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I know many in this sub don't believe in "God" given rights, but are there unalienable human rights? If you believe in these, is that common ground with those who believe they come from a higher power? If the source of these rights is up for debate, are thy they at least the same/similar?
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I'm not aware of any existent gods, as far as that goes.
In practical terms, things called "rights" are violated all the time.
The idea of "unalienable rights" is aspirational.
God doesn’t exist, so no rights can be given by god. Moreover, no right is actually unalienable. People absolutely can abuse you for exercising your human rights. God doesn’t step in to stop that.
Rights are legal entitlements created by governments. Good governments create and protect those rights for their citizens—and others.
"Rights" only exist as legal constructs. It's the same as money - it only has value because we believe it does. That means we have to choose to believe it. That means the moral duty of choosing and upholding certain rights falls squarely on us.
To me, the term "god-given rights" just tries to define the concept in an unnecessary supernatural context as though rights are a thing that exists independent of humanity. It doesn't. It's up to ensure it. No supernatural force is coming to enforce your rights.
Yes. These terms like natural rights, human rights and god given rights are ultimately just “rights we as a society agree we have, most of the time and with limits”.
I always figured they were value statements at the end of the day. Looking into their arguments to define them have mostly been what dose a person need to live a decent life.
Part of me thinks it's a bit of a modern mistranslation of the philosophical thought of the time. And unalienable rights and rights socially agreed on are essentially the same concept.
Yeah value statements aren’t a bad way of looking at it. Basically saying that of all our rights these are the ones we are super serious about and less willing to bend on.
The idea of natural rights is that they are emergent.
It's not that no one can take your life, take your liberty or take your property. The idea behind natural rights is that as a social species, when you start to deny those things to others, you tend to make it more likely that others will take one of those things from you.
If you go around killing people, that will piss people off and the safety of your own life is much less likely to be protected, or in an organized state, you may be imprisoned and lose your liberty. The three are interlinked.
We don't need to intellectually agree that we want to protect those three things for them to be natural rights. Calling them natural rights is just the observation that when you cross those lines with others, you put yourself at serious risk.
Yes, people in the US held slaves for the first big chunk of our existence, and that eventually culminated with a huge bloody war. Rights don't create a guarantee that every individual will face those consequences, or that they will come swiftly, but when you kill, rob and enslave from others, they are far more likely to do the same to you when they have the opportunity.
This is very much the answer. The whole concept of unalienable rights is laughable. There is always the possibility of a government taking those rights away in one way or another. Further, rights are only useful to the extent by which the government will protect those rights. You can claim to have a right to own a gun but if the state can execute you because they thought you had a gun and suffer no repercussions, you don't really have the rights you think you do.
Conservatives seem to want a strict list of rights that are "inalienable" mostly as a way to prevent the expansion of rights. It's why they are so quick to point out what the constitution says and hold it as sacred when it helps their arguments, but completely ignores the constitution when it's inconvenient for them. They want a fixed set of rights coming from a higher than human authority so they can say "Healthcare isn't a right! It's not in the constitution or the bible!".
The concept of nature rights during the Enlightenment was to counter the claims of monarchs and the church and the aristocracy to divine rights and divine law they used to justify their power
Unalienable rights are rights that the holder cannot *give* away. Nobody said they could not be taken, or that people can’t be assholes to you. *ALL* of the rights in the Constitution/Bill of Rights are alienable, not unalienable. Unalienable rights are like those found in the Declaration of Independence.
> This is very much the answer. The whole concept of unalienable rights is laughable. There is always the possibility of a government taking those rights away in one way or another.
The concept of "unalienable rights" obviously does not mean that governments are unable to take away those rights. The concept was invented as a reaction to governments violating those rights to explain why governments should not be allowed to do that.
It's laughable to you because you don't understand it. Inalienable rights are not called that because they can't be taken away. The idea of inalienable rights is that taking them away is objectively wrong. The concept exists to provide a moral foundation for the construction of society. Without it, there can be no basis for law to exist.
The concept is just lazy moralising though. At its core, effectively, is propaganda. It might be propaganda we overall agree with, but it’s still propaganda.
It’s no different to, say, the 10 commandments. It’s just a bunch of shit people made up a long time ago to try and keep societies in check. No ‘right’ is truly inalienable. And the concept of ‘rights’ in and of itself is something we made up.
Propaganda is a deliberate action by a specific person or group. Moral code that has sprung up over thousands of years independently all over the world with only slight variations is not a fucking propaganda, that's ridiculous.
If you think people make up shit to "keep societies in check" - you have a completely backwards view of history and sociology.
Societies ARE people. Societies create rules in order to codify things that are right, and ban things that are wrong. Rules don't create morals, morals create rules. Morality isn't artificially imposed on society. You raise a group of people without any contact with any existing culture, put them on the deserted island, and within some generations they will arrive at the same variation of the moral code as every other society on earth had arrived at, with some minor local variations - if they survive of course, which is kind of the point because these moral foundations are rooted in our imperative to survive. They are a part of our evolution.
You say taking away ‘inalienable rights’ is morally wrong but who is the arbiter?
I challenge you on your assertion that morality is universal; morality in cave man tribes was different to hunter-gatherer times and morality in hunter-gatherer times was different to modern morality. Rights and what we see as immoral can differ based entirely on how far across the ocean you want to travel right at this moment in time. Even a basic right to life is not absolute, and isn’t necessarily inalienable.
>Moral code that has spring up over thousands of years independently all over the world
The moral code across the world is not all that similar though, at least if you look at genuinely different independent civilisations; the moral codes of ancient China, Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome were all different. Basing your understanding of morality and some nebulous idea of ‘rights’ based on our understanding of modern society is inherently wrong because of how much influence, things like the British Empire and religion have all had on modern western societies.
The concept of rights, whether alienable or not, is an invented construct. As is morality. There are things that are more beneficial to a group of people than not, but wrapping that up in some idea of what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ I.e. morality is a construct. There are so many examples of this. I mean you can look at the animal world to begin with, but even in our own modern supposedly just society we say killing is wrong except in this extensive list of circumstances. So a right to life is hardly inalienable if there are an extensive list of circumstances within which some people have decided it’s okay to take a life (and this list of justifiable reasons to take a life can differ from county to county, state to state, suburb to suburb, country to country…).
Societies are us, sure, but that doesn’t really mean anything.
Laws influence morality as much as morality influences laws. Religion has had a huge influence on what we deem ‘moral’ and religion is effectively propaganda.
>The moral code across the world is not all that similar though, at least if you look at genuinely different independent civilisations; the moral codes of ancient China, Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome were all different.
Different in details, but the fundamental basis for each was pretty much the same. Which is basically like describing the same idea using different languages.
>The concept of rights, whether alienable or not, is an invented construct. As is morality.
No, it's simply a concept used to describe an easily observable pattern. Just because you don't understand why a pattern exists doesn't mean it's random or arbitrary. For example, we could describe gravity and explain in detail how it worked on a local scale LONG before we had even the slightest theoretical idea WHY two masses attracted. The concept of morals has been independently discovered by every society in existence. Every social group, no matter how isolated, has at some point independently arrived at the idea that some things are right and some things are wrong. And if you dig deep enough, most of these observations are based on the same evolutionary imperatives, and are for the most part the same. Social dynamics are a result of behavior, and behavior is a physical factor that is guided by the principles of evolution, which is a proven fact. There is nothing "invented" or "arbitrary" about it.
For example, if you look at ancient Babylon, ancient Greece and ancient China, all had laws regarding murder, personal property, false statements, matrimony, foreigners, dispensation of justice, etc. None of these things are arbitrary - they are all based on something that is essential for the society to exist.
Inalienable rights aren't the ones that CAN'T be taken away, they are simply a recognized baseline for "things that are objectively good". Legal system requires objective morality to exist.
God-given rights doesn't mean they are enforced by God, it just means they are GIVEN by God, and therefore have moral precedence over the rights established by people. That's the idea.
Meh, the way I see it, it doesn't matter how people justify their moral baseline - through god or some philosophical arguments - as long as they have it and at least attempt to follow it.
I would argue they are inalienable- innate to being human, not given to us by the government or God.
Government can only restrict or take away our rights, not grant them.
The lawyer thing is the government restricting our right and offering a guide to help us understand the ways they have taken the rights away from us.
I can certainly understand taking the position that some rights are so important that they should not ever be violated, but I think the distinction people are trying to make is that a "right" is a meaningless concept outside of a society that enforces it. No matter how often Iranians say that freedom of religion is an unalienable human right, it doesn't mean that they can exercise it. And a right that can't be exercised isn't a right at all.
> And a right that can't be exercised isn't a right at all.
Exactly. And if a "right" isn't practice universally, across all people, then it's not exactly inalienable or somehow just a result of being human.
Not sure I agree with your assertion.
If everyone was brainwashed into thinking that they had no right to not work, if every law on the books said you had to work, if everyone was forced to work, would the individual not still have the right not to work?
Don’t I always have the ability to say no? Isn’t that a fundamental inalienable right?
Society can have rules. Governments can have laws. And everyone can just go along with those laws.
But at the core, if I think a law is unjust, I have the right to violate that law. I will face consequences for that violation, but I did not lose my right to my own decision.
> I will face consequences for that violation, but I did not lose my right to my own decision.
By that logic, anything and everything anyone could ever want to do could be considered a right. Which would, IMO, change the definition of "right" so much that we'd be talking about something entirely different.
Do you have the right to go burn down your neighbor's house? Do you have the right to kill your neighbor? You may (hypothetically) think both things would be just, and you would face consequences, but yes technically you could do both. Is all that's required for something to be considered a right just the ability to actually do it?
I think you would agree that if I were to burn down my neighbors house, I would have violated his rights. If I kill my neighbor, again I have violated his rights. My right to swing my arm ends where someone else’s nose begins.
>Not sure I agree with your assertion.
>
>If everyone was brainwashed into thinking that they had no right to not work, if every law on the books said you had to work, if everyone was forced to work, would the individual not still have the right not to work?
>
>Don’t I always have the ability to say no? Isn’t that a fundamental inalienable right?
You have the right in the sense that you're physically capable of refusing at this point in time, because we don't yet have a biomechanical way to compel people's bodies to take arbitrary actions that they don't choose to take.
You don't have the right in the sense that people usually mean "right", which is to say, a socially and legally recognized ability to do something (or refrain from doing something) and not suffer negative consequences for it.
The point people are making is that the first "right" is meaningless; for literally any simple action or inaction, you have that right in the sense that you can physically accomplish it.
>Society can have rules. Governments can have laws. And everyone can just go along with those laws.
>
>But at the core, if I think a law is unjust, I have the right to violate that law. I will face consequences for that violation, but I did not lose my right to my own decision.
As far as I can tell, all you mean by a "right" is "something that you're physically capable of doing or not doing". You say that you have the right to violate an unjust law. Do you not also have the right to violate a law that you think is just? How exactly do you figure out whether you have the right to do something or not?
Ok, but you can have a complex and adversarial legal system without a right to counsel. That was the state of the US for most of its existence. That doesn't mean the government doesn't provide the right to counsel. No one else could.
You may be correct. I don’t see rights as part and parcel of the system of law. Perhaps I am naive, but I see rights as inherent within the individual, not granted by the government or society.
What's the difference between a world where the government protects no rights, and a world where people have no rights?
I don't see a practical difference.
If rights are given to you by government, then a lone individual in the wilderness has no rights?
If rights come from a social contract between groups, then what happens to the minority in that group who the larger group wants to enslave? Do they have no right to defend themselves from slavery or discrimination?
Protecting rights is not the same as granting rights.
I don't think rights or laws are a consideration for someone living in total isolation. Obviously very few people can be said to live in total isolation these days.
>Do they have no right to defend themselves from slavery or discrimination?
They're going to defend themselves one way or another, and the attackers probably aren't going to stop if no authority compels them to.
This isn't an argument that rights are some ethereal thing that transcends laws or behaviors, it's merely a caution that it's a good idea to acknowledge those rights.
But why do we say they exist? Why do we decide that rights should exist? Is it just purely random? Did someone wake up and decide "hey, let's make up a rule - how about no killing?" If that's not the case, then "society establishing laws" is the EFFECT, and therefore there must be a CAUSE preceding that effect, and that cause is what you might call an idea of inalienable rights.
So it would be more correct to say that the rights exist AND we as a society recognize their existence. If we didn't - that doesn't mean the rights wouldn't exist.
It's because enough people decided that they want something to be called a right. There's no objective way of determining that something should or shouldn't be a right. It relies entirely on the beliefs of the people involved in the political system
And why did "enough people" suddenly decide that something should be a right? You don't think that there is a reason why a huge group of people would suddenly decide that something is a right?
Because those people have similar philosophies and think in similar ways.
If you want to explore why that is, I'd argue that because homo sapiens sapiens are a relatively incompetent species individually (try hunting a deer alone and without any ranged or metal weapons), our evolution has required us to be able to work together and care for others so that there are others around to work with. This is ultimately why we are compassionate and care for other humans, but biology is chaotic and not a philosophical basis for anything. Other animals fill a niche which requires them to act in other ways, such as ones which intentionally eat their sexual partners or children.
I don't care about other animals. No one claims that human ethics should apply to giant anteaters. But our ethics are grounded in the fundamental evolutionary programming of human species, which means they absolutely ARE objective. Ethical concepts of right and wrong are not derived from laws, it's the other way around - the laws are created based on fundamental concepts that can be traced all the way back to the fundamental building blocks of human condition.
Did it through? You look at the fundamental laws from the Old Testament or the Code of Hammurabi and you can see that the fundamental principles of what people considered right and wrong didn't change all that much over 3000 years.
A government making bad thing legal doesn't make bad thing into a good thing. This concept has been firmly established in various international courts throughout last century.
You are conflating rights as a concept with legal rights. Those aren't the same. Something that is right might not be legally right, and vice versa.
Ideally, a society should strive to make sure that the two things are as close as possible
Of course it does. Why do we as a society suddenly decide that murder is bad? Is it random? "Hmm, let's ban something. Write a bunch of things on paper and pull from a hat. What did you get? 'Murder' Okay murder is now illegal"
Rights, wrongs, vices, virtues, moral, immoral - everything comes down to good things and bad things. The society recognizes that something is good and makes it into a "right". The society recognizes that something is bad and makes it into a "wrong" (also known as a crime). Inalienable rights are basic ideas, they precede legal rights. Some societies make inalienable rights into laws - some might not, but that doesn't change what they are. They are synonymous with common good basically.
This is not correct at all. Nobody sees free speech as inherently good or bad, we just believe people ought to be able to speak without fear of government censorship. That can be bad sometimes, like with Nazis, but it's still a right.
On the other hand, more often than not it is bad when people own guns. The more people that own guns, the worse off a society is. We still consider it a right in the US.
You're correct sometimes just by coincidence, but there's nothing inherently linking morally good things with rights.
Edit: I just noticed the problem. You're using the word "right" in the way that word is a synonym for "just," while everyone else is using it in the more common form for these discussions which means "a protected ability." This meaning of the word is *not* an antonym for "wrong" in the way you've been using it.
You are also confusing legal rights granted by the state with the fundamental rights which are a philosophical concept that the legal rights are usually built upon. People don't make a law because they just want to make a random law. They make the law because a large group of people agree that certain right that they believe in must be codified. And there is always an underlying fundamental reason why a large group of people would believe that something should be a right.
For example, the legal right to use guns is just an aspect of the fundamental right to self-determination. After all the stated reason for owning guns in the US constitution is to defend from tyranny. Different groups might disagree on the topic of the gun ownership, but every group of people believes in self-determination (even if they sometimes deny it to others on some grounds)
Inalienable just means we acknowledge that a violation of those rights is a crime against not only one person, but against humanity in general
God doesn’t enter into it. As always, if God wants any say in politics, He can come down here and apply for citizenship
But we very explicitly do not acknowledge that. We very much consider it a justice when a serial murder is put to death, not a violation of their rights and a crime against humanity
I agree, so it doesn't make sense to say that it's broadly acknowledged. And even if some people are against the death penalty, even jail time would be a violation of someone's right to pursue happiness.
That's because everyone acknowledges the importance of responding to crime with corrective action. That isn't in contradiction with the idea of inalienable rights.
How does it not? How can someone consider something to be inalienable but also recognize situation in which it should be "aliened"
I think it makes a lot more sense to say that something is generally a good idea, but that there are exceptions as opposed to saying that it's inalienable*
*void where prohibited.
>We very much consider it a justice when a serial murder is put to death
We do? How is that justice? The justice system in America is obviously flawed. How is the state sanctioned killing as a result of a flawed justice system in any way considered justice? And even if the person is guilty as shit, how have we improved society by adding another body to the pile?
>We do?
Yeah, look around.
>How is that justice?
Because many people find revenge and retribution to be a part of justice.
I too am against the death penalty, I'm just saying that lots of people who consider rights to be inalienable also don't have a problem with state sanctioned killing
Look around at what? The fact that the government abuses a power they give to themselves? Is that supposed to mean the people generally agree with it? I don't think so.
Revenge and retribution do not require killing. People that feel revenge and retribution to be a part of justice are within their right to feel that way, but that doesn't justify, nor require, more killing. For me, retribution and revenge would be watching on video as the killer slowly looses their mind completely spending the rest of their life in a solitary hole under the basement of the prison. I'd click on that camera every time I thought about my dead family members, and I'd feel the justice wash over me.
Yes...because they first violated the rights of others. A person who violates the natural rights of others forfeits their own.
I suppose you could argue that \*technically\* that makes the right(s) not unalienable, because they are considered to be taken away legitimately in some circumstances...but the point is that \*the only\* justification for deprivation of rights is defensive.
Killing someone unprovoked is wrong, but killing someone who killed someone else or is trying to kill you is not wrong. Theft is wrong, but taking assets by force from a thief to pay back their victim(s) is not wrong.
>Yes...because they first violated the rights of others. A person who violates the natural rights of others forfeits their own.
Well then they aren't inalienable are they. If they can be forfeited then they aren't inalienable.
>I suppose you could argue that \*technically\* that makes the right(s) not unalienable, because they are considered to be taken away legitimately in some circumstances...but the point is that \*the only\* justification for deprivation of rights is defensive.
Justification is always going to be subjective. You can't say that the *only* justification is defensive.
For one it's still a justification and two "defensive" can be interpreted very broadly
I believe that it's a good idea/creates better outcomes when we ensure that people are allowed to do certain things. I don't see why anything more than that is necessary
The sandworms obviously.
Bless the Maker and His water.
Bless the coming and going of Him.
May His passage cleanse the world.
May He keep the world for His people.
Also they can't seem to decide if they're talking about that jerkass described in the bible or some sort of impersonal abstract notion rising out of half-baked ancient greek metaphysics.
There are no such thing as unalienable rights or God given rights. So no there isn't a difference between two imaginary things.
Unalienable rights which is written in the constitution means that there are rights which cannot be taken away. However the state has taken away the rights of the citizens. So not really unalienable.
God given rights don't exist. God didn't declare freedom of speech. He didn't take about the right to not be forced to quarter soldiers in your home. Sky Daddy doesn't smite those that violate human rights.
Rights comes from us believing in them and being willing to defend them. Usually though the state, but by armed force when the state is either inability or unwilling to enforce them for various reasons or if the state is violating them
I've been a part of these debates for decades and it really comes down to semantics.
I'm an atheist, so I don't literally believe a god gave us rights. I do believe however, that a human being, simply by existing, is entitled to certain privileges. Whether a government recognizes and protects those privileges is irrelevant to the question of whether or not humans have them.
So whatever term people want to use to describe those privileges that humans are inherently entitled to, I don't really care. I call them human rights.
I use the word privilege because using the word 'rights' would be circular and I've found that in this discussion you end up going round and round with the semantic game. I could say entitlement instead of privilege. Rights is really the only word that encompasses it though, but then we get the 'what is a right' question.
I don't think there's much of a difference between the two. It's basically like starting at different points but finishing with the same conclusion - at the end of the day it doesn't really matter where you believe those rights came from, so long as we can all acknowledge that we have them.
It matters because rights being "god given" sets them in stone and removes human agency in guiding their own societies. This is happening today with conservatives making the "argument" that healthcare isn't a right. If God grants the rights, then we're stuck with what was written down a couple hundred years ago in the constitution. God should also compensate the government for ensuring those rights are actually protected.
>Is there a difference between unalienable human rights and God given rights?
Sure.
'Inalienable human rights' are philosophical precepts, that guide well-intentioned framers of law.
People who claim that there are God-given rights, are often making the claim that their rights are above the law, which means they are above the law, which is bad.
---------
If someone believes that some human rights are inalienable *because they were God-given*, and therefore concludes that they should be protected by law...then I won't have a problem with them.
The fact that the right to not be owned was not listed in the founding of America as God given nor unalienable makes it pretty clear that there really isn’t such a thing as either. It is up to the people and the government to uphold and progress human rights as we know it.
God given rights would be defined by whatever religious doctrine you are using, whereas inalienable human rights are what should be generally applicable to every human being regardless of the circumstances of their birth or their beliefs or their actions (or with caveats, such as in the case of depriving someone of their freedom due to their posing a risk to other people's rights/safety).
There are overlaps - Christianity says "thou shalt not kill," which is a strong contender to be a similar right to "human beings are entitled to life" (though these two things are not necessarily the *same* - one is a commandment *not* to murder and one is the inherent right to exist free from being murdered).
"God-given rights" is simply not broad enough, if you do not believe in God, you would not put much faith or stock in anything that is claimed "God's word." But you would, feasibly, still have a coherent ethical understanding of the world and of reasonable laws.
But in practicality, a right is only as relevant as it is defensible. We can say that humans are inherently entitled to life - and that may be morally accurate - but if we do not enact any protections to assure that is so, people will simply go around murdering each other with impunity.
There definitely *should* be a codified statute of agreed-upon human rights, such as the [ICCPR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Covenant_on_Civil_and_Political_Rights) and the [UDHR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights) among other bodies that make up International Customary Law, and these rights should be considered "inalienable" as much as we should be ethically obligated to form systems of governance and law that preserve them, not the other way around.
No “rights” are given to you by God, or human nature, or the universe, or whatever eternal principle one might believe in. Human beings assert their rights to their government, and their government either honors these rights or risks being overthrown by violence. Different human populations across time and space have different standards for what rights they will insist their governments honor.
I would roughly define "inalienable" as "impossible to forfeit or lose", which makes this a different question than what is "God-given" (which is also a bad question for me, since I'm an atheist). One is about the source, one is about the permanency. The birthright of the firstborn might well be considered God-given in some biblical tradition or another, but it's also biblically considered alienable (see: Jakob and Esau); I don't believe the right to life is God-given, for lack of a god, but it's at the very least extremely close to being inalienable. There might be an argument that something is a God-given right and therefore can't be taken away by a government, but first, that's just one argument on an issue larger than one point, and second, that would not automatically say anything about whether it's possible to forfeit that right.
And yes, I do sometimes mock people who support the death penalty and have the gall to still claim they believe in an inalienable right to life. No, they believe in an alienable right to life if they believe in one at all.
Edit: Typo
> I know many in this sub don't believe in "God" given rights, but are there unalienable human rights?
From a technical perspective I would say no. Rights only exist because societies choose to agree they do.
>If you believe in these, is that common ground with those who believe they come from a higher power?
I guess this doesn't apply to me, but I think people who do hold either of those views have essentially the same position.
>If the source of these rights is up for debate, are thy they at least the same/similar?
So my view of religion is that it very much started as a means of enforcing ideas and standards on societies and thus a lot of times religious people give credit to a higher power for being the source of ideas and standards, especially when those ideas turn out to lead to positive outcomes or are popular with the general public.
Objective morality doesn't exist, so there's no set of rights that are objectively true and therefore inalienable. Rights are given by people and are just things everyone (or whatever the requisite number to change the laws) agrees should be protected.
I don't know. I mean, inalienable rights are simply rights that can not be taken away or transferred to another person. Such as your right to bodily autonomy and personal sovereignty.
Can the same be said for a "God" given right? I suppose that would depend on the "God" and how those in power interpret the teachings of that religion, right?
For instance, one might say that your bodily autonomy and personal sovereignty are "God" given rights, but that their God never meant to allow women to have them, which would make them not inalienable since being a woman is justification enough to take that right away.
Well, it’s kinda hard to argue that rights come from the God of the Bible. God forbade freedom of religion (1st and 2nd commandment) and freedom of speech (3rd commandment). Jesus seems to have forbidden a right to self-defense (“turn the other cheek”, “those who live by the sword, die by the sword”, neither Jesus nor his apostles ever used weapons to defend themselves, even when they could have, etc). And the Bible is inconsistent with right to life. God arbitrarily kills or orders the killing of people all the time, including genocide against the Canaanites, so clearly the right to life is alienable. The Bible never condemns slavery, so I guess freedom from slavery is not a right. And so forth.
If you take God out of the picture, nature is objectively unfair. There is nothing whatsoever in the universe which shows that humans have rights. Even if rights were natural, the universe does absolutely nothing to enforce these rights. Slavery had been practiced since time immemorial, and yet there was no attempt to outlaw it until the last 200 years or so. Slavery was outlawed because we outlawed it, not because nature outlawed it.
No.
Rights come from the government. Without the means to defend your rights, you don’t have them.
Edit: and governments can change their laws or deny your rights.
I'm confused as to what you think government is. It's people coming together to protect each other's rights. It can take many forms and be organized in many different ways. But when people come together to plan and organize at a societal level and bring the capability to defend those positions, that's government.
The government isn’t some inhuman directorate established by aliens.
A democratically elected government is created by the citizens/community. Non-democratic governments are inherently illegitimate governments.
> Non-democratic governments are inherently illegitimate governments.
This seems like quite a silly thing to say. The only thing that makes a government legitimate is whether they can follow through on their policies and hold onto their territory. Everything else feels like semantics. You may not like monarchies or dictatorships (I don't either), but it's ridiculous to say they aren't legitimate forms government. North Korea has a real, albeit authoritarian, government that does government things.
> The only thing that makes a government legitimate is whether they can follow through on their policies and hold onto their territory.
No, that is the criteria to decide that they are a functional government—I.e. recognizable.
Being a legitimate is different from being a recognized government.
Illegitimate governments are still governments.
Illegitimate means unjustified by law or accepted standard. Which law are they violating which makes them illegitimate? When we look at what's "standard" for governments around the world, the majority aren't democratic which means by that definition the democracies would be illegitimate.
Or is there some other definition of illegitimate that you are going by?
> Illegitimate means unjustified by law or accepted standard. Which law are they violating which makes them illegitimate?
The accepted standard is that governing legitimacy derives exclusively from the consent of the governed through a democratic process that accurately measures the consent of the governed. That’s what they’re violating.
It’s not that controversial an idea—it was more or less the standard conception up till the end of the Cold War at least.
> the majority aren't democratic
And thus rule illegitimately. Which is why regime change is more or less always morally acceptable against them.
Your standard isn't the fucking global standard. If the "accepted standard" was democracy, then there would be more democracies. You're just making up your own definitions for words at this point to justify a silly belief.
If rights come from the government who’s to say the government can’t just change your rights and expect it’s citizens to be okay with that?
If rights come from the government who’s to say the rights in the USA are superior to the rights in North Korea?
The people of the United States are to say for themselves since we have a democratic system. Even accounting for the flaws we have.
Rights come from the government but in a democracy we are the government.
Strong disagree. Rights are protections from the government. The human rights council exists to try and hold governments accountable for human rights violations.
If they fail, then those governments would be actively violating your rights.
But since the human rights counsel is supported by nearly every first world country on the planet, the sanctions put on those countries by supportive countries are, usually, effective at curbing those rights restrictions.
However, if the country is powerful, like China, for instance. Then, the human rights counsel has no real power to prevent human rights violations. In these cases, it's up to humanity to intervene. But that means certain death.
Regardless. The governments are not providing you with rights. Rights are for your protection from the government.
If the government isn’t stepping in then that’s correct (minus the shut the fuck up part). The correct follow up would be that we need to reform our systems to **actually** ensure they have that right.
Why omit the part about telling them to shut up? If, as you say, victims don't have a right, they have no right to complain. Without a right, there's no need to reform the system.
There's a reason that the Declaration uses the phrase "Laws of Nature and Nature's God"; even if you don't believe that rights come from a transcendent Creator, you can still believe that there are rights to which people are entitled just by being thinking, feeling, self-aware entities with needs and a capacity for suffering.
Within versions of both frameworks, those rights are typically ordered toward the fulfillment of those needs and/or minimization of that suffering. So things like a right to not be arbitrarily killed, to have access to recourse if you've been wronged somehow, to determine who you associate with, to believe what you feel intrinsically compelled to believe, etc. We can argue for different things being rights, like education or employment or housing, but we should generally agree that rights are things that are *recognized* by states rather than *granted* by them, since the former makes their future revocation unlikely whereas the latter makes it a governmental prerogative.
A right that isn't protected or recognized by the state quite literally is not a right. Russian citizens don't have a right to free expression. North Korean citizens have very few rights at all. Their "inalienable" rights mean fuck all because they are being alienated daily. In the real world, a right is only ever as real as a state's willingness to enforce it.
Right, which is where we get the bit about "governments are instituted among men to secure these rights" and whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it and institute new government.
The best response I've seen so far and glad you acknowledged that "laws of nature of of nature's God" can be interpreted to mean any living being regardless of religious beliefs is entitled to the rights.
A lot of people here are somehow missing the point about the "rights" listed in the Declaration and those in the constitution. They are not different they come from the same idea. Which the bill of rights being added was a huge argument anyway and why we have the 9th amendment.
Agreeing with someone with your flair when the rest of the comment section seems to strongly (and, tbh, surprisingly) against the idea of natural rights is making me have a real Legolas/Gimli "side by side with a friend" moment lol
But yeah, anything granted by government is a privilege, not a right, and that idea is pretty integral to the constitutional distinction between enumerated and unenumerated rights being at all coherent, let alone having any utility as a bulwark against state overstep.
Lol I get what you mean. Also agree that is an integral idea to the premise of the Constitution.
I'm a bit of a nerd though I'm a firm believer that the Declaration is the most profound political writing in Human History in my personal opinion Magna Carta is probably a distant second I try to reread both the declaration and constitution at least once a year and every time I'm still astonished that a 32 year old wrote it. Makes me feel like an absolute brainlet.
One last point and a little off topic.
I'm not sure if you have ever run across it but imo the Roe V Wade argument was trash they should have argued from the 9th amendment and english common law. There is a write up somewhere about the argument that is definitely worth checking out.
It's all just words
People make the rules, not some mythical god
The words in the historical documents are reactions to the older state of affairs where the king was assumed to own everything and grant a tiny amount of rights to certain selected people. The new idea was to limit the power of the king or government
The only true unanlienable rights are the right to breathe, and the right to think freely. Hell, even the right to breathe can be taken away.
Anything that can be taken away is a privilege, not a right.
It's "inalienable rights" and it means, by definition, that we are born with these. As humans, they are automatically conferred upon us, whether thru some sky god, or just cos we're human and everyone is equal.
Sorry, first only answered the title. Now the rest of the post
>are there unalienable human rights?
I would say yes: most of those you'd think of to some degree (it's still bad for you not to get to walk around freely if you're rightly a prisoner, although your right to walk around freely is trumped by the need to imprison you then), and I would say human dignity absolutely.
>If the source of these rights is up for debate, are thy they at least the same/similar?
They are, although we probably all disagree a lot on what exactly they are.
Words are important. There are no "God" given rights because there is no empirical way to prove the existence of a divine creator. We all have what I would call "natural rights"; the right to breathe, walk, speak and perform bodily function. Basically, the right to exist. The source of those rights is your birth; the science of your heart pumping blood through your body to allow for your continued existence.
This is kind of a silly conversation to have though because "natural rights" pretty much start and end with existence. Any other right is part of a moral, philosophic and economic discussion of what we owe to society, what society owes to us and what we owe to each other.
Neither exist, but inalienable can at least pertain to human rights recognized by governments.
Government granted rights are the only type that truly can exist. Without the government part it's just you shaking your fist at others.
God doesn't exist.
The source of unalienable human rights is humanity, the agreed co-operation of people across civilizations ("unalienable" just means can't be given away). I don't think many people who don't believe in God (like myself) believe rights are something found in nature or anything like that. We might like to think of these things as facts of nature, they are subjective to humans, like all morality or ethics. The rocks and wind aren't saying _"you can own a gun"_
This is why I always find it weird when libertarians are like "you think your rights come from a piece of paper!!!" as if that is some sort of gotcha.
Inalienable rights is a statement of values, possibly from people who don't understand that people are denied those rights all the time. Or it's hyperbole for emphasis on their importance to the person.
God-given rights is baseless self-delusion.
They're similar when someone believes rights "come from a higher power." I would think god-given rights are all supposed to be considered "inalienable rights" by the people who believe in wrong things. So they're not mutually exclusive. But inalienable rights could just be someone's way of saying that people should have certain rights by virtue of being people and the government shouldn't take them away. Whereas god-given is pretty inescapably a misattribution of where rights come from, to an imagined, not-even-attempted-to-be-proven-to-exist entity that conveniently its believers believe exists in the way that they desire it to be.
There are only the rights that we as a society agree upon. No other rights exist. The right gets all twisted up trying to define increasing layers of rights—with gun ownership somehow belonging to the most sacred category. It's a waste of time.
I think they are probably the same rights, but unalienable implies we have those rights because they are an intrinsic human property, and God given implies they are an external divinely granted property. The difference is the source
I'm not religious. I think, arguably, these two terms are **meant** to mean the same thing by people who use it, but that they don't agree on what's on that list of rights.
People may also call these natural rights but, again, those people don't agree with what they are. Unless they are parroting John Locke in regards to "life, liberty, and property" or more accurately "life, liberty, health, and property" (strange that they leave health off), or citing the foundation of the United States with the actual "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness". I mean to say, some people like to use a small basic list of rights as those 3 things (usually the Locke one, not the Founding Fathers one).
I think that rights are practically only what society agrees to. I think these can be driven by human instinct - not that they are entirely a whim. Humans are moral not because of religion (no matter what some religious people believe) but because humans understand that it's in their best interest to have a society where freedom from killing and stealing and harm is something to strive for. I think this most accurately reflects the reality of rights. If 99% of people feel like you have a right to health, then it's a right. I'd argue that one of the most dangerous things for humans and society are the "Libertarians" who actually believe there are few rights and that not being forced to another's prescription of rights is supremely virtuous, because that actually ensures that people don't have any rights unless they accumulate power - and that won't be most people. I urge libertarians who believe this to reconsider. Like, maybe it's not an infringement to expect people not to drink and drive - and not an infringement on all sorts of "rights" - to give up some things that *aren't really needed* but to not have actually is much more helpful.
No. We say they're God given because they weren't given to us by government. They're as natural and guaranteed as life is. No human is supposed to be able to take them away or limit them under any circumstances. The government needs to be reminded of that
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written. I know many in this sub don't believe in "God" given rights, but are there unalienable human rights? If you believe in these, is that common ground with those who believe they come from a higher power? If the source of these rights is up for debate, are thy they at least the same/similar? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I'm not aware of any existent gods, as far as that goes. In practical terms, things called "rights" are violated all the time. The idea of "unalienable rights" is aspirational.
God doesn’t exist, so no rights can be given by god. Moreover, no right is actually unalienable. People absolutely can abuse you for exercising your human rights. God doesn’t step in to stop that. Rights are legal entitlements created by governments. Good governments create and protect those rights for their citizens—and others.
"Rights" only exist as legal constructs. It's the same as money - it only has value because we believe it does. That means we have to choose to believe it. That means the moral duty of choosing and upholding certain rights falls squarely on us. To me, the term "god-given rights" just tries to define the concept in an unnecessary supernatural context as though rights are a thing that exists independent of humanity. It doesn't. It's up to ensure it. No supernatural force is coming to enforce your rights.
Yes. These terms like natural rights, human rights and god given rights are ultimately just “rights we as a society agree we have, most of the time and with limits”.
I always figured they were value statements at the end of the day. Looking into their arguments to define them have mostly been what dose a person need to live a decent life. Part of me thinks it's a bit of a modern mistranslation of the philosophical thought of the time. And unalienable rights and rights socially agreed on are essentially the same concept.
Yeah value statements aren’t a bad way of looking at it. Basically saying that of all our rights these are the ones we are super serious about and less willing to bend on.
The idea of natural rights is that they are emergent. It's not that no one can take your life, take your liberty or take your property. The idea behind natural rights is that as a social species, when you start to deny those things to others, you tend to make it more likely that others will take one of those things from you. If you go around killing people, that will piss people off and the safety of your own life is much less likely to be protected, or in an organized state, you may be imprisoned and lose your liberty. The three are interlinked. We don't need to intellectually agree that we want to protect those three things for them to be natural rights. Calling them natural rights is just the observation that when you cross those lines with others, you put yourself at serious risk. Yes, people in the US held slaves for the first big chunk of our existence, and that eventually culminated with a huge bloody war. Rights don't create a guarantee that every individual will face those consequences, or that they will come swiftly, but when you kill, rob and enslave from others, they are far more likely to do the same to you when they have the opportunity.
This is very much the answer. The whole concept of unalienable rights is laughable. There is always the possibility of a government taking those rights away in one way or another. Further, rights are only useful to the extent by which the government will protect those rights. You can claim to have a right to own a gun but if the state can execute you because they thought you had a gun and suffer no repercussions, you don't really have the rights you think you do. Conservatives seem to want a strict list of rights that are "inalienable" mostly as a way to prevent the expansion of rights. It's why they are so quick to point out what the constitution says and hold it as sacred when it helps their arguments, but completely ignores the constitution when it's inconvenient for them. They want a fixed set of rights coming from a higher than human authority so they can say "Healthcare isn't a right! It's not in the constitution or the bible!".
The concept of nature rights during the Enlightenment was to counter the claims of monarchs and the church and the aristocracy to divine rights and divine law they used to justify their power
Unalienable rights are rights that the holder cannot *give* away. Nobody said they could not be taken, or that people can’t be assholes to you. *ALL* of the rights in the Constitution/Bill of Rights are alienable, not unalienable. Unalienable rights are like those found in the Declaration of Independence.
> This is very much the answer. The whole concept of unalienable rights is laughable. There is always the possibility of a government taking those rights away in one way or another. The concept of "unalienable rights" obviously does not mean that governments are unable to take away those rights. The concept was invented as a reaction to governments violating those rights to explain why governments should not be allowed to do that.
It's laughable to you because you don't understand it. Inalienable rights are not called that because they can't be taken away. The idea of inalienable rights is that taking them away is objectively wrong. The concept exists to provide a moral foundation for the construction of society. Without it, there can be no basis for law to exist.
You can use tons of other things as a basis for laws aside from making assertions
Like what?
Broad agreement. If we all happen to think that not allowing wanton killing would produce a better outcome then we can make it illegal based on that.
The concept is just lazy moralising though. At its core, effectively, is propaganda. It might be propaganda we overall agree with, but it’s still propaganda. It’s no different to, say, the 10 commandments. It’s just a bunch of shit people made up a long time ago to try and keep societies in check. No ‘right’ is truly inalienable. And the concept of ‘rights’ in and of itself is something we made up.
Propaganda is a deliberate action by a specific person or group. Moral code that has sprung up over thousands of years independently all over the world with only slight variations is not a fucking propaganda, that's ridiculous. If you think people make up shit to "keep societies in check" - you have a completely backwards view of history and sociology. Societies ARE people. Societies create rules in order to codify things that are right, and ban things that are wrong. Rules don't create morals, morals create rules. Morality isn't artificially imposed on society. You raise a group of people without any contact with any existing culture, put them on the deserted island, and within some generations they will arrive at the same variation of the moral code as every other society on earth had arrived at, with some minor local variations - if they survive of course, which is kind of the point because these moral foundations are rooted in our imperative to survive. They are a part of our evolution.
You say taking away ‘inalienable rights’ is morally wrong but who is the arbiter? I challenge you on your assertion that morality is universal; morality in cave man tribes was different to hunter-gatherer times and morality in hunter-gatherer times was different to modern morality. Rights and what we see as immoral can differ based entirely on how far across the ocean you want to travel right at this moment in time. Even a basic right to life is not absolute, and isn’t necessarily inalienable. >Moral code that has spring up over thousands of years independently all over the world The moral code across the world is not all that similar though, at least if you look at genuinely different independent civilisations; the moral codes of ancient China, Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome were all different. Basing your understanding of morality and some nebulous idea of ‘rights’ based on our understanding of modern society is inherently wrong because of how much influence, things like the British Empire and religion have all had on modern western societies. The concept of rights, whether alienable or not, is an invented construct. As is morality. There are things that are more beneficial to a group of people than not, but wrapping that up in some idea of what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ I.e. morality is a construct. There are so many examples of this. I mean you can look at the animal world to begin with, but even in our own modern supposedly just society we say killing is wrong except in this extensive list of circumstances. So a right to life is hardly inalienable if there are an extensive list of circumstances within which some people have decided it’s okay to take a life (and this list of justifiable reasons to take a life can differ from county to county, state to state, suburb to suburb, country to country…). Societies are us, sure, but that doesn’t really mean anything. Laws influence morality as much as morality influences laws. Religion has had a huge influence on what we deem ‘moral’ and religion is effectively propaganda.
>The moral code across the world is not all that similar though, at least if you look at genuinely different independent civilisations; the moral codes of ancient China, Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome were all different. Different in details, but the fundamental basis for each was pretty much the same. Which is basically like describing the same idea using different languages. >The concept of rights, whether alienable or not, is an invented construct. As is morality. No, it's simply a concept used to describe an easily observable pattern. Just because you don't understand why a pattern exists doesn't mean it's random or arbitrary. For example, we could describe gravity and explain in detail how it worked on a local scale LONG before we had even the slightest theoretical idea WHY two masses attracted. The concept of morals has been independently discovered by every society in existence. Every social group, no matter how isolated, has at some point independently arrived at the idea that some things are right and some things are wrong. And if you dig deep enough, most of these observations are based on the same evolutionary imperatives, and are for the most part the same. Social dynamics are a result of behavior, and behavior is a physical factor that is guided by the principles of evolution, which is a proven fact. There is nothing "invented" or "arbitrary" about it. For example, if you look at ancient Babylon, ancient Greece and ancient China, all had laws regarding murder, personal property, false statements, matrimony, foreigners, dispensation of justice, etc. None of these things are arbitrary - they are all based on something that is essential for the society to exist.
Inalienable rights aren't the ones that CAN'T be taken away, they are simply a recognized baseline for "things that are objectively good". Legal system requires objective morality to exist.
God-given rights doesn't mean they are enforced by God, it just means they are GIVEN by God, and therefore have moral precedence over the rights established by people. That's the idea.
A pretty stupid idea though
Meh, the way I see it, it doesn't matter how people justify their moral baseline - through god or some philosophical arguments - as long as they have it and at least attempt to follow it.
I don't even think that matters, because as inconsistent or baseless as you want, just don't do things that harm others or society
This is a completely meaningless statement if people disagree on what constitutes "harm".
But it is meaningful to the extent that we do agree, and we do agree on quite a bit, even if we disagree on some points.
Government doesn’t give you rights. It can and will take away rights. But your rights don’t come from the government.
From where do they come?
I would argue they are inalienable- innate to being human, not given to us by the government or God. Government can only restrict or take away our rights, not grant them. The lawyer thing is the government restricting our right and offering a guide to help us understand the ways they have taken the rights away from us.
I can certainly understand taking the position that some rights are so important that they should not ever be violated, but I think the distinction people are trying to make is that a "right" is a meaningless concept outside of a society that enforces it. No matter how often Iranians say that freedom of religion is an unalienable human right, it doesn't mean that they can exercise it. And a right that can't be exercised isn't a right at all.
> And a right that can't be exercised isn't a right at all. Exactly. And if a "right" isn't practice universally, across all people, then it's not exactly inalienable or somehow just a result of being human.
Not sure I agree with your assertion. If everyone was brainwashed into thinking that they had no right to not work, if every law on the books said you had to work, if everyone was forced to work, would the individual not still have the right not to work? Don’t I always have the ability to say no? Isn’t that a fundamental inalienable right? Society can have rules. Governments can have laws. And everyone can just go along with those laws. But at the core, if I think a law is unjust, I have the right to violate that law. I will face consequences for that violation, but I did not lose my right to my own decision.
> I will face consequences for that violation, but I did not lose my right to my own decision. By that logic, anything and everything anyone could ever want to do could be considered a right. Which would, IMO, change the definition of "right" so much that we'd be talking about something entirely different. Do you have the right to go burn down your neighbor's house? Do you have the right to kill your neighbor? You may (hypothetically) think both things would be just, and you would face consequences, but yes technically you could do both. Is all that's required for something to be considered a right just the ability to actually do it?
I think you would agree that if I were to burn down my neighbors house, I would have violated his rights. If I kill my neighbor, again I have violated his rights. My right to swing my arm ends where someone else’s nose begins.
>Not sure I agree with your assertion. > >If everyone was brainwashed into thinking that they had no right to not work, if every law on the books said you had to work, if everyone was forced to work, would the individual not still have the right not to work? > >Don’t I always have the ability to say no? Isn’t that a fundamental inalienable right? You have the right in the sense that you're physically capable of refusing at this point in time, because we don't yet have a biomechanical way to compel people's bodies to take arbitrary actions that they don't choose to take. You don't have the right in the sense that people usually mean "right", which is to say, a socially and legally recognized ability to do something (or refrain from doing something) and not suffer negative consequences for it. The point people are making is that the first "right" is meaningless; for literally any simple action or inaction, you have that right in the sense that you can physically accomplish it. >Society can have rules. Governments can have laws. And everyone can just go along with those laws. > >But at the core, if I think a law is unjust, I have the right to violate that law. I will face consequences for that violation, but I did not lose my right to my own decision. As far as I can tell, all you mean by a "right" is "something that you're physically capable of doing or not doing". You say that you have the right to violate an unjust law. Do you not also have the right to violate a law that you think is just? How exactly do you figure out whether you have the right to do something or not?
I'd say they come from society, and some specific legal rights are recognized and enforced by the government.
I think that's probably true for some rights, but I wouldn't say it's universal. Who would ensure right to counsel if not the government?
Right to a lawyer is a recognition that the legal system is complex and adversarial.
Ok, but you can have a complex and adversarial legal system without a right to counsel. That was the state of the US for most of its existence. That doesn't mean the government doesn't provide the right to counsel. No one else could.
You had the right to hire a lawyer before the Miranda case. We just admit that not everyone can afford a lawyer.
I guess I don’t see agreement that society will pay for XYZ as a right, more a privilege.
It feels like we've drifted off track. Who is providing this right if not the government? Who could set the rules for a trial if not the government?
You may be correct. I don’t see rights as part and parcel of the system of law. Perhaps I am naive, but I see rights as inherent within the individual, not granted by the government or society.
What's the difference between a world where the government protects no rights, and a world where people have no rights? I don't see a practical difference.
If rights are given to you by government, then a lone individual in the wilderness has no rights? If rights come from a social contract between groups, then what happens to the minority in that group who the larger group wants to enslave? Do they have no right to defend themselves from slavery or discrimination? Protecting rights is not the same as granting rights.
I don't think rights or laws are a consideration for someone living in total isolation. Obviously very few people can be said to live in total isolation these days. >Do they have no right to defend themselves from slavery or discrimination? They're going to defend themselves one way or another, and the attackers probably aren't going to stop if no authority compels them to. This isn't an argument that rights are some ethereal thing that transcends laws or behaviors, it's merely a caution that it's a good idea to acknowledge those rights.
>God doesn’t exist Or if it he/she/it does exist, there sure doesn't seem to be any solid convincing evidence.
There are no inalienable rights. Anything can be taken from you with sufficient power. Even how you think can be manipulated.
If your right is denied that doesn't mean you don't have it.
It definitely does. If you don't have a right, you don't have that right.
No it doesn't. Having a right to life doesn't mean you are immortal, it simply means that killing you is a crime.
I'm not saying rights don't exist. Just that they aren't inalienable. Rights exist because we, as a society, say they do.
But why do we say they exist? Why do we decide that rights should exist? Is it just purely random? Did someone wake up and decide "hey, let's make up a rule - how about no killing?" If that's not the case, then "society establishing laws" is the EFFECT, and therefore there must be a CAUSE preceding that effect, and that cause is what you might call an idea of inalienable rights. So it would be more correct to say that the rights exist AND we as a society recognize their existence. If we didn't - that doesn't mean the rights wouldn't exist.
It's because enough people decided that they want something to be called a right. There's no objective way of determining that something should or shouldn't be a right. It relies entirely on the beliefs of the people involved in the political system
And why did "enough people" suddenly decide that something should be a right? You don't think that there is a reason why a huge group of people would suddenly decide that something is a right?
Because those people have similar philosophies and think in similar ways. If you want to explore why that is, I'd argue that because homo sapiens sapiens are a relatively incompetent species individually (try hunting a deer alone and without any ranged or metal weapons), our evolution has required us to be able to work together and care for others so that there are others around to work with. This is ultimately why we are compassionate and care for other humans, but biology is chaotic and not a philosophical basis for anything. Other animals fill a niche which requires them to act in other ways, such as ones which intentionally eat their sexual partners or children.
I don't care about other animals. No one claims that human ethics should apply to giant anteaters. But our ethics are grounded in the fundamental evolutionary programming of human species, which means they absolutely ARE objective. Ethical concepts of right and wrong are not derived from laws, it's the other way around - the laws are created based on fundamental concepts that can be traced all the way back to the fundamental building blocks of human condition.
You'd have to ask them. The concept of rights evolved over history. There is no single time when it was decided.
Did it through? You look at the fundamental laws from the Old Testament or the Code of Hammurabi and you can see that the fundamental principles of what people considered right and wrong didn't change all that much over 3000 years.
And if the government chooses to make it bo longer a crime to kill you, then you no longer have a right to life.
A government making bad thing legal doesn't make bad thing into a good thing. This concept has been firmly established in various international courts throughout last century.
Who said anything about good or bad? You have no rights except those that the government gives you, whether those things are good or bad.
You are conflating rights as a concept with legal rights. Those aren't the same. Something that is right might not be legally right, and vice versa. Ideally, a society should strive to make sure that the two things are as close as possible
I'm saying that rights as a concept don't exist.
Of course it does. Why do we as a society suddenly decide that murder is bad? Is it random? "Hmm, let's ban something. Write a bunch of things on paper and pull from a hat. What did you get? 'Murder' Okay murder is now illegal"
Nobody is talking about good things or bad things, this post is about rights.
Rights, wrongs, vices, virtues, moral, immoral - everything comes down to good things and bad things. The society recognizes that something is good and makes it into a "right". The society recognizes that something is bad and makes it into a "wrong" (also known as a crime). Inalienable rights are basic ideas, they precede legal rights. Some societies make inalienable rights into laws - some might not, but that doesn't change what they are. They are synonymous with common good basically.
This is not correct at all. Nobody sees free speech as inherently good or bad, we just believe people ought to be able to speak without fear of government censorship. That can be bad sometimes, like with Nazis, but it's still a right. On the other hand, more often than not it is bad when people own guns. The more people that own guns, the worse off a society is. We still consider it a right in the US. You're correct sometimes just by coincidence, but there's nothing inherently linking morally good things with rights. Edit: I just noticed the problem. You're using the word "right" in the way that word is a synonym for "just," while everyone else is using it in the more common form for these discussions which means "a protected ability." This meaning of the word is *not* an antonym for "wrong" in the way you've been using it.
You are also confusing legal rights granted by the state with the fundamental rights which are a philosophical concept that the legal rights are usually built upon. People don't make a law because they just want to make a random law. They make the law because a large group of people agree that certain right that they believe in must be codified. And there is always an underlying fundamental reason why a large group of people would believe that something should be a right. For example, the legal right to use guns is just an aspect of the fundamental right to self-determination. After all the stated reason for owning guns in the US constitution is to defend from tyranny. Different groups might disagree on the topic of the gun ownership, but every group of people believes in self-determination (even if they sometimes deny it to others on some grounds)
Inalienable just means we acknowledge that a violation of those rights is a crime against not only one person, but against humanity in general God doesn’t enter into it. As always, if God wants any say in politics, He can come down here and apply for citizenship
This is generally the answer I fall on as well.
But we very explicitly do not acknowledge that. We very much consider it a justice when a serial murder is put to death, not a violation of their rights and a crime against humanity
Very few people are entirely comfortable asserting that there is a right to not be executed by the state.
I agree, so it doesn't make sense to say that it's broadly acknowledged. And even if some people are against the death penalty, even jail time would be a violation of someone's right to pursue happiness.
That's because everyone acknowledges the importance of responding to crime with corrective action. That isn't in contradiction with the idea of inalienable rights.
How does it not? How can someone consider something to be inalienable but also recognize situation in which it should be "aliened" I think it makes a lot more sense to say that something is generally a good idea, but that there are exceptions as opposed to saying that it's inalienable* *void where prohibited.
>We very much consider it a justice when a serial murder is put to death We do? How is that justice? The justice system in America is obviously flawed. How is the state sanctioned killing as a result of a flawed justice system in any way considered justice? And even if the person is guilty as shit, how have we improved society by adding another body to the pile?
>We do? Yeah, look around. >How is that justice? Because many people find revenge and retribution to be a part of justice. I too am against the death penalty, I'm just saying that lots of people who consider rights to be inalienable also don't have a problem with state sanctioned killing
Look around at what? The fact that the government abuses a power they give to themselves? Is that supposed to mean the people generally agree with it? I don't think so. Revenge and retribution do not require killing. People that feel revenge and retribution to be a part of justice are within their right to feel that way, but that doesn't justify, nor require, more killing. For me, retribution and revenge would be watching on video as the killer slowly looses their mind completely spending the rest of their life in a solitary hole under the basement of the prison. I'd click on that camera every time I thought about my dead family members, and I'd feel the justice wash over me.
Yes...because they first violated the rights of others. A person who violates the natural rights of others forfeits their own. I suppose you could argue that \*technically\* that makes the right(s) not unalienable, because they are considered to be taken away legitimately in some circumstances...but the point is that \*the only\* justification for deprivation of rights is defensive. Killing someone unprovoked is wrong, but killing someone who killed someone else or is trying to kill you is not wrong. Theft is wrong, but taking assets by force from a thief to pay back their victim(s) is not wrong.
>Yes...because they first violated the rights of others. A person who violates the natural rights of others forfeits their own. Well then they aren't inalienable are they. If they can be forfeited then they aren't inalienable. >I suppose you could argue that \*technically\* that makes the right(s) not unalienable, because they are considered to be taken away legitimately in some circumstances...but the point is that \*the only\* justification for deprivation of rights is defensive. Justification is always going to be subjective. You can't say that the *only* justification is defensive. For one it's still a justification and two "defensive" can be interpreted very broadly
Which god is giving out rights?
Lol none that I personally know of. But I do believe in human rights which everyone deserves.
It’s a funny thing though. Ive only heard “god given rights” used in conversation about gun rights. It’s an odd thing
I sometimes like to use it for abortion. As in, it’s my god given right to make reproductive choices because god gave me this uterus.
That makes a whole lot more sense. Guns are a retail product.
Why would an eternal God grant humans the right to own a specific piece of technology invented in the 14th century?
I believe that it's a good idea/creates better outcomes when we ensure that people are allowed to do certain things. I don't see why anything more than that is necessary
Thor is the defender of humanity and the patron of warriors and farmers
Mars is the god of war and candy bars
And, recently, pet health.
The sandworms obviously. Bless the Maker and His water. Bless the coming and going of Him. May His passage cleanse the world. May He keep the world for His people.
If I saw God regularly eat giant vehicles whole and excreted a residue that let people see the future i'd be at church every sunday
The Christian God apparently🤣
Which one? There are differences between evangelical, Catholic, Mormon , JW etc Lol
Also they can't seem to decide if they're talking about that jerkass described in the bible or some sort of impersonal abstract notion rising out of half-baked ancient greek metaphysics.
There are no such thing as unalienable rights or God given rights. So no there isn't a difference between two imaginary things. Unalienable rights which is written in the constitution means that there are rights which cannot be taken away. However the state has taken away the rights of the citizens. So not really unalienable. God given rights don't exist. God didn't declare freedom of speech. He didn't take about the right to not be forced to quarter soldiers in your home. Sky Daddy doesn't smite those that violate human rights.
God doesn't give us rights. We give ourselves rights and we pick and choose which are inalienable
God given rights don’t exist.
Rights comes from us believing in them and being willing to defend them. Usually though the state, but by armed force when the state is either inability or unwilling to enforce them for various reasons or if the state is violating them
I've been a part of these debates for decades and it really comes down to semantics. I'm an atheist, so I don't literally believe a god gave us rights. I do believe however, that a human being, simply by existing, is entitled to certain privileges. Whether a government recognizes and protects those privileges is irrelevant to the question of whether or not humans have them. So whatever term people want to use to describe those privileges that humans are inherently entitled to, I don't really care. I call them human rights.
Are you using the word "privilege" on purpose instead of "right"? Or just how you worded the sentence. I'm with you on this issue though.
I use the word privilege because using the word 'rights' would be circular and I've found that in this discussion you end up going round and round with the semantic game. I could say entitlement instead of privilege. Rights is really the only word that encompasses it though, but then we get the 'what is a right' question.
I don't think there's much of a difference between the two. It's basically like starting at different points but finishing with the same conclusion - at the end of the day it doesn't really matter where you believe those rights came from, so long as we can all acknowledge that we have them.
It matters because rights being "god given" sets them in stone and removes human agency in guiding their own societies. This is happening today with conservatives making the "argument" that healthcare isn't a right. If God grants the rights, then we're stuck with what was written down a couple hundred years ago in the constitution. God should also compensate the government for ensuring those rights are actually protected.
>Is there a difference between unalienable human rights and God given rights? Sure. 'Inalienable human rights' are philosophical precepts, that guide well-intentioned framers of law. People who claim that there are God-given rights, are often making the claim that their rights are above the law, which means they are above the law, which is bad. --------- If someone believes that some human rights are inalienable *because they were God-given*, and therefore concludes that they should be protected by law...then I won't have a problem with them.
Well, I'd say they're essentially the same thing. I don't think it really matters where they come from. They basically mean the same thing.
The fact that the right to not be owned was not listed in the founding of America as God given nor unalienable makes it pretty clear that there really isn’t such a thing as either. It is up to the people and the government to uphold and progress human rights as we know it.
God given rights would be defined by whatever religious doctrine you are using, whereas inalienable human rights are what should be generally applicable to every human being regardless of the circumstances of their birth or their beliefs or their actions (or with caveats, such as in the case of depriving someone of their freedom due to their posing a risk to other people's rights/safety). There are overlaps - Christianity says "thou shalt not kill," which is a strong contender to be a similar right to "human beings are entitled to life" (though these two things are not necessarily the *same* - one is a commandment *not* to murder and one is the inherent right to exist free from being murdered). "God-given rights" is simply not broad enough, if you do not believe in God, you would not put much faith or stock in anything that is claimed "God's word." But you would, feasibly, still have a coherent ethical understanding of the world and of reasonable laws. But in practicality, a right is only as relevant as it is defensible. We can say that humans are inherently entitled to life - and that may be morally accurate - but if we do not enact any protections to assure that is so, people will simply go around murdering each other with impunity. There definitely *should* be a codified statute of agreed-upon human rights, such as the [ICCPR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Covenant_on_Civil_and_Political_Rights) and the [UDHR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights) among other bodies that make up International Customary Law, and these rights should be considered "inalienable" as much as we should be ethically obligated to form systems of governance and law that preserve them, not the other way around.
No “rights” are given to you by God, or human nature, or the universe, or whatever eternal principle one might believe in. Human beings assert their rights to their government, and their government either honors these rights or risks being overthrown by violence. Different human populations across time and space have different standards for what rights they will insist their governments honor.
There are no such things - either of them. Rights are things we as a society decide on and have a high threshold for conferring and taking away.
I would roughly define "inalienable" as "impossible to forfeit or lose", which makes this a different question than what is "God-given" (which is also a bad question for me, since I'm an atheist). One is about the source, one is about the permanency. The birthright of the firstborn might well be considered God-given in some biblical tradition or another, but it's also biblically considered alienable (see: Jakob and Esau); I don't believe the right to life is God-given, for lack of a god, but it's at the very least extremely close to being inalienable. There might be an argument that something is a God-given right and therefore can't be taken away by a government, but first, that's just one argument on an issue larger than one point, and second, that would not automatically say anything about whether it's possible to forfeit that right. And yes, I do sometimes mock people who support the death penalty and have the gall to still claim they believe in an inalienable right to life. No, they believe in an alienable right to life if they believe in one at all. Edit: Typo
> I know many in this sub don't believe in "God" given rights, but are there unalienable human rights? From a technical perspective I would say no. Rights only exist because societies choose to agree they do. >If you believe in these, is that common ground with those who believe they come from a higher power? I guess this doesn't apply to me, but I think people who do hold either of those views have essentially the same position. >If the source of these rights is up for debate, are thy they at least the same/similar? So my view of religion is that it very much started as a means of enforcing ideas and standards on societies and thus a lot of times religious people give credit to a higher power for being the source of ideas and standards, especially when those ideas turn out to lead to positive outcomes or are popular with the general public.
Objective morality doesn't exist, so there's no set of rights that are objectively true and therefore inalienable. Rights are given by people and are just things everyone (or whatever the requisite number to change the laws) agrees should be protected.
>, but are there unalienable human rights? Nope. Well, "yes" if the community agrees that there are.....which is a "no" technically
I don't know. I mean, inalienable rights are simply rights that can not be taken away or transferred to another person. Such as your right to bodily autonomy and personal sovereignty. Can the same be said for a "God" given right? I suppose that would depend on the "God" and how those in power interpret the teachings of that religion, right? For instance, one might say that your bodily autonomy and personal sovereignty are "God" given rights, but that their God never meant to allow women to have them, which would make them not inalienable since being a woman is justification enough to take that right away.
Well, it’s kinda hard to argue that rights come from the God of the Bible. God forbade freedom of religion (1st and 2nd commandment) and freedom of speech (3rd commandment). Jesus seems to have forbidden a right to self-defense (“turn the other cheek”, “those who live by the sword, die by the sword”, neither Jesus nor his apostles ever used weapons to defend themselves, even when they could have, etc). And the Bible is inconsistent with right to life. God arbitrarily kills or orders the killing of people all the time, including genocide against the Canaanites, so clearly the right to life is alienable. The Bible never condemns slavery, so I guess freedom from slavery is not a right. And so forth. If you take God out of the picture, nature is objectively unfair. There is nothing whatsoever in the universe which shows that humans have rights. Even if rights were natural, the universe does absolutely nothing to enforce these rights. Slavery had been practiced since time immemorial, and yet there was no attempt to outlaw it until the last 200 years or so. Slavery was outlawed because we outlawed it, not because nature outlawed it.
No. Rights come from the government. Without the means to defend your rights, you don’t have them. Edit: and governments can change their laws or deny your rights.
Would it be fair to substitute "government" with "society"?
Only if there’s an enforcement mechanism within that society
Social shaming is a pretty commonly used enforcement mechanism for most socially but not legally recognized rights
If the society is well managed enough to protect those rights, generally we call that a government.
What about citizens/community protecting each other's rights? No go, because it's not the government?
I'm confused as to what you think government is. It's people coming together to protect each other's rights. It can take many forms and be organized in many different ways. But when people come together to plan and organize at a societal level and bring the capability to defend those positions, that's government.
The government isn’t some inhuman directorate established by aliens. A democratically elected government is created by the citizens/community. Non-democratic governments are inherently illegitimate governments.
> Non-democratic governments are inherently illegitimate governments. This seems like quite a silly thing to say. The only thing that makes a government legitimate is whether they can follow through on their policies and hold onto their territory. Everything else feels like semantics. You may not like monarchies or dictatorships (I don't either), but it's ridiculous to say they aren't legitimate forms government. North Korea has a real, albeit authoritarian, government that does government things.
> The only thing that makes a government legitimate is whether they can follow through on their policies and hold onto their territory. No, that is the criteria to decide that they are a functional government—I.e. recognizable. Being a legitimate is different from being a recognized government. Illegitimate governments are still governments.
Illegitimate means unjustified by law or accepted standard. Which law are they violating which makes them illegitimate? When we look at what's "standard" for governments around the world, the majority aren't democratic which means by that definition the democracies would be illegitimate. Or is there some other definition of illegitimate that you are going by?
> Illegitimate means unjustified by law or accepted standard. Which law are they violating which makes them illegitimate? The accepted standard is that governing legitimacy derives exclusively from the consent of the governed through a democratic process that accurately measures the consent of the governed. That’s what they’re violating. It’s not that controversial an idea—it was more or less the standard conception up till the end of the Cold War at least. > the majority aren't democratic And thus rule illegitimately. Which is why regime change is more or less always morally acceptable against them.
Your standard isn't the fucking global standard. If the "accepted standard" was democracy, then there would be more democracies. You're just making up your own definitions for words at this point to justify a silly belief.
How would they do that without a government
If rights come from the government who’s to say the government can’t just change your rights and expect it’s citizens to be okay with that? If rights come from the government who’s to say the rights in the USA are superior to the rights in North Korea?
The people of the United States are to say for themselves since we have a democratic system. Even accounting for the flaws we have. Rights come from the government but in a democracy we are the government.
Nobody is to say that We can decide that for ourselves. As can people with knowledge of both groups of rights
Strong disagree. Rights are protections from the government. The human rights council exists to try and hold governments accountable for human rights violations.
>try And if they fail, then are those rights?
If they fail, then those governments would be actively violating your rights. But since the human rights counsel is supported by nearly every first world country on the planet, the sanctions put on those countries by supportive countries are, usually, effective at curbing those rights restrictions. However, if the country is powerful, like China, for instance. Then, the human rights counsel has no real power to prevent human rights violations. In these cases, it's up to humanity to intervene. But that means certain death. Regardless. The governments are not providing you with rights. Rights are for your protection from the government.
Then those Chinese people don’t have rights. Legit, rights that aren’t protected aren’t rights
That's ridiculous. Just because someone assaults you doesn't mean you have no right to bodily autonomy. It means your right was violated.
If the government doesn’t step in for recourse, then I indeed do not have a right to bodily autonomy
So, every rape victim has no right to bodily autonomy and needs to shut the fuck up. That's your point.
If the government isn’t stepping in then that’s correct (minus the shut the fuck up part). The correct follow up would be that we need to reform our systems to **actually** ensure they have that right.
Why omit the part about telling them to shut up? If, as you say, victims don't have a right, they have no right to complain. Without a right, there's no need to reform the system.
There's a reason that the Declaration uses the phrase "Laws of Nature and Nature's God"; even if you don't believe that rights come from a transcendent Creator, you can still believe that there are rights to which people are entitled just by being thinking, feeling, self-aware entities with needs and a capacity for suffering. Within versions of both frameworks, those rights are typically ordered toward the fulfillment of those needs and/or minimization of that suffering. So things like a right to not be arbitrarily killed, to have access to recourse if you've been wronged somehow, to determine who you associate with, to believe what you feel intrinsically compelled to believe, etc. We can argue for different things being rights, like education or employment or housing, but we should generally agree that rights are things that are *recognized* by states rather than *granted* by them, since the former makes their future revocation unlikely whereas the latter makes it a governmental prerogative.
A right that isn't protected or recognized by the state quite literally is not a right. Russian citizens don't have a right to free expression. North Korean citizens have very few rights at all. Their "inalienable" rights mean fuck all because they are being alienated daily. In the real world, a right is only ever as real as a state's willingness to enforce it.
Right, which is where we get the bit about "governments are instituted among men to secure these rights" and whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it and institute new government.
The best response I've seen so far and glad you acknowledged that "laws of nature of of nature's God" can be interpreted to mean any living being regardless of religious beliefs is entitled to the rights. A lot of people here are somehow missing the point about the "rights" listed in the Declaration and those in the constitution. They are not different they come from the same idea. Which the bill of rights being added was a huge argument anyway and why we have the 9th amendment.
Agreeing with someone with your flair when the rest of the comment section seems to strongly (and, tbh, surprisingly) against the idea of natural rights is making me have a real Legolas/Gimli "side by side with a friend" moment lol But yeah, anything granted by government is a privilege, not a right, and that idea is pretty integral to the constitutional distinction between enumerated and unenumerated rights being at all coherent, let alone having any utility as a bulwark against state overstep.
Lol I get what you mean. Also agree that is an integral idea to the premise of the Constitution. I'm a bit of a nerd though I'm a firm believer that the Declaration is the most profound political writing in Human History in my personal opinion Magna Carta is probably a distant second I try to reread both the declaration and constitution at least once a year and every time I'm still astonished that a 32 year old wrote it. Makes me feel like an absolute brainlet. One last point and a little off topic. I'm not sure if you have ever run across it but imo the Roe V Wade argument was trash they should have argued from the 9th amendment and english common law. There is a write up somewhere about the argument that is definitely worth checking out.
It's all just words People make the rules, not some mythical god The words in the historical documents are reactions to the older state of affairs where the king was assumed to own everything and grant a tiny amount of rights to certain selected people. The new idea was to limit the power of the king or government
The only true unanlienable rights are the right to breathe, and the right to think freely. Hell, even the right to breathe can be taken away. Anything that can be taken away is a privilege, not a right.
It's "inalienable rights" and it means, by definition, that we are born with these. As humans, they are automatically conferred upon us, whether thru some sky god, or just cos we're human and everyone is equal.
One has God, the other has aliens.
No.
Sorry, first only answered the title. Now the rest of the post >are there unalienable human rights? I would say yes: most of those you'd think of to some degree (it's still bad for you not to get to walk around freely if you're rightly a prisoner, although your right to walk around freely is trumped by the need to imprison you then), and I would say human dignity absolutely. >If the source of these rights is up for debate, are thy they at least the same/similar? They are, although we probably all disagree a lot on what exactly they are.
Words are important. There are no "God" given rights because there is no empirical way to prove the existence of a divine creator. We all have what I would call "natural rights"; the right to breathe, walk, speak and perform bodily function. Basically, the right to exist. The source of those rights is your birth; the science of your heart pumping blood through your body to allow for your continued existence. This is kind of a silly conversation to have though because "natural rights" pretty much start and end with existence. Any other right is part of a moral, philosophic and economic discussion of what we owe to society, what society owes to us and what we owe to each other.
Useless semantics.
Neither exist, but inalienable can at least pertain to human rights recognized by governments. Government granted rights are the only type that truly can exist. Without the government part it's just you shaking your fist at others.
God doesn't exist. The source of unalienable human rights is humanity, the agreed co-operation of people across civilizations ("unalienable" just means can't be given away). I don't think many people who don't believe in God (like myself) believe rights are something found in nature or anything like that. We might like to think of these things as facts of nature, they are subjective to humans, like all morality or ethics. The rocks and wind aren't saying _"you can own a gun"_ This is why I always find it weird when libertarians are like "you think your rights come from a piece of paper!!!" as if that is some sort of gotcha.
Inalienable rights is a statement of values, possibly from people who don't understand that people are denied those rights all the time. Or it's hyperbole for emphasis on their importance to the person. God-given rights is baseless self-delusion. They're similar when someone believes rights "come from a higher power." I would think god-given rights are all supposed to be considered "inalienable rights" by the people who believe in wrong things. So they're not mutually exclusive. But inalienable rights could just be someone's way of saying that people should have certain rights by virtue of being people and the government shouldn't take them away. Whereas god-given is pretty inescapably a misattribution of where rights come from, to an imagined, not-even-attempted-to-be-proven-to-exist entity that conveniently its believers believe exists in the way that they desire it to be.
There are only the rights that we as a society agree upon. No other rights exist. The right gets all twisted up trying to define increasing layers of rights—with gun ownership somehow belonging to the most sacred category. It's a waste of time.
I don’t think there are any unalienable human rights. Without a government, any rights you could claim to have can and will be infringed.
I think they are probably the same rights, but unalienable implies we have those rights because they are an intrinsic human property, and God given implies they are an external divinely granted property. The difference is the source
I'm not religious. I think, arguably, these two terms are **meant** to mean the same thing by people who use it, but that they don't agree on what's on that list of rights. People may also call these natural rights but, again, those people don't agree with what they are. Unless they are parroting John Locke in regards to "life, liberty, and property" or more accurately "life, liberty, health, and property" (strange that they leave health off), or citing the foundation of the United States with the actual "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness". I mean to say, some people like to use a small basic list of rights as those 3 things (usually the Locke one, not the Founding Fathers one). I think that rights are practically only what society agrees to. I think these can be driven by human instinct - not that they are entirely a whim. Humans are moral not because of religion (no matter what some religious people believe) but because humans understand that it's in their best interest to have a society where freedom from killing and stealing and harm is something to strive for. I think this most accurately reflects the reality of rights. If 99% of people feel like you have a right to health, then it's a right. I'd argue that one of the most dangerous things for humans and society are the "Libertarians" who actually believe there are few rights and that not being forced to another's prescription of rights is supremely virtuous, because that actually ensures that people don't have any rights unless they accumulate power - and that won't be most people. I urge libertarians who believe this to reconsider. Like, maybe it's not an infringement to expect people not to drink and drive - and not an infringement on all sorts of "rights" - to give up some things that *aren't really needed* but to not have actually is much more helpful.
No. We say they're God given because they weren't given to us by government. They're as natural and guaranteed as life is. No human is supposed to be able to take them away or limit them under any circumstances. The government needs to be reminded of that
Rights are a pure social construct