OK: so rights are universal over all people, but they’re not inalienable, in that you sometimes have good reason for violating them. I’m not sure whether that always reflects our approach, especially for minors: is it that we think they have rights such as voting, contract etc. but we violate this right due to some risk or danger? Or do we simply not hold that they have those rights?
On the sidepoint: fair enough. Presumably it’s mostly valuing them in others, as if you want to defend your own rights than doing so by encouraging a general culture of defence of rights is very indirect and the net effect to you personally would presumably be much smaller than simpler accruing greater wealth/power/knowledge.
Hm… I’ve never fully thought out the situation with minors. This probably would have occurred to me earlier if I had children of my own.
I want to say that I’m not sure that very young children can be considered fully human in the same way as adults, but this raises several red flags, not the least of which is the problem of determining when a person counts as “human” or not. I think rather than dig myself into a hole that I’m not sure I even support, I’d rather default back to my previous position -
Minors have rights at the same point that anyone else has rights: once they have the power/allies to assert and defend those rights.
The position in general does deserve some more pondering.
I suppose that depends on whether the ‘basic rights’ include things like voting and contract, that you might consider distinctively rights of citizens.
To be honest, I never know how to take human rights language. Some people treat it as morally factual that people have certain rights, whether these are upheld and exercised or not. For me, ‘rights’ has to refer to a sort of social contract. We say that people have the ‘right to life’ because it makes certain decisions more difficult to take than if we just said you had to do what was best for your citizens in general.
It’s very difficult to condemn a country for ‘not pursuing policies that evidence suggests maximises the freedom and quality of life of its citizens’. Doing so involves all sorts of sub-arguments and complexities. Whereas saying ‘they torture people’ at least gives you a clear point of objection, even if the fact and justification are both subject to argument afterwards.
Kudos on the ‘I’ve never fully thought the situation through’, btw. Remarkably rare words on the net.
OK: so rights are universal over all people, but they’re not inalienable, in that you sometimes have good reason for violating them. I’m not sure whether that always reflects our approach, especially for minors: is it that we think they have rights such as voting, contract etc. but we violate this right due to some risk or danger? Or do we simply not hold that they have those rights?
On the sidepoint: fair enough. Presumably it’s mostly valuing them in others, as if you want to defend your own rights than doing so by encouraging a general culture of defence of rights is very indirect and the net effect to you personally would presumably be much smaller than simpler accruing greater wealth/power/knowledge.
Hm… I’ve never fully thought out the situation with minors. This probably would have occurred to me earlier if I had children of my own.
I want to say that I’m not sure that very young children can be considered fully human in the same way as adults, but this raises several red flags, not the least of which is the problem of determining when a person counts as “human” or not. I think rather than dig myself into a hole that I’m not sure I even support, I’d rather default back to my previous position -
Minors have rights at the same point that anyone else has rights: once they have the power/allies to assert and defend those rights.
The position in general does deserve some more pondering.
I suppose that depends on whether the ‘basic rights’ include things like voting and contract, that you might consider distinctively rights of citizens.
To be honest, I never know how to take human rights language. Some people treat it as morally factual that people have certain rights, whether these are upheld and exercised or not. For me, ‘rights’ has to refer to a sort of social contract. We say that people have the ‘right to life’ because it makes certain decisions more difficult to take than if we just said you had to do what was best for your citizens in general.
It’s very difficult to condemn a country for ‘not pursuing policies that evidence suggests maximises the freedom and quality of life of its citizens’. Doing so involves all sorts of sub-arguments and complexities. Whereas saying ‘they torture people’ at least gives you a clear point of objection, even if the fact and justification are both subject to argument afterwards.
Kudos on the ‘I’ve never fully thought the situation through’, btw. Remarkably rare words on the net.