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From: tdh@frog.UUCP (T. Dave Hudson)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: ethics and rights
Message-ID: <177@frog.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 29-Apr-85 10:48:05 EDT
Article-I.D.: frog.177
Posted: Mon Apr 29 10:48:05 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 1-May-85 05:45:29 EDT
Reply-To: frog!tdh
Organization: Charles River Data Systems, Framingham MA
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>From: mck@ratex.UUCP (Daniel Kian Mc Kiernan)
>Any ethical
>system other than Ethical Nihilism can be formulated in terms of rights.
>You may not agree with Libertarian assertions about rights, but you cannot
>rationally reject both them and Ethical Nihilism.

An ethical system suitable for a Robinson Crusoe sans Friday would not
have to take rights into consideration.  A complete ethical system
would only in part be dealing with rights, and therefore could not
be formulated in terms of rights.  Furthermore, it is not necessary
for a complete ethical system to formulate rights, although it is
necessary to provide a basis for rights, which are formulated (no,
not arbitrarily as legal "fictions") in political philosophy (dependent
for their existence on the existence of a societal framework that
most of us would call government), and to relate values to rights.

I apologize for not having been prepared to oppose that ridiculous
assertion that all rights derive from self-ownership that crept into
the Libertarian platform at the 1983 convention.  (If you want to see
how stupidity creeps into a platform, go see a convention.  Watch how
things are rushed and swept aside in confluent attempts to get pet
amendments passed.)  I oppose both that particular Libertarian
assertion about rights and also ethical nihilism -- rationally.
(An ethically subjective approach to values is consistent with
ethical objectivity and does not imply nihilism.)

					David Hudson