Do natural rights exist?
Yes, and the immediate proof is found in an examination of the most basic right, the right to one's own life.
A right is a just claim. A just claim is a claim that is true, right, correct, and complete. The most immediate just claim is the one that any person has to his own life, hence his right to his life.
He is the person living his life. It is his life. Likewise, he has a perfect and immediate claim to his own thoughts. He is the one thinking them; they are his.
The right to one's life is realized empirically (i.e., by direct experience) when a child becomes aware of himself as himself. But that right to life is also transcendently realized by others as a claim that will and must be made by the child. And since it will and must be made, they are morally obligated to hold the claim by proxy for a child before he becomes aware of himself as himself, before he takes hold of his identity by the action of reflexive self-possession.
In other words, the right to his life belongs transcendently to a child before he claims it empirically by the simple understanding that he will make that claim on his life and that any claim to the contrary by others, before or after the child makes it, is inferior to it.
His life is his own, not that of his stewards or proxies, either before or after he has come to understand and know his claim. Yet his stewards and proxies are required by the immediately implied ethics of natural law to hold and protect his right to life for him.
Further, the discovery of one's own immediate identity as one's self, the actual claiming of one's self as one's self, and more particularly the immediate and identical claiming of one's thoughts as one's own, is the predicate and foundation of Reason, coordinated abstract rational thought. In other words, Reason begins with the reasoner, and the self-identification of the reasoner as himself places Reason in a foundation of truth.
All of this is painfully obvious, but I think it was A.N. Whitehead who said that the obvious is often the most difficult thing to discover.
If Reason is the conformity of the mind to reality, the initiation point for that is in the individual person claiming his thoughts as his own. Prior to that consolidation of the "I", the logical insights of a child have no coordinator, no reasoner who is conscious of himself as a conscious self. The brain is hardwired to follow logical coordinates: extension, duration, up, down, depth, motion, distinct objects, others. But Reason begins when the reasoner is identified as himself by himself and takes charge of his thoughts. That realization is an empirical truth, Reason is grounded in it and cannot happen without it.
Hence rights are at the foundation of Reason. Reason is grounded in their essential truth, and Reason is inherently moral by virtue of its grounding in rights and truth. When Reason attempts to have a foundation in itself -- in mere logical operations and logical possibility -- as opposed to its real grounding in just claims and truth, it becomes self-negating and self-destructive. It cannot apprehend truth because it denies that it is founded in truth. It denies natural rights because it denies that it is founded in the first natural right -- the just claim to one's own life.
The skepticism that has allowed truth to be reduced, in one corner, to no more than the product of a logical statement, and in another corner to the only truth is that there is no truth, would be a hilarious cosmic joke were it not so seriously held by so many who run the philosophy business.
If the hard skeptics can't recognize that they are only able to use Reason because they know that they are themselves and are themselves reasoning, and accept that as the foundation truth of Reason, then the baby has disappeared and the bathwater is all that remains. The only hope for the hard skeptics is for them to keep staring at the bathwater until they realize that something was once in it that gave it its very character.
A right is a just claim. A just claim is a claim that is true, right, correct, and complete. The most immediate just claim is the one that any person has to his own life, hence his right to his life.
He is the person living his life. It is his life. Likewise, he has a perfect and immediate claim to his own thoughts. He is the one thinking them; they are his.
The right to one's life is realized empirically (i.e., by direct experience) when a child becomes aware of himself as himself. But that right to life is also transcendently realized by others as a claim that will and must be made by the child. And since it will and must be made, they are morally obligated to hold the claim by proxy for a child before he becomes aware of himself as himself, before he takes hold of his identity by the action of reflexive self-possession.
In other words, the right to his life belongs transcendently to a child before he claims it empirically by the simple understanding that he will make that claim on his life and that any claim to the contrary by others, before or after the child makes it, is inferior to it.
His life is his own, not that of his stewards or proxies, either before or after he has come to understand and know his claim. Yet his stewards and proxies are required by the immediately implied ethics of natural law to hold and protect his right to life for him.
Further, the discovery of one's own immediate identity as one's self, the actual claiming of one's self as one's self, and more particularly the immediate and identical claiming of one's thoughts as one's own, is the predicate and foundation of Reason, coordinated abstract rational thought. In other words, Reason begins with the reasoner, and the self-identification of the reasoner as himself places Reason in a foundation of truth.
All of this is painfully obvious, but I think it was A.N. Whitehead who said that the obvious is often the most difficult thing to discover.
If Reason is the conformity of the mind to reality, the initiation point for that is in the individual person claiming his thoughts as his own. Prior to that consolidation of the "I", the logical insights of a child have no coordinator, no reasoner who is conscious of himself as a conscious self. The brain is hardwired to follow logical coordinates: extension, duration, up, down, depth, motion, distinct objects, others. But Reason begins when the reasoner is identified as himself by himself and takes charge of his thoughts. That realization is an empirical truth, Reason is grounded in it and cannot happen without it.
Hence rights are at the foundation of Reason. Reason is grounded in their essential truth, and Reason is inherently moral by virtue of its grounding in rights and truth. When Reason attempts to have a foundation in itself -- in mere logical operations and logical possibility -- as opposed to its real grounding in just claims and truth, it becomes self-negating and self-destructive. It cannot apprehend truth because it denies that it is founded in truth. It denies natural rights because it denies that it is founded in the first natural right -- the just claim to one's own life.
The skepticism that has allowed truth to be reduced, in one corner, to no more than the product of a logical statement, and in another corner to the only truth is that there is no truth, would be a hilarious cosmic joke were it not so seriously held by so many who run the philosophy business.
If the hard skeptics can't recognize that they are only able to use Reason because they know that they are themselves and are themselves reasoning, and accept that as the foundation truth of Reason, then the baby has disappeared and the bathwater is all that remains. The only hope for the hard skeptics is for them to keep staring at the bathwater until they realize that something was once in it that gave it its very character.
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