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Quote by: rez  What are "personal rights"? Did nature give these rights to humans or were they invented by humans? If nature gave these rights to humans who exactly should interrupt what nature gave humans?
I am not sure if "rights" were given by anything, be it nature or a Creator.
But some behaviorisms are self evident. We can observe nature and take note that nearly all animals and birds (of higher intelligence) have a habit of protecting their truf from other animals, although flight is sometimes an option for a fight. Female animals often protect their off spring form danger.
Some might call that a "right to self defense" but it is not about rights at all, it is about protecting your self and family and what you need so that you can survive and not be distroyed - so that you do not become a "happy meal" for some other animals or creature to enjoy. It is an impulsive reaction. Nature is about consuming and being consumed, and so to suggest that you have a nature or god given right to protect your self when attacked is two sided, because under that system all other creatures have the right to eat you for supper, just like you also have the right to eat food to stay alive. Which is not a right, it is a matter of fact. Not an interpretation but a reality. So you can fight or take flight as determined by how your spiecies evolved. And you can eat and consume and build your "house" as a nest or as a hole in the ground, or whatever, and you can try to protect it from intruders. But that is different then some "right to own property" which is a man made concept that involves money, banks, deeds (paperwork) and other "un-natural" contracts and lawyers. An animal does not really "own" the land where it builds it's dwelling place. If you wanted to chop down a tree in your yard the bird that has a nest in that tree would have no legal foundation to stop you from distroying it's "house". Legal rights are a kind of imaginary rule that we have created as human beings but they are not the same thing as what we can witness in nature. Animals do not own property, they "proclaim it and then must defend that claim" by force - by fang and claw - not by going to a courtroom of "justice". Nature could care less about the concepts we call "justice". By the same token a crow does not know that you own that corn field and they will fly right down and eat the corn as they please, unless you physically stand by and defend it by killing the crow or by scaring it away. Where-as if some hobo or homeless person ate your corn you could have them arrested for violating your "rights" to own that food supply. The difference is that a hobo knows that a farmer has property rights under law and a crow does not have a clue, no animal feels bound to respect the 'ownership rights" of other animals, if a dog "marks" it's truf it is just a warning but their are no rules enforced by nature to back up that claim. God will not punish a dog for violating another dogs truf. Sniff sniff all you want, you will not find evidence of any "superpower" that is enforcing any of those so-called natural rights. If an animals claims a right they must do their own defending of that right. Or run for the hills - or be distroyed as is sometimes the case.
William James took the opposite view of you. He said that animals may be ruled by instincts, but humans are ruled by more instincts. This thread was designed to make the natural seem strange. |
William James is a well respected person of philosophy, and he has added much to our resource of knowledge. The natural is not strange, but the concept of natural rights might be so, as I am not sure if an instinct is a "given right". Or a "evolved right" for that matter. Again, nature does not have money and banks and deeds and lawyers and courtrooms of justice. Humans do. We have created a different kind of "paperwork" environment that animals might find a bit amusing if they could even fabric such a notion.
Do we really think that Mother Nature in her wisdom created the "Consitution of the United Kingdom and a Bill of Rights" for the birds? And that humans then used that to create our own Consitution of the United States and our bill of rights? Because we felt it was self evident that this is how nature should operate under the control of a Creator who might enforce such concepts for which religions often advocate? A little bit yes, and a lotta bit no.
Instinct is not a right or the enforcer of rights, it offers no choice of free will for a animal anyway. Nature is not a government and it will not rescue those who feel their rights are being violated. If a mountian lion attacks a human we can call in the police who will kill the lion and to protect our rights to be safe in our own backyards, but if that mountain lion kills a deer, the deer would have no right to ask God or Mother Nature to take revenge or to protect it in it's own field of grass. Because in nature everything has a right to violate your rights just as you have the right to defend those rights, which are not actually rights in the legal sense of the word.