[huetius]

I wonder what the venn diagram looks like between “people who are responding to this in the negative” vs “people who believe human rights are real and serious.” I’m not trying to be flippant here, I just really don’t believe that people think through the consequences of their beliefs very well.

[meroes]

In case you’re interested, in the 20th century James in his pragmatism essentially did this for all of philosophy. He divided philosophy in two 2 main types, roughly the pessimist and the optimist or tender method and ____ method (forgot the second), and said all of philosophy is due to these personalities. Dewey made this Venn diagram.

[ta8645]

I don't think humans are particularly special, and I don't believe in human rights. At least in the sense that there is some fundamental guarantee to liberty, property, or whatever.

Nature is cruel, and if given half a chance, will for example snatch the life from a 2-month-old baby. That baby did nothing wrong, but did not have the "human right" to life and liberty, just a hope for it.

We can still institute rules we agree to abide by, in hopes that our lives will be better overall. But that's just self-interested agreement, not some immutable "right" inherently bestowed upon us.

[tstrimple]

> I don't think humans are particularly special, and I don't believe in human rights.

I don't believe humans are particularly special, but "human rights" are nothing more than what societies deem as requirements for leading fulfilling lives and the degree to which we have those rights is determined solely by the willingness of society to protect those rights. There are no "natural rights" only rights that we recognize and implement for ourselves at a societal level. There is nothing stopping a society from making access to something arbitrary a "human right" like the "right to be delivered a new blue hoodie every winter solstice" and then protecting and enforcing that right. If a society decides that humans have no rights, then you'd be correct in that there are no human rights which is what you may experience in some parts of the world.

[huetius]

This is an intellectually consistent view, which is good.

It seems to me to be relativistic to the point where I would call it nihilism, but it is, at least, consistent.