Here is another one: Do people have a right to live? Or is life not a fundamental human right?

If you then consider human life a right, and a person find that no one will help them, and they risk death, then would not them doing whatever is necessary to stay alive be justified? They can claim their right to live justified them stealing or squatting in property. Take the case of a child that was abandoned by their parents, and now fends on the streets for themselves, and steals and what not. If human life is a right, aren't they justified to do so?

Or do you want to argue life is not a right people have? If life is not a right then, then what is a right?

richardhutnik said: Here is another one: Do people have a right to live? Or is life not a fundamental human right? If you then consider human life a right, and a person find that no one will help them, and they risk death, then would not them doing whatever is necessary to stay alive be justified? They can claim their right to live justified them stealing or squatting in property. Take the case of a child that was abandoned by their parents, and now fends on the streets for themselves, and steals and what not. If human life is a right, aren't they justified to do so? Or do you want to argue life is not a right people have? If life is not a right then, then what is a right?

You have the right not to be murdered. You don't have a right to force other people to provide a living for you by sheer virtue of your need. Children are always a special case, and I don't think many people could fail to pity a child who resorts to stealing food to stay alive, but that doesn't make it ethically correct behavior even though it's certainly logical.

badgenome said: richardhutnik said: Here is another one: Do people have a right to live? Or is life not a fundamental human right? If you then consider human life a right, and a person find that no one will help them, and they risk death, then would not them doing whatever is necessary to stay alive be justified? They can claim their right to live justified them stealing or squatting in property. Take the case of a child that was abandoned by their parents, and now fends on the streets for themselves, and steals and what not. If human life is a right, aren't they justified to do so? Or do you want to argue life is not a right people have? If life is not a right then, then what is a right? You have the right not to be murdered. You don't have a right to force other people to provide a living for you by sheer virtue of your need. Children are always a special case, and I don't think many people could fail to pity a child who resorts to stealing food to stay alive, but that doesn't make it ethically correct behavior even though it's certainly logical.

You are not able to effectively argue, from a rights based framework against murder.  Murder is what someone does to someone else.  When you say murder is wrong, you speak of the person who does the act of murder, not the person who is recipient of the act.  The basis of rights, represents the state a person is entitle to have, for being something.  You aren't able to deduce ANYTHING that people should do for others based upon rights.  In a right's based framework, which you are arguing, it is ethically wrong for a child to steal to survive, but it is ok for someone to not give to prevent the child from dying so they don't have to steal, under ANY situation.  But then you have argued, without being able to show why, that murdering someone is wrong.  Being able to prevent a death and not acting has NO basis in your framework as a the morally right thing to do, because you operate exclusively out of rights.

A rights-based framework is inheritantly selfish in nature, and results in people dying to due neglect, as your comment above has shown.  It can't even begin to arrive at a situation like you see from the Gospels, for example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sheep_and_the_Goats

The text of the passage appears in Matthew's Gospel, and is the final portion of a section containing a series of parables. From Matthew 25:31–46 (WEB):

³¹"But when the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. ³²Before him all the nations will be gathered, and he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. ³³He will set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.³⁴Then the King will tell those on his right hand, 'Come, blessed of my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; ³⁵for I was hungry, and you gave me food to eat. I was thirsty, and you gave me drink. I was a stranger, and you took me in. ³⁶I was naked, and you clothed me. I was sick, and you visited me. I was in prison, and you came to me.'³⁷"Then the righteous will answer him, saying, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry, and feed you; or thirsty, and give you a drink? ³⁸When did we see you as a stranger, and take you in; or naked, and clothe you? ³⁹When did we see you sick, or in prison, and come to you?'⁴⁰"The King will answer them, 'Most certainly I tell you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.' ⁴¹Then he will say also to those on the left hand, 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels; ⁴²for I was hungry, and you didn't give me food to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me no drink; ⁴³I was a stranger, and you didn't take me in; naked, and you didn't clothe me; sick, and in prison, and you didn't visit me.'⁴⁴"Then they will also answer, saying, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and didn't help you?'⁴⁵"Then he will answer them, saying, 'Most certainly I tell you, inasmuch as you didn't do it to one of the least of these, you didn't do it to me.' ⁴⁶These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."

richardhutnik said: You are not able to effectively argue, from a rights based framework against murder.  Murder is what someone does to someone else.

Thank you for proving once and for all that you don't understand rights based ethical systems.

Peace out.

badgenome said: richardhutnik said: You are not able to effectively argue, from a rights based framework against murder.  Murder is what someone does to someone else. Thank you for proving once and for all that you don't understand rights based ethical systems. Peace out.

You PERSONALLY are not able to argue from a rights-based framework if you personally aren't going to argue that a person has a right to life, but has a right to not be murdered.  Being murdered is wrong in the context of a right to life.  You can see this in the context of the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed

I did not say you can't hold not being murdered as a right, but you can't effectively argue for it, because such an argument is arbitrary.  Well, it is selectively done, because you want to avoid having it based on a right to life, because that would mean that people have a right to live and can do what they need to, in order to live, and it can lead to an argument that the state can engage in welfare, to make sure people die.

Reality is, you get around the problem of values being in conflict (it isn't even just between people, but also within someone else), by reducing everything to simply Liberty.  By saying. "leave me alone" you argue that the only right people have is to Liberty and that such a right should not be interfered with in any way, by a state imposing on them, or any group.  You frame all your reasoning around this.  

This view, which looks like it resolves all sorts of conflicts, ends up missing a lot.  This view would end up saying the only issue with the Hunger Games (the games in the book) is that the participants in the games didn't volunteer to go there.  If they had volunteered, then the entire thing would be ok.  There is nothing unethical about people fighting to the death for fame and glory, so long as they freely choose to do so.  The bigger picture of a system that seems incredibly cruel is that you have no basis for saying it is wrong, if you merely reduce it to one of choice.  And even in that world, the people in it choose to end up being entered in more.  They can choose to be complaint.  People can also choose to not watch.  The entire system could go down, if people choose.  So, in light of choice, you can't even argue that the games are wrong, because people choose to be compliant with it.

And also to end up saying that a rights base ethical system doesn't have flaws, is to remain blind to arguments made on the Utilitarian side, of where you calculate outcomes.  Reducing everything to being ok to choice, ends up denying that a situation where choices made have bad results.  Is a system where you make individual and collectively bad choices, with worst outcomes than one where better outcomes are bad superior to the one with better outcomes?  Can you argue for this?  Hey, we had the freedom to choose, and we all died is superior to one where someone interupted the situation and imposed one with better outcomes and they came to pass?  Would you argue this?  

richardhutnik said: You PERSONALLY are not able to argue from a rights-based framework if you personally aren't going to argue that a person has a right to life, but has a right to not be murdered.

Uh... how is that? You have the right to be unmolested. That is the entire basis of "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness". Murder is certainly a deprivation of the right to life and thus of liberty.

Your problem is that you believe that the right to life means that you are entitled to be provided with a living. But if it is the case that you have the right to be provided with something, then you also have the right to deprive someone else of something.

I don't know what the Hunger Games is, but let's put it this way. There is nothing wrong with boxing, but there is something very wrong with someone punching someone who doesn't consent to be punched first.

richardhutnik said: Here is another one: Do people have a right to live? Or is life not a fundamental human right? If you then consider human life a right, and a person find that no one will help them, and they risk death, then would not them doing whatever is necessary to stay alive be justified? They can claim their right to live justified them stealing or squatting in property. Take the case of a child that was abandoned by their parents, and now fends on the streets for themselves, and steals and what not. If human life is a right, aren't they justified to do so? Or do you want to argue life is not a right people have? If life is not a right then, then what is a right?

Do people have a right to live? In the strictest sense no because eventually they will die and the act of dying in no way infringes on someone's rights on its own ... A person has a right to not be intentionally harmed by the acts of another person (which is why intentional acts of harm are against the law, and people may still be compensated for unintentional acts that harm them) but a person does not have the right to infringe on someone else's rights to live.

Here is a hypothetical question to demonstrate the reasoning for this ...

Suppose an individual has experienced kidney failure and they need a kidney transplant to survive but (for a wide variety of reasons) the compatibility for a donor is low, would it be ethical for him to be able to force a healthy individual to give them their kidney knowing that they health of the healthy person would be significantly impacted?

Is there a synonym for a rights-based ethical system? Because I'm not familiar with the term.

richardhutnik said: This view, which looks like it resolves all sorts of conflicts, ends up missing a lot.  This view would end up saying the only issue with the Hunger Games (the games in the book) is that the participants in the games didn't volunteer to go there.  If they had volunteered, then the entire thing would be ok.  There is nothing unethical about people fighting to the death for fame and glory, so long as they freely choose to do so.

I have no issue with that statement.

There is nothing wrong with a group of people who have volunteered under no outside pressure to fight to the death for fame and glory, doing exactly that. They know what they signed up to do, and nobody is being hurt other than those who have willingly forfeited their right to life and safety.

An important part of a rights-based ethical system is that the forfeiting of rights is possible.

Slimebeast said: Is there a synonym for a rights-based ethical system? Because I'm not familiar with the term.

No, I think it is (more or less) a term richardhutnik made up ...

What I think he is really trying to describe is that he sees a problem with negative rights and favours positive rights.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights

Rights considered negative rights may include civil and political rights such as freedom of speech, private property, freedom from violent crime, freedom of worship, habeas corpus, a fair trial, freedom from slavery. Rights considered positive rights, as initially proposed in 1979 by the Czech jurist Karel Vasak, may include other civil and political rights such as police protection of person and property and the right to counsel, as well as economic, social and cultural rights such as food, housing, public education, employment, national security, military, health care, social security, and a minimum standard of living. In the "three generations" account of human rights, negative rights are often associated with the first generation of rights, while positive rights are associated with the second and third generations.

Negative rights essentially describe freedoms you have from other people's actions, positive rights essentially describe entitlements that other people have to provide you. Using his right to life argument, the negative right you would associate with this is that you have the right not to be murdered regardless of the actions you take, the positive right would be that the government must provide you with healthcare to prevent your death. The logical extreme of the negative right is that even a sexual predator can not be murdered, whereas the logical extreme of the positive right is that a smoking, drinking, overweight 95 year old is still entitled to a heart transplant paid for by taxpayers.