On Apr 6, 2005, at 2:42 PM, Dan Minette wrote:
----- Original Message ----- From: "Warren Ockrassa" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
On Apr 3, 2005, at 9:09 PM, Dan Minette wrote:
From: "Doug Pensinger" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Pffft. Developing implies some sort of progress. We're backsliding.
Out of curiosity, how is that possible if you don't believe in truth?
Um, what?
I assume here you mean some kind of godly entity, rather than "truth", because you used the term "believe in".
No, "self-evident truths" definately qualify in my mind. Thus, I'd argue
that secular humanists who believe in human rights act on faith, because there is no empirical evidence for human rights. Holding truths to be
self-evident indicates that the founding fathers believed this too. It
makes sense, because that understanding was very much a part of the
enlightenment.
But I don't buy the "self-evident truths" argument either. The entire phrase describing people being created equal, endowed by their creator, etc., etc., just isn't a strong argument for me because it falls back on deity.
People are *not* equal. If we were I could be on an NBA team. I can't. Why? Because I can't do everything an NBA star can. Therefore we're not equal. What I think we should promote is the idea of equality of opportunity, to the extent that it's reasonable to pursue -- that is, I maybe should be free to try out for an NBA team, but hopefully I've got the wisdom to understand that doing so would waste the time of everyone involved -- but no fuzzy-headed ideas of universal equality, which simply cannot exist.
That's good, really. As a supervillain pointed out recently, once everyone's super, no one will be.
By extension, then, we don't -- or should not -- do those things to others, because they are ethically bankrupt actions.
I agree we shouldn't; but I'm stating that there is no factual basis for
human rights.
I agree. The entire idea of human rights is a legal fiction that was invented, several times in history in various ways, and that has been enumerated in our own founding documents, with other nations doing the same thing in the most recent (~200 years) cycle of liberal humanism.
I certainly have faith that they exist, but I realize that they are not objective, measureable quantities. They are not required parts of well verified theories.
They're not even required parts of well ordered societies, as you indicate.
All it takes is a
little empathy to understand how the victim must feel in those
situations. I wouldn't like anyone doing anything like that to anyone I
know, so it's clear to me that those are behaviors I should not do unto
others. ;)
If that's all it takes, then why have so many people hurt others?
That's a question for the ages, isn't it? Possibly because, it seems to me, there are priorities to human existence, on an individual level. Maybe I could prioritize the list (as I see it) thus:
1. Personal survival/security 2. Family survival/security 3. In-group survival/security
To the extent that the first need is met, the second can then be considered; when the second is met, the third can then be dealt with. To the above I'd add education, learning, indulging curiosity, creation of art. etc. as items that can work in conjunction with the foregoing, but *only after the basic survival needs are met first*.
Since the rather abstract idea of "human rights" requires philosophy, which requires some leisure time to develop, maybe it's not too surprising that, since a lot of human history has been stuck in meeting needs 2 and 3, we haven't seen so much of the extension of humanness to out-groups, the assignment of human rights to others, etc.
In order to extend compassion, it might be argued that one has to be able to get out of survival mode first.
Did I explain that in a useful way, or is my thinking on this still unclear?
On a somewhat more general level, social breakdowns do happen, and
again, they don't have to be judged against some kind of phantom
"truth" to be seen as bad things. Hitler was just plain evil, and what
he and the Nazis perpetrated was an atrocity. There's no reason to pull
a deity or "truth" into the courtroom to indict him and his cohort.
Are you arguing that good and evil are observables, like mass or velocity?
Not exactly, no, but when you extend the earlier criteria -- I don't want anyone to rob me, so I won't rob anyone else -- to general behavior, we might be able to come across a provisional definition of actions that can be seen as good or evil.
Can something that is socially acceptable be evil?
Yes. The socially sanctioned murder of ~6,000,000 Jews by the Nazis, for instance.
What about large, long-lasting civilizations that did not have a concept of human rights?
What of them? Civilizations' duration is not the sole measure by which one can judge their ethical merits.
Also, can you enumerate these civilizations? Perhaps I'm not perceiving history in the same way as you, or maybe I'm just tired. ;)
If
you want to argue that one needs no phantoms, then it would help to be able
to point to a scientific measurement of good and bad, not just labels.
Show how experimental results would be different if good and bad were
different.
I'm not sure what you're driving at here; but since definitions of good and evil tend to be subjective, I don't think we'll be able to find an objective measure. That would imply the existence of Truth, after all. ;)
Evolution taught in classrooms may be "just a theory" (which by the way
is incorrect; evolution is a fact)
But evolution is a theory, not a fact. Evolution is no more a fact than universal gravitation is. :-)
Oh, OK, well, you got me there. :)
BTW you mention Rome in a different note:
The Roman empire lasted for centuries without the concept of human rights.
I beg to differ. Rome, as I understand it, had ideas of human rights; they just didn't extend very well to non-Romans. The Roman ideals of rights, by our measure, were incomplete, but Rome at the time was quite liberal. For instance, if you were a Roman citizen from another nation ( = your nation was conquered by Rome, more often than not), you were allowed to worship your own gods as you used to, provided you rendered tribute annually to Caesar. That's a remarkably freethinking idea.
-- Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books http://books.nightwares.com/ Current work in progress "The Seven-Year Mirror" http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf
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