Sucks to be an incompetent burgler

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pErvinalia
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Re: Sucks to be an incompetent burgler

Post by pErvinalia » Fri Aug 30, 2013 7:18 am

Seth wrote:
rEvolutionist wrote:Well if you are serious, then you shouldn't have any trouble backing your claim up. You can't actually do it, can you?

I've given reasoning, but you've ignored it, like you've repeatedly ignored my calls for you to provide your own reasoning. My initial comment was in rebuttal to Seth's "natural rights" claims. That's the context of my quote. If I'm wrong about my claim, then that doesn't validate Seth's claim that they are natural. You may be right, but we'd have no way of knowing, as so far all you've done is repeat a baseless claim over and over.

Rights are meaningless concepts without the means to have them protected and enforced.


Correct. The problem is you refuse to go back to first principles, you're stuck in examining human societies and not examining the root structures of what "societies" are and why and how they come to exist.

To rephrase your statement above, "Rights are meaningful concepts when the means to have them protected and enforced exist."

But you wrongly think that this must inevitably be enforcement and protection BY SOCIETY, and you ignore the fundamental truth of nature that rights are FIRST vindicated and protected by the individual who claims the freedom of action as a right and then successfully defends that freedom of action against intrusion by others.

Society is merely a group dynamic of achieving the same result in a more organized and beneficial manner, but society does not create the rights that are to be defended, it merely uses the power of the collective to enhance the adjudication and resolution of conflicts over the exercise of pre-existing rights by individual members of the collective.

The rights, at least some of them, pre-exist the society and are a function of the necessary natural behavior of all living organisms, and there for they are "natural rights."
A behaviour isn't a "right". A "right" doesn't become a thing until there is communal agreement to protect/respect that right. Some societies don't think that women have the same rights as men. You (or a woman in that society) could say they have the same rights as men until you are blue in the face. Unless that society collectively agrees to respect that right, then it's simply not a right. It's a belief.
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Re: Sucks to be an incompetent burgler

Post by Cormac » Fri Aug 30, 2013 9:17 am

rEvolutionist wrote:
Cormac wrote:
rEvolutionist wrote:Well if you are serious, then you shouldn't have any trouble backing your claim up. You can't actually do it, can you?

I've given reasoning, but you've ignored it, like you've repeatedly ignored my calls for you to provide your own reasoning. My initial comment was in rebuttal to Seth's "natural rights" claims. That's the context of my quote. If I'm wrong about my claim, then that doesn't validate Seth's claim that they are natural. You may be right, but we'd have no way of knowing, as so far all you've done is repeat a baseless claim over and over.

Rights are meaningless concepts without the means to have them protected and enforced. I can claim a right to free beer for the rest of my life. Woohoo for rights! Oh. Societies weren't "created" despite your repeated claim (and your repeated refusal to back that claim up). Societies are the natural state of existence for Homo sapiens, whether they are formal societies or were informal communities. To assert that societies were "created" is a nonsensical step, and defies the principles of parsimony in explanation. You've added a 'bit' to the natural history of H.sapiens, so you get to explain why you have added that bit. Because it fits your preconceived libertarian notions is not a valid reason. Can you actually give a valid reason? :ask:
I've yet to see you post your reasoning. I've seen a repeated assertion, and a reference to debates on RDF and on Ratskep.

I don't accept that rights are meaningless just because they can't be protected or enforced.

For example - is a woman's right to not be raped void or rendered non-existent because in the moment of the crime, that right can't be protected or enforced?

Societies evolved out of families. Are you claiming that a family is a society? Fine - but if so, you're really stretching.

Who said I'm a libertarian?

As it happens, if we're going all the way back to the early humans and beyond, then I'd argue that rights and "society" evolved together. Social structures though, evolve to provide a stable structure within which to weigh up competing rights and apportion between them. Those rights may simply be mating and reproduction rights, or the right to feed from prey first, and so on.

But what we think of when we say "society" is usually something a little more complex. A tribe, or a village, or something more complex still. The rudiments of what would become towns and later cities. ALL of these come into being through human invention or rules and regulations to weigh up competing rights - or claims to put it another way.

And in the mix of all of this, we have the evident fact of sharing and so on amongst our animal relatives. In my view, rights evolved from this behaviour.

All this is, of course, my opinion. It is one I'm happy with.

I am open to being shown where my opinion is erroneous.

It won't be the first time or the last time I've been shown the error of my ways.

:biggrin:
I don't particularly agree with you, but at least you've given some reasoning. That's all I wanted. Ultimately both of us can only give opinions, as there simply isn't a way (that I can think of) to materially evidence this at all. Regardless of the semantics, defensible rights are provided by society, so they are definitely not "natural" like Seth asserts. That was all I was really trying to say.

Thanks for being so gracious. :tup:

I disagree with this assertion:
defensible rights are provided by society
I think that society is created to defend rights, and without such structures either rights cannot be vindicated, or tyrranies reign. And we see this in many different societies today, including our own, because social structures are inherently imperfectible. Not all competing rights can be reconciled.

Again - my opinion, and I am content to simply disagree.
Last edited by Cormac on Fri Aug 30, 2013 9:41 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Sucks to be an incompetent burgler

Post by pErvinalia » Fri Aug 30, 2013 9:34 am

This was the point about semantics. Regardless of whether rights came first, or society came first, society is still the means for rights to be provided/defended/respected/etc. Without society putting its weight behind a particular right, it would be meaningless in a practical sense.
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Re: Sucks to be an incompetent burgler

Post by Cormac » Fri Aug 30, 2013 9:42 am

rEvolutionist wrote:This was the point about semantics. Regardless of whether rights came first, or society came first, society is still the means for rights to be provided/defended/respected/etc. Without society putting its weight behind a particular right, it would be meaningless in a practical sense.

On this we are agreed, more or less.
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Re: Sucks to be an incompetent burgler

Post by pErvinalia » Fri Aug 30, 2013 9:52 am

:tup:
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"The Western world is fucking awesome because of mostly white men" - DaveDodo007.
"Socialized medicine is just exactly as morally defensible as gassing and cooking Jews" - Seth. Yes, he really did say that..
"Seth you are a boon to this community" - Cunt.
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Re: Sucks to be an incompetent burgler

Post by Seth » Fri Aug 30, 2013 11:15 am

rEvolutionist wrote:
Seth wrote:
rEvolutionist wrote:Well if you are serious, then you shouldn't have any trouble backing your claim up. You can't actually do it, can you?

I've given reasoning, but you've ignored it, like you've repeatedly ignored my calls for you to provide your own reasoning. My initial comment was in rebuttal to Seth's "natural rights" claims. That's the context of my quote. If I'm wrong about my claim, then that doesn't validate Seth's claim that they are natural. You may be right, but we'd have no way of knowing, as so far all you've done is repeat a baseless claim over and over.

Rights are meaningless concepts without the means to have them protected and enforced.


Correct. The problem is you refuse to go back to first principles, you're stuck in examining human societies and not examining the root structures of what "societies" are and why and how they come to exist.

To rephrase your statement above, "Rights are meaningful concepts when the means to have them protected and enforced exist."

But you wrongly think that this must inevitably be enforcement and protection BY SOCIETY, and you ignore the fundamental truth of nature that rights are FIRST vindicated and protected by the individual who claims the freedom of action as a right and then successfully defends that freedom of action against intrusion by others.

Society is merely a group dynamic of achieving the same result in a more organized and beneficial manner, but society does not create the rights that are to be defended, it merely uses the power of the collective to enhance the adjudication and resolution of conflicts over the exercise of pre-existing rights by individual members of the collective.

The rights, at least some of them, pre-exist the society and are a function of the necessary natural behavior of all living organisms, and there for they are "natural rights."
A behaviour isn't a "right".


I didn't say it was. I said that a "right" is a freedom of action that can be defended against intrusion by others.
A "right" doesn't become a thing until there is communal agreement to protect/respect that right.
Yes, the individual creature alone in nature has all possible freedom of action and no need to defend that freedom of action against intrusion by others.

Therefore, the individual creature alone has no need of "rights" because it enjoys absolute freedom of action.

However, the moment that another creature appears and for whatever reason, or in whatever way, intrudes on the freedom of action of the first creature, then "rights" begin to appear. "Communal agreement" is not a necessary component of the exercise of a right. It is how many organisms go about establishing a hierarchy of rights and enforcing it, but it is not a fundamental requirement of asserting and exercising a right. All that is essential to the exercise of a freedom of action is the physical capacity to perform that action despite attempts at intrusion by others. The single-cell organism has a "right to life" that is manifested in it's creation of a cell membrane that resists intrusion by other organisms that seek to interfere with that right to life.

The Alpha male wolf has a right to be the sole mate of the Alpha female because he has the ability to suppress any challenge to his free exercise of that right, including challenge by the Alpha female, whom he chooses.

In primitive human society, the leader of the tribe has the right to choose a mate, or eat first, or take the largest share of food, or direct the actions of others because he has demonstrated the ability to defend that right against challenge by others in a very physical and direct manner. Or, alternatively, the tribal elder has a right to rule because he has demonstrated the ability to survive for a long time and in doing so gathers wisdom that gives him the ability to defend that right to rule against others.

Communal agreement to respect the exercise of a right by the individual is merely part of the assembly of the hierarchy of rights and an adjudicatory mechanism by which conflicts between individuals in the exercise of rights can be resolved without "law of the jungle" naked force.

But the right, the freedom of action that can be defended against intrusion by another, always pre-exists the social structure and hierarchy that balances and adjudicates conflicts.

You have failed to actually define what a right actually is. You try to define it by reference to the adjudicatory actions of the collective, but that's an empty argument. What is a "right" to begin with? What gives it existence and function? Does a rock have "rights?" Does seawater have "rights?"

No. Rights are something that only living creatures can have because it is the interaction between living creatures that leads to the formation of the hierarchy and adjudicatory mechanisms that a society of creatures uses to advance survivability.

So a right must be something more than an abstract notion of communal agreement. Communal agreement is how the exercise of a particular right by a particular organism that affects other organisms in some way is adjudicated or enforced, but that agreement is merely the recognition of something that is inherent in the organism and it's actions that must pre-exist in order to be there to be recognized and adjudicated.

So I say that a right is a freedom of action that may be defended against intrusion by another. How that freedom of action is regulated or acknowledged is the basis of hierarchal society, but the society does not create the right, it merely acknowledges and regulates it.

The Founders ascribed these natural rights to God, as given by God to man as an essential part of his nature without which man cannot survive.

One can remove the deity and still derive the natural rights from the essential nature of living organisms without which they cannot survive.
Some societies don't think that women have the same rights as men. You (or a woman in that society) could say they have the same rights as men until you are blue in the face. Unless that society collectively agrees to respect that right, then it's simply not a right. It's a belief.
It's a right if the individual can defend that freedom of action against intrusion by others. Whether society recognizes that defense as valid is an entirely different matter. That is an adjudicatory and hirearchal ranking matter. I can claim that women have the same rights as men and if I can defend that proposition against intrusion by those who disagree, in one way or another, beginning with naked law of the jungle force and extending to persuasion and legislative action, then I can move that right to the top of the hierarchy. Society does not create the right, it merely acknowledges and respects the exercise of the right to one degree or another depending on how that freedom of action is ranked in the social hierarchy of rights.
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Re: Sucks to be an incompetent burgler

Post by Seth » Fri Aug 30, 2013 11:25 am

rEvolutionist wrote:This was the point about semantics. Regardless of whether rights came first, or society came first, society is still the means for rights to be provided/defended/respected/etc. Without society putting its weight behind a particular right, it would be meaningless in a practical sense.
Not true. While the weight of social approval or disapproval is an effective way to adjudicate the exercise of a right and resolve conflicts over the exercise of freedoms of action, the basic "practical meaning" of a right is the actual physical ability to perform that freedom of action and defend it against intrusion by another. Pure naked physical force and ability. Law of the Jungle. Adapt or die.

Everything after the struggle between two individual organisms competing for the right to prevail in a conflict over the natural rights, like the right to life, the right to seek out and reduce to individual possession those resources necessary for survival, the right to self defense, the right to procreation, is merely a more complex and less directly violent mechanism for adjudicating the rights that pre-exist the existences of "society."

It begins with two organisms seeking to gather energy to survive that come into conflict over a single resource. One organism asserts the right to sole possession and use of that resource, and the other organism does the same thing. The adjudication of who prevails in this conflict is the basis of a hierarchy of rights in a larger society, but the fundamental adjudication is by naked force and the ability to prevail...the defense of the freedom of action against intrusion by another.
"Seth is Grandmaster Zen Troll who trains his victims to troll themselves every time they think of him" Robert_S

"All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke

"Those who support denying anyone the right to keep and bear arms for personal defense are fully complicit in every crime that might have been prevented had the victim been effectively armed." Seth

© 2013/2014/2015/2016 Seth, all rights reserved. No reuse, republication, duplication, or derivative work is authorized.

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