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This long rambling essay really has little to do with rights. If no one objects, I'm going to delete this entire section.-- JW1805 02:21, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
I have been told that the interwiki of this page to French language actually points to the page about Law. Checking the en interwiki of the page fr:Droit, it points back to Law. So this should be fixed. I couldn't help as I don't know any French. -- Lerdsuwa 16:17, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
The article currently says things like:
Most modern conceptions of rights are universalist and egalitarian; in other words, equal rights are granted to all people. Such rights may be defined in terms of the Golden Rule ("do unto others as you would have them do unto you"). An individual agrees to respect the rights of others in exchange for the assurance that the others will respect the same rights for him in turn.
This appears to be talking solely about negative rights! Is that satisfactory? Dealing with positive rights at the same time makes the writing task much harder but is very necessary for teaching our readers about the subject properly. -- pde 00:40, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
" Property rights provide a good example…" Yes and no. It's a matter of an example of what. I think we would do better to give two examples, one of rights that are recognized as truly universal, and property as the other, because property rights, by their nature, are in some respects particular: they pertain to the owner of specific property. Freedom of thought or of speech might be good examples of truer universality, at least in the realm of theory if not in practice (since they are abridged by some governments). That is, my having certain thoughts or uttering certain speech doed not deprive anyone else of thought or speech, but my owning particular private property is precisely at the expense of anyone else's claim on that property. - Jmabel | Talk 06:21, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
I see that there is a seperate individual rights article. I guess that means this article needs to include talk of both individual and group rights, so it needs some modifications. Maybe individual rights should be merged into this article? RJII 01:28, 16 May 2006 (UTC) I created a group rights article, if anyone wants to work on that. RJII 01:35, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
The conception of a right to something that implicitly creates an obligation on someone else to provide that thing (a positive right) is widely challenged. You can not enforce your wish for something (under the auspices of a right) if it implicitly constitutes an obligation on another to do something for you. However, one person's right to something creates a negative right in that you have the right for that thing not be interfered with by another, and that other is obligated not to interfere with your right to it. The obligation test is widely used to determine what constitutes a right. To illustrate: You have the right to own an axe, but you do not have a right to an axe. If you do own an axe, others have an obligation not to steal it.
I've got a post-graduate education, and I had to read practically every sentence of this paragraph more than once to parse it. And it has a lot of problems beyond that:
In short: poorly written libertarian cant.
I'll allow at least 48 hours (and probably more) for someone to rewrite this in a way that belongs here, but if it hasn't been substantially fixed by then, I intend simply to remove it. - Jmabel | Talk 22:35, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
As far as I can see, this addresses none of the issues I raised. - Jmabel | Talk 06:06, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
It's my understanding that the distinction between law and right is quite different in some other languages, such as French and German using droit and Recht respectively to cover both, and that this partly reflects their legal systems' different conceptions of the underlying ideas. Of course this article shouldn't go off on linguistic tangents, but insofar as the language reflects a different conceptual viewpoint, it might be worth discussing how universal and/or controversial the law vs. right distinction is, and how it relates to philosophy of law and so on. -- Delirium 23:59, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
I changed "a right on a thing" to "a right to something". Although it's a trivial change, I note it here in case there's something I'm missing. Mujokan 06:26, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
I removed the sentence:
Compare with privilege, or a thing to which one has a just claim.
This was in the introduction, but I don't think that's really the definition of a privilege, and if something else is meant by it, I don't understand it, and it would be helpful if someone could rephrase it so it is simpler. Thanks, Drum guy ( talk) 21:10, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps a better way to phrase that concept is that a right does not require permission and a privilege does require permission. A simplified definition of right may be in order: "A right is an action that an individual can do, that does not require permission, and that is generally accepted or condoned (for example, not prohibited by custom or law)".
I am not going to modify the main body text without some feedback as there are many opinions as to what is or is not a right. For example, the bill of rights outlines many rights but it has been argued that the bill of rights is a blueprint of how to convert rights into privileges and then to limit them. A specific example is the right to keep and bear arms. Can you carry an unlicensed firearm in the United States of America and not be subject to arrest when that firearm is discovered upon your person? James thirteen ( talk) 20:06, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
The result of the proposal was move. JPG-GR ( talk) 18:09, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
Shouldn't this article be called "Rights" instead of "Right"? RJII 01:07, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
I'd agree with that. Mujokan 06:27, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
... Rights are of vital importance in theories of justice and deontological ethics.
The contemporary notion of rights is universalist and egalitarian. Equal rights are granted ...
So discussion here seems to have died down, with support generally in favor rather than against (7 out of 9 votes by my count). When/how does this move happen (or if not, what next?). - Pfhorrest ( talk) 00:56, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
From the article:
Such rights may be defined in terms of the Golden Rule ("do unto others as you would have them do unto you"). An individual agrees to respect the rights of others in exchange for the assurance that the others will respect the same rights for him in turn.
Clearly a well-intentioned explanation, but not necessarily on the mark. It does get at one thing: a moral injunction to treat others as one wishes to be treated oneself. If we are getting that into the article, I would think that it should be by way of the concept of social contract.
The Golden Rule and the categorical imperative do not lead directly to a set of rights: they lead to a system of moral obligation, which can be translated into a theory of justice, from which a concept of rights can be derived.
Anyway, I think we need to get something like that into the article rather than the sentences just quoted, but I know that my wording here is too academic. I'm open to ideas. - Jmabel | Talk 03:19, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
The golden rule is a religous edict that has been put under scrutiny for years. There is even a history of Jewish Christian conflict over this rule. The rule is an example of the Ethic of Reciprocity and has been found to be flawed on the basis that it does not take into account the wishes of others and would mean that people have to accept what others like regardless of their individual preferences, or that others have the right to force their preferences on you. Simply put the golden rule if turned to establish rights would indicate that because I like getting tatoos or sodomy I have the right to give others tatoos and anything else I like. For obvious reasons this logic is flawed and it has been stated that the rule should be amended to, "do unto others as they would have done to them". Regardless the golden rule deserves not palce in this article concerning rights and I move to have it removed. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Stratvic ( talk • contribs) 26 September 2006.
I've just more or less completed a major cleanup, reorganization, and expansion of this article. I've excised a large chunk of text that I find to be of very poor quality; I am going to attempt to work what of it I can back into the article, but for now I've moved it here to the talk page. The excised text follows:
It is not generally considered necessary that a right should be understood by the holder of that right; thus rights may be recognized on behalf of another, such as children's rights or the rights of people declared mentally incompetent to understand their rights. However, rights must be understood by someone in order to have legal standing, so the understanding of rights is a social prerequisite for the existence of rights. Therefore, educational opportunities within society have a close bearing upon the people's ability to erect adequate rights structures.
Property rights provide a good example: society recognizes that individuals have title to particular property as defined by the transaction by which they acquired the property granting the individual free use and possession of the property. In many cases, especially regarding ideological and similar rights, the obligation depends on the legal system in its entirety, or on the state, or on the generical universality of other subjects submitted to the law.
Societal rights or civil rights are bestowed to its citizenry by society and are a set of obligations that are purported as a social contract. Societal rights are a privilege of membership and the benefits are limited to its members though may be extended to temporary guests. Access to societal rights is dependent on government grants and on the citizen fulfilling their obligations e.g. complying with laws and paying taxes.
The right can therefore be a faculty of doing something, of omitting or refusing to do something or of claiming something. Some interpretations express a typical form of right in the faculty of using something, and this is more often related to the right of ownership of property. The faculty (in all the above mentioned senses) can be originated by a (generical or specific) law, or by a private contract (which is sometimes exactly defined as a specific law between or among volunteer parties).
Other interpretations consider the right as a sort of freedom of something or as the object of justice. One of the definitions of justice is in fact the obligation that the legal system has toward the individual or toward the collectivity to grant respect or execution to his/her/its right, ordinarily with no need of explicit claim.
Aristotle, in the Nicomachean Ethics (book five), claims that there is a large difference between written (generalized) justice and what is actually right for the (specific) individual.
But what obscures the matter is that though what is equitable is just, it is not identical with, but a correction of, that which is just according to law.
The reason of this is that every law is laid down in general terms, while there are matters about which it is impossible to speak correctly in general terms. Where, then, it is necessary to speak in general terms, but impossible to do so correctly, the legislator lays down that which holds good for the majority of cases, being quite aware that it does not hold good for all.
The law, indeed, is none the less correctly laid down because of this defect; for the defect lies not in the law, nor in the lawgiver, but in the nature of the subject-matter, being necessarily involved in the very conditions of human action.
— Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics (10-3) (Peters' translation) [1]
With reference to the object of the right, a common general distinction is among:
- Intellectual rights, which include:
I know I'm still fairly new around here and I'm not entirely certain this is an acceptable move to make, but some of these rights pages are in serious disrepair and I am trying in good faith to fix them up the best I can. Apologies is anything I do is inappropriate - please feel free to notify me and I will refrain in the future. - Pfhorrest ( talk) 07:59, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
I've just undone the following contribution by User:Simultaneous movement, which was placed in the "theoretical distinctions" section, because it is not a theoretical distinction, and because it seems to talk specifically about negative, natural, claim rights, and so better suits one of those pages (said user has also recently made a similar contribution to Natural and legal rights) than this page on rights in general. However, if anyone would like to discuss better ways of working this or something similar into this or another article, I'm including it below for posterity:
The libertarian view is that "a right is a principle which morally prohibits men from using force or any substitute for force against anyone whose behavior is non-coercive. A right is a moral prohibition; it doesn't specify anything with regard to what actions the possessor of the right may take (so long as his actions are non-coercive) – it morally prohibits others from forcibly interfering with any of his non-coercive actions." [2]
- Pfhorrest ( talk) 06:56, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
I've just partially reverted the recent edits by User:Piratejosh85 (retaining Zodon's intermediary changes), and I'm here to explain.
First, I've removed this passage:
The article on Natural and legal rights already discusses the concepts of natural law vs positive law, and we don't want to go into too much detail on each particular distinction here. Also, mentioning legal positivism without its contradictory position (which doesn't seem to have a proper name, much less an article, as far as I can tell) seems a bit biased against natural rights.
Second, regarding claim rights, I've replaced this passage:
with the older phrasing:
Claims rights do not all serve to ensure access to resources, and that is certainly not the primary sense of the term; only a subset of positive claim right regard the provision of resources. The second meaning in the reverted passage seems dependent on the first meaning: the "claims" in question are not claims against resources, but claims against people; thus the non-interference in the second meaning is what one has a claim to, not something enabling one to have something else that one has a claim to.
I've also reinserted the word "simply" regarding liberty rights being called simply liberties; it just sounds better to my ear, since the sentence is about whether to call them "liberty rights" or just "liberties" simpliciter.
I reverted the sentence defining group rights because the alteration oblitterates one of the possible senses of group rights. the article on group rights is itself ambiguous on what exactly "group rights" means - are rights held individually by members of only a select group "group rights" too, or must the rights be held by the group collectively? The text here was copied verbatim from there, and until that gets clarified this article should probably mirror that ambiguity.
I'm not entirely certain that the example of group-individual conflicts is the best, but I can't articulate a particular complaint against it at the moment so I'll leave it.
I'm likewise uncertain about the new Explicit and unenumerated rights section. I do like bringing that attention to this distinction, and I've even wikilinked to the article on unenumerated rights. But this distinction is a subset of the legal division of rights - there is no such thing as an explicit or unenumerated natural right - whereas none of the other distinctions are subsets of each other. That is, you can have negative natural individual liberty rights, or positive legal group claim rights, or any combination of the four earlier distinctions; which is not true of the distinction between explicit and unenumerated rights. I'm not sure what to do about this.
Finally, I've reworded Piratejosh's addition to the Areas of concern subsection to read "legal or moral issues" rather than just "legal issues", so as to include natural rights as well as legal rights. -- Pfhorrest ( talk) 09:50, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
All of these make a great deal of sense. I would still advocate noting that some people do not believe in natural rights. If a great deal of respected people don't believe something extists, that should be noted in a place like this. I, therefore, advocate the reinsertion of the objection to natural rights via legal positivism. Piratejosh85 ( talk) 18:55, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
I find a problem is the phrase, "The contemporary notion of rights is universalist and egalitarian." There are a few things wrong with this. First, there is no such thing as an egalitarian notion. Notions cannot discriminate. What this phase seems to be trying to say is that rights should be distributed everywhere (universally) and equally (egalitarian). There are problems here. First of all, the article needs to point out that not everyone believes these things: it is therefore inaccurate to simply say, "The contemporary notion or rights is..." That may be true in the US, but not everywhere. Take the contemporary caste system for example, where rights are neither distributed everywhere nor in equal amounts so to say. Still another problem is that "universal" or "unversally" might be appropriate, the word "universalist" currently links to the world religion and philosophy which has innappropriatly little to do with the meaning given to the word here. I therefore believe the phrase needs to be reconsidered.
The second phrase I believe needs reworking is, "For instance, compare Manifest destiny with Trail of Tears." One of the introduction paragraphs talks about times two or more philosophies of rights come into conflict. Manifest destiny is a good example of a philosophy of rights, but the trail of tears is not. Supposedly the philosophy of whites would need to be compared to the philosophy of the non-white colonized (in this case Native Americans, though not always). The trail of tears is not such a philosophy; it is, factually, a very long march. I believe rewording is then in order. Piratejosh85 ( talk) 18:17, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
The very first sentence of the article "Rights are legal or moral entitlements or permissions." effectively excludes the concept of natural rights. Natural rights are not entitlements or permissions. The word "right" as used in the U.S. constitution doesn't refer to an entitlement or permission. The words entitlement and permission imply that they would not exist without being "granted" by government. The word right as used in the constitution assumes pre-existence.
This entire article seems to be about entitlements, not about rights, as the word has been historically used to describe the liberties that man is universally born with, and that exist whether or not they are protected by government.
I realize that the word is used today in lieu of the word entitlement, mostly for political purposes, but should the very first sentence of the article effectively exclude the concept of natural rights? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.110.227.11 ( talk) 09:59, 25 January 2009 (UTC)
Why does the Notable People list only seem to include mostly modern left-wing heroes and/or anti-war activists? Shouldn't Jefferson precede Jimmy Carter? That list is a joke. 76.194.214.56 ( talk) 23:39, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
Please feel free to expand it with people you feel are notable, or to contest any that you feel are not. That list is from a very old version of this page. -- Pfhorrest ( talk) 02:59, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
Pirate Josh recently made some edits which I partially reverted, and I'm here to discuss this at his request.
My main contention with most of these edits was their essay-like style and uncited nature in conjunction: had they been cited I would have attempted to clean up the style instead, or likewise if they had been in a more encyclopedic tone I would likely have just added some {{fact}} tags.
Anyway, my point by point thoughts on the content of the edits:
I think I'm going to make some of the compromise changes I suggested above just now, mostly to the intro. Please discuss. -- Pfhorrest ( talk) 02:03, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
Pfhorrest, Thanks for the attention paid to this article. I appreciate the work you've done. Here are my thoughts and ideas. I've added them in response form to what you posted. I hope this system is agreeable. I think we both have our ideas on the table and I don't believe anyone else is going to object to changes. So, would you be willing to make the changes you see as commensurate with both our ideas? Again, thanks for you work and I'm looking forward to seeing this article as good as it can get. Piratejosh85 ( talk) 01:13, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
- The change of the intro to say that rights "stem from a particular value system" and the following section on "Non-legal or moral rights" seems somewhat biased toward a relativistic POV: a natural rights theorist would not say that rights are "granted" by any "value-system" as that implies that they are somehow human constructs rather than objective, naturally occurring things.
- You said, “a natural rights theorist would not say that rights are ‘granted’ by any ‘value-system’”. However, I think what you might mean is that a natural rights theorists would insist that some rights are not granted by a value system, i.e. exist in nature. But, he would not deny, I believe, the existence of other rights that do stem from other, posited, systems, such as the rules of manners.
- Perhaps a compromise could be rephrasing the intro to "'Rights are permissions or entitlements of a legal, moral, or other nature."
- I really like this. It’s good. The fact that there are so many other systems which might confer rights merits them mention in the intro, which is done in the possibility just given.
- This might actually be a good road to go down anyway, as now that I think about it, Josh does have a good point about "rights" in an etiquette sense being neither strictly legal or moral in nature, and there is already the article on social rights discussing another (or perhaps the same?) neither-moral-nor-legal sense of "rights".
- Regarding "Rights vs privileges", that is a good topic that should probably be discussed here
- I definitely agree that the majority of “ink” was devoted to what you’re referring to as a realistic POV, my point was only to point out that the argument could be made. On the other hand, I agree that fair treatment means devoting equal amount of space to opposing arguments. And to the accusation that I did not do that, I am definitely guilty. I, though, also think that there should be a section talking about the differences between rights and priv. And, consistent with the content that I added, I think the point should be raised that some might argue that there is, in fact, no difference. I however, acknowledge that a more fair and explained discussion is in order.
Piratejosh85 ( talk) 01:13, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
I saw that unenumerated rights needs expansion and documentation, and I don't have time or inclination to do it, but to those who would, the prototypical unenumerated right, which is encapsulated in the fourth and ninth amendments (and particularly the ninth, which is essentially all about unenumerated rights), among others, is the so-called Right to Privacy. In order to properly defend the unenumerated rights claim that was made in the article, one could reference (appeals, supreme) court cases in which the majority opinion made reference to the unenumerated right to privacy. Of course, there are many others, but privacy seems to be the poster child for the topic. 147.105.3.11 ( talk) 22:34, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
RAAWRR! Just had to get that out there. Why is this page vandalised so much? I hate it and it is so anoying. Piratejosh85 ( talk) 04:49, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
Some old page history that used to be at the title "Rights" can now be found at Talk:Rights/Merge. Graham 87 10:53, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
From my viewpoint, it looks like the article focuses exclusively on legal/philosophical parts of rights, when I think the whole concept of rights is simpler, more expansive, and more basic. After two terse sentences in the lead paragraph without doing (in my view) a good job of explaining what the concept of "rights" is, it breaks off into subdivisions. This article is poorly sourced. It needs good references. I'll be working on this article soon and if people wish to revert my edits, please provide substantive reasons why on this talk page.-- Tomwsulcer ( talk) 01:01, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
“ | Generally I'm dissatisfied with this article and I'll be working on it soon to get it up to speed with more sources and clarity. I thought my additions were constructive; please provide a better explanation why you reverted my edits. I'm dissatisfied with the statement that rights are only "permissions" or "entitlements" -- permissions by whom? for what? in what contexts? And I think there's a lot more to the concept of "rights" than only legal/moral aspects; I think the concept undergirds much of Western civilization.-- Tomwsulcer ( talk) 01:04, 13 December 2009 (UTC) | ” |
“ | Rights are variously construed as legal, social, or moral permissions to act (or refrain from acting) in some way, or entitlements to be acted upon (or not be acted upon) in some way. Rights are of vital importance in the fields of law and ethics, especially theories of justice and deontology. | ” |
I'm thinking permissions and entitlements are somewhat the same thing; an entitlement is essentially a legal permission, isn't it? So I'm thinking the "entitlements" part is unnecessary, or an entitlement is kind of like an expanded legal permission. But I still think the issue of understanding in advance is a key, as well as it being a social construct in which we're talking about possible future actions which can be prevented. Maybe we need to start simple, and work outwards.-- Tomwsulcer ( talk) 13:43, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
How about something like this:-- Tomwsulcer ( talk) 13:43, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
It might be that the concept is too big for a single sentence, but perhaps a paragraph?-- Tomwsulcer ( talk) 13:43, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
Wow, this is an interesting discussion. I'm learning stuff from you guys. So I appreciate it. And I'm beginning to apprciate how complex this can become. At this point, what I'm thinking of doing is taking a step back, and reading over some of the other articles about rights, and thinking about things some more.-- Tomwsulcer ( talk) 14:15, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
But I was thinking, afterwards, after reading your intelligent comments, which I'd like to share at this point, briefly, was this. That possibly what's happening, overall, is the whole concept of "rights" has never been nailed down; the concept of what it means has always been in flux; it's been understood by different people in different contexts so long, as well as having deliberately been manipulated by people for progaganda purposes, that the term itself doesn't have solid meaning any more? The term "rights" is like taffy stretched in many directions, that it doesn't look like taffy any more. And people have been eating the stretched taffy and thinking that's what taffy is, but it's something different.-- Tomwsulcer ( talk) 14:15, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
Another analogy: suppose the real term of "rights" is like brewed fresh coffee. Suppose that's what the concept is really about. But tea makers promote tea as "rights", Tea with milk, too, is "rights". Plus, hell, new people come along and assert that any beverage is "rights". But these many uses get popularized, so now what do we have: "rights" is any liquid.-- Tomwsulcer ( talk) 14:15, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
That is, the weirdness of everything screws up our ability to offer an adequate definition?-- Tomwsulcer ( talk) 14:15, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
So, I'm kind of coming around to thinking that the best we can do here is offer a watered-down view of rights, that is, abbreviated only to "permissions" and "entitlements", and that's that, oh and maybe the legal/moral stuff. I still think the concept of rights SHOULD be more than this minimalist (it's a liquid!) view, that is, I think my construct would adequately fit almost all other peoples' constructs, like a big enough house to fit all kinds of weird furniture (even the animal rights furniture, negative rights furniture, positive rights furniture, etc), but you're saying the house isn't big enough? I'll keep stewing over this stuff and possibly get back in a week or so, if I have time; right now I'm working on an article about Lies told by US presidenyts. Best.-- Tomwsulcer ( talk) 14:15, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
I stewed over this stuff for about a week. And what I'm kind of realizing is that I didn't know earlier how complex this topic was, with so many different senses. And I read the article to the Stanford Encyclopedia carefully, as well as some of the other Wikipedia articles on things like claim rights or negative-positive rights. So I'm getting up to speed. So I thought the current Pfhorrest summation of rights is the best, although I thought I'd tweak the wording somewhat. But basically I'm kind of appreciating how much you guys know and how little I knew. But also that my lack of knowledge is good, since it allows me to relate to what other Wikipedia readers might want in an article like this.-- Tomwsulcer ( talk) 23:10, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
I propose a redraft of the article. Right now it's on my sandbox page, please have a look, and if you have changes, please go ahead and make them. Proposed revamping of "rights" article And let me know what you think.-- Tomwsulcer ( talk) 23:10, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
But basically I kept the format as it was, but added new stuff, with a few more references, especially using the Stanford stuff. One concern I had was that the article offered a bare bones summary of the basic concept, and then immediately launched into rather difficult-to-grasp distinctions (ie negative vs positive rights), almost assuming most readers would be interested in some of the finer philosophical/logical points. I was afraid that the article would intimidate most readers. That is, I wanted to keep the article focused on the essence of the concept of "rights", and at the same time not abandoning the cool stuff that's here already, like the neg-pos distinctions. So, what I did was try to slow down the philosophical/logical stuff, give more examples (hopefully correct ones!). and keep the distinctions, but have them more as article pointers. In one case, where I thought the material was way too difficult (like I couldn't quite grasp it after several passes), I just omitted it, and it's still reachable if someone clicks on one of the links to the more specific articles. The pictures added were for visual beauty, to make the subject less intimidating, and hopefully to explain some of these concepts.-- Tomwsulcer ( talk) 23:10, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
I think this article could perhaps do with an etymology section; I think the etymology of the word "right" is quite interesting: originating ultimately from an Indo-European root ("reg-") meaning roughly "straight", which actually derives from the same root, as do words such as "correct", "rex" (Latin for "king") and thence "regal" and thence "royal", also thence "regular" and "regulation", and in different senses "right angle" and thence "rectangle" - the shifts of meaning are fascinating, IMO. And there are similar developments with roots such as "norm" (e.g. "normal" behavior, surface "normals", "normative"), and "ortho-" (e.g. "orthogonal", "orthodox"), and "rule" (e.g. "ruler" as in leader, "ruler" as in straight-edge, "rule" as in law, "rule" as in lines on paper), with meanings of both right as in correct and also as in straight, rigid (also deriving from PIE "reg-"), upright, etc, as in geometry.
It would probably also be a good place to talk about how "right" and "law" are the same word in many languages, such as French "droit" and German "recht".
I'll do more on this myself later; this is mostly a note to myself. Sources to start looking through for citations: [2] and [3] -- Pfhorrest ( talk) 22:52, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
So I removed the category, because philosophy concerns things that happen naturally, things that aren't doesn't occur naturally usually belong to the information science or sociology. (evidence: philosophical method is provable through neuroscience)
they are no scientific evidence nor computer simulation to prove this, there Original Research ( WP:OR). (aka — there is no established theory on whether or not is a right is considered something that is natural, artificial or a concept derived from political ideology nor ethics. -- 173.183.102.184 ( talk) 03:11, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
I have removed this addition [4] on the grounds that is OR and improperly sourced. It is sourced, but in a very misleading and inappropriate fashion that is the very paradigm of skilled POV-pushing. Specifically:
In light of the above, I am going to perform a partial removal of the added text. Athenean ( talk) 02:18, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
With all the vandalism this page recieves (one ever two or three days it seems like), I would have hoped for more creative abuses. Not that I'm encouraging it; it's annoying as... well. Other pages get interesting vandals, but we get [5]. I feel that the worst of both words is to be a vandal and a boring one. Couldn't it be at least a little more interesting? Piratejosh85 ( talk) 07:28, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
I've partially reverted these recent edits by User:Stevertigo because I don't believe that the subject of Fundamental rights is (no pun intended) fundamental enough to the concept of rights to belong in the lede of this article. However it could be worth a mention somewhere, but I'm not sure where would be best, so I'm here to discuss. The redacted passage is:
For example, a " fundamental right" is a moral principle which has been expressed through a framework of laws as being "basic," "inalienable" or " universal," and is therefore fundamental to said framework.
This topic seems similar to Unenumerated rights inasmuch as both are subtypes of legal rights. Unenumerated rights are also not presently mentioned on this page, though perhaps they should be. The latter are mentioned briefly in passing on the main Natural and legal rights article, but not in the summary thereof here. Perhaps both could be mentioned briefly in the "Legal rights" paragraph, linked to their respective articles for more information? I'm open to other thoughts though.
Oh also, I've likewise reverted the addition of Fundamental rights to the Rights sidebar "theoretical distinctions" section, as it's not really a theoretical distinction. But, again like Unenumerated rights, maybe it should be on there somewhere... but where exactly? -- Pfhorrest ( talk) 04:45, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
Rights are normative principles of freedom or entitlement, variously construed as legal, social, or moral in character.
The term fundamental rights generally refers to a set of entitlements in the context of a legal system, wherein such system is itself said to be based upon this same set of basic, fundamental, or inalienable entitlements or "rights.
For example, a " fundamental right" is a moral principle which has been expressed through a framework of laws as being "basic," "inalienable" or " universal," and is therefore fundamental to said framework.
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 |
This long rambling essay really has little to do with rights. If no one objects, I'm going to delete this entire section.-- JW1805 02:21, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
I have been told that the interwiki of this page to French language actually points to the page about Law. Checking the en interwiki of the page fr:Droit, it points back to Law. So this should be fixed. I couldn't help as I don't know any French. -- Lerdsuwa 16:17, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
The article currently says things like:
Most modern conceptions of rights are universalist and egalitarian; in other words, equal rights are granted to all people. Such rights may be defined in terms of the Golden Rule ("do unto others as you would have them do unto you"). An individual agrees to respect the rights of others in exchange for the assurance that the others will respect the same rights for him in turn.
This appears to be talking solely about negative rights! Is that satisfactory? Dealing with positive rights at the same time makes the writing task much harder but is very necessary for teaching our readers about the subject properly. -- pde 00:40, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
" Property rights provide a good example…" Yes and no. It's a matter of an example of what. I think we would do better to give two examples, one of rights that are recognized as truly universal, and property as the other, because property rights, by their nature, are in some respects particular: they pertain to the owner of specific property. Freedom of thought or of speech might be good examples of truer universality, at least in the realm of theory if not in practice (since they are abridged by some governments). That is, my having certain thoughts or uttering certain speech doed not deprive anyone else of thought or speech, but my owning particular private property is precisely at the expense of anyone else's claim on that property. - Jmabel | Talk 06:21, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
I see that there is a seperate individual rights article. I guess that means this article needs to include talk of both individual and group rights, so it needs some modifications. Maybe individual rights should be merged into this article? RJII 01:28, 16 May 2006 (UTC) I created a group rights article, if anyone wants to work on that. RJII 01:35, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
The conception of a right to something that implicitly creates an obligation on someone else to provide that thing (a positive right) is widely challenged. You can not enforce your wish for something (under the auspices of a right) if it implicitly constitutes an obligation on another to do something for you. However, one person's right to something creates a negative right in that you have the right for that thing not be interfered with by another, and that other is obligated not to interfere with your right to it. The obligation test is widely used to determine what constitutes a right. To illustrate: You have the right to own an axe, but you do not have a right to an axe. If you do own an axe, others have an obligation not to steal it.
I've got a post-graduate education, and I had to read practically every sentence of this paragraph more than once to parse it. And it has a lot of problems beyond that:
In short: poorly written libertarian cant.
I'll allow at least 48 hours (and probably more) for someone to rewrite this in a way that belongs here, but if it hasn't been substantially fixed by then, I intend simply to remove it. - Jmabel | Talk 22:35, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
As far as I can see, this addresses none of the issues I raised. - Jmabel | Talk 06:06, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
It's my understanding that the distinction between law and right is quite different in some other languages, such as French and German using droit and Recht respectively to cover both, and that this partly reflects their legal systems' different conceptions of the underlying ideas. Of course this article shouldn't go off on linguistic tangents, but insofar as the language reflects a different conceptual viewpoint, it might be worth discussing how universal and/or controversial the law vs. right distinction is, and how it relates to philosophy of law and so on. -- Delirium 23:59, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
I changed "a right on a thing" to "a right to something". Although it's a trivial change, I note it here in case there's something I'm missing. Mujokan 06:26, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
I removed the sentence:
Compare with privilege, or a thing to which one has a just claim.
This was in the introduction, but I don't think that's really the definition of a privilege, and if something else is meant by it, I don't understand it, and it would be helpful if someone could rephrase it so it is simpler. Thanks, Drum guy ( talk) 21:10, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps a better way to phrase that concept is that a right does not require permission and a privilege does require permission. A simplified definition of right may be in order: "A right is an action that an individual can do, that does not require permission, and that is generally accepted or condoned (for example, not prohibited by custom or law)".
I am not going to modify the main body text without some feedback as there are many opinions as to what is or is not a right. For example, the bill of rights outlines many rights but it has been argued that the bill of rights is a blueprint of how to convert rights into privileges and then to limit them. A specific example is the right to keep and bear arms. Can you carry an unlicensed firearm in the United States of America and not be subject to arrest when that firearm is discovered upon your person? James thirteen ( talk) 20:06, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
The result of the proposal was move. JPG-GR ( talk) 18:09, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
Shouldn't this article be called "Rights" instead of "Right"? RJII 01:07, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
I'd agree with that. Mujokan 06:27, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
... Rights are of vital importance in theories of justice and deontological ethics.
The contemporary notion of rights is universalist and egalitarian. Equal rights are granted ...
So discussion here seems to have died down, with support generally in favor rather than against (7 out of 9 votes by my count). When/how does this move happen (or if not, what next?). - Pfhorrest ( talk) 00:56, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
From the article:
Such rights may be defined in terms of the Golden Rule ("do unto others as you would have them do unto you"). An individual agrees to respect the rights of others in exchange for the assurance that the others will respect the same rights for him in turn.
Clearly a well-intentioned explanation, but not necessarily on the mark. It does get at one thing: a moral injunction to treat others as one wishes to be treated oneself. If we are getting that into the article, I would think that it should be by way of the concept of social contract.
The Golden Rule and the categorical imperative do not lead directly to a set of rights: they lead to a system of moral obligation, which can be translated into a theory of justice, from which a concept of rights can be derived.
Anyway, I think we need to get something like that into the article rather than the sentences just quoted, but I know that my wording here is too academic. I'm open to ideas. - Jmabel | Talk 03:19, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
The golden rule is a religous edict that has been put under scrutiny for years. There is even a history of Jewish Christian conflict over this rule. The rule is an example of the Ethic of Reciprocity and has been found to be flawed on the basis that it does not take into account the wishes of others and would mean that people have to accept what others like regardless of their individual preferences, or that others have the right to force their preferences on you. Simply put the golden rule if turned to establish rights would indicate that because I like getting tatoos or sodomy I have the right to give others tatoos and anything else I like. For obvious reasons this logic is flawed and it has been stated that the rule should be amended to, "do unto others as they would have done to them". Regardless the golden rule deserves not palce in this article concerning rights and I move to have it removed. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Stratvic ( talk • contribs) 26 September 2006.
I've just more or less completed a major cleanup, reorganization, and expansion of this article. I've excised a large chunk of text that I find to be of very poor quality; I am going to attempt to work what of it I can back into the article, but for now I've moved it here to the talk page. The excised text follows:
It is not generally considered necessary that a right should be understood by the holder of that right; thus rights may be recognized on behalf of another, such as children's rights or the rights of people declared mentally incompetent to understand their rights. However, rights must be understood by someone in order to have legal standing, so the understanding of rights is a social prerequisite for the existence of rights. Therefore, educational opportunities within society have a close bearing upon the people's ability to erect adequate rights structures.
Property rights provide a good example: society recognizes that individuals have title to particular property as defined by the transaction by which they acquired the property granting the individual free use and possession of the property. In many cases, especially regarding ideological and similar rights, the obligation depends on the legal system in its entirety, or on the state, or on the generical universality of other subjects submitted to the law.
Societal rights or civil rights are bestowed to its citizenry by society and are a set of obligations that are purported as a social contract. Societal rights are a privilege of membership and the benefits are limited to its members though may be extended to temporary guests. Access to societal rights is dependent on government grants and on the citizen fulfilling their obligations e.g. complying with laws and paying taxes.
The right can therefore be a faculty of doing something, of omitting or refusing to do something or of claiming something. Some interpretations express a typical form of right in the faculty of using something, and this is more often related to the right of ownership of property. The faculty (in all the above mentioned senses) can be originated by a (generical or specific) law, or by a private contract (which is sometimes exactly defined as a specific law between or among volunteer parties).
Other interpretations consider the right as a sort of freedom of something or as the object of justice. One of the definitions of justice is in fact the obligation that the legal system has toward the individual or toward the collectivity to grant respect or execution to his/her/its right, ordinarily with no need of explicit claim.
Aristotle, in the Nicomachean Ethics (book five), claims that there is a large difference between written (generalized) justice and what is actually right for the (specific) individual.
But what obscures the matter is that though what is equitable is just, it is not identical with, but a correction of, that which is just according to law.
The reason of this is that every law is laid down in general terms, while there are matters about which it is impossible to speak correctly in general terms. Where, then, it is necessary to speak in general terms, but impossible to do so correctly, the legislator lays down that which holds good for the majority of cases, being quite aware that it does not hold good for all.
The law, indeed, is none the less correctly laid down because of this defect; for the defect lies not in the law, nor in the lawgiver, but in the nature of the subject-matter, being necessarily involved in the very conditions of human action.
— Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics (10-3) (Peters' translation) [1]
With reference to the object of the right, a common general distinction is among:
- Intellectual rights, which include:
I know I'm still fairly new around here and I'm not entirely certain this is an acceptable move to make, but some of these rights pages are in serious disrepair and I am trying in good faith to fix them up the best I can. Apologies is anything I do is inappropriate - please feel free to notify me and I will refrain in the future. - Pfhorrest ( talk) 07:59, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
I've just undone the following contribution by User:Simultaneous movement, which was placed in the "theoretical distinctions" section, because it is not a theoretical distinction, and because it seems to talk specifically about negative, natural, claim rights, and so better suits one of those pages (said user has also recently made a similar contribution to Natural and legal rights) than this page on rights in general. However, if anyone would like to discuss better ways of working this or something similar into this or another article, I'm including it below for posterity:
The libertarian view is that "a right is a principle which morally prohibits men from using force or any substitute for force against anyone whose behavior is non-coercive. A right is a moral prohibition; it doesn't specify anything with regard to what actions the possessor of the right may take (so long as his actions are non-coercive) – it morally prohibits others from forcibly interfering with any of his non-coercive actions." [2]
- Pfhorrest ( talk) 06:56, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
I've just partially reverted the recent edits by User:Piratejosh85 (retaining Zodon's intermediary changes), and I'm here to explain.
First, I've removed this passage:
The article on Natural and legal rights already discusses the concepts of natural law vs positive law, and we don't want to go into too much detail on each particular distinction here. Also, mentioning legal positivism without its contradictory position (which doesn't seem to have a proper name, much less an article, as far as I can tell) seems a bit biased against natural rights.
Second, regarding claim rights, I've replaced this passage:
with the older phrasing:
Claims rights do not all serve to ensure access to resources, and that is certainly not the primary sense of the term; only a subset of positive claim right regard the provision of resources. The second meaning in the reverted passage seems dependent on the first meaning: the "claims" in question are not claims against resources, but claims against people; thus the non-interference in the second meaning is what one has a claim to, not something enabling one to have something else that one has a claim to.
I've also reinserted the word "simply" regarding liberty rights being called simply liberties; it just sounds better to my ear, since the sentence is about whether to call them "liberty rights" or just "liberties" simpliciter.
I reverted the sentence defining group rights because the alteration oblitterates one of the possible senses of group rights. the article on group rights is itself ambiguous on what exactly "group rights" means - are rights held individually by members of only a select group "group rights" too, or must the rights be held by the group collectively? The text here was copied verbatim from there, and until that gets clarified this article should probably mirror that ambiguity.
I'm not entirely certain that the example of group-individual conflicts is the best, but I can't articulate a particular complaint against it at the moment so I'll leave it.
I'm likewise uncertain about the new Explicit and unenumerated rights section. I do like bringing that attention to this distinction, and I've even wikilinked to the article on unenumerated rights. But this distinction is a subset of the legal division of rights - there is no such thing as an explicit or unenumerated natural right - whereas none of the other distinctions are subsets of each other. That is, you can have negative natural individual liberty rights, or positive legal group claim rights, or any combination of the four earlier distinctions; which is not true of the distinction between explicit and unenumerated rights. I'm not sure what to do about this.
Finally, I've reworded Piratejosh's addition to the Areas of concern subsection to read "legal or moral issues" rather than just "legal issues", so as to include natural rights as well as legal rights. -- Pfhorrest ( talk) 09:50, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
All of these make a great deal of sense. I would still advocate noting that some people do not believe in natural rights. If a great deal of respected people don't believe something extists, that should be noted in a place like this. I, therefore, advocate the reinsertion of the objection to natural rights via legal positivism. Piratejosh85 ( talk) 18:55, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
I find a problem is the phrase, "The contemporary notion of rights is universalist and egalitarian." There are a few things wrong with this. First, there is no such thing as an egalitarian notion. Notions cannot discriminate. What this phase seems to be trying to say is that rights should be distributed everywhere (universally) and equally (egalitarian). There are problems here. First of all, the article needs to point out that not everyone believes these things: it is therefore inaccurate to simply say, "The contemporary notion or rights is..." That may be true in the US, but not everywhere. Take the contemporary caste system for example, where rights are neither distributed everywhere nor in equal amounts so to say. Still another problem is that "universal" or "unversally" might be appropriate, the word "universalist" currently links to the world religion and philosophy which has innappropriatly little to do with the meaning given to the word here. I therefore believe the phrase needs to be reconsidered.
The second phrase I believe needs reworking is, "For instance, compare Manifest destiny with Trail of Tears." One of the introduction paragraphs talks about times two or more philosophies of rights come into conflict. Manifest destiny is a good example of a philosophy of rights, but the trail of tears is not. Supposedly the philosophy of whites would need to be compared to the philosophy of the non-white colonized (in this case Native Americans, though not always). The trail of tears is not such a philosophy; it is, factually, a very long march. I believe rewording is then in order. Piratejosh85 ( talk) 18:17, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
The very first sentence of the article "Rights are legal or moral entitlements or permissions." effectively excludes the concept of natural rights. Natural rights are not entitlements or permissions. The word "right" as used in the U.S. constitution doesn't refer to an entitlement or permission. The words entitlement and permission imply that they would not exist without being "granted" by government. The word right as used in the constitution assumes pre-existence.
This entire article seems to be about entitlements, not about rights, as the word has been historically used to describe the liberties that man is universally born with, and that exist whether or not they are protected by government.
I realize that the word is used today in lieu of the word entitlement, mostly for political purposes, but should the very first sentence of the article effectively exclude the concept of natural rights? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.110.227.11 ( talk) 09:59, 25 January 2009 (UTC)
Why does the Notable People list only seem to include mostly modern left-wing heroes and/or anti-war activists? Shouldn't Jefferson precede Jimmy Carter? That list is a joke. 76.194.214.56 ( talk) 23:39, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
Please feel free to expand it with people you feel are notable, or to contest any that you feel are not. That list is from a very old version of this page. -- Pfhorrest ( talk) 02:59, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
Pirate Josh recently made some edits which I partially reverted, and I'm here to discuss this at his request.
My main contention with most of these edits was their essay-like style and uncited nature in conjunction: had they been cited I would have attempted to clean up the style instead, or likewise if they had been in a more encyclopedic tone I would likely have just added some {{fact}} tags.
Anyway, my point by point thoughts on the content of the edits:
I think I'm going to make some of the compromise changes I suggested above just now, mostly to the intro. Please discuss. -- Pfhorrest ( talk) 02:03, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
Pfhorrest, Thanks for the attention paid to this article. I appreciate the work you've done. Here are my thoughts and ideas. I've added them in response form to what you posted. I hope this system is agreeable. I think we both have our ideas on the table and I don't believe anyone else is going to object to changes. So, would you be willing to make the changes you see as commensurate with both our ideas? Again, thanks for you work and I'm looking forward to seeing this article as good as it can get. Piratejosh85 ( talk) 01:13, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
- The change of the intro to say that rights "stem from a particular value system" and the following section on "Non-legal or moral rights" seems somewhat biased toward a relativistic POV: a natural rights theorist would not say that rights are "granted" by any "value-system" as that implies that they are somehow human constructs rather than objective, naturally occurring things.
- You said, “a natural rights theorist would not say that rights are ‘granted’ by any ‘value-system’”. However, I think what you might mean is that a natural rights theorists would insist that some rights are not granted by a value system, i.e. exist in nature. But, he would not deny, I believe, the existence of other rights that do stem from other, posited, systems, such as the rules of manners.
- Perhaps a compromise could be rephrasing the intro to "'Rights are permissions or entitlements of a legal, moral, or other nature."
- I really like this. It’s good. The fact that there are so many other systems which might confer rights merits them mention in the intro, which is done in the possibility just given.
- This might actually be a good road to go down anyway, as now that I think about it, Josh does have a good point about "rights" in an etiquette sense being neither strictly legal or moral in nature, and there is already the article on social rights discussing another (or perhaps the same?) neither-moral-nor-legal sense of "rights".
- Regarding "Rights vs privileges", that is a good topic that should probably be discussed here
- I definitely agree that the majority of “ink” was devoted to what you’re referring to as a realistic POV, my point was only to point out that the argument could be made. On the other hand, I agree that fair treatment means devoting equal amount of space to opposing arguments. And to the accusation that I did not do that, I am definitely guilty. I, though, also think that there should be a section talking about the differences between rights and priv. And, consistent with the content that I added, I think the point should be raised that some might argue that there is, in fact, no difference. I however, acknowledge that a more fair and explained discussion is in order.
Piratejosh85 ( talk) 01:13, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
I saw that unenumerated rights needs expansion and documentation, and I don't have time or inclination to do it, but to those who would, the prototypical unenumerated right, which is encapsulated in the fourth and ninth amendments (and particularly the ninth, which is essentially all about unenumerated rights), among others, is the so-called Right to Privacy. In order to properly defend the unenumerated rights claim that was made in the article, one could reference (appeals, supreme) court cases in which the majority opinion made reference to the unenumerated right to privacy. Of course, there are many others, but privacy seems to be the poster child for the topic. 147.105.3.11 ( talk) 22:34, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
RAAWRR! Just had to get that out there. Why is this page vandalised so much? I hate it and it is so anoying. Piratejosh85 ( talk) 04:49, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
Some old page history that used to be at the title "Rights" can now be found at Talk:Rights/Merge. Graham 87 10:53, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
From my viewpoint, it looks like the article focuses exclusively on legal/philosophical parts of rights, when I think the whole concept of rights is simpler, more expansive, and more basic. After two terse sentences in the lead paragraph without doing (in my view) a good job of explaining what the concept of "rights" is, it breaks off into subdivisions. This article is poorly sourced. It needs good references. I'll be working on this article soon and if people wish to revert my edits, please provide substantive reasons why on this talk page.-- Tomwsulcer ( talk) 01:01, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
“ | Generally I'm dissatisfied with this article and I'll be working on it soon to get it up to speed with more sources and clarity. I thought my additions were constructive; please provide a better explanation why you reverted my edits. I'm dissatisfied with the statement that rights are only "permissions" or "entitlements" -- permissions by whom? for what? in what contexts? And I think there's a lot more to the concept of "rights" than only legal/moral aspects; I think the concept undergirds much of Western civilization.-- Tomwsulcer ( talk) 01:04, 13 December 2009 (UTC) | ” |
“ | Rights are variously construed as legal, social, or moral permissions to act (or refrain from acting) in some way, or entitlements to be acted upon (or not be acted upon) in some way. Rights are of vital importance in the fields of law and ethics, especially theories of justice and deontology. | ” |
I'm thinking permissions and entitlements are somewhat the same thing; an entitlement is essentially a legal permission, isn't it? So I'm thinking the "entitlements" part is unnecessary, or an entitlement is kind of like an expanded legal permission. But I still think the issue of understanding in advance is a key, as well as it being a social construct in which we're talking about possible future actions which can be prevented. Maybe we need to start simple, and work outwards.-- Tomwsulcer ( talk) 13:43, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
How about something like this:-- Tomwsulcer ( talk) 13:43, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
It might be that the concept is too big for a single sentence, but perhaps a paragraph?-- Tomwsulcer ( talk) 13:43, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
Wow, this is an interesting discussion. I'm learning stuff from you guys. So I appreciate it. And I'm beginning to apprciate how complex this can become. At this point, what I'm thinking of doing is taking a step back, and reading over some of the other articles about rights, and thinking about things some more.-- Tomwsulcer ( talk) 14:15, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
But I was thinking, afterwards, after reading your intelligent comments, which I'd like to share at this point, briefly, was this. That possibly what's happening, overall, is the whole concept of "rights" has never been nailed down; the concept of what it means has always been in flux; it's been understood by different people in different contexts so long, as well as having deliberately been manipulated by people for progaganda purposes, that the term itself doesn't have solid meaning any more? The term "rights" is like taffy stretched in many directions, that it doesn't look like taffy any more. And people have been eating the stretched taffy and thinking that's what taffy is, but it's something different.-- Tomwsulcer ( talk) 14:15, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
Another analogy: suppose the real term of "rights" is like brewed fresh coffee. Suppose that's what the concept is really about. But tea makers promote tea as "rights", Tea with milk, too, is "rights". Plus, hell, new people come along and assert that any beverage is "rights". But these many uses get popularized, so now what do we have: "rights" is any liquid.-- Tomwsulcer ( talk) 14:15, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
That is, the weirdness of everything screws up our ability to offer an adequate definition?-- Tomwsulcer ( talk) 14:15, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
So, I'm kind of coming around to thinking that the best we can do here is offer a watered-down view of rights, that is, abbreviated only to "permissions" and "entitlements", and that's that, oh and maybe the legal/moral stuff. I still think the concept of rights SHOULD be more than this minimalist (it's a liquid!) view, that is, I think my construct would adequately fit almost all other peoples' constructs, like a big enough house to fit all kinds of weird furniture (even the animal rights furniture, negative rights furniture, positive rights furniture, etc), but you're saying the house isn't big enough? I'll keep stewing over this stuff and possibly get back in a week or so, if I have time; right now I'm working on an article about Lies told by US presidenyts. Best.-- Tomwsulcer ( talk) 14:15, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
I stewed over this stuff for about a week. And what I'm kind of realizing is that I didn't know earlier how complex this topic was, with so many different senses. And I read the article to the Stanford Encyclopedia carefully, as well as some of the other Wikipedia articles on things like claim rights or negative-positive rights. So I'm getting up to speed. So I thought the current Pfhorrest summation of rights is the best, although I thought I'd tweak the wording somewhat. But basically I'm kind of appreciating how much you guys know and how little I knew. But also that my lack of knowledge is good, since it allows me to relate to what other Wikipedia readers might want in an article like this.-- Tomwsulcer ( talk) 23:10, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
I propose a redraft of the article. Right now it's on my sandbox page, please have a look, and if you have changes, please go ahead and make them. Proposed revamping of "rights" article And let me know what you think.-- Tomwsulcer ( talk) 23:10, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
But basically I kept the format as it was, but added new stuff, with a few more references, especially using the Stanford stuff. One concern I had was that the article offered a bare bones summary of the basic concept, and then immediately launched into rather difficult-to-grasp distinctions (ie negative vs positive rights), almost assuming most readers would be interested in some of the finer philosophical/logical points. I was afraid that the article would intimidate most readers. That is, I wanted to keep the article focused on the essence of the concept of "rights", and at the same time not abandoning the cool stuff that's here already, like the neg-pos distinctions. So, what I did was try to slow down the philosophical/logical stuff, give more examples (hopefully correct ones!). and keep the distinctions, but have them more as article pointers. In one case, where I thought the material was way too difficult (like I couldn't quite grasp it after several passes), I just omitted it, and it's still reachable if someone clicks on one of the links to the more specific articles. The pictures added were for visual beauty, to make the subject less intimidating, and hopefully to explain some of these concepts.-- Tomwsulcer ( talk) 23:10, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
I think this article could perhaps do with an etymology section; I think the etymology of the word "right" is quite interesting: originating ultimately from an Indo-European root ("reg-") meaning roughly "straight", which actually derives from the same root, as do words such as "correct", "rex" (Latin for "king") and thence "regal" and thence "royal", also thence "regular" and "regulation", and in different senses "right angle" and thence "rectangle" - the shifts of meaning are fascinating, IMO. And there are similar developments with roots such as "norm" (e.g. "normal" behavior, surface "normals", "normative"), and "ortho-" (e.g. "orthogonal", "orthodox"), and "rule" (e.g. "ruler" as in leader, "ruler" as in straight-edge, "rule" as in law, "rule" as in lines on paper), with meanings of both right as in correct and also as in straight, rigid (also deriving from PIE "reg-"), upright, etc, as in geometry.
It would probably also be a good place to talk about how "right" and "law" are the same word in many languages, such as French "droit" and German "recht".
I'll do more on this myself later; this is mostly a note to myself. Sources to start looking through for citations: [2] and [3] -- Pfhorrest ( talk) 22:52, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
So I removed the category, because philosophy concerns things that happen naturally, things that aren't doesn't occur naturally usually belong to the information science or sociology. (evidence: philosophical method is provable through neuroscience)
they are no scientific evidence nor computer simulation to prove this, there Original Research ( WP:OR). (aka — there is no established theory on whether or not is a right is considered something that is natural, artificial or a concept derived from political ideology nor ethics. -- 173.183.102.184 ( talk) 03:11, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
I have removed this addition [4] on the grounds that is OR and improperly sourced. It is sourced, but in a very misleading and inappropriate fashion that is the very paradigm of skilled POV-pushing. Specifically:
In light of the above, I am going to perform a partial removal of the added text. Athenean ( talk) 02:18, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
With all the vandalism this page recieves (one ever two or three days it seems like), I would have hoped for more creative abuses. Not that I'm encouraging it; it's annoying as... well. Other pages get interesting vandals, but we get [5]. I feel that the worst of both words is to be a vandal and a boring one. Couldn't it be at least a little more interesting? Piratejosh85 ( talk) 07:28, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
I've partially reverted these recent edits by User:Stevertigo because I don't believe that the subject of Fundamental rights is (no pun intended) fundamental enough to the concept of rights to belong in the lede of this article. However it could be worth a mention somewhere, but I'm not sure where would be best, so I'm here to discuss. The redacted passage is:
For example, a " fundamental right" is a moral principle which has been expressed through a framework of laws as being "basic," "inalienable" or " universal," and is therefore fundamental to said framework.
This topic seems similar to Unenumerated rights inasmuch as both are subtypes of legal rights. Unenumerated rights are also not presently mentioned on this page, though perhaps they should be. The latter are mentioned briefly in passing on the main Natural and legal rights article, but not in the summary thereof here. Perhaps both could be mentioned briefly in the "Legal rights" paragraph, linked to their respective articles for more information? I'm open to other thoughts though.
Oh also, I've likewise reverted the addition of Fundamental rights to the Rights sidebar "theoretical distinctions" section, as it's not really a theoretical distinction. But, again like Unenumerated rights, maybe it should be on there somewhere... but where exactly? -- Pfhorrest ( talk) 04:45, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
Rights are normative principles of freedom or entitlement, variously construed as legal, social, or moral in character.
The term fundamental rights generally refers to a set of entitlements in the context of a legal system, wherein such system is itself said to be based upon this same set of basic, fundamental, or inalienable entitlements or "rights.
For example, a " fundamental right" is a moral principle which has been expressed through a framework of laws as being "basic," "inalienable" or " universal," and is therefore fundamental to said framework.