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Gooberpf t1_j77f9cl wrote

Reply to comment by nightraven900 in There Are No Natural Rights (without Natural Law): Addressing what rights are, how we create rights, and where rights come from by contractualist

No human has ever or will ever exist in a vacuum. The tabula rasa foundational approach to ethics is fatally flawed, in that these presuppositions of "well if I were a singular person I would want XYZ" are 1. skewed by the value system you actually developed by whatever point in your life you're currently at and 2. literal impossibilities and not only do not but cannot reflect humanity.

Every person at minimum has one parent, and humans evolved to exist in communal groups. Any approach to ethics that starts with "in a vacuum" and ignores the simple fact that all persons have social connections from the instant they're born is starting from the wrong place.

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nightraven900 t1_j77vjlw wrote

In a vacuum more so means not in collaboration with other humans ie not part of a society or family which has happened very frequently. And while yes currently people do not live in a vacuum it is a very good starting point as humans are naturally selfish. Thus why I said those rights are adapted to fit society and technology levels. Rights like certain personal freedoms.

People arent always going have parent and it is still possible for a person to become completely isolated from other people even in first world countries.

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FinancialDesign2 t1_j784enc wrote

> And while yes currently people do not live in a vacuum it is a very good starting point as humans are naturally selfish.

Humans are not naturally selfish. Snakes are naturally selfish. Most reptiles are naturally selfish. Humans are intrinsically social animals that rely on group coherence to survive. If humans were naturally selfish then basically all of society would not exist. American culture may reward selfishness, but that does not mean that we are naturally so.

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nightraven900 t1_j78ibpc wrote

I think you are confusing social with generous. It is the goal of every person to focus on themselves more than others as it should be. Society exist because it is benificial for individuals to participate with each other to benifit themselves. They dont participate for altruistic reasons, they are being rewarded for their participation.

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Gooberpf t1_j783g2i wrote

Imagine that honeybees had philosophers and ethicists. Would it make sense for a worker bee philosopher to start her examination of morality based on herself and herself alone? Her whole concept of survival is intrinsically dependent on the queen and on other workers; she also can't breed. Before even discussing her concept of ethics, all of her core values are inseparable from her position in her hive society.

I'm not even proposing moral relativism here, I'm saying that any human conception of morality is inextricably connected to humans as social creatures. Even a self-centered individual has to bear that in mind as well - if "building a legacy" is a valuable goal to some specific, fully selfish individual, it's important to note that there's no such thing as a legacy without other members of society to experience or remember it into the future.

Assumptions about philosophy that start and end with the individual consciousness are IMO not "more rational" but instead something inhuman. How can a fully isolated human even be considered the same kind of existence as someone in a collective?

This is an aspect of "natural law" and "social contract" discussions that I think gets buried when people start focusing on individual positive/negative rights. If you're the only conscious individual around, there is no value in a concept of "rights" to begin with - a "right" only even has meaning when it affects another conscious being. Conjuring up some idea of "rights" one has when fully isolated and then applying that as a foundation for rules in a group is nonsensical - a fully isolated human could never have the language to conceive of "rights" (or even language at all).

Accordingly, conceptualizing what, if any, natural rights exist necessarily must begin with people in a group, not in isolation. Putting a human in a vacuum and then considering how they would behave at that point in a thought experiment is creating a non-human and then trying to give it the same label.

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