My statement that Being is our right to be raised objections. Apparently the gist of these is Hume’s is/ought distinction. In other words I cannot equate Being with any right.
Other threads have resurrected this distinction. My take on that is that there must be an is to produce an ought. I have it on good authority that Hume made ethical statements. From where did these come? If not from reason, could they have come from intuition?
My attempt to prove Being is a right was to explore where ought is a part of is, i.e., to find physical antecedents for ideas about human ethics. Maybe we can take another approach here by asking what a belief in Being as a right entails. What are the social, cultural advantages of believing this is true?
Surely you’d have some of those answers if you’re the one that believes it’s a right.
Thanks. I do. I want yours!
my thoughts: the term “right” is thrown around really lightly, usually by people who wouldn’t even know where to begin in explaining what a right is or how you can actually determine if a particular right “exists.” conversations about rights are often the most philosophically sloppy conversations, with people talking past each other because they’re not even using the same definition, and also because rights are a very political thing, and people tend to use arguments as soldiers especially in political contexts.
I agree that the concept of right is bandied about as you suggest. I was thinking more of such documents as The Rights of Man. Can truth come from a lie? If Being is not a right all atrocities of man’s inhumanity to man are justified.
The one thing about truth when confronted with it that’s all there is to it. The truth cannot be birth from a lie because before man it was.
Everyday its around you, its something deep within you. We believe its given or spoken into life but its not.
This need for a tangible truth is the reason we create laws, explore the world, and always need the answers for our questions.
Just not understanding its freely given and revealed in everything around us.
But the idea of being wasn’t just created when man was placed here. We live and breath just as many other creatures do.
The only difference is we have the thought pattern to discern things.
The atrocities of man have little to do with the right to be but the god like thought that one has the right to discern over
another life because they can. Humans need little justification to kill.
Animals kill to eat, for dominance, and to survive. Humans kill off emotions and power.
Ought is not a part of is - it is a part of social conditioning or personal opinion or how one sees his duty/obligation to him/her -self or another.
Is, on the other hand, to me, reflects reality or how things are in and of themselves. And it takes a greal deal more than obvious knowledge and observation to determine that. It takes an honest and loong looking and seeing beyond what is on the surface and even then, what IS is difficult to determine except ALSO through one’s inner experiences and intuitions…the reality of which may also be examined and determined by questioning and seeing how we choose to live our lives and how they relate and influence in a positive way, the lives of others.
Perhaps ‘being’ only becomes a right at the moment of conception - when being comes into existence. Being, by its very nature, presupposes entitlement to life in that moment…
A belief in being as a right, at least for me, entails a coming into awarenss of human justice and fairness, knowledge that all men truly are created equal, no matter the life they are born into, and have a right to live a life that is productive or happy, or in any way they choose to live, so long as it does not, in reality, violate the human rights of another, by taking away spiritual Being from that person or persons.
But I think ‘right’ is a matter of perception. There is no right or wrong specifically but how one chooses to live and to think and to experience their being. The ‘rightness’ of it comes from society’s moral or legal dictates BUT it also comes in a much higher and real sense from what a human being comes to experience, intuit and know on a deeper psychological level which grows from his/her own consciousness and spirit, which might contain more than some degree of separation from what society feels is necessarily right or correct.
If any of that made sense.
How in the vastness of all there is does someone go about demonstrating that he has any more a right to be than the ant he just stepped on? After all, it’s only a matter of time before he will be sharing with it the one thing they both truly do have in common: oblivion.
I’m one of those who feels that the ant has as much ‘right’ to be as I do. Does his life have any less ‘value’ than mine does? Ask the ant and listen to what he says. The fact that we will, at some point, fall into oblivion, slide into death, gives us the urge, the drive, to experience our right to be - to live in the moment. To do otherwise, would be totally illogical and unloving toward ourselves.
This may be true. But both of us are stuck when it comes to demonstrating to others which point of view is the most reasonable. My assumptions are more cynical but no less relevant to the human condition.
We are both speculating from the vantage point of dasein.
And that seems always to be comforting to some and discomforting to others.
We have no say so in our existence–that was an outcome of our parents’ decision.
However, once we’re born (or conceived, depending on your PoV), do we have a ‘right’ to live? The law says no one has the right to take our lives–Thou shalt not kill–but does that mean existence is a right?
Are you looking for anti-abortion thoughts, ier? Or do you mean people should be allowed to ‘be’ what they want to be?
rights are useful constructions. there is no right to be or right to live unless and until we invent one. fortunately, virtually everyone shares the same desire to exist, so it’s easy to invent ethical restrictions on things like murder, and get most people to abide by them under normal circumstances.
we derive oughts from ises all the time, but we also derive ises from oughts - that’s what rights are.
we collectively feel that there ought to be a right to exist, and from that we derive that there is in fact such a right.
A legal right is one thing. But that is rooted in the understanding that if someone violates another’s right to be they can be punished for it. They may be sent to prison and denied rights of their own. Or even executed and denied their own right to be.
But outside the law someone may have their own reasons for wanting to take away your right to be. And if they can get away with it and are not troubled by the consequences what does your “right to be” really mean?
In the end it is just point of view. Unless, of course, it is derived from an omniscient/omnipotent God.
Is there a difference between being and living? For thought there seems to be a concern with how to exist. With life, there was no issue to be resolved when it was being created in the womb, so there’s no question there. The activity of living has taken on the idea of a right surrounding it: How to live? Existence is all that’s important, not how to exist.
- I do not support an anti-abortionist position.
- We seem to be getting into various definitions of Being. Let’s say Hume existed as a human being. Added to that is that Hume is known as being a philosopher. My thread is with the first consideration of Being.
- Is/ought–Hume was an is before he expounded oughts. This can’t be separated.
- I would kill the ants that invade my kitchen. On a larger scale of killing, i.e., the extemination of entire species, I must consider what ecological systems of balance I may be upsetting.
- Disease, drugs, murder, suicide, executions, war–all challenge one’s right to exist.
Ier:
can you explain in more detail what “the right to be” entails for you?
For me the right to be is epigenetic, i.e., it is part of a process wherein genetic drives and dispositions are extended and customized through environmental and organismic interactions. If the right to be is a taught ought, it is leaned when identity between the teaching and the learner is established. In other words learning owes to innate dispositions without which nothing could be taught. I’m with Socrates on this: what we would teach ,must on some level of existential awareness, be already known.
We are able to maintain this identity through the constant use of memory which is also thought. This constant use of memory or identity or whatever you call it is consuming a tremendous amount of energy. Is there any way that we can free ourselves from the identity? Through dialectical thinking about thinking itself we are only sharpening that instrument. All philosophies help us only to sharpen this instrument.
It’s not, unless it actually affects the markers on the DNA of either of your parent’s gametes.
Known, or just felt . . . ?