rewards or punishments due to human actions. Nothing is due (per justice) to someone who has not acted in some way relevant to the reward or punishment in question, who deserves it.
What action has the soldier or the (unwed) woman performed which obligates them to Aristotle’s requirement?
Already answered. If they freely entered into those relationships then they have contractual obligations. If they didn't they have no obligations at all (arising from those roles).
No, I here asked about an unwed woman who presumably has an obligation to not commit adultery with a married man. Will you pretend this obligation does not exist as well?
GE Morton wrote: December 11th, 2022, 11:20 pm
Leontiskos wrote: December 11th, 2022, 6:39 pmWhat action does a person perform in order to possess their right to life? It is beyond obvious that some things are due irrespective of any action performed.
The acquisition and possession of natural rights involve no issues of justice. One has a right to life because he is the first possessor of it (having brought it with him into the world, along with his body and his various abilities and capacities). Justice concerns the apportionment of rewards and penalties by moral agents; natural rights are not bestowed upon persons by other moral agents. With respect to (natural) rights, questions of justice only arise when they are violated; not when or how they are acquired.
Your account of natural rights has failed often in the past, and your stipulated relation of morality to justice is mistaken, but let us simply examine the error from a single angle. You wish to accept the classical definition where to act justly is to render to another what is their due. Now since to not-murder another person is to render them their due, not-murdering is, by your own definition, an act of justice. Since it is their due, and you believe all dues are predicated upon merit, then how has Alfie merited his due to not be murdered? What has he done to so merit this due?
GE Morton wrote: December 11th, 2022, 11:20 pm
Leontiskos wrote: December 11th, 2022, 6:39 pmFurther, your enlightenment conception of merit is restricted to the realm of positive justice and neglects natural justice. This is in some sense circular, as Ecurb has pointed out, for the very notion of equality implicit in merit presupposes a due which must exist prior to merit (and prior to action).
I have no idea to what you refer with "natural justice." "Justice" applies to the actions of moral agents, not to any natural phenomena. But there is no "notion of equality implicit in merit." Indeed, the very notion of "merit" assumes inequalities --- merit being something one may have more or less of. But there is indeed a "due" which precedes merit --- one is due respect for one's status as a moral agent and for one's natural rights (per a sound moral theory). But as I said, no issues of justice arise with regard to the possession of that status or those rights; they arise only with violations of them.
If you posit dues unrelated to justice then you have abandoned your definition of justice in favor of an ad hoc appeal to some equivocal definition of justice. If Alfie has a due then to render that due is justice. Given your own definition, you cannot claim that some dues relate to justice and some do not.
GE Morton wrote: December 11th, 2022, 11:20 pm
Leontiskos wrote: December 11th, 2022, 6:39 pmThe principle of equality which grounds just treatment of others, and which merit is based upon (sometimes called contrapassum), must needs be an inherent and unmerited quality of human beings. As human beings it is our rightful due to be treated in accord with the justice-equality principle, and this obtains even prior to any action that we have performed. The same holds of the merit-proportion principle.
Well, there is no "justice-equality principle" (that I've ever heard of). Those are two different principles. I agree that all moral agents must be treated in accord with the Equal Agency principle, which asserts that all moral agents are equally subject to the same moral rules and protections and to "equal protection of the law." But that does not entail that all moral agents be treated equally. How they are treated (as long as their rights are respected) will vary with their actions, i.e., according to merit (if they are to be justly treated).
We have a thread about that principle (<link>), but I figured it would go over your head, which is why I also referred to the "merit-proportion principle." You yourself cannot deny that all moral agents have a due to be treated in proportion to what they merit. That due is also unmerited. Either way, you lose.
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Re: How May the Principle of 'Justice as Impartiality' as a Foundation for Ethics be Evaluated?

Post by Stoppelmann »

GE Morton wrote: December 17th, 2022, 12:12 pm How do you think that "emergence" occurred? By 1900 the USA had become the wealthiest nation on Earth, and the first in history in which a majority of its people were not poor. That "emergence" didn't occur by virtue of government welfare programs; it occurred because people were largely free to "pursue happiness" as they defined it and by any means they chose, as long as they violated no one else's (real) rights.

There is nothing wrong with a desire to "secure more than the skin on the back of people" as long as the means chosen to do so don't involve tearing the skin off the backs of other people, i.e., enslaving them or seizing the products of their labor and talents.
You know as much as I do that this is a typical exaggeration, and you only have to look to Europe to see that there are still people reaping in the profits despite enabling the rights listed in the UN declaration. Where exaggeration is, you normally find a cover up.

I think I know why you hate Franklin D. Roosevelt; it was he who said, “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” This challenge is still a task today, but curiously, we are adding ever more to the abundance of those who have much, despite the fact that the largest growth in the USA was achieved when the wealthiest paid more tax. This is quite obvious really, because if you compare wealth to blood, it must flow through the organism to keep it alive, just as money must flow to keep a society thriving. When people hoard wealth, it is like a haematoma, and any hematoma that increases in size over time is a danger to surrounding tissue.

The maddening thing for many people, especially abroad, is the moral elitism that America shows, whilst at the same time displaying a moral depravity. This is especially obvious when America is called a Christian Nation (wrong as it is) by those who deny those people on low wages affordable healthcare, which is a right in countries in Europe, but I’ve heard Americans call it theft, or expropriation.
GE Morton wrote:
The natural rights beg the question how a life is to be sustained if you possess nothing but the skin on your back.
The answer to that is obvious --- by acquiring some skills, exercising some talents, exerting some efforts to produce whatever you need to sustain the lifestyle you desire, just as most of your neighbors (and indeed every animal on Earth) must do. The other humans in your vicinity are not your slaves or your parents; they're not responsible for your welfare. Forcing Alfie to support Bruno immediately establishes a master-slave relationship between the enforcer and the person forced, contrary to the UN's declarations of equality and freedom from slavery.
Another exaggeration and cover up for people too miserly to enable an appropriate social security to prevent a lack of basic necessities and a lack of security. We know that there are so many factors that lead to poverty that people have no control over, like a poor economy, a lack of affordable housing, or high medical expenses.

With regard to getting an education and gaining some skills, many people from the lower class simply cannot afford to attend college and earn a degree. The only jobs they can get are low paying with little to no benefits and then they have to support themselves and their families on a low salary. This may slowly drive a family into poverty. As of the year 2008, the average earnings for someone with just a high school diploma was about $28,000, which is just above the poverty line for a family of four. The skills that they then acquire are survival skills, any many of these are against the law.
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Re: How May the Principle of 'Justice as Impartiality' as a Foundation for Ethics be Evaluated?

Post by Gertie »

GE
Belindi wrote: ↑Yesterday, 7:41 am
Natural rights don't exist. GEMorton claimed the Declaration of Independence states that there exist natural rights. But all rights are fiat rights.
You're clearly not paying attention to the definitions of "rights" and "natural rights" I gave above, Belindi. Please go back to those, re-read, and then reconsider your claim above.
No, Belindi is rightly disagreeing. Rights are a concept someone made up. Different types of rights are different conceptualisations, which people made up. All have their own types of justifications. You prefer one type of conceptualisation and justification of rights, and dump the rest in the made up category, by using definitions. It doesn't wash because it's just defining your preference as more justified. It's annoying, because it's the justifications which are philosophically and morally significant.
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Re: How May the Principle of 'Justice as Impartiality' as a Foundation for Ethics be Evaluated?

Post by GE Morton »

Gertie wrote: December 18th, 2022, 12:57 pm
No, Belindi is rightly disagreeing. Rights are a concept someone made up.
Well, of course! All concepts were made up by someone. They are all human constructs.
Different types of rights are different conceptualisations, which people made up.
That's true too. There are natural rights, common rights, legal rights, for example. There are also the "fiat rights" I mentioned. I don't deny that there are different conceptions and kinds of rights --- my argument has been that the classical conception, understood historically in the Western liberal tradition, has a specific, quite definitive basis, i.e., first possession. That is the conception assumed in common law, in the US declaration of Independence, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, etc.

https://www.sfu.ca/~allen/1st%20poss%20 ... lgrave.doc

The noun "right" derives from the adjective "rightful." To say that Alfie "has a right" to X" means that Alfie is rightfully in possession of X, or has a rightful claim to X. That possession or claim is "rightful" if Alfie's acquisition and possession of X inflicted no loss or injury on any other person. That is a moral basis for Alfie's claim. Since something someone produced or discovered could not possibly have benefited anyone prior to its production or discovery, possession and claims to things first possessed are per force rightful.

Rights classically understood rest on the moral premise, "One ought not inflict harms or losses on other moral agents." Most of the "fiat rights" asserted in recent decades rest on another moral premise, i.e., "People have a moral obligation to meet other people's needs." Hence, if Alfie "needs" X, then he "has a right to X."
You prefer one type of conceptualisation and justification of rights, and dump the rest in the made up category, by using definitions. It doesn't wash because it's just defining your preference as more justified. It's annoying, because it's the justifications which are philosophically and morally significant.
I agree with your last statement there. The first moral premise above seems self-evident. The second requires a powerful moral argument. I've never seen such an argument. Alfie has no a priori, unconditional duty to meet Bruno's needs. Thus "rights" based on that moral premise are spurious, because that premise is false.
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Re: How May the Principle of 'Justice as Impartiality' as a Foundation for Ethics be Evaluated?

Post by JackDaydream »

Belindi wrote: December 17th, 2022, 1:05 pm
GE Morton wrote: December 17th, 2022, 12:46 pm
Belindi wrote: December 17th, 2022, 7:41 am Natural rights don't exist. GEMorton claimed the Declaration of Independence states that there exist natural rights. But all rights are fiat rights.
You're clearly not paying attention to the definitions of "rights" and "natural rights" I gave above, Belindi. Please go back to those, re-read, and then reconsider your claim above.
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are not natural states; life, liberty, and happiness are the norms of some cultures.
Huh? Life is a "norm of some culture"? There could be no life on Earth without "culture"? And, yes, liberty is the natural state of all animals; they are all born free to exercise whatever abilities and capacities with which nature has endowed them. Among humans "culture" is what imposes constraints on that freedom.
American cultural norms follow Xian norms, and Xian norms can be traced and dated as originating in Greece and Palestine about two and a half thousand years ago.
Oh, no. American "cultural norms" --- at least those advocating respect for the natural rights to life, liberty, and the equal moral status of all persons --- derived from the liberal tradition beginning with Hobbes and Locke, and are antithetical to the norms of the Greeks and Christianity, both of which countenanced aristocracy (the "Divine right of Kings"), theocracy, and slavery. The concepts of freedom and equality were utterly absent from Christian theology, and opposed, often brutally, when advocated by others.
I and others like me learned freedom and equality from Xian culture and Xian theology.
The right of an individual to continue his life is a normal ethic of Abrahamic cultures. The Biblical story of Abraham and Isaac is an illustration of how Abraham's God intervened to preserve the life of a helpless child.
Hobbes and Locke are products of Xian culture plus scientific Enlightenment values and rationale. Xian theology itself is a mixture of mostly Greek and Palestinian Axial Age ethics.

Human societies do impose limits and freedoms. These are malleable and depend ultimately on means of subsistence. The post- Socratic Greeks belonged to a developed economy as did the OT prophets.
The idea of natural rights does come from a religious perspective. It may be that once rights are seen outside of this, many stop believing in rights as valid, like, Dostoevsky's idea that with no God 'everything is permitted'. It may be easier to dismiss the value of treating others with respect in a secular context, although humanism manages to retain the emphasis on ethics and justice.

Probably one important way of seeing rights and moral codes as being made up but still as important is in connection with the idea of a social contract. Many people from all kinds of backgrounds do hold on to rights as being entitlements. To some extent, it is even possible to take certain rights for granted. I even thought how when I am looking for somewhere to live I do have a certain expectation and entitlement. For example, if I ever get evicted I would expect to be able to go to the council and be assisted with temporary emergency housing.


People in different cultures and countries differ in what they expect. In England people probably expect certain conditions and standards of treatment, including the Welfare State and the NHS. These are not seen as 'natural' but people have been accustomed to them and the idea of these fragmenting brings fear of an injust world. I certainly worry in case these stop existing because so many people rely on these and would not manage if they wither away.
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JackDaydream
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Re: How May the Principle of 'Justice as Impartiality' as a Foundation for Ethics be Evaluated?

Post by JackDaydream »

GE Morton wrote: December 18th, 2022, 1:48 pm
Gertie wrote: December 18th, 2022, 12:57 pm
No, Belindi is rightly disagreeing. Rights are a concept someone made up.
Well, of course! All concepts were made up by someone. They are all human constructs.
Different types of rights are different conceptualisations, which people made up.
That's true too. There are natural rights, common rights, legal rights, for example. There are also the "fiat rights" I mentioned. I don't deny that there are different conceptions and kinds of rights --- my argument has been that the classical conception, understood historically in the Western liberal tradition, has a specific, quite definitive basis, i.e., first possession. That is the conception assumed in common law, in the US declaration of Independence, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, etc.

https://www.sfu.ca/~allen/1st%20poss%20 ... lgrave.doc

The noun "right" derives from the adjective "rightful." To say that Alfie "has a right" to X" means that Alfie is rightfully in possession of X, or has a rightful claim to X. That possession or claim is "rightful" if Alfie's acquisition and possession of X inflicted no loss or injury on any other person. That is a moral basis for Alfie's claim. Since something someone produced or discovered could not possibly have benefited anyone prior to its production or discovery, possession and claims to things first possessed are per force rightful.

Rights classically understood rest on the moral premise, "One ought not inflict harms or losses on other moral agents." Most of the "fiat rights" asserted in recent decades rest on another moral premise, i.e., "People have a moral obligation to meet other people's needs." Hence, if Alfie "needs" X, then he "has a right to X."
You prefer one type of conceptualisation and justification of rights, and dump the rest in the made up category, by using definitions. It doesn't wash because it's just defining your preference as more justified. It's annoying, because it's the justifications which are philosophically and morally significant.
I agree with your last statement there. The first moral premise above seems self-evident. The second requires a powerful moral argument. I've never seen such an argument. Alfie has no a priori, unconditional duty to meet Bruno's needs. Thus "rights" based on that moral premise are spurious, because that premise is false.

The idea of rights may be based on specific ideas of respect for persons. For example, I would argue that Alfie has a legitimate claim to expect that Bruno does not injure him or bully him verbally With some rights, as in positive ones, like those involving distributive justice it may come down to who has the responsibility. Alfie may feel that he should be entitled to have food and drink each day. However, the responsibility may not simply be down to Alfie unless they are in the same family or close friends.

What may happen is that all individuals refuse to think that they have a personal responsibility to meet another's needs. This can end up meaning that Bruno is left with nothing to eat at all, and ends up having to hunt in bins for leftovers. To some extent it can come down to institutions but it may be that some people slip through the net through isolation. Then what is Bruno expected to do? He may resort to stealing to survive and that may be one of the problems of Bruno's unmet needs, especially those are the very bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
Gertie
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Re: How May the Principle of 'Justice as Impartiality' as a Foundation for Ethics be Evaluated?

Post by Gertie »

GE
Rights classically understood rest on the moral premise, "One ought not inflict harms or losses on other moral agents." Most of the "fiat rights" asserted in recent decades rest on another moral premise, i.e., "People have a moral obligation to meet other people's needs." Hence, if Alfie "needs" X, then he "has a right to X."
Those are just two conceptualisations of rights you can conveniently juxtapose.  Your moral foundation will determine how they fit into your moral framework, and if they fully encompass the role of rights within your framework. 

So lets see -
You prefer one type of conceptualisation and justification of rights, and dump the rest in the made up category, by using definitions. It doesn't wash because it's just defining your preference as more justified. It's annoying, because it's the justifications which are philosophically and morally significant.
I agree with your last statement there. The first moral premise above seems self-evident. The second requires a powerful moral argument. I've never seen such an argument. Alfie has no a priori, unconditional duty to meet Bruno's needs. Thus "rights" based on that moral premise are spurious, because that premise is false.

The moral foundation we share is something like ''Promoting the welfare of sentient creatures''.  That's the moral framework within which we should start to conceptualise rights, what the role of rights should be, if any. 

The powerful argument for the existence of rights within our framework is that in order for conscious creatures to successfully flourish, generally certain basic needs will need to be met.  Not perfectly, not in every instance, but as a sound rule of thumb.  We can argue details as to what needs those are, how met they should be, how they should be met, and so on, but that's a sound  premise which follows from our foundation.  Flourishing is fundamentally undermined if basic needs aren't met. 

So what constitues a basic constituent for flourishing?  Well if you have no food you die, so that's a no brainer.  No shelter, healthcare, education - huge challenges to flourishing.  No freedom to pursue your personal goals, or no access to resources to make them achievable - again flourishing is a long shot.  Being discriminated against for ad hoc reasons, not exactly a help.  Being vulnerable to having your stuff nicked or harmed in other ways, even murdered - obviously derails flourishing. And without reliable contracts you can plan around, and some systems of enforcement, none of it works well.


So we've got some (top of the head) ideas for the nature of rights which are inferred by  our moral foundation.  Weighing them when they conflict in certain certain scenarios might result in the juxtaposition you presented, or other problems.  How we implement them has problems too, where do we draw lines - I think this is inevitably fuzzy with our foundation. Or is it in keeping with our foundation to take resources through tax in order to meet the basic needs of others (and ourselves when the circs arise).  Well we can't objectively measure the wellbeing of conscious subjects, but we can compare consequences to wellbeing in a common sense way. For example does contributing tax to universal healthcare, welfare, housing, emergency services, social services, the justice system, defence   and education overall increase the welfare of those in a society, more than it reduces their welfare?  No brainer.
GE Morton
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Re: How May the Principle of 'Justice as Impartiality' as a Foundation for Ethics be Evaluated?

Post by GE Morton »

JackDaydream wrote: December 18th, 2022, 2:55 pm
The idea of rights may be based on specific ideas of respect for persons.
Oh, no. "Respect" is an ambiguous term. It can mean several things:

Respect (noun):
1: a relation or reference to a particular thing or situation
2: an act of giving particular attention : CONSIDERATION
3a: high or special regard : ESTEEM

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/respect

Alfie may respect the fact that Bruno is a moral agent (senses 1 & 2 above), but hold him in no special esteem. None of those senses, however, entail that Alfie must meet any of Bruno's needs. They do entail (since Bruno is a moral agent) that Alfie ought not inflict losses or injuries upon Bruno.
For example, I would argue that Alfie has a legitimate claim to expect that Bruno does not injure him or bully him verbally.
I'd agree, except that you have to be careful with "bullying," not to equate it with mere insults or rejection.
With some rights, as in positive ones, like those involving distributive justice it may come down to who has the responsibility.
All rights are "positive" --- they assert some definite relationship between a person and some specific thing. This (quite recent) notion of "positive" and "negative" rights (and the correlative notions of "positive and negative liberty") is derived from the implications Alfie's rights have for Bruno and others, with "negative" rights imposing only constraints on Bruno (actions from which he must refrain), while "positive" rights impose duties upon him (actions he must take). The classic analysis and discussion of these notions is Isaiah Berlin's:

http://faculty.www.umb.edu/steven.levine/Courses/Action/Berlin.pdf
. . . in which Alfie may feel that he should be entitled to have food and drink each day. However, the responsibility may not simply be down to Alfie unless they are in the same family or close friends.
Alfie may well "feel entitled" to those things, but his feelings are hardly a moral argument. If Bruno is alleged to have a moral duty to provide them to Alfie then some moral argument is needed rationally justifying that alleged duty.
What may happen is that all individuals refuse to think that they have a personal responsibility to meet another's needs. This can end up meaning that Bruno is left with nothing to eat at all, and ends up having to hunt in bins for leftovers. To some extent it can come down to institutions but it may be that some people slip through the net through isolation. Then what is Bruno expected to do? He may resort to stealing to survive and that may be one of the problems of Bruno's unmet needs, especially those are the very bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
What Bruno must do is what everyone else does to secure the things he wants and needs --- produce them, or produce something else, some good or service, he can exchange with others for the goods they produce and he desires.
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