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richardhutnik on 15 August 2012
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badgenome said:
richardhutnik said:

A rights-based ethics system frames arguments for right and wrong around how much rights are upheld.  The system has a much more absolutist view than that of the likes of Utilitarianism, and the measure of it is that rights don't get violated.  Other frameworks/systems have other measures, like one based on virtue and how close things correspond to ideal states of being and behavior.

So, you are judging the situation, if rights based on what here?  What right do you feel that the individuals have at the funeral which is superior to that of the WBC's right of free speech that WBC claims it has.

Rights should be the foundation of a good ethical system, not the totality of it. Why do you insist that a system of ethics based on rights cannot take into account one single other thing? That seems unnecessarily and impractically rigid.

A problem with saying rights should be THE foundation of any good ethical system is that you have no basis for determing which things are rights, and which or not, and which rights have greater priority.  You can either then arbitrarily just pick them, or declare as Locke had they are given by God and inalienable.  And this inalienable is a stronger position than just picking them, or saying they are alienable because that means they can be traded in a market and exchanged for something else.  At that point, you come up with a relativist market that is close to Utilitarianism, and reduces ethical decisions to financial calculations, which undermines a strength of rights-based systems, that means the rights are fairly clear and non-negotiable.

Now, saying that an ethical-based system is based around, and operates on the basis of upholding rights doesn't mean that a person making ethcal decisions needs to be only informed by a rights-based ethical system to make ethical decisions.  One can end up know the weaknesses of rights-based ethical systems, and while favoring it, lean on other system of ethics to make decisions.  Of course, the risks in doing this is to end up not making sound ethical decisions, but ones based on personal preferences.