Stephen Keim,

You make 9/11 seem a thunderbolt from the sky, which it was, and it wasn’t.

You forgot that President James Monroe on the second of December 1823 declared War to the world.

And 9/11was an episode of that war

And that war is still raging

And will continue to tear the world apart until either Americans are exhausted or they understand that Liberty is no license but freedom and their freedom is conditional to other people’s freedom.

what, not one mention of abortion, as glaring and egregious a violation of human rights as anything ever perpetrated in this 'war on terror'?

Peter Hume

I make neither mistake. And the first is not a fallacy, in any case. I don't have time to give you a course of lectures.

ozbib
You comment consists of nothing but fallacies
1. appeal to absent authority - someone somewhere supposedly knows better, it's just that you can't make you any sensible argument yourself
2. I supposedly don't understand, whereas you do without proving it, which assumes what is in issue.

Then when I point out that you've said nothing but fallacies, your response is only to insist that your original fallacious approach is not fallacious, but without showing reason. Presumably your appeal to the absent authority of the Stanford online Enclopaedia of Philosophy was just some kind of optical illusion?

"Someone somewhere proves you wrong". There. That's an argument to satisfy your own intellectual standards.

If you don't have time, then shut up. If you do, then make some sensible argument on point instead of making a fool of yourself

Peter H

An invitation to you to read some literature so that you are better informed on a topic is not an appeal to an authority at all.

A comment that you are mistaken is not begging the question, because it is not an argument at all. Because it is not an argument, it cannot exhibit a fallacy.

I was, I admit, rather short with you, and that was not very polite. I apologise for that. By way of amends, here is a brief introduction to the topic.

There are a number of different kinds of rights claims, carrying different implications about who is obligated to act or to refrain from acting in particular ways. For example, there are role or institutional rights; and to these correspond duties. There are legal rights--to a fair trial for instance. There are natural rights, and there are human rights.

Natural rights are often treated as specifications of the principle of liberty--such as the right to free speech. To that correspond obligations not to interfere with someone's speech. But there is no corresponding obligation to make forums available for the speech. Human rights are sometimes treated as depending on arguments about what is required for a person to live a life that is at least minimally good. An individual (on this account) does not have a duty to another specific individual to provide what is required, but has a duty to be part of institutions which make it possible for persons to obtain what is required.

Each of these is argued about. A positivist account of legal rights, for instance treats them as stating what the courts will uphold. But opponents say they are rather about what the courts should uphold.

There are arguments about how the rights claims are to be justified, and especially about how they relate to other moral claims. They are, however, not arbitrary--not even human rights.

ozbib
Thank you.

I reject any implication that you speak from a position of superior knowledge. Perhaps you do. But unless you can establish that as a matter of argument, rather than assertion, I no more intend to accept it, than I would expect you to accept the same assumption coming from me.

So far it seems to me that what you have said, has not advanced the argument any further than what I said.

Both Hart's and Dworkins theories have in common that they resolve to what the state says a right is or ought to be. They are essentially ex post facto rationalisations of pre-existing state power.

But the state is that group in society claiming and exercising a territorial monopoly of ultimate decision-making and backed by force. To say a right is or ought to be what the state says it is or should, only says in other words, that it is what the powerful say it is or ought to be.

How has anything you said escaped, or shown how to escape that problem?

"There are arguments about how the rights claims are to be justified, and especially about how they relate to other moral claims. They are, however, not arbitrary... "

Why not? If the state claims a right to confiscate my property and give it to someone else, why is that not arbitrary?