Phil 160 Joel Feinberg The Nature and Value

Phil 160 Joel Feinberg “The Nature and Value of Rights”

Reductio Ad Absurdum: • RAA is an argumentative method with the following steps: – Make an assumption – Figure out the implications of that assumption (if that assumption is true, what else has to be true? ) – If the implications of the assumption are absurd, then the assumption is false.

Feinberg’s RAA • Feinberg asks the reader to assume there is a place that has no concept of rights at all (he calls this assumed place “Nowheresville”) • He will contend that this place is devoid of a very important moral category. • The conclusion is that if we can’t get a very important moral concept without rights, there must be rights.

Nowheresville (not to be confused with Garden City, KS): • Just to be charitable, and to give the idea that there could be a moral place with no rights its strongest possible representation, Feinberg asks us to assume the following:

Benevolence • Assume first, that in Nowheresville, people do actions just to be kind to each other. There’s no idea that they owe it to each other to be kind, but nevertheless there’s even a higher proportion of kind acts in Nowheresville than in the real world.

Duty • Of course, Nowheresville cannot have the kinds of duties to one another than imply rights, but they can have a weaker sense of ‘duty’. This weaker sense of duty does not have them do anything because they owe it to anyone, but just because they feel that they should.

Legal and Social Order: • Feinberg claims we can even have a kind of social and legal order in Nowheresville that is just exactly like that found in the real world if we adopt the following two principles: – Weak personal desert: This is the sense of people deserving things that does not obligate anyone else to action, but allows people to reard others for good services, etc. (like the classic sense of gratuity, where it is optional, not obligatory) – Sovereign rights monopoly: This is the Hobbesian idea that some abstract higher power (i. e. the sovereign, or God) has all the rights, not individuals. So one person cannot do wrong to another, but each could do wrong to the abstract higher authority.

What Nowheresville is missing: • Feinberg points out that though such a society might look even better in some respects than the real world, it leaves something to be desired. • The biggest difference between Nowheresville and the real world is that Nowheresville is entirely missing the kinds of claims to moral good that we call rights.

A right is a claim to a moral good • When we say that we have a right to freedom of expression, we meant that we have a claim that binds legal authorities to refrain from punishing any peaceable expression. • When we say we have a right to our own property, we meant that we have a claim that binds others to respect out decisions with regard to what is our own. • When we claim a right to life we have a claim that binds others not to kill us. • Feinberg argues, through his example, that the mere appearance of moral behavior is not enough, we must recognize that people have binding claims on one another's behaviors. We call such claims ‘rights’.