Rights and the Principle of Helping the Poor

In his book Word and Purpose, WV Quinne describes the problems that arise when one tries to translate a language one does not know at all. Among the ideas he raises in his discussion is that if a person tries to interpret what a person says, he should use it the principle of love, Quine said that we should think that “the alarmingly false expressions of their countenances may evoke subtle linguistic differences.” If your translation means that your interlocutor said something that doesn’t make sense, you should assume that something is lost in translation rather than that you are talking to a fool. And Quine points out that this is not limited to translating from foreign languages ​​- the same problem can arise in the “domestic situation” due to the “diversity of languages.”

I try, however imperfectly, to use this idea when I talk to other people. And recently, I’ve wondered whether such “linguistic differences” might, if properly accounted for, help me make a useful understanding of how other people talk about rights.

The idea in question was this explained by Michael Huemer as Legal Perspective of rights. (Note, in that paper Huemer is talking specifically about property rights, but the same view is often taken about rights in general.) As Huemer puts it, in the Legalist View,

This is a thought I have heard in various forms over the years. Its proponents often say that “Rights only exist where they are established by society and/or enforced by the state. To talk about something that has no social enforcement behind it as a ‘right’ is confusing. If it is not supported and enforced by the state or society, that is not a right.”

Now, this line of thought has always struck me as, in Quine’s words, an incredible lie on its face, because it has absurd consequences. For example, I take it for granted that slavery represents the greatest human rights violation in history. But in terms of the “rights only exist when enforced by the state” view, slavery was not a violation of rights at all. If rights only exist if the state (or sufficiently strong social conventions) recognize and enforce them, then it simply follows that whenever and wherever slavery is enforced by the state and considered acceptable by the citizens, no enslaved person experiences any violation of their rights – because in reality they have none. In this view, Dredd Scott’s infamous decision declaring that African Americans “had no rights that a white man should respect” was not a big mistake – it was an undeniable statement of fact (at least at the time). If your theory is that slavery does not violate anyone’s rights as long as society approves it and the government enforces it, you need a better theory.

However it always seemed to me. But now I wonder if, perhaps, there is a hidden linguistic difference, or a linguistic difference, that might put this in another way. I just remembered back and forth from the comments section of this blog about the rights situation from a few years ago (yes, I can remember things like this but I can’t remember when my siblings’ birthdays are!). Another commentator he defended the legalistic view of rights, which says that if one believes that “rights exist and can be ‘denied’ even if the social situation does not clearly recognize those rights, then I would not agree with that argument.” There are many rights that I think communities should create and protect; but they don’t exist before the community goes and does that.”

But I saw in another commenter that maybe his opinion could be reversed. Also discussed in that post was Love v Virginia a case that overturned a ban on interracial marriage. According to the legal opinion defended by this analyst, one will say that these laws before they were repealed, did not violate human rights. And the publisher accepted that statement – although he also added his belief that “the Lovings *should have had the right* to marry.” However, before the court decisions were issued, they had no such right.

So here is my suggestion that might fill the gap. This analyst confirmed that he believes in Lovings I had to have it the right to marry. This means that it was wrong for the state to prevent them from marrying. Well, “it’s not right for the country to ban people from X”, for people like me, that’s just what it is said to say that people have a right to X. When I say “people have the right to speak freely,” I mean that it is wrong for the state to forcefully silence people from speaking. It is a descriptive claim, which allows us to assess which types of rules are appropriate or inappropriate. In this view, laws and agreements can be violations of rights. This is another definition of rights, that “people have the right to speak freely” a what you describe claim, and therefore may be true or false depending on the laws and conventions in any particular society. Thus, in this view, laws and treaties cannot violate rights, because “rights” simply mean “whatever is recognized and enforced by laws and treaties.”

Think about it, when this commentator says “There are many rights that I think communities should create and protect; but they don’t exist before the community goes and does that.” This confirms the existing view something out there, existing before and without social coercion, and that something it must be protected and accepted. To the extent that society or state it should protect these things but not do that, that is a failure and must be corrected. For people like me, that’s the former thing we talk about when we talk about rights, and what we mean when we say that rights exist before and without being legally recognized and enforced by government or social agreements. The commenter and I both agree that there is something pre-existing national policy and public agreements that dictate which policy and such agreements it should be. It’s just that I’m calling this what’s already there something “rights”, and he doesn’t.

As an additional example, here is another thought experiment that Huemer offers in the paper cited earlier, where I throw in an additional caveat:

In this thought experiment, the hermit is not under the authority of any government, and there are no governing social conventions. However, it seems obvious that you would be doing wrong to the hermit if you did these actions. And I think almost anyone who accepts a legalistic view of rights, if pressed, would agree that it would be wrong to do these things to a hermit. Well, the wrongness of those actions, for people like me, is just what it is said to say that the hermit has property rights here and that he has violated them. If you agree that it is wrong to do these things to a hermit, you agree with the essence of what people like me say when we say that the hermit has rights even if there is no state and social law, even if you describe the situation with another vocabulary.

My point in this post is not to argue that one definition of “rights” is the right one, or that one is superior to the other. (I may come back to that point in a future post, but let’s put it on the table for now.) My point is that the possibility of disagreement about whether rights exist before or after state independence is likely to open up language. separation from what the word “rights” is intended to designate.