Talk:Natural right

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The concepts of "natural rights" by definition are those rights which are inborn by reason of being present at the time of birth, or shortly thereafter. One of these rights, is life itself. A person, simply by being born, has a natural right to live. This is not a right given by any government, but is a person's right given by his creator, God or Nature. Thus, the right to life is a natural right.

Another natural right would be the "pursuit of happiness." Pursuit being literally to chase after, and pursue those things which make a person happy. This is a natural right, which follows after a person is born, and of an age old enough to find pleasure in anything. Thus, a baby has a right to be comfortable, which it would find pleasurable. It follows, then, that a child has a right to reasonable food to survive, dry comfortable clothing, and to be able to play, in the pursuit of his or her happiness.

Liberty is also termed a natural right, as any human being would not be happy if kept prisoner and prevented from the pursuit of happiness. Together with "life", "pursuit of happiness," and ability to have property, these form the basis for human rights.

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That could use some work. Natural rights form a natural hierarchy (sorry for the pun). You have to start with life like you stated above. Liberty has to follow life since life is rather worthless without it. Property follows from life as a means to living, "hey, that's my knife and cow!" The pursuit of happiness isn't a natural right per se. It's more of the point to living and more of a natural result of the above. I'll have to review Piekoff's Objectivism again and try not to plagarize it. Some actual history of natural rights would be good too.

- NolanEakins

Contents 1 Precondition for Liberty 2 Proposed Redirect to Inalienable rights 2.1 The Declaration of Independence refers to Natural/Unalienable Rights, not Human Rights 2.2 Breathing is a Natural Right 2.3 There are Two Fundamentally Different Concepts 2.4 Proposed merge 3 Text of the Unalienable Rights Article 4 Native American Influence?

[edit] Precondition for Liberty

Life is not a right given by any government, but this is the 21st century. It is apparently verging on over consumption, if not overpopulation. It needs a transformation of economic, religious and racial factors so as to support life. Hence the need to govern the governed by governing natual rights to be "...able to play, in the pursuit of his or her happiness."

This precondition for "..."life", "pursuit of happiness," and ability to have property," are natural rights to life, which are limited by food, shelter, transportation, and communication. This commonality is fundamental to the purpose and limits of governance. Beyond these natural rights to life is liberty.education

[edit] Proposed Redirect to Inalienable rights

I redirected this article to Inalienable rights, but Zephram Stark reverted the redirect with this comment:

Natural Rights is NOT the same as Human Rights/Inalienable Rights. Please do a Google search or read any dictionary or encyclopedia to verify this. The two terms are polar opposites.

However, the OED defines "natural right" as:

A right considered to be inherent or inalienable, esp. in connection with the individual's relationship to the state and to society. Cf. human rights s.v. HUMAN a. 3b. Freq. in pl.

It seems to me that a "right considered to be inalienable" is the same thing as an "inalienable right". --JW1805 18:56, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] The Declaration of Independence refers to Natural/Unalienable Rights, not Human Rights

In the United States Declaration of Independence, "Jefferson did not just assert one thing after another; rather, each term logically implies the others." "Take 'unalienable,' for example. A piece of property can be given away because you would still be human even without it. Property is alienable. 'Unalienable rights' are those which are inherent in human nature so that it is logically impossible for a human to be without them. If we have these rights by being humans, then we are obviously all equal in regard to them. Conversely, anything we have just by being human is unalienable. 'Their creator' is whatever endowed us with this nature." "If 'happiness' were defined as this or that, here, there would be no liberty to pursue something else. It follows logically that 'happiness' must necessarily be whatever a human pursues, and 'pursue' must mean whatever humans do in regard to happiness, and 'liberty' is just this unalienable right to pursue. And these linkages come because each of these concepts already involves the others. Since the linkages do not depend on something else, they are 'self-evident' and that is ultimately what truths are and mean, and we are human and are the ones saying this." ~ The Focusing Institute (Introduction to Philosophy)

This is one of 18,000 hits on Google for Unalienable vs. Inalienable, but User:Mel_Etitis and his buddies ignored them all to destroy this unique and factually correct article about Unalienable Rights as used in the United States Declaration of Independence to redirect it to the article for Inalienable Rights which puts Life and Liberty in the same classification as Palestine's desire for Mediterranean property and Iran's desire for nuclear fuel cycles. Now the Natural Rights article is being wiped out and redirected to something that claims to essentially be the same thing as Human Rights. Natural Rights and Human Rights are polar opposites. Do a Google search or open any dictionary or encyclopedia to verify this.

The article to which Mel redirected people who wanted to know what Unalienable means in the Declaration of Independence says in so many words, that the self-evident, unalienable parts of humanity are essentially the same thing as Iran and Palestine's pleas for material commodities. The article then says that the concept is an example of the Naturalistic fallacy, which essentially states that pleas for material commodities based on moral grounds are meaningless. Somewhere in the argument, the simple fact is lost that the Declaration of Independence: is not a plea, does not base its arguments on moral grounds, does not seek material commodities, and has nothing to do with the current usage or meaning of the word Inalienable.

The Criticism section of "Inalienable Rights" basically says that rights founded upon moral grounds are a joke. I couldn't agree more, but the United States Declaration of Independence is clearly not founded on moral grounds. Read it!! To those who are trying to subvert the meaning of the DOI, are you redirecting people from the Declaration of Independence to something that calls it and its fundamental concepts "largely groundless," "non sequitur," "an example of the naturalistic fallacy," and "a more elegant version of 'Because we said so'" because you hate the United States of America? What is your agenda? When you want to wipe out an article, please make sure that it doesn't change the meaning of the things that reference it. Please make some sort of good-faith effort to reach a consensus. --Zephram Stark 19:00, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

• I agree that the Inalienable rights article is very poor, but that doesn't change the fact that "natural rights", "human rights", "inalienable rights", "unalienable rights" are all basically talking about the same thing. See Tom Paine:

Rights of Man 110: The representatives of the people of France..considering that ignorance, neglect, or comtempt of human rights, are the sole causes of public misfortunes..have resolved to set forth..these natural, imprescriptible, and unalienable rights.

Rights of Man 111: The end of all political associations, is, the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man; and these rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance of oppression.

To suggest that there are subtle shades of difference between these various terms is just silly. All of these articles should be merged into a single article.--JW1805 19:20, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

There are no subtle shades between the "unalienable rights" of the Declaration of Independence and the human rights that Mel is making fun of. Mel is absolutely right in saying that rights based on morals are a fallacy, because morals are subjective. But the DOI specifically bases its "unalienable rights" on the fact that they are "self-evidently" "unalienable." There are no morals involved. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are as unalienable from the human condition as breathing. --Zephram Stark 19:59, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

How are "liberty" and "the pursuit of happiness" "as unalienable from the human condition as breathing"? Millions of people today, and in history, have had their liberty taken away from them. The slaves of Thomas Jefferson and other "founders" certainly did not have that liberty. Many people live in miserable poverty and never have the opportunity to "pursue happiness"—how have they retained that right? I don't mean to dismiss the importance of rights—I think they are important—but I think you should consider that your arguments are not irrefutable. — Mateo SA | talk 05:29, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

I could write a book to answer the question of how Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness is as unalienable to the human condition as breathing, but proving that the argument is correct is not necessary to proving that the argument exists. My point in bringing up breathing is that there are some rights that are not morally based. Given that, we can safely say that not all rights are subject to the naturalistic fallacy. Rights based on what the "self-evident" nature of what humanity is are different from rights based on what humanity should have.

The right to breath is self-evident. You can verify that by simply trying to stop breathing. The right to liberty is harder to prove, but not the assertion that it exists. The founding fathers definitely assert that we are created with this right and that it cannot be relinquished. My only concern here is in keeping the two disparate concepts separate.

To answer your question, however, simply imagine what the world would be like if we had the ability to relinquish our right to liberty. If any dictator in the history of the world had ever figured out a way to coerce people into giving up their liberty, that nation would never fall regardless of how corrupt it became. The leader would simply do what was was required to keep civilians in line. He might threaten to kill a person's family unless they gave up their right to liberty or their right to pursue happiness, and that is all that would be required. Everybody would fall into line out of concern for their families.

But that is exactly what happens, according to our illustrious president here in the United States, right? President Bush said that the people of Iraq were being coerced into giving up their freedom. According to him, all we needed to do was invade Iraq, everyone would be free of their threats from Saddam, they would love America, and we could defeat terrorism. He believed that so much that, as soon as we occupied the country, he declared "Mission Accomplished!!" Yet, we all know that isn't exactly what happened. Why? Because the people of Iraq had not given up their freedom. It is impossible to do so. It is part of human nature. Even if Saddam had the ability to threaten each person with the lives of their family and friends, it would not have been possible for them to stop striving for liberty. They could have stopped for a while, like one can hold their breath for a while, but even the strongest willed of them would not have been able to hold out forever. If Saddam were really the oppressor that Bush made him out to be, he would have been overthrown. Such is human nature. It is impossible for that not to happen. It is built into us. It is a natural right that we can see for ourselves simply by witnessing that no dictator in history has ever been able to maintain indefinite control of the population through fear. A stable government must be at the consent of the governed. --Zephram Stark 22:25, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Breathing is a Natural Right

Let's consider the difference between Natural Rights an Human Rights (since the article on Inalienable Rights says that they are essentially the same thing as Human Rights).

A pretty basic example of this would be breathing. Breathing is not something we have a moral right to do. It is part of what it means to be a human. We cannot give up our right to breath. We can't permanently stop breathing even if someone said, "Give up your right to breath, or we will kill all of your family and friends." Breathing is a natural right. --Zephram Stark 19:17, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Some people claim that there are other things, besides breathing, so closely tied to humanity that they cannot be relinquished. The founders of the United States of American claim that "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" are other natural rights, not based on any moral reasoning, but simply because they are a "self-evidently" part of what it is to be a human being. They called these rights "unalienable" which means exactly what it sounds like: they cannot be alienated! We don't need anyone to reinterpret these words. They mean exactly what they sound like. That's why they were written that way. --Zephram Stark 19:28, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

• Please see the OED definition above: "...esp. in connection with the individuals relationship to the state and to society." Thus, breathing is not a natural right/human right/etc because it has nothing to do with the state and society.--JW1805 19:34, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

If you think the OED is the word of God or an irrefutable truth, that is your opinion. Wikipedia is not restrained by OED definitions and even if it were, there IS a connection between a person's natural rights, including breating, and their state/society. An individual cannot give up his unalienable rights to the state. It is impossible to relinquish any of them, including breathing.

Suppose a group of terrorists strapped bombs to your family and told you, "The next time you seek nuclear fuel cycles, we will kill them all." Could you save your family? Could your relinquish your right to nuclear fuel cycles? Of course, because you have the physical ability to give them up. You could go the rest of your life without a single nuclear fuel cycle. It is possible. However, what would happen if the terrorists instead said, "The next time you seek a to protect your life, we will kill them all." Could you physically relinquish your right to life? Could you let someone beat you to death without raising your hands in defense? Could you let someone push you in a pool without trying to stay afloat? The founding fathers of the United States say, "no." Your right to life is unalienable. It is built-in. It is not something that you can relinquish, even if you try—-even if the lives of all your loved ones depend upon it. The DOI is not based on morals. It doesn't claim to be. It is based, as it says, on the "self-evident" nature of mankind. --Zephram Stark 19:52, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

• Well, I was just taking your suggestion to open "any dictionary" to try and verify your statement that the two words were "polar opposites". I happened to open the OED (which is the world's most respected and definitive dictionary of the English language) and it did not seem to agree your statement. To say that Wikipedia is not restrained by the historical usage and accepted definitions of words is just ridiculous. --JW1805 20:46, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

It certainly is ridiculous, which is why I can't figure out the reason you are trying to change the historic usage of the words of the most important document in the history of my country. Click here, read through the actual principles of the Declaration of Independence, and tell me if you think it has anything to do with a plea for fairness or any of the other crap you are trying to redirect it to. The foundation of the United States of America is based on observable human characteristics. It is not a plea, it is a declaration. --Zephram Stark 21:16, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

To answer your questions above: Yes, you can physically relinquish your right to life. People commit suicide all the time. Yes, you could let someone beat you to death without raising your hands in defense. Again, that happens and has happened all the time. Many individuals, after being physically or mentally abused for long periods, will not defend themselves. An example of this would be the slaves beaten to death by some of the contemporaries of the "founding fathers". As to the assertion that one cannot relinquish one's right to life "even if the lives of all your loved ones depend upon it", I would say that countless people have gone to war and lost their lives, allowed themselves to be martyred, killed themselves, etc. to protect the lives of their loved ones. And someone could kill themselves—give up their right to breath—if someone threatened the lives of their loved ones. If those are your arguments for the "self-evident" and indisputable concept of natural rights, they are very poor arguments. So perhaps you could consider that your understanding of the concept of natural rights might be wrong, and that others are entitled to their opinions as well.

To use your words, if you think that the Declaration of Independence is "the word of God or an irrefutable truth", again that is your opinion. Wikipedia is not restrained by OED definitions, but it is also not restrained by the definitions used in the Declaration of Independence. Wikipedia is supposed to describe what other authorities say about particular concepts; i.e., it describes the existing body of knowledge and opinion in the world, without making assertions as to its validity. JW1805 was not saying the OED was irrefutable and did not try to "change the historic usage" of the DOI. He simply pointed out that at least some authorities do not agree with you. While you may fervently believe in your concept of natural rights, the point of Wikipedia is not to assert your beliefs, but to describe what people generally believe, and when they disagree, to describe those points of disagreement.

Finally, why do keep referring to "pleas for fairness"? The article "human rights" does not make that assertion. How would merging the articles "natural rights" and "human rights" make people think that the DOI is a "plea for fairness"? — Mateo SA | talk 05:18, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

See my answer in the above section for most of this. Your question about "irrefutable truth" is not relevant to what I said. I never used the word "irrefutable" and I certainly don't mean to imply it in reference to any interpretation of the Declaration. In fact, I tried adding a section in Support of the Declaration, in the "Inalienable Rights" article, without touching the Criticism section. The support section was promptly deleted. The people controlling that article don't want anyone to know that a dispute exists, despite the fact that a Google search for "unalienable vs. inalienable" yields 18,100 hits. Likewise, a very NPOV section on "Inalienable vs. Unalienable" was deleted, and the entire "Unalienable rights" article of cited and relevant information was deleted along with all history and discussion of it. --Zephram Stark 22:35, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] There are Two Fundamentally Different Concepts

Human Rights are based on morals. They are used in pleas for fairness, and to show victimhood. Because their basis is subjective, they have no Platonic factual existence.

Natural Rights are based on factual evidence that we can see for ourselves or prove via the scientific method. Because their basis is not subjective, natural rights can only be used for statements about the factual nature of man. A plea for a natural right negates the possibility that the item in question could be a natural right because natural rights are unalienable—-we don't have to ask anybody for them—-there is no way to give up the item in question.

The founding fathers of the United States of America did not create a Plea for Independence. They did not ask permission for their rights. These rights already belonged to them because they were unalienable—-they could not give them up in the first place. They are a natural part of what human beings consist of. They are natural rights. --Zephram Stark 20:41, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps you should note the name of the document called "The Universal Declaration of Human Rights". The UDHR, like the Declaration of Independence", does not make a "plea" for rights, but assumes that they exist and that they are "inalienable" to all human beings (see the text of the UDHR at http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/lang/eng.htm. This is a concept common to many ideas of human rights. While you are entitled to your opinion about the nature of natural rights vs. human rights, other people have different views. The point of Wikipedia is to describe that existing knowledge, not to make an argument for one POV or another.

I am not on what you base your claim that "Human Rights are based on morals. They are used in pleas for fairness, and to show victimhood." Many of the provisions of the UDHR are similar to statements in the Declaration of Independence or other similar documents. For example, Article 3 of the UDHR declares that "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.", a statement very similar to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". Most claims for human rights are based simply on the assumption that those rights exist and are worth protecting. In that the concept of human rights is quite similar to that of natural rights.

What sort of "factual evidence" is used to prove the existence of natural rights? And how has the existence of natural rights been proven using the scientific method? I know of many theories of natural rights—such as that presented in the Declaration of Independence—but I have never heard of anyone providing a scientific proof of their existence. In fact, I would think that most scientists would consider the abstract concept of right to be inherently unprovable. Considering this, I would assert that the basic distinction between "human" rights and "natural" rights is that a religious or philosophical argument is made for the existence of natural rights, while human rights are simply assumed to exist. This explains why many asserted human and natural rights are identical (again, such as the right to "life and liberty"). The difference between them is that natural rights theory provides an argument for their inherent nature, while human rights theory simply assumes that they are inherent. — Mateo SA | talk 04:47, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Hopefully, I have answered these questions to your satisfaction in the two sections above. If not, please tell me which parts I have not answered. Terms like Natural Rights and Human Rights are not truths, they are constructs to describe concepts that exist. We can mix up the meanings of the constructs all we want, but the concepts remain pure. Without mixing it up with any other document, "unalienable" as used in the Declaration of Independence means: cannot be alienated. I don't need to tell you that, it's evident in the text of the document. It's evident without any interpretation at all. The most I can do to deter people from changing the meaning would amount to nothing more than if people read the Declaration without any "expert interpretation." The funny thing is, everyone I know here in the physical world who reads Principles of the Declaration of Independence gets it without any interpretation or annotation. Why is it so hard for my online friends to get it? Are they biased? That's the only conclusion I can come to. Do you really have to ask what the rights in the Declaration are based upon? It says right in the text: they are held to be self-evident. You can claim that you do not see evidence of them, but that doesn't change the fact that the American founding fathers created a pretty damned good nation based on them that held together for more than two hundred years until the concepts were discarded in favor of the USA Patriot Act. --Zephram Stark 23:31, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed merge

Inalienable rights beedn't be (though they're usually claimed to be) natural, and natural rights needn't be (though they're often claimed to be) inalienable. I'd vote against the proposed merger. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 10:57, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Text of the Unalienable Rights Article

I propose that we clean up the text of the deleted "Unalienable Rights" article and use it for this article on Natural Rights. There are definitely two disparate concepts here. Whether you agree that certain rights are morality based or physically based is irrelevant. We need to describe the difference between the two concepts. Here is the text of the "Unalienable Rights" thread. We've all heard the rhetoric, that the information is all evil and needs to be wiped from the face of the Earth, but lets try to be a little more objective about our thoughts on the article. Okay? For instance, if you think that something cannot be verified, ask for a source. --Zephram Stark 23:30, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

For old text of Unalienable rights article, see [1]

• Wow, that is really one poorly written article. My favorite part is in the "Proof of unalienable rights" section, which has the quote: "The United States Congress asserts that unalienable rights are self-evident", and then goes on to mention The Matrix. And you wonder why no one else seems to agree with your point of view? --JW1805 02:50, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
• Also, please note that this article was the subject of a VfD. The consensus was to delete and redirect to Inalienable rights.--JW1805 03:10, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Please look up the word consensus.

I appreciate your attempt at a personal attack, but seeing as how I wrote very little of that article, your comments means nothing to me. I pasted it here so that we could talk about the various parts of it and possibly use some of it to create a strong article for Natural rights, but that doesn't appear to be in line with your agenda. Instead, you deleted it and gave us a link to a page that we can't edit. I don't know what you are so afraid of, but if that information is so dangerous to you that we can't even discuss it, I guess you have no choice but to delete it and rearrange my responses to people so that they don't even make sense. --Zephram Stark 03:18, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

I didn't personally attack anyone, I just said it was a badly written article. This talk page is not the place to paste a big chunk of text from another article. I don't have an "agenda", and I certainly don't consider anything in that silly article to be "dangerous". If you want to add to this article, go ahead, but try and stick to documented facts, rather than original research or attempts to "prove" a certain point of view. I don't know what you mean by "rearrange my responses", when did I do that? On the definition of "consensus", I would say that since every single person (except you) who contributed to that VfD voted to delete or redirect, I would call that consensus. --JW1805 04:31, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

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"For instance, Jonathan Wallace has asserted that proclaiming some rights as 'natural' is another way of saying 'Stop asking questions' and 'I have won this argument.'"

This is in here twice.

[edit] Native American Influence?

Recently I read a book called 14911491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus and it makes the case (though not throughly, as the book's main purpose is elsewhere) that Native American/Indian models of government and society had a strong impact on the development of ideas about natural rights in Europe (arguably these ideas underlied some Native societies - he cites the Iroquois). He notes that Native American/Indian examples were used to bolster these ideas in the works of many philosophers. I don't feel like I have a deep enough knowledge of the subject to write a section on it, but I'm wondering if those of you who have read deeper into the works of people like Locke and who know more about the history of American Native groups think this is reasonable. Right now articles on the enlightenment, liberalism, and ideas like natural rights are strongly grounded in European philosophers but don't mention the influence of America or go into how these ideas affected life at the time.--adamatari 23:35, 22 September 2007 (UTC)