Michael Gove to double spending per pupil in state schools

[SpontaneousOrder]

Your conclusion is bogus. A "right" can be contradictory and still be considered valid, indeed most of what are considered rights in most of the world are just that, and they aren't considered any less valid, in law or daily life, regardless of your philosophical meanderings. Such wordplay is all very well but it generally adds little of value because it usually presupposes it's own correctness over that of reality, which is clearly wrongheaded.

You accuse ME of word-play? You just defined a right as word-play.

[SpontaneousOrder]

I was gonna try and make sense of the rest, then I read this

and decided to return to my Unit Testing. WTF is a 'negative right'?

Negative and positive rights - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[SpontaneousOrder]

As it's only 7am I certainly hope the above remains the most idiotic thing I read all day, because I'm in for one hell of a difficult time otherwise.

Of course, though, I'm sure you're right and the rest of the world is totally wrong. Much as I normally love to formally debate such ideas, certain thoughts are so beyond reason that it's really not going to help either of us.

You don't have to care for objectivity - that's up to you. But I find it interesting that you post on a forum to make some kind of truth statement, in the context of personal ambivalence towards truth & falsehood.

Performative contradiction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I'm not expecting a reply - that's just something for you to ponder.

[vwdan]

You don't have to care for objectivity - that's up to you. But I find it interesting that you post on a forum to make some kind of truth statement, in the context of personal ambivalence towards truth & falsehood.

Performative contradiction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I'm not expecting a reply - that's just something for you to ponder.

I never said I was ambivalent to what you said, and nothing I typed was a contradiction. What I said, and what I stand by, is that your post is so beyond normal reasoning that it would not be a good use of my time consider the debate any further.

[doodab]

You accuse ME of word-play? You just defined a right as word-play.

No, I accuse philosophers in general of word play. I haven't defined anything as anything, that's just you making stuff up.

[pjclarke]

Getting back to basics, in my naive way: The dictionary definition of a 'right' is 'a moral or legal entitlement to have or do something'.

Legal entitlements are easy, we have whatever rights are granted to us in whichever legislation we reside in or recognise or agreed by contract. There are courts to resolve the inevitable contradictions.

Moral rights are more slippery, but ultimately I would argue, fairly meaningless. If I claim some moral right to something, and you don't want to grant it, all you have to do is say that your morality differs from mine.

Example: 'Thou shalt not steal' was cited as an axiomatic moral imperative. But nobody seems to have told the bankers or the CEOs....

Oh and from the wiki piece on +ve and -ve rights:

Some philosophers (see criticisms) disagree that the negative-positive rights distinction is useful or valid.

Uh-huh.

[SpontaneousOrder]

I never said I was ambivalent to what you said, and nothing I typed was a contradiction. What I said, and what I stand by, is that your post is so beyond normal reasoning that it would not be a good use of my time consider the debate any further.

The content of my post was precisely that rights are only legitimate if they stand up to the objective scrutiny of reason (if 'normal' reasoning is some less than absolute standard of reason, then yes - you are ambivalent). If a right isn't objectively true, then it's subjectively a 'preference'.

If you do not believe that logical consistency is a prerequisite to truth, then yes - you do not value objectivity.

[vwdan]

The content of my post was precisely that rights are only legitimate if they stand up to the objective scrutiny of reason (if 'normal' reasoning is some less than absolute standard of reason, then yes - you are ambivalent). If a right isn't objectively true, then it's subjectively a 'preference'.

If you do not believe that logical consistency is a prerequisite to truth, then yes - you do not value objectivity.

Okay, I'm trying not get to pulled into an argument of logical fallacies and semantics here, but I'm going to try and explain my position in regards to this:

If a right isn't objectively true, then it's subjectively a 'preference'.

I don't see how ANY manmade right or law can be "objective" - essentially, the only thing that I'm born to do is breed and survive, regardless of cost to others. The problem with the way you argue is that you use philosophical points and attempt to apply them as fact and logical absolutes.

[DirtyDog]

SpontaneousOrder sounds very similar to masonryan just before he was permabanned.

[SpontaneousOrder]

Legal entitlements are easy, we have whatever rights are granted to us in whichever legislation we reside in or recognise or agreed by contract. There are courts to resolve the inevitable contradictions.

Sure. Such contractual legal rights are really an observance of a man's negative moral right to not be defrauded. Purely legal rights, such as a supposed right to a minimum wage, are just codified subjective preferences; that is to say that while the use of the word 'right' in a legal sense may be semantically valid, that does not mean that the law itself is legitimate - the only legitimate laws are those which codify man's negative right to not be coerced against.

Moral rights are more slippery, but ultimately I would argue, fairly meaningless.

Morality is a tool which men use as a shortcut to arrive at pre-processed ethical principles - the science of ethics is hard and we don't want to be constantly analysing everything every time we interact with another human being - hence pre-analysed moral axioms such as do not steal, do not kill, etc.

If moral rights are meaningless then morality is meaningless. But let me ask you, if ethics & morality are meaningless then why are you trying to convince me that I'm wrong? The preference of truth over falsehood is a moral value. If right and wrong is meaningless then why do you care enough to argue about whether i'm right or wrong?

If I claim some moral right to something, and you don't want to grant it, all you have to do is say that your morality differs from mine.

Morality is either valid or not - there can be no difference of opinion when it comes to 'my' morality or 'yours'. So your statement here makes the point very well - there can be no positive moral right to 'something' because a positive moral right presupposes that someone else must be forced, if necessary, to provide it. Negative rights have no such difficulty.

Oh and from the wiki piece on +ve and -ve rights:
Uh-huh.

Some people also disagree on whether it's ok to rape. So what? The guy suggesting that negative rights incur a positive duty may as well be saying that the right for a woman to not be raped incurs a positive duty on me to find my kicks elsewhere. It's nonsense.