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From: nelson_p@apollo.HP.COM (Peter Nelson)
Newsgroups: alt.individualism
Subject: RE Rights, Social Convention, and Objectivism
Message-ID: <48234cc4.20b6d@apollo.HP.COM>
Date: 20 Jan 90 01:24:00 GMT
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Distribution: usa
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Apollo Division - Chelmsford, MA
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>DISCLAIMER:   This is Not Chris Conway, |   Philosophy is useless,
>this is Lily-Rose using his login.      |   Theology is worse.
>wombat@jupiter.nmt.edu                  |    -- Dire Straits                              
  
 ...posts:
                              

>"Rights" are a SOCIAL CONVENTION.  They do not exist anywhere in the
>so-called Real World.  There is no empirical, scientific evidence that 
>any human has any rights or responsibilities w/r/t any other human.

>              Rights and other social conventions are *always* in flux.

>I am not exactly an O'ist because I disagree with Ayn Rand on several
>points, and we've all heard how fatal that is! ;-)  However, I currently
>believe that a lot of her definitions of "rights" are good starting points
>for this kind of ongoing revision.

 There seem to be an awful lot of people of this persuasion 
 around here lately.   Are there ANY people left on the net
 who actually agree with either Objectivism or any other 
 philosophy that claims we can fundamentally identify true
 moral right and wrong???    Stand up and be counted!

 Anyway, given that there seem to be a lot of people who agree
 with me that rights and right and wrong are either social
 conventions or at least not accessible to formal proof, I 
 have new questions:

 This is alt.individualism.   I think we're mostly "individualists".
 We seem particularly interested in "man w.r.t. society" issues.
 Given that we can't seem to PROVE rights or right-and-wrong,
 what obligation does the individual have to buy into the 
 conventional social ideas on these things?  Should we feel 
 obligated to obey laws that we disagree with, if we think we
 can get away with disobeying?   Should we feel obligated to
 accept social convention on ethical matters?   What does 
 individualism *mean* in the context of socially-defined
 values?    Should we be satisfied that the horror or re-
 vulsion that we might feel at violating certain values is
 sufficient reason for not doing them or should we consider 
 the possibility that we have merely *internalized* a set
 of values from society?   If we have internalized social or
 cultural values then are we truly free individuals?  

                                             ---Peter