Thoughts on individual rights

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Thoughts on individual rights

There is a long discussion going on over at RoR about rights that I have been following with a certain interest: Getting the right Rights right. As is usual with these discussions on Objectivist/libertarian boards, people are all over the place intellectually, highly emotional, and there is more confusion than clarity. One thing stands out to me: everyone who posts thinks his view is the one that should be adopted by all others.

Now, this is OK for personal views. We all own our own minds, so we all have the capacity and “right” to our own opinions. This is not OK if one’s wish is to spread Objectivism. If Objectivists cannot agree on something as basic as what the concept of individual rights is, how on earth are adherents to Objectivism going to teach it to others? The simple fact is that they will not be able to teach it to anyone. They haven’t defined it to such satisfaction that they agree with each other.

Outsiders come to these discussions, see an enormous amount of bickering, misunderstandings, people misinterpreting someone’s statements on purpose to win an argument, faulty reasoning and God knows what else. I have even seen a criticism of Objectivists once that went something like this: “Objectivists don’t know much. They don't even know what they think about rights, but they sure know how to be nasty people.” I consider myself to be an Objectivist, with some differences regarding a few principles and extensions, and this view by outsiders does not please me at all. I can't do anything about others, but I can try to prompt civil discussions. Here goes:

So far, I have been able to discern in the discussion on RoR (which I find representative of these kinds of discussions) that there are essentially three views of what individual rights are (on the Objectivist/libertarian side—excluded are liberal entitlements like health care and so forth):

1. Intrinsic rights. There are many variations of this, but they all stem from some kind of connection to the phrase of the Founding Fathers about “inalienable rights.” This view holds that a right is a fact of reality—usually an aspect of a human being in the form of a need—and that this is what makes it a right and what makes it inalienable. Sometimes the word “right” is used and sometimes the word “condition” or something similar is used. They all lead to the same place, though—if a right did not exist in reality, it would be impossible to detect it and identify it.

2. Rights as abstractions—moral principles taken to a social level—that derive from man’s nature as a full human being. This is the view championed by Robert Bidinotto and one with which I agree.

3. Rights as abstractions—moral principles taken to a social level—but governing values that pertain to adult human beings only. This is the view promoted by Joseph Rowlands—see here. Below is a direct quote from that post:

I just don't think being a part of the species is relevant to the concept of rights. If the principle is formulated in the context of adults, establishing a harmony of interests between them, then the principle is applicable to adults. Spreading it out to all humans, including babies, is an example of using one criteria to formulate the concept (rational men living harmonious), and another criteria to expand it (part of the human species). I don't think it applies.

One of the irksome things I find about Rowlands is that he constantly advertises himself as some kind of Objectivist intellectual who works at spreading Objectivism (he calls it “activism”), yet this view of rights is just about as far from Objectivism as one can get. Objectivism is a philosophy for human beings to live on earth. It is not a philosophy restricted to human beings only when they are adults. I have no qualm about someone holding the "adult only" view of rights, for as much as I disagree with it, but I do have bones to pick when that someone claims this is Objectivism and tries to preach it as such. It ain’t even close.

Rowlands wants to preach Objectivist activism, but just look at that thread. He can't even get his own supporters to agree with him on what individual rights means, and that is just about as core as you can get for social change. So who does he think he will convince to adopt Objectivism as the best alternative? There is a major motion picture coming with Atlas Shrugged and that kind of mess is what newcomers are going to see when they look for more information.

My history of attrition with this guy is partly due to me perceiving these instances of lopsided reasoning and misunderstandings in his writing and calling attention to them. When we had the possibility of direct public communication (I no longer post on RoR and he does not post here), he used to get royally ticked off and has called me many names for bringing these things to light, “dishonest” being one of the less offensive names. I chose not to respond in kind since I was in his house, but I would never let him do that if he posted here. It just wouldn't be tolerated. And more, I would refrain from treating him how he repeatedly treated me. And I would do so on principle. That is my ethics.

But even setting aside my personal issues with this guy, I think it is nothing short of delusional for a person to think he is going to convince humanity in general of an ethical system ("save the world" is how some core people preach it on RoR) that maintains that children do not have any individual rights. Taken to a personal level, a newcomer will think: “This means that my children do not have any individual rights. Sorry. I love my children. Time to find something else. That is boneheaded.”

And it is.

I once mentioned on that forum, way back when I started posting, when it was called SoloHQ, and when I was still a bit naïve about the behavior of (some) Objectivists, that rights are social conventions. Looking back, this episode is almost amusing due to the violent shock of contexts. If only I had known then what I know now. Here was my context back then.

I had recently arrived from Brazil and was still strongly immersed in the vocabulary of public bids, not Objectivist jargon (although I was familiar with it from having studied Objectivism on my own for years). I had worked as a translator in Brazil and I had done about 35,000 pages in 10 years or so. That is approximately 3,500 pages a year. That comes to translating somewhere around 10 pages a day—day after day for 10 years. This is no exaggeration. I did that.

Brazil had just finished privatizing many government-owned companies and was selling them off and opening different fields (like telecommunications) to public competition. This meant public bids for licenses and properties. I translated huge gobs of government bidding documents back then. One word that was used over and over was “convention.” In the bidding sense, this meant a contract or treaty. It did not mean “custom.”

In the discussion I mentioned, my use of that term “social convention” was taken to mean “custom” and I experienced my first taste of people ganging up on me on an Objectivist forum, getting my meaning all wrong (I meant something closer to “social obligation” than “tradition” or “social custom”), insisting on the error and using a lot of macho-sounding rhetoric to “trounce” me. I watched all that in wonder. “How could they do that to their minds?” I kept thinking.

Later there was a rather well-known episode with the example of the starving child in the wilderness, where I tried to examine and discuss what “right to life” meant to and for a baby in today’s world. The hostility unleashed was nothing short of shameful, although, this time I was able to transfer the discussion to a different place (over here to OL), where much civil and intelligent discussion ensued.

In both cases, I noticed and heard from (via email) newcomers to Objectivism. Many simply walked away shaking their heads in sadness and disgust. They thought Objectivism was a nasty business that produced nasty people and they did not want to become one of those nasty souls. Here is just one example of one such person I wrote about back then: The Ayn Rand Love/Hate Myth – Part 3 – The Brotherhood of Hate. I have heard from many people like that (before and since) and it is bothersome to think I am part of something which, by the behavior of its practitioners, drives large numbers of people away after they become familiar with it. (As an aside, I have not had that reaction from newcomers with discussions on OL. I strongly believe that this is due to the civility of OL posters in general, despite some flare-ups, and the focus on discussing Objectivism, often within a context of other thinkers, not preaching it to "save the world.")

So here is my take on what all the shouting is about as regards rights.

1. The first problem is one of meaning. Rand herself used a double meaning when she talked about the “The Divine Right of Kings” in her essay “Man’s Rights” in The Virtue of Selfishness, then turned around and made the following pronouncement in that same essay:

Any alleged "right" of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right.

Granted, Rand used scare quotes in mentioning “The Divine Right of Kings,” but I do not believe that she would deny that there is some kind of cognitive meaning for “right” in that phrase. The word “right” meant something. This means that she used the same word with two different meanings in the same essay.

I see this happen all the time in Objectivist/libertarian discussions. It is noticeable when one poster does it in his writing, but it particularly stands out when one poster uses one meaning and another poster uses another and neither admit that they are talking about different things.

This error becomes especially easy to fall into if the derivation of rights is not agreed upon. For instance, there was an enormous disagreement between Rowlands and Bidinotto in the discussion I mentioned above. The root of that disagreement was in the different views of human nature, from which rights are derived. Rowlands, as mentioned, limited “human nature” to adults when applying ethics (I have always called this the “cost/benefit” approach, since those who hold this view usually concentrate only on the payoff aspect of values), and Bidinotto had a more complete view, as given here in that same discussion:

But when we talk of "babies," "children," and "adults," we are talking about US -- at various ages. That's all. And rights are moral principles that pertain to humans as a species -- not merely to time periods in the lives of humans.

These two people cannot agree on the same concept of rights because their view of human nature is so different. Their ethics sounds deceptively the same in the beginning (such as Objectivism in general) but there exists a crack—a fundamental difference that rips open later. What was not obvious on a more fundamental level of ethics becomes glaringly evident when rights are concerned.

The fact is that the meaning of the word “rights” is one for Rowlands and another for Bidinotto, and even another for the intrinsicists. (Thankfully, Rowlands finally identified that his concern was only with adults, so something essential was placed on the table instead of people constantly talking past each other because they used the same word to stand for different values.)

2. Another problem I usually see ignored with rights in Objectivist/libertarian discussions is volition. Most everybody in Objectivism-land agrees that moral values are intimately involved with volition by definition (ethics is “a code of values to guide man's choices and actions” as given by Rand in “The Objectivist Ethics” in The Virtue of Selfishness). ALL moral principles involve volition and what to do using the faculty of volition. Moral principles are codified values and instructions for what and how one chooses to perform his/her actions. When we take morality to the social level, however, and discuss rights, volition is usually thrown out the window and ignored altogether.

But nothing can alter the logic. If rights are derived from ethics and ethical principles are chosen by definition, then rights have to be chosen by definition. The conditions in reality that provide causes and results for a human being to analyze before acting are not open to choice, but what he does is chosen. Moral principles are abstracted from these cause/effect conditions by choice and they are applied to a person's actions by choice. This means that individual rights are abstracted by choice and applied by choice. Rights are chosen.

3. Now, here comes the monkey-wrench in the works. There is one aspect of rights that I have seen discussed rarely, and even then, it is usually mentioned as an offhand comment. The foundation is the fact that a right does not exist in relation to an earthquake or a lion. Rights only pertain to human beings and how they interact with each other. Thus a right does not involve only a single person. More than one person is needed for a right to become “a code of values to guide choices and actions” (like with ethics). So here is the dirty little secret that is rarely mentioned about rights:

A right is a power an individual holds over other people.

That’s it. There is no such thing as a right without some kind of power over others. For example, in the “Divine Right of Kings,” the King held an incontestable power over others to do as he pleased. “Might makes right” means just that—a person has power over others by brute force, like a gang leader. When a policeman shoots a dangerous bandit in the act of committing a crime, the policeman’s act of violence is done by right. He holds the power over others to maim and kill them—or arrest them—under certain circumstances and he can shoot as many bandits as he can manage under such circumstances. Getting to the Objectivist/libertarian level, as regards an individual, the right to life means the power over others to keep one and all from taking that life.

This view certainly makes the intrinsicist position sound weird. Take “right” and replace it with “power over others” and see how “inalienable powers over others” sounds. It loses its umph.

Objectivists and libertarians should focus on what those powers over others mean, not simply what freedoms a person holds. Freedom is nothing if it is not power over others. It restricts their choices and actions. The real issue is where to anchor all this intellectually.

Locke, for instance, anchored it in Nature, which, to him, was created by God. That was a neat trick for taking God out of “divine” for “Divine Right of Kings,” but then he kept in the part about God bestowing rights on human beings through Nature.

The simple truth is that human beings bestow individual rights on human beings—by choice. Rights should be anchored in man's nature, especially the volition part. Individual rights are only apparently bestowed by force (i.e., by the government) in today’s world because some people (called the Founding Fathers) chose them and set the system up of protecting them by force.

This brings me to babies and abandoned babies in particular. During the “starving baby in the wilderness” discussion, I stated that I would think about the situation of rights. Back then, I thought it wise to retract some of my more inflammatory positions, take some time off from all the hollering and think about matters. Well, I have not thought the issue completely through, but I have arrived at one formulation that I doubt I will ever change from here on out.

A baby by definition does not have the means to survive if he is not cared for by an adult. If we agree that a baby has the right to life, we have to agree that the baby has a right to be cared for until he reaches the age he can care for himself (or herself). Under Objectivism, the government is the organized social body entrusted to protect individual rights. That means that it is entrusted to protect the individual rights of an abandoned baby falling within its jurisdiction. This can only mean that if no adult can be found to ensure the right to life of the baby, the government must become the ward. I am completely at peace intellectually with this as being the 100% proper moral system and code.

How this is to be funded and what to do in emergencies (or what to do about matters like depraved indifference) are still under consideration in my thinking.

There is one other issue where I have become intellectually serene, also. The traditional manner of discussing individual rights makes a dichotomy: either a person is a slave or he is free. Under my present view (arrived at through a lot of mulling), when another person holds an individual right, my own freedom of action is limited by a power he holds over me, and this power is enforced by the government. At a very basic level (as an example), I cannot kill him at whim, not only because this would infringe his right to life, but also because he has the power to prevent me from doing so and punishing me through his agent (the government) if I do it anyway.

This does not make me a slave, but it does set limits on what I can and cannot do. Within this standard, I reject an either/or dichotomy with respect to producers and the helpless. The rights of one do not annul the rights of the other when reason is used to identify the conditions and establish the rules. Force is the main consideration, but not the only one. The nature of the person at that stage in life is also on the table (like with a baby). There are others, like volition, that are involved. And there are even others.

Both groups (producers and the helpless) have rights and they both have restrictions. If this puts me at variance with orthodox Objectivism, so be it. I still find my grounding in core Objectivist principles and definitions and make no apology for any of it.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

What power over others does my right to free speech grant or produce? I have the right to speak freely on any issue. But this does not give me the power to compel other's to listen or to agree or to act on what I say.

Can you clarify the matter?

Thanks.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

What power over others does my right to free speech grant or produce? I have the right to speak freely on any issue. But this does not give me the power to compel other's to listen or to agree or to act on what I say.

Can you clarify the matter?

Thanks.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Bob,

Sure. You have the power to prohibit anyone who wishes to interfere with your freedom of speech. You can back that up with government guns, if need be.

Why do you think power is only compelling another to listen or agree? You need to abstract a little wider for this concept.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

"A right is a power an individual holds over other people" is a true enough statement, but it tells us nothing about the nature of the power. It implies physical power, but surely a moral power is also in the concept. This is just one facet of the rights' diamond.

The human world, echoing the world at large, consists of power arrangements, juxtapositions and conflicts. Government rightly consituted is the necessary third party in human relationships so those relationships can be peaceful and productive instead of tribal and destructive.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Brant,

We are so much on the same page it is not funny.

Thank you for the comments.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

Sure. You have the power to prohibit anyone who wishes to interfere with your freedom of speech. You can back that up with government guns, if need be.

Why do you think power is only compelling another to listen or agree? You need to abstract a little wider for this concept.

Michael

Let me try again. How does MY right to free speech give me power over anyone else. In the exercise of this right, I exert no force whatsoever on anyone else. MY speaking (or writing) freely does not prevent anyone else from doing the same. I gain no ascendancy, domination or power over anyone else by speaking (or writing) freely.

Ba'al Chatzaf.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Bob,

If the dude wants to interfere with you, you certainly do have ascendancy over his actions. This ain't rocket science. If you don't get it this time, I leave you to your musings.

Michael

[merjet]

So here is my take on what all the shouting is about as regards rights.

1. The first problem is one of meaning. Rand herself used a double meaning when she talked about the “The Divine Right of Kings” in her essay “Man’s Rights” in The Virtue of Selfishness, then turned around and made the following pronouncement in that same essay:

Any alleged "right" of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right.

In said essay Rand used another meaning of "right" that you did not mention:

Rights are conditions of existence required by man's nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product of his work. If life on earth is his purpose, he has a right to live as a rational being: nature forbids him the irrational.

Except maybe the last one, her uses of "right" here are not rights in the political sense, but rather the basis of rights in the political sense. They are inherent in man's nature. I believe it is rights in this sense that the "intrinsic" side (as you called it) of the debate on RoR tried to defend, sometimes not very well. I don't think anyone on that side meant "intrinsic" in the pejorative sense used by Rand, Bidinotto, or Rowlands. Also, what is it that one abstracts from to get to the Bidinotto or Rowlands position if not these inherent (or natural) rights?

Another problem I usually see ignored with rights in Objectivist/libertarian discussions is volition. Most everybody in Objectivism-land agrees that moral values are intimately involved with volition by definition (ethics is “a code of values to guide man's choices and actions” as given by Rand in “The Objectivist Ethics” in The Virtue of Selfishness). ALL moral principles involve volition and what to do using the faculty of volition. Moral principles are codified values and instructions for what and how one chooses to perform his/her actions. When we take morality to the social level, however, and discuss rights, volition is usually thrown out the window and ignored altogether.

I would not describe it as "thrown out" or "ignored", but taken for granted. It's rarely mentioned because it's taken for granted.

So here is the dirty little secret that is rarely mentioned about rights:

A right is a power an individual holds over other people.

That’s it. There is no such thing as a right without some kind of power over others. ...

This view certainly makes the intrinsicist position sound weird. Take “right” and replace it with “power over others” and see how “inalienable powers over others” sounds. It loses its umph.

That strikes me as odd (especially so when attributing rights to an infant or incompetent). A power usually means an ability to do something. Rights are far more about restraining from doing something, in particular initiating force or fraud against other persons.

A baby by definition does not have the means to survive if he is not cared for by an adult. If we agree that a baby has the right to life, we have to agree that the baby has a right to be cared for until he reaches the age he can care for himself (or herself). Under Objectivism, the government is the organized social body entrusted to protect individual rights. That means that it is entrusted to protect the individual rights of an abandoned baby falling within its jurisdiction. This can only mean that if no adult can be found to ensure the right to life of the baby, the government must become the ward. I am completely at peace intellectually with this as being the 100% proper moral system and code.

Non sequitur. If anyone has the responsibility, it is the parents. If they abdicate it, there are nearly always others willing to assume it. And they do so voluntarily, without government force.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Merlin,

What gets abstracted are basically causes and effects. If you do this, that will result. Add a desire to continue existing ("qua man"). A right is neither a cause or an effect or a desire. It is a chosen guide, a defined restriction on action and freedom of action attributed by men to men by choice.

I disagree that volition is not mentioned because it is taken for granted. I usually see proponents of natural rights try to claim that volition is not involved with the word "inalienable." One does not choose what is inalienable. If a person cannot choose to acquire it or transfer it, there is no volition at all involved.

For you to understand the "power" idea, think property and trespass. I own a house with a yard. You are free to come and go as you please except on my yard. You are not free to come and go there. I hold power over your ability to come and go as you please with respect to my yard.

It sounds off-key to you probably because it is never stated that way.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

Bob,

If the dude wants to interfere with you, you certainly do have ascendancy over his actions. This ain't rocket science. If you don't get it this time, I leave you to your musings.

Michael

Wrong. I have a response to his actions, not a ruling power. And the bone of contention is -his- interference of me, which is to say an assertion of power on -his- part over me. Merely speaking (or writing) freely, AS SUCH, gives me no power, domination or might over anyone else.

The aspect of -defense- of a right, is not in itself power over another. If no one interfered with anyone else, there would be no exercise of counter-force to defend the right. So having the right in and of itself confers no power over anyone else.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[James Heaps-Nelson]

Michael,

I don't know why you have issues with Joe Rowlands. He seems like a really good guy to me. I see children as having rights in view of their potential as rational beings. Obviously, they gain more rights as they grow older and become independent. Depending on family circumstances, some children are granted more rights earlier by their parents.

Jim

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Jim,

Right-e-oh sweetheart. He's just a swell fella.

Don't worry about it.

Michael

[James Heaps-Nelson]

James,

Right-e-oh sweetheart. He's just a swell fella.

Don't worry about it.

Michael

I only bring this up because it's natural for people who argue about ideas to rub each other the wrong way. Once this happens people have a choice. They can form hard barriers where they have decided on people once and for all or they can remain open to new evidence and new overtures. I think there are some topics that you vehemently disagree with Rowlands on. Why push it if there is not a significant value at stake?

Jim

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

James,

Significant value to whom?

Suggestion once again: don't worry about it.

Michael

[James Heaps-Nelson]

James,

Significant value to whom?

Suggestion once again: don't worry about it.

Michael

Suggestion taken. I certainly don't have a stake in it not knowing either of you well.

Jim

[merjet]

For you to understand the "power" idea, think property and trespass. I own a house with a yard. You are free to come and go as you please except on my yard. You are not free to come and go there. I hold power over your ability to come and go as you please with respect to my yard.

It sounds off-key to you probably because it is never stated that way.

Based on the examples of this power you have given, it seems largely equivalent to a right to retaliate. There is more to rights than that. Again, it doesn't sound very essential when attributing rights to an infant or incompetent.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Merlin,

An infant or incompetent have a right to life. Without that right, there are no others. That is pretty basic, isn't it?

Michael

[tjohnson]

I don't see how you can have a meaningful discussion about rights without including responsibilities - it seems to me the two go hand in hand.

[James Heaps-Nelson]

Merlin,

An infant or incompetent have a right to life. Without that right, there are no others. That is pretty basic, isn't it?

Michael

Michael,

It's true that they have that right. The question is: what is the source of that right and who incurs the ensuing obligation. In the case of babies, either the parents or guardian have the obligation or the child is a ward of the state. The same is true for the truly incompetent.

The source of the right is a being's potential to become a rational actor. In the case of the incompetent, it is the recognition of similarity to ourselves even in the face of a failed capacity.

Jim

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Jim,

Did you read my essay correctly? I stated precisely what you just did about children being ward of the government if no proper adults are available (I used my own words). I did not deal with the mentally incompetent, but I agree to having care provided by the government as a last resort to ensure their right to life.

Michael

[James Heaps-Nelson]

Jim,

Did you read my essay correctly? I stated precisely what you just did about children being ward of the government if no proper adults are available (I used my own words). I did not deal with the mentally incompetent, but I agree to having care provided by the government as a last resort to ensure their right to life.

Michael

Michael,

I reread the essay. Yes, you do say that. I've never seen this as a huge problem for Objectivists because the solutions for this already exist. I disagreed with you in the starving baby in the wilderness example, because there is no such thing as a positive obligation on someone who doesn't assume it. \

Jim

[merjet]

An infant or incompetent have a right to life. Without that right, there are no others. That is pretty basic, isn't it?

Please tell us how any newborn or incompetent in my presence exercises this power over me that you allege. That is pretty basic, isn't it?

I'm not questioning rights of newborns or incompetents, just your formulation or what a right is:

A right is a power an individual holds over other people.

That’s it. There is no such thing as a right without some kind of power over others.

Is this intended as a definition or what?

[Brant Gaede]

An infant or incompetent have a right to life. Without that right, there are no others. That is pretty basic, isn't it?

Please tell us how any newborn or incompetent in my presence exercises this power over me that you allege. That is pretty basic, isn't it?

I'm not questioning rights of newborns or incompetents, just your formulation or what a right is:

A right is a power an individual holds over other people.

That’s it. There is no such thing as a right without some kind of power over others.

Is this intended as a definition or what?

The power can be exercised by proxy, by parent or guardian, stranger or police officer, sanctioned by law, in the infant's name.

It's not a definition. If it were it would be begging the question. It's also much too broad. It's just an oddball way of representing an aspect of rights theory. But the "power over others" is simply analogous to the fence around my property that keeps others out. The formulation is distasteful because a dictator has "power over others."

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

Jim,

Did you read my essay correctly? I stated precisely what you just did about children being ward of the government if no proper adults are available (I used my own words). I did not deal with the mentally incompetent, but I agree to having care provided by the government as a last resort to ensure their right to life.

Michael

Michael,

I reread the essay. Yes, you do say that. I've never seen this as a huge problem for Objectivists because the solutions for this already exist. I disagreed with you in the starving baby in the wilderness example, because there is no such thing as a positive obligation on someone who doesn't assume it. \

Jim

We all know that "the starving baby in the wilderness" will be taken in and raised by wolves so we can pass it by in good conscience.

--Brant

[Bidinotto]

Since I've been quoted here, I thought I might draw from an entry I just posted over on the RoR site. (Incidentally, Joe Rowlands and I found that we reached a point of disagreement; but he was never incivil to me about it, and our debate ended quite amicably and respectfully, even though nobody cried "Uncle!" I think he has a first-rate mind.)

The following pertains to the question of whether rights have a metaphysical or an epistemological status -- that is: whether "rights" exist in nature (as an aspect of human nature -- the traditional "natural rights" or intrinsicist view of rights) -- or whether rights are a human concept: an abstract identification of a moral principle that ought to be applied in social contexts (which is the view of rights that I hold).

Let's first try to settle exactly what Rand's view of rights was. To do that, please follow her own chain of definitions, which are available in The Ayn Rand Lexicon. Here is the first chain of three interrelated definitions (I've underlined the key transitional words):

"A 'right' is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context."

"A principle is 'a fundamental, primary, or general truth, on which other truths depend.'"

"Truth is the product of the recognition (i.e., identification) of the facts of reality."

Now, here's a second chain of Randian definitions:

"A 'right' is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context."

"...[A] principle is an abstraction which subsumes a great number of concretes."

"Abstractions as such do not exist; they are merely man's epistemological method of perceiving that which exists--and that which exists is concrete."

The implications of either of these two chains couldn't be clearer:

For Rand, rights are principles; principles are truths; principles are also abstractions. Truths are human identifications of facts -- but they are not the facts themselves; abstractions are man's epistemological means of perceiving facts -- but they are not the facts themselves.

Or, simplified even further:

Rights = principles = truths = abstractions; but "abstractions as such do not exist." Therefore, the abstractions called rights "as such do not exist" -- at least not in nature, according to Rand.

One way to assimilate this point of view about rights is to visualize or draw three concentric circles. The broadest circle, which includes the other two, is labeled "abstractions"; the second biggest circle is labeled "principles"; within it is the third and smallest circle, labeled "rights." In other words, rights are one kind of principle; and principles are one form of abstractions. Therefore, anything true of abstractions also must be true of both principles and rights; and anything true of principles must also be true of rights.

So, if it is true that the widest category, abstractions, "as such do not exist," then it also must be true that principles, including the principles of rights, "as such do not exist," since they are only kinds of abstractions.

You can do the same thing with the concepts "truths," "principles," and "rights." The broadest concept is "truths," so anything true of that concept must also be true of "principles" and "rights," which are subcategories or kinds of truths.

So, if truths are "product of the recognition (i.e., identification) of the facts of reality," then rights, which are one form of "truths," must also be products of human identifications of facts of reality. Therefore, without those human identifications, rights do not arise and exist. This is just another way of affirming what was said above: "Rights" do not exist metaphysically in nature; they are epistemological constructions -- abstract principles -- based on human identifications of certain facts of reality.

The belief that rights exist metaphysically, rather than only epistemologically, is what Rand referred to as intrinsicism -- the fallacies of which she spelled out in Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (specifically, in her discussion of the Aristotelian concept theory of "moderate realism," which she explicitly rejected).

If you still wish to argue that rights have a metaphysical status in nature, it's time to take up your argument with Rand, not me.