Where did Ayn Rand claim that rights are "contextual"?

[sjw]

"Objectivists uphold a contextualist view of rights, as being an extension of the ethics of rational self-interest into social situations." --Robert Bidinotto (see http://rebirthofreason.com/Articles/Bidinotto/Getting_Rights_Right.shtml)

"Rights are contextual. In any situation where metaphysical survival is at stake all property rights are out. You have no obligation to respect property rights. The obvious, classic example of this is, which I've been asked a hundred times, you swim to a desert island — you know, you had a shipwreck — and when you get to the shore, the guy comes to you and says, ‘I've got a fence all around this island. I found it. It's legitimately mine. You can't step onto the beach.' Now, in that situation you are in a literal position of being metaphysically helpless. Since life is the standard of rights, if you no longer can survive this way, rights are out. And it becomes dog-eat-dog or force-against-force." --Leonard Peikoff

I would point out two things regarding Peikoff's inane treason against individual rights:

1. Rand condemned using "lifeboat scenarios" in order to derive ethical theories.

2. A valid theory of rights would not permit one to just grab all the land even when you weren't really using it. Due to Peikoff's weak grasp of the nature of rights, he can't see that you can't just "point and own" or even "fence and own"; on the contrary, the Lockean theory (which Objectivists usually ignore) says that you have to "mix your labor with the land." And even this isn't the whole story on just land acquisition.

But to my main question: Where did Ayn Rand say anything like "rights are contextual"? I think she didn't. I think that in the post-9/11 world, Objectivists who want to stand behind America no matter what it does are wiping the Bill of Rights with their ass and then trying to cover it by corrupting Ayn Rand's view.

Ball is in their court. Put up or shut up. Either demonstrate where Ayn Rand's Objectivism makes the woozy claim that "rights are contextual," or stop defaming Objectivism by attributing that nonsense to her.

Shayne

[sjw]

Here is what I think Ayn Rand wrote:

Reality is an absolute, existence is an absolute, a speck of dust is an absolute and so is a human life. Whether you live or die is an absolute. Whether you have a piece of bread or not, is an absolute. Whether you eat your bread or see it vanish into a looter’s stomach, is an absolute.

Indeed. And individual rights, properly understood, are an absolute as well.

Just as, in epistemology, the cult of uncertainty is a revolt against reason — so, in ethics, the cult of moral grayness is a revolt against moral values. Both are a revolt against the absolutism of reality.

Sounds like the theory that "rights are contextual" to me.

Shayne

[Mike Renzulli]

The quotes you cite are talking in terms of ethics. When discussing the view of government it should (and in many cases does to this day) recognizes individual rights as absolutes. Doing this prevents it from flagrantly violating individual rights yet it retains the power to halt someone from knowingly violating the individual rights of others.

Yet conduct among people is what ethics are all about. I think the ethics folder is where this discussion belongs and I would also point out that Shayne is (yet again) trying to start trouble by bending and twisting Objectivism because he obviously has nothing better to do with his time.

Here is what I think Ayn Rand wrote:

Reality is an absolute, existence is an absolute, a speck of dust is an absolute and so is a human life. Whether you live or die is an absolute. Whether you have a piece of bread or not, is an absolute. Whether you eat your bread or see it vanish into a looter’s stomach, is an absolute.

Indeed. And individual rights, properly understood, are an absolute as well.

Just as, in epistemology, the cult of uncertainty is a revolt against reason — so, in ethics, the cult of moral grayness is a revolt against moral values. Both are a revolt against the absolutism of reality.

Sounds like the theory that "rights are contextual" to me.

Shayne

[sjw]

The quotes you cite are talking in terms of ethics. When discussing the view of government it should (and in many cases does to this day) recognizes individual rights as absolutes. Doing this prevents it from flagrantly violating individual rights yet it retains the power to halt someone from knowingly violating the individual rights of others.

Yet conduct among people is what ethics are all about. I think the ethics folder is where this discussion belongs and I would also point out that Shayne is (yet again) trying to start trouble by bending and twisting Objectivism because he obviously has nothing better to do with his time.

Have you even read Ayn Rand or are you just a cheap troll? She clearly states that rights are a link between ethics and politics, hence they go in either category.

And quit derailing the thread. Answer the question: Where does Rand claim that "rights are contextual"? If you can't find it, stop claiming that it has anything to do with Objectivism.

Shayne

[Mike Renzulli]

The only one acting like a troll is you. You are making these posts because you are obviously upset that I rebutted a claim by you and put ethics and politics in its proper sense in terms of Objectivism. Now after having done so, you act like a three year old and go off on a tangient in order to commence more arguments since you can't argue from your original premise any more in terms of rights.

In light of the fact that you are not, I wonder why you are still here. If you want to have the kinds of discussions you have create your own chatroom. Don't ruin ours.

The quotes you cite are talking in terms of ethics. When discussing the view of government it should (and in many cases does to this day) recognizes individual rights as absolutes. Doing this prevents it from flagrantly violating individual rights yet it retains the power to halt someone from knowingly violating the individual rights of others.

Yet conduct among people is what ethics are all about. I think the ethics folder is where this discussion belongs and I would also point out that Shayne is (yet again) trying to start trouble by bending and twisting Objectivism because he obviously has nothing better to do with his time.

Have you even read Ayn Rand or are you just a cheap troll? She clearly states that rights are a link between ethics and politics, hence they go in either category.

And quit derailing the thread. Answer the question: Where does Rand claim that "rights are contextual"? If you can't find it, stop claiming that it has anything to do with Objectivism.

Shayne

[sjw]

So Mike, are you saying that if I put this into the "right" category, then you'll answer where in the hell you get the view that Rand said or would sanction "rights are contextual"? If so, then that's petty and childish. If not, you're obviously a troll. I think the answer is not, because you cannot. Hence all the irrelevant squeaking sounds you're making.

Put up or shut up.

Shayne

[anthony]

Yet conduct among people is what ethics are all about.

Mike,

I found what you say to be thought-provoking, but I can't agree with this.

To be pedantic, "conduct among people" is what *rights* are all about; those rights are derived from ethics; the ethics, derived from man's nature.

(As we know.)

Tony

[Xray]

[quoting Leonard Peikoff]:

"Rights are contextual. In any situation where metaphysical survival is at stake all property rights are out." (Leonard Peikoff)

What is the difference between "metaphysical" survival and physical survival?

[quoting Leonard Peikoff]:

"You have no obligation to respect property rights. The obvious, classic example of this is, which I've been asked a hundred times, you swim to a desert island — you know, you had a shipwreck — and when you get to the shore, the guy comes to you and says, ‘I've got a fence all around this island. I found it. It's legitimately mine. You can't step onto the beach.' Now, in that situation you are in a literal position of being metaphysically helpless." (Leonard Peikoff)

Again, what is the difference between "metaphysically" helpless and physically helpless?

Since life is the standard of rights, if you no longer can survive this way, rights are out. And it becomes dog-eat-dog or force-against-force." --Leonard Peikoff

I would point out two things regarding Peikoff's inane treason against individual rights:

1. Rand condemned using "lifeboat scenarios" in order to derive ethical theories.

Why is Peikoff's disregarding a Randian premise "a treason against individual rights"?

Due to Peikoff's weak grasp of the nature of rights, he can't see that you can't just "point and own" or even "fence and own"; on the contrary, the Lockean theory (which Objectivists usually ignore) says that you have to "mix your labor with the land."

But can't most land acquisitions be traced back to "point and own" originally?

But to my main question: Where did Ayn Rand say anything like "rights are contextual"?

In TVOS, p. 108, Rand equates a "free society" with "capitalism", so my guess is that she conceives of rights as being possible only in the context of a society functioning on capitalist principles. As for how the capitalism is to look like, Rand is clear as a bell:

"When I say capitalism, I mean a full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated, laissez-faire capitalism." (Rand, TVOS, p. 37).

Edited March 24, 2011 by Xray

[sjw]

xray, will you please fix the attribution of those quotes, I didn't say "rights are contextual."

Shayne

[Xray]

xray, will you please fix the attribution of those quotes, I didn't say "rights are contextual."

Shayne, my apologies for forgetting to add Peikoff as the source. I have fixed the attribution of the quotes.

Edited March 24, 2011 by Xray

[sjw]

xray, will you please fix the attribution of those quotes, I didn't say "rights are contextual."

Shayne

I was editing my post while you wrote yours, so I'm not sure what you are referring to. I know that you didn't say rights are contextual, so in case I put the quotes wrong in what you read, my apologies.

Well, right now it still says "sjw says ... "rights are contextual"...

A small point maybe, but I find that view so heinous and obnoxious that I don't want it anywhere near my name.

Shayne

[Xray]

xray, will you please fix the attribution of those quotes, I didn't say "rights are contextual."

Shayne

I was editing my post while you wrote yours, so I'm not sure what you are referring to. I know that you didn't say rights are contextual, so in case I put the quotes wrong in what you read, my apologies.

Well, right now it still says "sjw says ... "rights are contextual"...

A small point maybe, but I find that view so heinous and obnoxious that I don't want it anywhere near my name.

Shayne

I have added "quoting Leonard Peikoff"; the reason why I quoted you was to give the reader access to the source post which provided the quote from LP.

Edited March 24, 2011 by Xray

[sjw]

I have added "quoting Leonard Peikoff"; the reason why I quoted you was to give the reader access to the source post which provided the quote from LP.

Thanks.

Shayne

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Shayne,

Here is how I understand it.

Whenever you have society, the society itself is one context. But I don't think that is what the folks who say "rights are contextual" mean--except for one point.

Whenever two people interact, there are bound to be conflicts at some time or other. To ignore that would be to ignore reality, given human history. So when people say "rights are contextual," I believe they are talking about cases where a right of one collides with a right of another and the two do not reach an agreement. This is in line with Rand's view that, socially, man is a contractual animal.

In this case, the right with the wider conceptual base would be favored over the right with the narrower conceptual base. (Like I said, this is how I understand it.)

For example, the right to life is a wider conceptual base than the right to property. You can be alive and not own property, but you cannot own property without being alive. That's just reality.

Thus if a person is using his property to perform an act that threatens the lives of those around him, say, constructing a bunker and stocking it with heavy artillery right next to a crowded place of people he is vocal about hating, even though the act of taking the lives of others has not occurred, it is reasonable for the threatened people to make him stop. There is another wider conceptual base issue here, too. You can replace property. You cannot replace a life.

Let him make his bunker out in the desert somewhere if that is what he wants. Reasonable people will come to some understanding like that. The context (1. property presumes life to be a right at all, and 2. the permanence of death versus the plastic nature of property) demands it.

I think this is what they mean by rights are contextual. That's what I would mean. It's almost a genus and differentia thing.

How they apply it is another issue. Bombing a building in NYC over ideology and calling that a proper exercise of rights is out there. That's really out there.

Michael

[sjw]

Michael,

It seems to me that what Mike R means by it in the following post is different from what you are saying:

http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=10345&view=findpost&p=129588

I don't think so since Rand is not taking the view of consistency for the sake of being consistent. Like I explained to Shayne, the view of rights Robert outlines is how it is among the ethics of others (i.e. how people should live).

In the Objectivist view of government, it views (and in many cases does in real life) respect a person's rights as absolute until and unless some person or group is determined to pose a threat to the individual rights of others.

When it is objectively determined that a group or person is a threat then it may take action to stop them. That's what we are seeing with the U.S. government's activities to halt terrorism now.

Observe the concrete-bound understanding of rights here. On MR's view, if a sniper takes out a kidnapper and accidentally hit a hostage, then the sniper violated the hostages rights. But, he happily thinks, it's OK, because "rights are contextual."

On a principled understanding of rights, the sniper is defending the hostages and any inadvertent damage to them (assuming he takes due care) is an absolute violation of rights -- by the kidnapper.

Shayne

My resolution to what he sees as a conflict of rights it to underscore that there is no conflict between the sniper and the hostage, but rather between the criminal and the hostage. I think you're doing roughly what I'm doing with your idea of a "wider conceptual base".

Shayne

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Shayne,

In my understanding of your sniper case, at the point in time where the killing takes place, I believe the question of rights is already out the window.

The kidnapper violated the people's right to life the moment he kidnapped them. What else is there to violate after that? Do you see any rights they have left? Potentially being murdered is their metaphysical context, no longer the freedom to act among strangers.

So I don't see a need to divorce the later death from the preceding violation and rename it a new violation. In other words, I don't see a causal link between two separate violations, but instead one overall violation that had a tragic result for one of the victims.

I consider kidnapping to be a most heinous crime.

Thus, crime-wise, I would not categorize your case as kidnapping and murder by the kidnapper. Not when the act came from the sniper. That just doesn't make sense. Instead, I would call it kidnapping with a fatality (as opposed to kidnapping without a fatality--being that the difference between the two for me is no greater than one rung on the ladder in hell).

In either case, I don't believe the idea of violating rights applies to the sniper at all. He is blameless, not because he potentially was guilty, but the guilt fell on another. I hold he was blameless because in the situation he tried to interfere in, there were no rights to be had. The kidnapper had already screwed it all up. The sniper was trying to save someone's life, not defend their right to life.

If he was trying to do anything rights-wise, I hold he was trying to restore social interaction to a point where rights would have meaning once again. But even that sounds forced to me. I just think he was trying to save the hostages lives and worry about all this other stuff later.

Michael

[Selene]

Shayne:

Have you ever been in a life or death situation where a weapon was involved?

Adam

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Bombing a building in NYC over ideology and calling that a proper exercise of rights is out there. That's really out there.

Actually, Roark did that, didn't he?

Michael

[anthony]

In a fully rational society, there can be no conflict of interest between individuals, and their rights.

Back in the real world, in a society that superficially upholds individual rights, there will be occasional conflict due to a sense of subjective entitlement by some. This is where contextualism may apply - when your rights restrict my rights. But I still don't see this as contextual, more like self-evidently wrong. My morality-based rights directs me to take into account your rights, too.

Now,in a third society, where "Human rights" are upheld (as in mine), contextualism is the ONLY standard. When everybody has a right to something, then nobody has individual rights. So there'll be regular conflict.

As example, we have just had Human Rights Day, here in South Africa.

Tens of thousands of citizens arrived at a rally (non-partisan, supposedly),in Cape Town, to hear speeches by politicians from across the board.

The ruling party, the ANC, bused in thousands of their supporters, and - planned, or not - when a leading politician of the opposition party tried to make her speech, she was drowned out by the boos of the crowd, and so never made it.

Here's contextualism for you: freedom of speech, vs. freedom of dissent.

Who wins?

Tony

[Dennis Hardin]

In the following quote from Ayn Rand Answers(pp. 102-104), Rand is essentially saying that people who do not understand or respect rights do not possess rights. This clearly implies that rights only apply under conditions of civilization, i.e., a society where physical force is banned from human relationships.

"When you consider the cultural genocide of Native Americans, the enslavement of blacks, and the relocation of Japanese Americans during World War Two, how can you have such a positive view of America?"

“Now, I don't care to discuss the alleged complaints American Indians have against this country. I believe, with good reason, the most unsympathetic Hollywood portrayal of Indians and what they did to the white man. They had no right to a country merely because they were born here and then acted like savages. The white man did not conquer this country. And you're a racist if you object, because it means you believe that certain men are entitled to something because of their race. You believe that if someone is born in a magnificent country and doesn't know what to do with it, he still has a property right to it. He does not. Since the Indians did not have the concept of property or property rights--they didn't have a settled society, they had predominantly nomadic tribal "cultures"--they didn't have rights to the land, and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights that they had not conceived of and were not using.

It's wrong to attack a country that respects (or even tries to respect) individual rights. If you do, you're an aggressor and are morally wrong. But if a "country" does not protect rights--if a group of tribesmen are the slaves of their tribal chief--why should you respect the "rights" that they don't have or respect? The same is true for a dictatorship. The citizens in it have individual rights, but the country has no rights and so anyone has the right to invade it, because rights are not recognized in that country; and no individual or country can have its cake and eat it too--that is, you can't claim one should respect the "rights" of Indians, when they had no concept of rights and no respect for rights.

But let's suppose they were all beautifully innocent savages--which they certainly were not. What were they fighting for, in opposing the white man on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive existence; for their "right" to keep part of the earth untouched--to keep everybody out so they could live like animals or cavemen. Any European who brought with him an element of civilization had the right to take over this continent, and it's great that some of them did. The racist Indians today--those who condemn America--do not respect individual rights.”

[sjw]

In the following quote from Ayn Rand Answers(pp. 102-104), Rand is essentially saying that people who do not understand or respect rights do not possess rights. This clearly implies that rights only apply under conditions of civilization, i.e., a society where physical force is banned from human relationships.

"The citizens in [a dictatorship] have individual rights."

On this particular point she was correct and the meaning is clear, and goes straight against what you just said.

It is certainly true that if you have a human being who violates your rights, then depending on the nature of the violation then some kind of recourse is in order. It is not true however to make sweeping, collectivist statements such that an entire continent of humans has no rights because of some kind of statistical reasoning about what the rest of them did. Rand doesn't know whether this particular Indian respected rights or that one did not. Justice is individual justice, not condemnation of an entire race because of what some of its members did.

I don't want to comment on the rest of what she said there other than to say she is very seriously wrong on a number of issues. Again, it is no wonder that she has caused confusion in the minds of many Objectivists. Given your quote of hers, I can begin to see how it may be partly her fault that they are now, since the Patriot Act, claiming "rights are contextual" (I don't know that any Objectivist was making this claim before the Patriot Act). On the other hand, she generally was quite consistent that rights are individual not collective, and that they are absolute, that anyone interfering with your rights is wrong.

Shayne

[Mike Renzulli]

I think this would also fit the criteria of this discussion. In another essay he wrote on Rand vs Peikoff, Robert Bidinotto wrote:

"Rand's stress on contextualism was ironically the hallmark of Peikoff's "Understanding Objectivism" course, in which he made an all-out attack on "intrinsicism" (meaning, on this issue, the belief in inherently good or inherently evil ideas or actions.) These interviews, in fact, show Rand stressing reasonableness in her criteria for judging people."

He quotes from interviews with Ms. Rand:

From the Ray Newman interview with Ayn Rand

NEWMAN: When do you classify someone as immoral?

RAND: Only when he has done...done, in fact, some immoral action... When someone in action [Rand's emphasis] does something which you know, can prove, is an immoral, vicious action -- a sin, not a value; or a vice (whichever you want to call it) -- then you have to judge him as he has proved.

You never judge a person on mere potentials, and you seldom judge him on what he says, because most people do not really speak very exactly; and on the basis of some one inadvertant remark you would not judge a person as immoral. If, however, he goes about the country preaching immoral ideas, then you would classify him as immoral.

NEWMAN: Well, there are people whom I meet who are mixed. In other words, they hold certain virtues, but then in particular situations they may act against the virtue -- or the sin or the evil.

RAND: Yes.

NEWMAN: Is that like, you can't be a little bit pregnant? Which is that if you're a little bit immoral, you're immoral? Your...your character is rated as immoral?

RAND: In fact, yes. But the important thing here is the degree of knowledge a given person has.

If you do not know exactly the nature of what you are doing, then you can't be considered immoral -- particularly if it's a young person and it's correctible. A person can make a mistake and correct it.

But it would have to be a major crime -- for instance, a person lying. Let's use that as an example. I would never forgive that at all. I would regard that as a top immorality, and regard that person as immoral, regardless of what kind of virtues he or she might have. Needless to say, if you have a robber or a murderer, or a person who is systematically breaking the rights of other people, you would call him immoral, no matter what lesser virtues he might have.

So you, in judging people of mixed premises, as most people are, you have to balance, in effect hierarchically, the seriousness of their virtues and of their vices, and see what you get in the net result.

From the James Day interview with Ayn Rand on "Day at Night" (video)

[in response to a question about values being absolute.]

RAND: ...Values are contextual. They depend on the context of a given situation.

Now there are, unfortunately, too many people who are part good, part bad. Well, that's their problem. But what would morality demand from them? To struggle to the best of their ability, to do good and to never do evil consciously.

If a man does that, I would regard him as completely good -- if he never does evil consciously, deliberately. However, if he does just one action which he knows to be wrong, but permits it to himself, then he's evil absolutely. The rest is only a matter of time.

DAY: You've written that the concept of God is morally evil.

RAND: I didn't say it's morally evil -- not in those words. I said it is false.

DAY: False.

RAND: I said it's a fantasy. It doesn't exist. I would say that religion can be very dangerous psycho-epistemologically, in regard to the working of a man's mind. Faith is dangerous, because a man who permits himself to exempt some aspect of reality from reason, and to believe in a god even though he knows he has no reason to believe in a god -- there is no evidence in a god's existence -- that is the danger, psychologically. That man is not going to be rational, or will have a terrible conflict. It's wrong in that way.

[Brant Gaede]

That Rand said something doesn't make it right. She really bollixed up American history and American Indians.

I think at the time she made those remarks there were great goings-on about white men guilt and Indian victimization and she countered that with ideology traducing her rights' teachings all because she wasn't enough a student of the history of this continent and how the Europeans affected the world with their travels and colonizations displacing natives primarily with disease. I doubt if she would have approved what Stanley did in Africa or the bloody machinations of Leopold II. Europeans were an exotic world-wide intrusion that almost put the Mongol hordes and the rise of Islam to shame.

Anybody else notice the implicit argument she made for eminent domain?

--Brant

Edited March 25, 2011 by Brant Gaede

[mcm]

Political rights only exist to objectify the proscription of force the members of a society must refrain from and the prescription of force an independent third party institution charged with guaranteeing them (government) may and/or must use to stop, prevent or punish such force. They are necessitated as a means to preserve individual autonomy in the application of reason to effort in the service of life in a society. In the absence of a choice by a sufficient population to systematically guarantee individual autonomy through a third party institution, there are no political rights. Thus one sense in which rights are contextual results from the prerequisite conditions for their ethical necessity and possibility of enforcement. [see OPAR ch.10 "Government - Individual Rights as Absolutes" p.351 ppb]

A second sense in which rights are contextual results from the nature of the ethical necessity itself—the fact that they are necessary to the pursuit of life. As such, no right may be defined in such a way that an act of sustaining it would cause or result in one's own death [or, in Peikoff's terms, end one's metaphysical survival]. This contextual limitaion excludes the applicability of rights to emergency situations, as Peikoff explained with the conflict between shipwreck survivors. Personally, I prefer the more palatable example of a hiker lost and starving in a blizzard on a mountain who comes upon a locked cabin. His only option is to break in and eat the owner's food or face certain death. The right to property may not be so defined as to require him to remain outside and die. It can only require him to contact the owner later and reimburse him.

Edited March 25, 2011 by mike

[sjw]

RAND: ...Values are contextual. They depend on the context of a given situation.

Just because Rand said X is contextual does not in any way imply that she would have said Y is contextual. Further, it does not sanction Mike R's interpretation of what is meant by "Y is contextual."

For example, I can be fine if someone says: "Rights are contextual. Whether something is a violation of a right or not depends on the context, for example, seizing someone and dragging them somewhere would be a violation of his rights in most contexts, but if the context was such there was evidence he had stolen, then seizing him so he can go on trial is not actually a violation of his rights." This is an interpretation of the meaning of "rights are contextual" but that is not what you, MR, mean when you say it. What you mean is to wave a magic wand and watch someone's rights disappear, without specifying particularly why they disappear other than some vague "it's for your own protection."

Shayne