That's a very fun topic. My short response would simply be that rights don't exist. That is to say, they aren't anything objective outside of ourselves. They're just thoughts in our minds. They're the respect we decide to automatically grant others and it varies from person to person. For instance, someone at the top of my chart only believes that conscious adult humans of sound mind have full human rights. Someone at the bottom of the chart, like me, will disagree and argue that people in comas, children, and all other sentient creatures of the world ought to be granted the same rights.
You are viewing a single comment's thread from:
But how do you come up with the story of rights? Where does that come from? What's your argument for "this is the story that people should believe"?
For me the concept of natural rights has been always somehow incomplete. It's like saying "everybody should believe this story, period", and not discussion of the reasons why. Like it's just a story that's mandatory for every libertarian to believe. That's the starting point and there is no need to discuss why we should start from there.
We adopt a moral framework based upon our highest values. Someone who values power and the spreading of his genes will have no interest in the NAP. He'll instead say that strength and domination are virtues and that weakness and submission are sins. I adopted the NAP because my highest goal/value is peaceful coexistence with others. The NAP is a recipe that produces that desired outcome. Morality is subjective until you have defined your ultimate values/goals. Once you have identified those, the rest is a matter of objective cause and effect.
But that is very dangerous. And your definition of subjectivity is incomplete. You should reconsider because you are not looking at the bigger picture.