NE_Pilot

Do you believe that because caveman did not know or recognize that the sum of the squares on the legs of a right triangle is equal to the square of the hypotenuse that it was not so? It only came into being with the collective will?

Much like the Pythagorean theory natural rights were discovered. People can choose to not believe in them or to violate them, but that does not invalidate them. Ultimately natural rights boil down to property rights (with self ownership being the most basic), societies in the past that recognized or valued these rights to at least some extent faired much better than those that did not.

Your example of cavemen who fought, were fighting over property rights. The fact that one side fought back on an attempt to take property is recognition of that right.

The codification of property rights does not make them beneficial it recognizes the already existing benefits.

GogglesPisano

No. Because this a mathematical fact. Aliens in another galaxy would agree with the math, regardless of their laws, customs, and "rights." Nothing imaginary or artificial about math.


A group of chimpanzees also believe in property rights. They will fight for land kill intruders who try to take their land. They have a society and a dominance hierarchy. Does this mean they have "Chimpanzee Rights?" And it's not only apes that have this practice.

I'd like to know where these "Human Rights" came from? If not from mammalian evolution culminating in society and codes, then from where? It seems ephemeral without some sort of structure and code.

NE_Pilot

Society emerged because of the recognition of the property rights of others. Without that, there would be no society and no codes or laws, you are putting the cart before the horse. Much like reason allowed us to discover the Pythagorean theorem, it also allowed us to discover that if we have property rights than others also have property rights.

METO Guido

These questions popped back into my thoughts a few days ago. Been dogging me for some reason. Chimps protect turf, true. A chimp might even somehow demonstrate an innate, practical use for Pythagoras's theorem. Who knows? But they don't experience free will or exercise judgement. IOW, they don't choose anything. They just do or don't do. Our rights come from here. Free will and the potential to rule over how we may act as individuals in a semi-free society. Hence the people's covenant, the Constitution.

Duffman

What does the Constitution have to do with any of this: https://www.constituteproject.org/co...f_America_1992

By your logic, you could make the same argument about drunk driving.

METO Guido

Happens everyday and night. To use your hypothetical DUI case; People v. Duffman commences with the reading of your rights at point of arrest.

Elevation

I really like where this discussion has gone! Our brains do a lot calculations which we read as intuition, instinct and skill. So, on some level, a Chimpanzee and even smaller organisms have an innate knowledge of ballistics, geometry, etc. Our brains as products of evolution have to be able to process the physical reality of the world around us (There's a whole philosophical discussion that covers whether our physical reality is fundamentally mathematics in various forms. It makes for some interesting reading/toilet videos.).

Still ants and all kinds of higher and lower organisms organize and process information basically as a reaction to the laws of physics, the resources nearby and the stability of the environment relative to their reproductive time.

So when we talk about society perhaps we don't so much invent laws as discover and describe them? Of course we can invent inane laws, but, in the long term the laws and rules which don't conform to the realities around us become burdensome or obsolete and we forget them. Any society that wants to survive the next hard winter or drought is going to require contract law, etc.

So yeah, I think a lot of lower organisms have social laws in as much as squirrels understand ballistics. That also means we don't invent new concepts so much as describe existing and unused concepts. It also means our society is rooted in physics and our incomplete understanding thereof.

So this is kind of fun! Sorry for the long post. My ideas are full of holes. Come shoot me up!

METO Guido

Why do I get the feeling you're the kind of guy who rigs his own ballyhoo?


^^^^ Key plot line of this thread. I'll agree it goes way back. So far back as, bite marks on this apple here don't look like birds done it. Any ideas you two? Universal right anything and everything but that one thing. Choices can be a real pi$$er.

Dominion over behavior is what sets us apart from beast and creates a basis for species survival. The U.S. Constitution is one country's framework for getting that done, on record, under terms of impartiality. Also namesake of the world's oldest commissioned frigate still afloat. Blasting deeper fault lines in the common ground that's served us so well only makes the job of confronting this crisis and the ones in trail, harder. Keep Old Ironsides shipshape you wonky AI master & commanders of tomorrow. She ain't lost yet.

GogglesPisano

If by "society" you mean hunter-gatherer, it emerged because we do better hunting and gathering in groups. It's been around for hundreds of thousands of years and the "society" part has existed for millions of years and across the animal spectrum.

If by "society" you mean the city-state, it emerged about 10,000 years ago because we discovered a better chance of surviving through agriculture and the division of labor. This necessitated a state, with laws and yes -- property rights. It also necessitated a hierarchy and tradition and a "leviathan" -- this being the state which has a monopoly on violence in order to keep the peace and defend the state.

Even hunter-gatherers had property rights, in that you couldn't go around stealing other peoples' food or wives. This predates agricultural society. It didn't cause it to emerge.

NE_Pilot

I am using the term society in response to your usage of it. Civilization may be more appropriate?

You can’t have a division of labor, and therefore agricultural society, without some recognition of property rights. Division of labor requires trade, and trade requires a recognition of property rights. Groups that recognized this survived and thrived, while groups that did not died off.

Lastly, from a prior statement by you:
Did hunter-gatherers recognize rights or not? These two statements appear to contradict each other.