> No, rights are not physical or materially real; that does not make them “fake” or contrived. Rather, they could be thought of as more or less useful in understanding material processes and relationships, in this case between people.

I agree with this. Imaginary concepts can certainly be useful, and I'd definetely say that rights are one of those, and a good thing for humanity overall. All I object to is the speaking of rights as if they are a discrete and "real" concept that can be discovered.

> Your argument is essentially the premise of Empiricism. But what you and the Empiricists fail to grasp is that everything we comprehend is man-made. Our conception of a physical rock is just as much a psychological construct as a notion of natural rights.

First of all, I understand the underpinnings of this argument. I understand the fact that we can never truly peer behind the veil of our own cognition. But this is just philosophical masturbation, and you do not act by those words even as you say them. Yes, all concepts exist to us only within our own cognition, but that does equate purely imaginary concepts with ones based in what we perceive as "physical reality". If you disagree we can perform a simple experiment: Take your notion of natural rights, and then throw it at my head. Then I'll go find an sensory object that I conceive off as a valid equivalent to my psychological construct of a rock, and I'll throw it at yours. I hypothesize that the effects of these actions will be somewhat different.

Yes, purely imaginary concepts such as "natural rights" can have a much bigger impact on the world than any amount of rock throwing, because we act upon them. I'm not saying they are not a part of physical reality. The brain is real, and what goes on inside one has real consequences. Technically, if we're being strict about it, there is no line distinguishing imagination from "reality". However, imaginary ideas are fundamentally flexible in a way that differs significantly from "reality". You and I can have completely different conceptions of the meaning of the word "rights", and the best we can hope for as a resolution is the agreements and disagreements of ourselves and others. Meanwhile, our conception of rocks might differ significantly, but the rock will have the same structure, mass and velocity, independent of whose head it is thrown at.

> Certainly, our words and arguments are constructed psychologically and socially.

Agreed

> But that doesn’t alter the purpose of the debate. In fact, it justifies it. If our words were perfectly consistent with the nature of reality, there would be no such thing as a debate, since a perfect word would need no elaboration; and if they were completely discordant, then there would also be no utility gained from engaging in debate.

Well, the debate would be significantly different if we were discussing our relative conceptions of rocks. For one, we could put forth hypotheses about rocks and come together to perform experiments on one. In doing so we could agree whose conception of a "rock" most closely correlates with the common sensory impulses we get from observing rock-related experiments, and get some idea of whose conception most closely matches what we think of as "reality". We have an external "judge" upon which to test our words and conceptions, and we can refine them both as a result. We might start with "rock", but end up with "Foid monzosyenite". Anyone else studying the same rock by the same methods, and given the same tools, time, intellect and rock studying passion would end up with more or less exactly the same name (ok perhaps not the same name, but the same conception).

But we are discussing an inter-imaginary concept, which makes for a very different debate. By debating we can refine our inter-imaginary set of logical precepts, and even agree on a set definition of the word. Let's say that, after a fierce debate, we agree that we both agree on what a right is, and that we have the right to self-determination and life. Tomorrow we meet someone that used the same logic to arrive at his right to determine the lives of others, and that proceeds to bash our heads in with a foid monzosyenite.

Did he not have the right to do this or not? Did he violate our rights by determining to take our lives, when we had just agreed that we had a right to live? But what about what his opinion that he has the right to take our lives? Who has the better definition of the word? I'm sure the debate would have been interesting and useful, as we elaborated on our understanding through rhetorical interaction. I'm also sure that whatever psychological concept and word we would have had for them, rock, foid monzosyenite or lumpy smashy thingy, if we had one we could have hit his rock with our rock and they would have gone "clunk" and perhaps saved our heads to self-determine yet another day.

This turned into a pretty long and stupid argument from my side. My point is that all words and psychological constructs are not created equal, and that this does in fact make a pretty significant difference.