More evidence that rights-based ethical systems have flawed foundations.

[richardhutnik]

Mnementh said:

richardhutnik said:

Part of the point.  The other part is that rights-based ethics systems end up with advocacy groups arguing for certain rights, and a conflict approach to end up resolving them.  You win the conflict and gain the ability to exercise your rights, at the expense of others.  Because of this arguing for rights, on one wants a certain right to have lower priority than another one.  The battle is over this right or that being superior.  Libertarians place Liberty above others (even to the extent of denying other rights exists).  You will see progressives placing the quality of life of individuals above others, including property rights.   Conservatives will place the right to preserve tradition above others.  Individuals who are capitalistic end up placing property rights above every other right.

We have a common set of personal rights that are globally mostly accepted: the human rights charta. These rights are well-defined. Also these rights have mostly accepted priorities, so the right of life is higher prioritized than other rights for instance. But even without this priorities these rights seldom conflict.

And yes, nobody said rights would never conflict. I think you make up a strawmen here. Rights can conflict.

And as said, other ethical systems can conflict internally too. You could argue the same way, that living following the ten commandments is ollogical, because you can construct situations in which these rules conflict.

And sorry, many things you call rights, are definitely no personal rights. 'Conservatives will place the right to preserve tradition above others.' As long as it doesn't have any effect on others it's fine. But what you mean if you let them conflict is, that conservatives want to force their traditions on others. But at that point they are no longer in the area of PERSONAL rights. The right to preserve tradition is only as long a PERSONAL right, as it only involves you. So, if your tradition says, you have to tatoo yourself, it's a personal thing. If your tradition says to kill all people of different skin-color, than it's not a personal right.

If you look at the arguments in this thread, people would argue that only negative rights are rights, and they never conflict, because if everyone lived by the motto of being left alone, everyone would leave each other alone, and no one would have any rights violated.

In regards to conservatives, they will argue, for example, they have a right to raise their kids a certain way, and keep the public square clear of obscenity.  They say their rights as parents warrant this.  And there are others also.  They ARE personal rights.  For the conservative, values they have personally, also belong in society as a whole, because they are collectively shared.  Again, the value of tradition, ends up being elevated above the values that progressives have, for example.  A progressive, for example, would have little qualms going into a church and disrupting a religious service, for political or reasons of ethical concerns.