| sleeper |
06-14-2006 05:04 PM |
Quote:
Originally Posted by GlasgowKiss
Well my posistion is that human rights, morality et al are social constructs. The idea that anything is right or wrong in a manner outside the sphere of public opinion is baffling.
|
well i actually wrote a reply originally and then felt like i was being had (i have a really hard time with your sense of humour, i never get it) and substituted it with that other post, so i can perhaps first post what i wrote originally and then elaborate? (corganist is tiring me out on the political board, i have to conserve energy)
Quote:
where is it that these after the fact, man-made standards of human rights come from? what are they based in? what determines them? how can they be (not just in name but in fact) universal, if theyre, as i think youre suggesting, simply the product of specific cultures? theyre exactly not that, these standards are not random, trivial social constructions, they reflect fundamental, profound rights that humans have or should have. obviously the form they end up taking when we lay them out and put them into words isnt an exact, perfect reflection, but, like i said in that thread, these man made laws just try to codify certain standards that already exist, they dont create them. im not even saying that i know what those standards exactly are -- determining that is more the province of philosophy (not fucking religion) and im not willing to act like i know the meaning of all things -- but i know that something exists and have an idea of what type of things are and are not *******d
and, besides, this is irrelevant for our purposes. nobody in that thread was even talking about human rights ontologically, he was just being a brat, trying to get in our faces
|
but to just explicitly answer your question, yes, i do think there is some a priori basis and that these are not merely just fundamentally arbitrary notions or simply social constructions. this really, i have to emphasize now, touches on so many huge questions and its hard to even know where to chip away at first, but to, like ive been consciously trying to do for a while now (hard to believe, sure), practice some concision, i can say that it really just comes down to the issue of relativism. im going to just declare that, while ive really thought about this alot, ive only developed a working solution to this question and dont yet feel totally comfortable with my opinion on it because there are a number of outstanding ideas and loose threads. but, to be clear, i dont agree with this notion that things are all just relative, that something like, say, genocide has only relative significance -- ie, that its only "bad" relative to a specific set of values produced by a specific culture, or its only good relative to another set. i think this issue is really clouded by so many different competing layers and ideas and everything -- i have a hard time remembering it all (i kind of set up this little construct in my head) long enough to even come to a conclusion, but i can say that its important to make an effort to really specify and differentiate: one fact is that, for any number of things, things are indeed relative. ive heard it worded as such before: if you bite into an apple and think it taste awful and i bite into an apple and think it taste smashing (sorry), its clear that neither of us are "right" or "wrong" with this. this doesnt contradict this idea of things not being relative because this is already constrained to simply being a question of taste, taste is inherently, by definition personal and it can never really not be. but if i go further and make a positive claim about the world -- if i, for instance, said the world is flat -- that claim has some relevance to things outside of myself and can be measured against soemthign objective. unless youre willing to say that there is no objective reality (im sure theres a more proper term for this concept in philosophy) and that subjectivity is all that exists, this is a good starting point to work from. so we might agree so far. but, to now extend this into the domain of "right and wrong" is where it gets really tricky, i think, and im not so sure of myself. but to me the landmark point, the really important thing to have decided, is that that does actually have a basis in the objective state of things and isnt fundamentally irrelevant (which is what is connoted when you dismiss it as a social construct), regardless of if we can agree on what form that takes. so its kind of important to highlight the idea that (ive said this way too many times in the past few weeks) you can know whats wrong without definitively knowing whats right. i could ask you: whats 1934932423 x 7654. do you know the answer (assume you didnt have a calculator!)? no, you dont. but is the answer, say, 3? no, it isnt, and you can say that with absolute certainty, while you still dont know what the answer actually is. this is because things can be approximated, and not knowing doesnt mean you know nothing. to relate this back to this discussion, there are certain things that are all, across any society or culture, always wrong. we can talk all we want about how different societies have different perspectives on the idea of punishment or adultery or a whole range of moral questions, but there are things that no culture holds as morally right and a lot of things that all cultures hold as morally wrong -- genocide is probably a good example. why is this? how can this be if things are all just relative? (i know im treading on thin ice with this kind of reasoning but bear with me). the core idea is that there really is some objective basis for these things. i do believe that. for instance, where do our ideas of fairness come from? how is that even a child can understand that soemthing is fair or unfair? there is some universality to these kind of things, theyre not irrelevant
in any case, i have to reiterate that i do think this is an question that rests on huge fundamental issues that are hard to resolve. back when i was thinking about it before i kind of boiled it all down to two issues, with the second being a kind of caveat on the first: the first was -- surprise -- on the question of god. if everything is fundamentally random and meaningless, then one couldnt say that right or wrong at all truly, objectively exists. if there was even the slightest, slightest, slightest semblance of order, it does. (i personally, for now at least, believe that theres order. if youre actually going to reply to this post, or if youve done the unlikely and read it this far i want you to answer that question of randomness/order first). the second idea was based on the first and is one that im far and way having the most difficulty with because of how much of a slippery slope it constitutes: regardless of if its objectively true, we still, for our sorry own sakes, have to invent right and wrong. we, irrespective of right or wrong, all have certain demands and desires and we can and should work to protect them |
