[extropy-chat] What the #$?! are rights anyway?

[The Avantguardian]

There have been a couple of threads on both lists
lately that have been somewhat contentious. On the WTA
there has been an ongoing debate on abortion that has
caused tempers to rise and people to go on angry
rants. Of course at the center of this debate is the
right of an unborn fetus to life versus a woman's
right to have control over her body. ExI, on the other
hand, has been hosting a debate on the right of poor
people to get rich enough to "eat beefsteak" versus
the right of a complex ecosystem known as a rainforest
to exist.

These debates have left me very pensive with a sense
of deep disquiet. This unease stems from the fact that
although I believe in rights, jealously guard mine,
and support the rights of other as well, I no longer
really know why I believe in them. So when people
started complaining that discussing the rights of
women versus those of fetuses is not a suitable topic
for a transhuman list, I found it necessary to ask the
lot of you to tell me what rights are, where they come
from, and why they are in any sense "real"?

I know these may seem like naive questions but as
Frank Forman pointed out, the transhuman community
really does need to come up with a rational theory of
rights. I will try to explain why this is necessary in
a historical context:

Divine right, ca. the Middle Ages:
"By the grace of God, I am your king. That means I am
the boss of you so give me your money, till my fields,
and go and fight those guys over that hill for me."

Natural rights, ca. the Enlightenment:
"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."

Human rights, ca. the Present:
"Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of
the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the
human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and
peace in the world..."

So what's the problem you ask? Well in order to
explain, I will need to play the devil's advocate for
a moment. My client, Lucifer aka Satan, claims that
neither he nor this God aka Creator person exists.
Thus he contends that if there is no Creator than
there can be no endowment of rights.

Now any logician will tell you that the scheme for
deductive reasoning is such:

Axiom: A is true.
Deduction 1: If A is true, then B must logically
follow from A.
Deduction 2: If B is true, then C must logically
follow from B.

Conversely if A is found to be false, then both B and
C must be false.

Now let us look at the first two formulation of rights
listed above. Divine right and natural rights. Both
treat the existence of a God/Creator as an axiom. Thus
if God does not exist, by the laws of reasoning,
neither should the concept of rights.

So that leaves us with the third formulation, the
modern concept of "human rights" as stated in the
United Nations charter. Yet it still leaves a bad
taste in my mouth.

If axiom A is shown to be untrue, one should not then
be able to simply take deduction B and suddenly make
it axiomatic. From a reasoning standpoint, that is a
cheap and dirty trick that I don't think stands up to
logical scrutiny. 

It forces the assumption that, for no reason
whatsoever, there is something inherently special and
sentimental about Homo sapien DNA that renders a dozen
cell embryo that carries it more sacred and more
deserving of life, freedom, and happiness than a full
grown chimpanzee that speaks sign language. Or for
that matter, renders a huge and poorly understood
ecosystem like a rain forest, a small price to pay for
the some guy to eat beefsteak.

To say that rights stem from "morality" is a cop out
too because morality can only be judged by a
subjective agent and as such is subject to cultural
relativism. Thus by this definition, fundamentalist
muslim men have every right to stone their daughters
for being "immoral".

If we find the lack of a reasonable "theory of rights"
divisive and problematic now while we are still
speaking of embryos and ecosystems, just think how
bizarre the situation will be in the proposed
transhuman future. When there may be genetically
modified human arcologies living alongside so called
neo-Amish communities, cyborgs, and uploaded
post-humans. Not to mention the possibility of
ether-roaming AGI and extra-terrestrial sentients
thrown into the mix for good measure.

So this is the challenge I put before you, the
brightest people I know:

Convince me and my client the devil that rights, human
or otherwise, actually exist. That they are not some
superstitious hold-over from a primitive past when the
earth was thought to be flat and at the center of the
universe. Tell me what rights are, where they come
from, who or what get to have them, and why. Otherwise
let me know, because being a biologist, I know the law
of the jungle better than anyone and I ought to be out
preying.



Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school... It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics students don't understand it... That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does." - Richard Feynman on QM

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