On Feb 15, 2010, at 12:27 PM, Eric Smith wrote: > Nick et al., > > A thought on rights, not well-formed. It comes from reading some of Dan > Dennett's work on free will and causation, and wondering how I would frame > the terms differently if I were not drawing on the long philosophical > tradition in discussing this subject, but rather from the work of my > ethologist colleagues on how animal personalities, behaviors, and identities > develop in the social contexts they both construct and require. > > My default would be that the whole human notion of causal efficacy and the > role of the will has emerged from the need of social animals for group > context, first for their mental development, and second for its ongoing > function (first and second only in a presentational sense, both are > concurrent and ongoing, and probably also logically inter-dependent). It > seems to me a problem of distributed control over systems with huge random > backgrounds, and small regularities that we notice as the describable parts > of function. The evolutionary question has been (over and over), which parts > of the regularity will be canalized as part of development "within" the > context of the individual, and which parts go under the control of > distributed mechanisms constructed by coherent actions of members that form > the "group" as an entity with qualitatively distinct dynamics. "Cause" (in > the psychological sense) becomes the part of your action that you implicitly > recognize depends on group embedding to take one form versus another, and > "freedom" is some kind of admission that the large random background is > capable of taking on elements of behavioral regularity, but that an appeal to > some notion of individuality in isolation is not enough to make sense of what > form that behavior will take. I know that this could sprout into a long and > exhausting disagreement, but I am hoping there is some form of this argument > that could be defended reasonably. But I'll put it down here, except as a > framing of some terms. > > What does this have to do with rights etc.? The notion of right presumably > is the partner of the notion of responsibility, and the only interesting > sense in which I have a "right" to something is the sense in which you feel a > responsibility to help make it available to me, or in which I can act on you > to try to induce you to feel and obey such a sense of responsibility. This > "I" may be very much a reference to the group coordination, as well as the > way I instantiate parts of it in my apparently individual actions.
This idea of "I-as-bridge" between rights and responsibilities nicely parallels some recent conversations elsewhere about some of the problem created by according legal/constitutional rights and limited liability protections to "juridical persons" like corporations. It also highlights the absolutely critical public-facing side of that "I" -- i.e., identity or identifiability. You could be the most trusting, most trustworthy/responsible entity that ever lived, but it wouldn't matter at all if "you" cannot be consistently and reliability identified, i.e., distinguished from all of the other entities populating your world, based on some other independent criterion. > On Feb 1, 2010, at 3:36 PM, Tom Vest wrote: > >> Getting a bit closer to the ground, perhaps we could say that the phenomena >> of "trust" is possible IFF there is some kind of consistent, durable linkage >> between (a) the capacity to be "trusting," i.e., to distinguish between >> reassuring consistencies and troubling inconsistencies in the behavior of >> third parties, and (b) the capacity to be "trustworthy," i.e., to >> consistently publicly manifest the kind of behavior that third parties could >> recognize and interpret as an indicator of continued reassuring behavior. >> BUT: Is that critical linkage the possession (or non-possession) of the >> hypothesized ineffable-"something," or is it the entirely effable >> distinction between discrete, persistent, embodied actors who cannot change >> identities over time, in whole or in part -- not in any legally meaningful >> way anyway -- vs. composite entities that can be created, dismantled, >> partially decomposed and/or reorganized in many different ways for a variety >> of reasons, many of which have the effect of absolving whatever remains of >> all previous transgressions? Apologies in advance if that sounds too academic; it's a practical question for me, as this is actually one of the looming, potentially existential threats/challenges facing the global Internet. TV > So to the extent that there is a mechanistic or evolutionary question about > what are rights, it would seem very wrong to me to focus primarily on > individual development while excluding the recognition of the group as a > thing that has also undergone development in some evolutionary context. > Perhaps more strongly, it seems strange to think that one could even talk > about what the individual is, in proper context, without constant reference > to the group embedding. > > i agree with what I think is one of your impulses in this, which is to resist > supposing that too much of this is really conscious social choice or > negotiation, because that may constitute only a small part of the mechanism > by which norms can form or change. On the other hand, deliberate negotiation > may constitute _some_ part of that mechanism, and if we think it has ever had > durable effects, it is worthy of part of the discussion. > > Sorry to argue obscurely and drag in things that probably could have been > better omitted, but this is a subject I have been wondering for a while about > how to frame in some coherent or interesting way. > > Thanks, > > Eric > > > > > > > On Feb 15, 2010, at 9:32 AM, Robert J. Cordingley wrote: > >> Glen >> See http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/ and don't skip the bit that says >> "disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts >> which have outraged the conscience of mankind". A right isn't a natural >> consequence... but then I think you jest. >> Thanks >> Robert >> >> On 2/15/10 8:32 AM, glen e. p. ropella wrote: >>> Thus spake Nicholas Thompson circa 02/14/2010 10:49 AM: >>> >>>> Rights talk is madness. >>>> >>> That's the most true sentence I've seen on this mailing list. [grin] >>> Nobody has a right to anything. Some of us are lucky enough to be in >>> the right social classes to take advantage of particular legal systems; >>> but that's the whole extent of it. If there are any rights at all, they >>> are those provided by our biology. >>> >>> E.g. I have the right to be hungry when I don't eat. I have the right >>> to be euphoric when I hunt. I have the right to pain and death in the >>> freezing dawn in my cardboard shanty under the bridge. >>> >>> Everything else is ideology and illusion. Luckily, there are those of >>> us who are crafty enough to exploit the gullibility of those around us >>> so that our rights seem more real than theirs. >>> >>> >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
