Ecurb wrote: ↑July 18th, 2020, 7:37 pm
The "loss" is real.
I didn't say it wasn't real; I said it wasn't a moral harm, which is a loss or injury inflicted by one moral agent upon an unwilling other. I also said it wasn't the baby who inflicted the pain, but the mother herself. She made all the decisions which brought on the pain.
If I were to claim that I painted my house, but one tiny spot had been missed, I would be making a true statement. (If you don't agree, fine. But that's normal English usage.
It would be accepted as true in most contexts. But not in (say) a house-painting contest in which missed spots would disqualify you.
And, of course, to return to the real issue, no public policy benefits 99+% of citizens either; they typically benefit barely a majority, and often far fewer than that. But they will still be declared to be "for the public good."
The capacity might be "innate", but where did that innate capacity get humans for the 50,000 years before they knew how to build a house or plant tomatoes? Nobody knew he had such an innate capacity when nobody knew how to build or plant. Our innate capacity for language is only realized when there IS a language to learn -- a language that has been developed over millenia and is responsible for many of our so-called innate capacities.
That is impossible. If one may acquire language only if language already exists it could never have come into existence. And, no, language is not responsible for any innate capacities. It is useful for the teaching of skills and transmission of knowledge, but everything known and every skill possessed had to first be discovered or acquired
de novo, by someone exercising innate talents and capacities.
In any event, nature vs. nurture is not resolvable, and I dispute the notion that it matters whether our capacities are culturally influenced or innate with regard to any reasonable objective moral basis of rights.
I agree it doesn't matter morally whether something to which a right is claimed is innate or acquired. What matters is whether that thing was acquired without inflicting loss or injury on other moral agents. It is that fact regarding the acquisition that is morally significant and objective.
The only practical difference between natural and common rights is that the latter are always subject to challenge --- someone may claim that you stole the thing to which you claim a right from him, or cheated him of it. Hence "quiet title" lawsuits. Natural rights are not vulnerable to such challenges (outside of science fiction). They are self-evident.