OK, let's take the third paragraph of your link as an example, where it basically describes how Natural law forms a philosophical bedrock of US society. Why were documents resulting from it accepted by society (eventually, more or less)?
Clearly from the same page there is not just one and societies existed and still do that don't share the same underpinning. They could have turned it down and go with something else.
My point is that they didn't because this was close enough to existing shared values. That doesn't mean it matched anyone's perfectly or that you can't move them over time, but they are not imposed.
Well, they may be for a while under occupation of a stronger force, but surely that is not what you argue for.
In your hypothetical example it would mean yes, they don't in that society. Like converting to a different religion can get you killed in some places even if it is completely unimaginable where I am from.
I am certainly not agreeing with or defending choices of every society under sun.
> In your hypothetical example it would mean yes, they don't in that society
So you mean "rights" in descriptive sense, you're talking about the de facto rights. This obviously excludes rights that are legally violated, but which are still there (from ethical point of view).
If someone asks why people should have a certain right (as nthcolumn did), they clearly mean rights in the latter sense of the word. Otherwise it's not an answer because it's circular logic: why would society grant you these rights? Because society grants you these rights. Well, like every tautology it's true ("technically", as you put it), only it's of no use :)
>Society decides itself what rights its members have which is why they are not the same everywhere.
Again, that's how you know what rights people in fact have. If you want to decide whether people should have a right, the law is irrelevant. That's an ethical question, not a legal one.
Laws get changed all the time, which doesn't mean the underlying ethics changed.
I agree with the last sentence, but I wasn't making a legalistic argument.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I think the difference between us is that you see ethics as something that "lives" outside of society and I don't. Ethics are not one or universally shared so societies themselves decide which ethical norms are shared widely enough to form foundations for laws etc.
So right can be any feasible privilege that is widely enough shared.
How does your model make sense of such statements as "we should have more freedom of speech"? If what should happen is defined by what's already law, then isn't the law by definition already what should be?
Because "we should have more freedom of speech" is not a universal truth. This should become obvious if you compare Israel, where holocaust denial is illegal, to the UK, where it is not. Clearly the 2 nations have different opinions on the limits of freedom of speech.
Laws get changed all the time, which doesn't mean the
underlying ethics changed.
Are you sure about this? I would have thought that laws change precisely because moral and ethical sensibilities do change.
If what should happen is defined by what's already law...
>Because "we should have more freedom of speech" is not a universal truth.
I'm not saying it is, I'm saying under the model presented above, the statement is meaningless, not just right or wrong. But people do make such statements, and mean something by it.
>This should become obvious if you compare Israel, where holocaust denial is illegal, to the UK, where it is not. Clearly the 2 nations have different opinions on the limits of freedom of speech.
And it would be coherent for someone to say in Israel "we should have the right to deny the holocaust", which shows that "should" is not the same as "it is legal".
>I would have thought that laws change precisely because moral and ethical sensibilities do change.
"moral and ethical sensibilities changing" != "ethics changing".
If you believe murder is right, does that make it right?
>I don't think that's being argued.
I was talking specifically about whether people "should" have rights. If you refer to laws to answer that, you're equating laws with "should".
"moral and ethical sensibilities changing" != "ethics changing".
What evidence do you have that there is any kind of "ethics" outside of what was called "moral and ethical sensibilities"?
If you believe murder is right, does that make it right?
For the person who believes, it does.
I was talking specifically about whether people "should" have rights. If you refer to laws to answer that, you're equating laws with "should".
No one said that laws are why people should have rights. What was said was "society decides", as the group of moral agents that it is. Laws are the result of that decision.
>What evidence do you have that there is any kind of "ethics" outside of what was called "moral and ethical sensibilities"?
I myself tend towards error theory, but am fluent enough in typical moral thoughts and arguments to partake in them. So I'm not going to claim that I have evidence for objective morals. What I will claim, is that the sense that people have for morals is not satisfied by law.
>For the person who believes, it does.
That's a tautology and not particularly useful.
>No one said that laws are why people should have rights.
Actually, someone asked "Why should you have 'the right to be forgotten'?"
You answered "Technically, because the EU countries are sovereign and can decide what rights their own citizens should have."
Note the word "should" in there; that statement directly implies that law leads to (whatever you mean by should).
>What was said was "society decides", as the group of moral agents that it is. Laws are the result of that decision.
Laws are made by a tiny subset of society and rarely consider other cases implied by but not directly mentioned in the law. Case in point, this law in France was made before Google existed.
Well, clearly I failed to make myself understood, and I apologize. When I said, "countries can decide", I meant "country" as in the general entity which includes society and its general moral code, not the legislative body specifically (nor any other component of the State).
Thanks for clarifying. If you're using that definition, it's no longer enough to say "look, that's the law"; you need to demonstrate public support for it as well. If politicians pushed it through without broad public support, then it's not a sign of societal ethics.
Neither ethical values of a society nor its laws are static entities. They both change over time. One cause (of many) for change are eventually persuasive parts of society not happy with current agreements.
Most of us probably do not completely share values of the society we live in. It is up to us to push it in right direction.
Or can you suggest a better authority to define them?