Rights

I use the term "standards of interpersonal behaviour" to refer to ethics. Most people agree that there should be standards of interpersonal behaviour (and if you don't then I definitely can't have a conversation with you -- since that invokes a dozen such standards) so once we've got that far we need to determine what these standards should be.

This is a matter of some contention as you might imagine, but most people will agree to a few basic principles in this field:

Firstly that standards of behaviour should be universal. That is: they should be applicable to all people (explicitly: "currently sentient, rational agents") at all times and places, and in any situation.

Secondly, that standards of behaviour are only valid when negative rather than positive. The first point makes this so, but its worth clarification. Standards of behaviour should say what you can't do, not what you can do. The burden of proof is automatically on whoever is describing a standard.

Thirdly, that any system of ethics (standard of behaviour) should be evaluated from some pre-moral or super-moral perspectives. -- This is the sanity test. One such perspective is "conducivity to human life" (because the purpose of ethics is human flourishing.) Another is: do humans without any standard of behaviour fare better than humans with this particular standard of behaviour? (again: human flourishing.)

This, at the moment, isn't a complete proof. But it suffices to say that once you boil it down like so, applying the above rationally derived rules, you eventually get to just a few basic universal rules: One of which is don't steal (private property) and another of which is don't harm (non-aggression.)

 

That's a common misconception. The right actually disallows others to take your guns away from you without just cause. The right to bare arms is a negative right.

To test if something is a negative or positive obligation ask how it is enforced? In the enforcement of said right are you required to do some particular thing (positive obligation) or to merely abstain from doing some particular thing (negative right)?

If we pretend that rights as commonly defined actually exist and are a valid concept we can elaborate the differences more clearly. The right to freedom of speech is merely the right to have others not restrict your capacities to produce and distribute information. The right to 'free healthcare' requires others to do something, namely provide you healthcare.

As we've both pointed out above, if you apply a sounder definition to ethics and rights, then this notion of a positive right goes by the wayside. 'Free healthcare' can't be universally valid for all people [currently sentient, rational agents] at all times in all situations, because else who is providing the healthcare? It would require a slave category of health-care worker in the simplest inception and it would violate the right to private property (thus creating a contradiction) in the complex inception. Further, it would label as immoral/unethical all those who lived before us who simply had no free capital or time to apply whatever medical knowledge they had to the general socialist welfare; Thus, arguably, it also fails the coma test as well as violating the first premise (universality) a number of times and creating an intractable contradiction in nearly all ethical standards.

(The coma test is that a man in a coma can necessarily do no wrong, therefore any ethical theory which accuses him of doing wrong is probably not a valid ethical theory.)

 

I expect to get paid a million dollars.

Wouldn't natural rights stem from nature? And if not, which morality, and how are you defining that?

You've said nothing, just deferred the issue back one level: You say rights are expectations stemming from morality, and its immoral to commit homocide, therefore you have a right not to be murdered. You might as well say that rights are morality and leave it at that <- at least this would have a clear meaning.

 

Yes, in common language it means government endowed privilege.

The philosophy of "right to life" was largely replaced with self-ownership to avoid this confusion. The confusion is actually deliberate on the part of the marxists and socialists. They've been polluting the terms of the original liberals for centuries.

Or how the concept of justice fits into a purely moral definition of rights.