It is not about being more advanced. It is about being advanced enough.
Don’t you think we need a bit more than a “pretty good benchmark” since the alternative if you haven’t reached the benchmark is that you can be killed/destroyed by anyone else without any reason or justified reprisal. So at 5 years your ok but at 4 years 364 days 23 hours 59 minutes and 59 seconds we can kill you. That makes perfect sense.
Advanced enough for what and how is that going to be determined and by whom? Doesn’t that defeat the whole point of rights if they are by definition determined by somebody else?
Again, a “right” is a “legal claim”, meaning, one has to be advanced enough to bring a case to court to be able to make a legal claim. It would be determined by the courts.
Do you think the law can stop people from “abusing” or killing their children? Who should determine what “abuse” is in your world? In your world, at what point can someone consent to being killed? Do you not recognize that very, very few people kill their children? Do you not recognize that the other parent can bring a case to court? Do you not recognize that “child abuse” laws are not magical, and that child abuse is still rampant?
I do not dispute that this is a difficult issue to address. However, parents killing their own children is extremely rare, and I see no reason why it would be anymore common if it were legal. In fact in a free society, people would be so wealthy, that it would probably go down even more.
Babies have rights, even unborn ones.
OK, let’s play. How do we know if a baby wants to die?
The point is, in your world, the individuals rights are determined by someone else. You don’t really have rights if they are not intrinsic to you. We are not discussing the law we are discussing when someone has these rights and when they begin. What you have stated is that you are not sure who has rights and when exactly they begin. You can only reference that people have to go to court for their rights to be determined. What if there are no courts?
Your entire construct rests on some third party determining what your rights are.
First of all, way to ignore my questions.
Second of all, A RIGHT IS A LEGAL CLAIM. Rights only exist in courts.
Third of all, courts would only not exist if there were only two adults left on earth.
And yes, a neutral third party is the best one to make the decision.
I know you are alive because you are typing. So you have life. I know you have liberty, because you are typing. I would guess you have property, because I would guess you are typing on your computer. So you have life, liberty, and property. A right to life, liberty, and property is a legal claim to those.
How do we know if anybody that is unable to directly communicate even if the communication is just temporarily interrupted like sleeping wants to die? What does wanting to die have to do with anything? You act as if this irrational idea of giving consent as the determining factor in life is some universal given. You can’t even establish when this event occurs or how we are going to recognize it in every case.
People that believe life begins at conception have none of these inconsistent issues to deal with.
Stupid question; babies are too young to grasp concepts such as suicide or even death for that matter.
By using the definition of rights as short-hand for the logical extension of property, are you suggesting that rights only arise at the behest of some self-proclaimed ‘court’? So then there is no natural law, only court ordered decisions?
So the critical factor in determining if rights exist for you is actually courts. So if there are no courts then no one has any rights. For example right now there are places that have no courts and in those places if one person kills another person then there is no violation of rights. Have i got that right?
Do corrupt courts count?
Are rights subjective based on the court determination? So a court could rule that all Jews have no rights and that would be acceptable?
Spidey, sure I can communicate with Chinese people without speaking. But by the same token, if I hit a child and he then moves away, he’s communicating with me. Taking this line of thought further, if I hit a child who then starts crying I think I can safely say that he doesn’t approve of my behaviour (hitting him). So where is this arbitrary cut off line between where killing babies is acceptable and it isn’t?
Whose court? What if the concept of third-party arbitration is foreign to the individual in question? Have my rights been assaulted if I do not take you to court? Or, are rights bound up in the individual?
Excellent post, Giles.
And if I were sleeping how would you distinguish me from a baby?
And I have ever said it is just about communication. It is also about intelligence, or more specifically, having the mental capacity to grant consent to something against our instincts.
What is the arbitrary line, in your world Giles, when people can consent to having sex, being killed, being tortured, or selling their productivity? We all have some arbitrary line when this occurs, and why you all cannot figure that out is beyond me.
I could wake you up and talk to you and reason with you. Is this really a serious question?
A court is just a third party that judges a dispute between two or more parties appointed by both parties to rule on the dispute.. So every place in the world has “courts”. So no, you did not have it right.
What is “corrupt”?
Who else would you put forward to rule on rights violations? Do you have some magical fairy that you have been hiding from the world?
Sure, and then no one would ever use it again. I guess a grocery store could sell rotting tomatoes and call them fresh too.
A court decided upon by the two parties having a dispute.
Teach them. I don’t know. Is this a serious question?
No, again, rights are a legal claim. And yes, you have still been assaulted, but your rights have not.
I am not really sure what you are asking.
It seems to me you just have not studied how private law/courts would work. Here is a good article.