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RIGHTS NOTES
Rights Theses
1. Rights entail duties. No duty, no right. (right/duty
correlativity)
2. Duties entail (effective) enforcement. No enforcement, no
duty. (from Bentham)
3. Rights entail (effective) enforcement. No enforcement, no
right. (from 1. and 2.)
4. In a state of nature, there is no (effective) enforcement.
5. There are no natural rights. This is the Bentham/Crawford
view. (from 3. and 4.)
6. There are no natural duties. (from 2. and 4.)
2a. Duties entail privileges to enforce.
2b. Duties do not entail (effective) enforcement. (denial of
2)
4a. In a state of nature, there are privileges to (no duties not to)
enforce duties. (This is consistent with the nonexistence--even the
impossibility of--natural duties. It follows from what Thomson calls
the weakness of privileges, i.e., the fact that a privilege is simply the
absence
of a duty.)
6a. Natural duties are possible, despite nonenforcement. (from
2a and 4a)
5a. Natural rights are possible, despite nonenforcement. (from
1 and 6a)
7. Moral properties and relations pertain to individuals and individuals
only. No moral judgment is meaningful unless it is equivalent to
a proposition about individuals.
8 Duty is a relation.
9. The only duties that exist hold between individuals or an individual
and himself or herself. (from 7. and 8.)
10. If p entails q, and q is (nonvacuously) an n-ary relation, then
p is an n-ary relation.
11. Rights are relations. (from 8. and 10.)
12. The only rights that exist are rights that individuals hold against
individuals, possibly against themselves. If there is no individual
against whom a putative right is held, there is no right. (from 7.
and 11.)
13. "x ought to have a right" does not entail that x has a right.
(from 5.)
14. "It would be wrong to deny x a right" does not entail that x has
a right. (from 5.)
15. "It would be right for x to have a right" does not entail that
x has a right. (from 5.)
16. "x has a privilege against y that x" does not entail that
x has a claim right against y that x. Privileges don't entail
claims. (Hohfeld)
17. "x has no duty against y that not- x" does not entail that x has
a claim right against y that x. (16. and privilege/no duty
correlativity)
18. "x has a claim right against all y that x be allowed to do z" does
not entail that x has a privilege to do z. Claims do not entail privileges.
(Thomson's thesis)
19. "x has a claim right against all y that x be allowed to do z" does
not entail that x has no duty not do do z (from 16 and privilege/no duty
correlativity)
20. Possibly, x has a duty not to do z and a claim right against all
y that x be allowed to do z. There may be a right to do wrong.
(from 17)
21. Women in macho cultures have a right to equal treatment, whether
or not that right is protected by or even consistent with prevailing local
law. (If this is true, then there is at least one natural right,
and natural rights are both possible and actual).
22. Women had no right to vote, although they ought to have had, before
they were legally enfranchised.
23. Women had a right to the establishment of procedures to enfranchise
them, before they were legally enfranchised. |