Having read the piece I find not one, but three possible nods to a meta-ethical basis for rights in particular, and to an extent also for liberalism.
(1) you say that ‘you can construct a coherent non-theological Lockean-type case for natural rights grounded in the human good or human reason’. That sounds like a direct reference to meta ethics, so I chased down arguments around ‘human good’ and ‘human reason’ to see how they are justified. There were lots of interesting variants, but they all started with an assumption about what is natural, or intuitive, or self evident, or inherent to the nature of being human.
(2) you also say that ‘the value of rights to liberalism looms large’, which sounds like a meta-consequentialist argument (I just made that term up). What I mean is; rights are valuable because they help to build a better liberalism. Okay, but that begs the question of why I should ascribe to liberalism, and how a better or worse liberalism can be judged?
(3) Finally, you say ‘particular rights that subsets of us can hold — as a matter of moral truth.’ That presupposes moral realism, which clarifies the earlier nod to naturalism to exclude cultural relativism (if it wasn’t already excluded)
No doubt most readers take liberalism as a given, and are happy to learn about the nuances brought on by embracing rights in different ways within such a framework. That’s great. And while I’m happy to play the game of opining on how to fine tune a moral framework, I’m left wondering why I should believe that the underpinning of the framework has any basis at all. That’s okay, perhaps that’s the nature of the problem. Either I realise what is self-evidently true to others or I don’t. Or is there something I’ve missed?
BTW. I look forward to your 5 things every week. I always find something good to read.
I'm an anti-consequentialist moral realist who broadly espouses Lockean-type natural law theory as the closest to thing a successful comprehensive moral theory. I have a pluralistic conception of the good. I think moral rights reflect objective truths about the world and what it is to be human and are pluralistically grounded, as I briefly mentioned in the podcast ep. So, e.g., I argued in my PhD thesis that a broad range of individual moral property rights to external things can be grounded in a combination of need and the common good (but that was pretty technical stuff that would take some time to back up here!)
What are your meta ethics? Is there a post where you lay out why you believe in rights etc?
I just found your thesis. Wish me luck!
I get on to some of that in the podcast ep I link to in the piece, and some of it here: https://www.pursuitofliberalism.com/p/the-significance-of-rights-to-liberalism
Thanks very much. I will listen to it.
:)
Having read the piece I find not one, but three possible nods to a meta-ethical basis for rights in particular, and to an extent also for liberalism.
(1) you say that ‘you can construct a coherent non-theological Lockean-type case for natural rights grounded in the human good or human reason’. That sounds like a direct reference to meta ethics, so I chased down arguments around ‘human good’ and ‘human reason’ to see how they are justified. There were lots of interesting variants, but they all started with an assumption about what is natural, or intuitive, or self evident, or inherent to the nature of being human.
(2) you also say that ‘the value of rights to liberalism looms large’, which sounds like a meta-consequentialist argument (I just made that term up). What I mean is; rights are valuable because they help to build a better liberalism. Okay, but that begs the question of why I should ascribe to liberalism, and how a better or worse liberalism can be judged?
(3) Finally, you say ‘particular rights that subsets of us can hold — as a matter of moral truth.’ That presupposes moral realism, which clarifies the earlier nod to naturalism to exclude cultural relativism (if it wasn’t already excluded)
No doubt most readers take liberalism as a given, and are happy to learn about the nuances brought on by embracing rights in different ways within such a framework. That’s great. And while I’m happy to play the game of opining on how to fine tune a moral framework, I’m left wondering why I should believe that the underpinning of the framework has any basis at all. That’s okay, perhaps that’s the nature of the problem. Either I realise what is self-evidently true to others or I don’t. Or is there something I’ve missed?
BTW. I look forward to your 5 things every week. I always find something good to read.
I'm an anti-consequentialist moral realist who broadly espouses Lockean-type natural law theory as the closest to thing a successful comprehensive moral theory. I have a pluralistic conception of the good. I think moral rights reflect objective truths about the world and what it is to be human and are pluralistically grounded, as I briefly mentioned in the podcast ep. So, e.g., I argued in my PhD thesis that a broad range of individual moral property rights to external things can be grounded in a combination of need and the common good (but that was pretty technical stuff that would take some time to back up here!)
(I see those individual moral property rights to external things not as natural rights. I have my own Lockean-type conception of natural rights)