What is the Basis of Human Rights

[Mike]

Mike' date=' I'm not sure that evolution rules out truth, meaning and reality. Praxis is praxis. The evolving universe is that which wonders - or something like that. I am frustrated because it seems so hard to nail down rights and something for morality to be about.[/quote']

 

Perhaps that's the nature of what we're trying to deal with -- it's impossible to objectify, and that's why it's a source of intrinsic value. To objectify a being is to de-mean, is it not?

 

 

"In consequence of this bifurcation of nature into an interior subjective world of secondary qualities and an exterior objective world of primary qualities, there emerges the axiological problem that nature is divested of the panorama of aesthetic qualities which give actuality its intrinsic value, as well as the epistemological problem that experience becomes an appearance (phenomenon) standing over against the things-in-themselves (noumena)." (Steven Odin in "Process Metaphysics and Hua-yen Buddhism", p116, underscoring mine)

 

 

I don't think evolution rules out truth, meaning, and reality, either. It's just that I don't think evolution gives us the whole story. That is, I don't think the physical facts give us the whole story. If they did, I think that would rule out our existential awareness and interest in truth, meaning, and reality.

 

 

"One worrisome set of problems came directly from the causal relevance, or lack thereof, of consciousness. In their broadest forms, these worries imply that consciousness plays no role in the physical world's dynamical evolution. This is the problem of epiphenomenalism.

"Epiphenomenalism seems to be true because the world's physical basis determines the dynamic structural properties of everything and because people tend to believe that physics can tell us everything relevant about the behavior of the world's physical basis." (Greg Rosenberg, A Place for Consciousness, 129)

 

 

Peace,

Mike

[GeorgeW]

Your statement seems conditional. The rights of our humanity "are what we say they are or are not".

 

Sorry for being unclear. I was trying to differentiate the rights humans (inherent) from the rights of corporations (conferred by humans).

 

George

[glintofpewter]

Mike is it accurate to say that , for you, evolution is insufficient, it is only "part of a whole"? why would evolution not be the whole, not represent everything without bifurcation, Why is evolution only "nature divested of the panorama of aesthetic qualities"? Why is evolution peeled away for examination?

 

We do not have a right to continue living. We have a right and an obligation to treat our life with dignity.

 

I have been thinking of my two bacterium in relationship 4 billion years ago. Do they not have a "right" to not be peeled away and considered only physcially? Don't they participate in the metaphyscial world? does a tsunami not treat humanity with dignity? Does it strip us of our dignity and is therefore "evil"?

 

dutch

[JenellYB]

It seems we can more easily articulate what any of our personal systems of values and morals are as they are, and why, but then fall off into a hole in trying to extend that into societies and humanity in general. We can get a handle on why and how our own personal perspective in matters of morality developed as it has, and even in what it originated out of.

 

I've come to consider in many things, what seem to me a principle of microcisms within macrocisms that are then the microcisms within the next level macrocism, and so on, similar in analogy to those sets of Russian Babushka dolls that fit one inside another. I'm thinking in that direction on this issue of origins of morality and concepts of human rights. Might our personal learning and growth processes be microcosm to the succeeding macrocosms of collectives, family, society, culture, eventually the whole of humanity? That just each individual goes through the process of developing morals, so do these other greaters human system that we are a part of?

 

Jenell

[Mike]

Mike is it accurate to say that , for you, evolution is insufficient, it is only "part of a whole"? why would evolution not be the whole, not represent everything without bifurcation, Why is evolution only "nature divested of the panorama of aesthetic qualities"? Why is evolution peeled away for examination?

 

We do not have a right to continue living. We have a right and an obligation to treat our life with dignity.

 

I have been thinking of my two bacterium in relationship 4 billion years ago. Do they not have a "right" to not be peeled away and considered only physcially? Don't they participate in the metaphyscial world? does a tsunami not treat humanity with dignity? Does it strip us of our dignity and is therefore "evil"?

 

dutch

 

I think this bifurcation is conceptual -- the result of incomplete philosophical visions of monisms and dualisms. I think evolution can be the whole story if we are approaching it with a sense of the metaphysical, with a respect for the ontological reality of subjectivity, where experience and meaning play a part, and not only gene and mechanism. But what most modern persons mean by evolution -- or even by "reality" -- is a state of affairs divested of subjectivity at base, which also divests reality of meaning and value. So I guess my comments on evolution depend on what evolution is taken to be. Is it mindless mechanism, or is it robust enough for subjectivity to have a genuine role? If the latter holds, then yes, I think that bacteria 4 billion years ago does have a right to not be objectified and considered only physically. It means that there are no "things" but beings. Things have no intrinsic worth, but beings are always ends in themselves.

 

Peace,

Mike