I know what you are getting at, but the distinction between word usage and the speed of light is that word usage is intersubjective and the speed of light is objective. They are not both objective.
Perhaps you could adequately respond to my previous post since nobody else has. You have very clear, concise responses, gotlucky, and I appreciate your input.
If rights are subjective, I could make the claim that since Nazi Germany institutionalized the killing of millions of people who weren’t Aryan that there was nothing wrong with it since culturally speaking, the victims were outcast and had no natural rights to life to begin with…right?
It depends upon your values. If you only value Aryans, or if you subscribe to a belief, such as “the ends justify the means”, then there is nothing wrong with it from that perspective. But if you value the golden rule, or the ethic of reciprocity, then the actions of the Third Reich were very wrong, or more precisely, evil.
It depends upon the subject in question and what his values are. The vast majority of people seem to value the golden rule, and libertarians seem to be individuals who apply it to everyone, no exceptions.
“word usage is intersubjective”
I’ve always considered the word “intersubjective” to be a bit of a weasel-word. Word usage is objective just like bird-calls are objective. The lark makes a call that is easily distinguished from the call of a crow. Similarly, we can go out into the world and observe the utterances that people make to one another and ascertain usage patterns. These observations are nothing less than objective.
Clayton -
Rights are concepts, this is a fact independent of my opinion on the matter. Rights (aka rules) exist within brains to the extent that they’re acknowledged. When two people agree on a rule (aka a “right”), then it exists in that regard and to that extent.
“Morally right” or “morally wrong” are concepts.
You’re confusing yourself. You simply can kill him. Whether you should isn’t the same as whether you can. In either case, whether you should is independent of whether anyone imagines a rule (e.g. a right) regarding such.
Clayton,
There is a clear distinction between intersubjective and objective.
Clayton you’re so confused man. There isn’t a law of nature (objective) that says the sound “table” will refer to a flat thing with legs. “Table” means whatever people agree it means. It might mean something unpredictable tomorrow, and I’m sure that’s how many languages have developed. It started in someone’s brain (subjective), and other brains acknowledged it (intersubjective).
I may not be clarifying my point through definitions. Allow me to offer an example via questioning:
Do you believe that taxation is wrong; why or why not?
Since rights are not inherent, you must maintain that there was nothing inherently wrong about the Holocaust. Do you maintain this?
“Right” and “wrong” are concepts. Tell me what you mean by “wrong” and I’ll be able to decide if I believe taxation fits in that category. In your explanation, don’t lose track of the topic: rights.
This should further specify things:
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Do you believe that liberty is a right?
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Do you believe that infringement of liberty via coercion can be forcefully resisted by the individual whose liberty is being infringed?
Not confused at all. We can observe the meaning of “table” by going out to see how people use it. It doesn’t matter who does this observation, they will come up with the same result. Hence, the meaning of the word (written or sounded) “table” is objective (doesn’t vary from observer to observer).
The “broadcast-acknowledge” model you are promulgating is simply false. Words are not broadcast/proposed from some central brain and then “acknowledged” by other brains. They are invented willy-nilly by the population at large and then repeated as people see fit. Certain words spread rapidly and enter the “permanent” lexicon, other words are a flash-in-the-pan and die out quickly. Even in the “permanent” lexicon, there is a slow churn as durable words, usages, spellings and variants fade in and out of usage. The study of word usage is as objective as the study of bird-calls, there’s nothing subjective about it.
Clayton -
Let me reiterate:
A) Rights (rules), and “morally right” or “morally wrong” are concepts, this is a fact independent of my opinion on the matter.
B) Whether you should do something is independent of whether you can.
C) Whether you should do something is independent of whether people acknowledge a rule.
D) Whether you should do something is independent of the beliefs (morals) of others.
It is when people agree that it is. Then and only then, by definition. That’s what a right (a rule) means.
It depends on the power of the individual. Like I said, whether you can do something is independent of whether you should do something.
I fail to see the distinction. All objective facts are “intersubjective” the moment we begin talking about them. While I can conceive of something being shared by just two minds (for example, a secret code), I fail to see the significance of this class of knowledge… it seems negligible to me. There is no practical difference between a fact being shared by a large number of minds and its being objective, and while I can conceive of facts shared between a small number of minds I do not understand why I should care about such a category of knowledge.
Clayton -
That is correct. There is nothing inherently right or wrong with homicide. If you value the golden rule, however, then the holocaust was tremendously evil.
Red herring. The word “table” didn’t mean what it does mean until people proposed and acknowledged it.
And double red herring, because the fact that rights are rules (and are therefore whatever people acknowledge them to be) is independent of the fact that language has meaning to the extent that it’s communicable.
You fail to see the distinction between the meaning of the word “gay” and the length of a table? Gay might mean happy and it might mean homosexual. Certainly this is observable, but the meaning is either subjective or intersubjective. If I choose to call myself a zebra, I am not a white striped horse. For there to be meaningful communication between us, either you have to recognize that I am using zebra in a nonstandard manner, or I have to choose a different word that would communicate my meaning.
Take the sound pa. Depending upon the subjects in question, it could mean a variety of different things. We could even take the same sound in English, such as gay, as I explained already. Another good example is the word “capitalist”. You know that it is used in very different ways by different people.
The fact of the matter is that the meaning of the word depends upon the subjects using the word. If there is no agreement, then it is subjective and useless as a form of communication. If there is agreement, then it is intersubjective and conveys meaning from one subject to another. But there are no inherent meanings of words.
If you are using objective to not mean inherent, but simply as an object, then sure, anything can be “objective”. But the distinction between intersubjective and objective is a useful distinction that highlights the difference between things that require intersubjective agreement and things that do not.
Obfuscation. We don’t even need to form a psychological theory of meaning in order to see how people use language. People repeat words and the usage of some words becomes widespread for whatever reason while the usage of others does not. The correlation between a table and the word “table” is something we can objectively ascertain simply by going out and asking people what they call a table.
Rights are not rules in the sense of the rules of the game of chess and it’s confusing to refer to them as “rules”. Rights-language is just another way of speaking about law, in particular, criticizing law. “Men have a right to speak their mind” means that good law will not allow people to prevent one another from speaking their mind. This is just a form of criticism, nothing more.
Clayton -
Sorry but I don’t see you’re going with it—and you’re still confused:
You missed the first steps: a word is proposed, then it’s acknowledged, THEN it’s spread. In any event, red herring, because words do mean what people agree they mean, and this has no bearing on the fact that rights are concepts and therefore mean whatever people agree they mean.
Whatever other category they fit in, they are concepts, they are subjective, normative, and prescriptive—they exist when people acknowledge them, and they have value when people agree on them.
The usages of the word gay are just as objective as the length of a table. I can stretch a tape over the table or I can walk around with a multiple-choice sheet and a photograph of a happy man with one choice marked “gay” and the others anything but synonyms of “gay” and people will invariably choose “gay”.
I’m using objective to mean “observer independent”. If Frank asks 100 random people off the street what they call a table (perhaps he can show them a picture and ask “what is the word for this?”), he will get exactly the same results as if Bob asks 100 random people off the street what they call a table.
Granted, when we get into more complex words than simple nouns, things get much more complicated. However, I do not subscribe to this theory of language as “meaning-by-contract”. Meaning is not the result of a contract between the speaker and listener and meaning is not conveyed in anything like the sense in which, say, I can move a plate from my hands to your hands or photocopy a piece of paper and hand the photocopy to you.
My view is that the speaker has very little, if any, control over the effect that his statements will have upon the listener’s mind in the usual case. And even in the ideal case of a determined, articulate speaker working in tandem with a diligent, meticulous listener, the conveyance of meaning is still nothing like the transfer of a plate or a photocopy, even though the language we use to speak about the conveyance of meaning strongly uses this metaphor.
Clayton -