The subject of a life (SOAL) criteria is vital for any humanist or post-absolutist system of natural rights above and beyond the issue of animal rights. Our nation's founding documents list our rights as natural and 'God given,' but what happens when there is no God? There is no such thing as a morality derived from nature, or else you could argue that homosexuality was immoral because it makes no sense from an evolutionary perspective (also false). How then do we talk of 'rights,' insinuating duties to individuals above and beyond arbitrarily ascribed law, when there seems to be no absolute basis to put rights on?
That's where the SOAL criteria comes in. While it is true that the universe is fundamentally meaningless and valueless we still tend to seek meaning and value things. The key is that value is not external or intrinsic to the metaphysical objects of the world around the conscious subject, but rather it is the capacity in the subject's mind to value that creates value! A conscious being with the ability to value likely values itself and objects related to it. Moral value is thus constructed, but it is absolutely constructed (1) in that a subject values itself and certain metaphysical objects around it, so therefore the subject itself has inherent moral value created a priori from being a thing that values.
Talk of rights should then be fundamentally informed by the SOAL criteria, which provide the epistemological mechanism for deciding if a being possesses natural rights. Relying on a document as the basis for rights is dangerous and fundamentally fallacious because that document needs to refer elsewhere to guarantee rights. It would be fantastic if the popular concept of rights considered them as something naturally beyond the reach of government or societal regulation.
(1) That is, not haphazardly constructed in any way the conscious mind wants like some would argue.
That's where the SOAL criteria comes in. While it is true that the universe is fundamentally meaningless and valueless we still tend to seek meaning and value things. The key is that value is not external or intrinsic to the metaphysical objects of the world around the conscious subject, but rather it is the capacity in the subject's mind to value that creates value! A conscious being with the ability to value likely values itself and objects related to it. Moral value is thus constructed, but it is absolutely constructed (1) in that a subject values itself and certain metaphysical objects around it, so therefore the subject itself has inherent moral value created a priori from being a thing that values.
Talk of rights should then be fundamentally informed by the SOAL criteria, which provide the epistemological mechanism for deciding if a being possesses natural rights. Relying on a document as the basis for rights is dangerous and fundamentally fallacious because that document needs to refer elsewhere to guarantee rights. It would be fantastic if the popular concept of rights considered them as something naturally beyond the reach of government or societal regulation.
(1) That is, not haphazardly constructed in any way the conscious mind wants like some would argue.
No comments:
Post a Comment