Acceptance that there simply are no transcendent, objective, mind-independent moral values would seem to bear on how one comprehends rights, more particularly moral or non-legal rights.
It does so in a way which I can more clearly illustrate by distinguishing between three separate perspectives:
(i) The perspective yielding a purely descriptive, naturalistic account) This account would focus on issues and questions about the observable, natural world such as whether most people (in a given time and place) happen to feel there are natural or non-legal rights and if so, the possibility of offering plausible explanations for why this is so in causal, empirical terms.
(For example, explanations of such sentiments might be put forward in psychological and sociological terms.) Indeed from the way most people happen to feel it may even be possible to extrapolate further, to say something about values and standards.(ii) The perspective yielding a justificatory or true-essences account. This account would consider whether non-legal rights do really exist (or at least potentially could exist) in some objective sense.
(iii) The perspective yielding an imprecatory, prescriptivist account. This account would pronounce on whether it is preferable to start with a rights-based foundation in building a moral and legal theory for our (morally subjective for the sceptic) world. That is to ask, should we humans create a moral and political system that emphasises rights, and if so why?
These three accounts involve taking up different perspectives, and although each is logically independent of the others, they are frequently intermingled. Perhaps this is because for the moral realist — the person who believes that there are true, real moral values, that mind-independent, authoritative prescriptions exist, because of some purported intuition, some logical and necessary connection, the normal meaning of moral language, the persuasiveness of the secondary qualities analogy, or on some other ground — the three perspectives cannot be separated in the way I have done. For her, higher values do exist (call them objective or natural or, if unrecognised and unenforceable in the positive law, non-legal). By their very nature as higher, real norms, ex hypothesi, we should emphasise these values.3 The only remaining question then, to the infrequent extent that it is raised by the moral objectivist, is why everyone does not recognise these supposedly real values. Consequently, for the moral realist, my perspective (ii) interfuses with perspective (iii) and both combine to eliminate the need for, or at least to alter the focus of, perspective (i).4
For the moral sceptic though, it can be valuable to keep the three viewpoints separate.
a)
More on the topic Acceptance that there simply are no transcendent, objective, mind-independent moral values would seem to bear on how one comprehends rights, more particularly moral or non-legal rights.:
- Moral Scepticism and the Meaning of Moral Statements
- What moral ‘facts’ could lie behind the variety of moral notions — and what is often their bedrock, religious notions — which have manifested themselves in myriad institutions and norms of behaviour and which appear to be relative to time, place and circumstances?
- B. Legal and Moral Validity
- A LEGAL AND MORAL DIVERGENCE
- The foregoing discussion in Part A of moral scepticism and several of its ramifications will form the backdrop of my consideration of aspects of legal theory.
- Do Non-Legal Rights Contingently Emerge?
- Do Non-Legal Rights Really Exist?
- Chapter Nine Non-Legal Rights: Human or Humean?
- b) An enriched, moral reason? A different reality?
- J) Bills of Rights
- PART A: A CASE FOR MORAL SCEPTICIS
- Recommending Rights — Should they be Emphasised?
- Chapter Three Defending the View that Moral Distinctions are Projected, Subjective Sentiments
- The Good Life v. the Moral Life
- In building my case for moral scepticism I begin with reason, by deciding what can be considered its ambit and abilities.
- The European Convention on Human Rights
- The European Court of Human Rights
- From the Treaty of Maastricht to the European Charter of Fundamental Rights
- European Convention on Human Rights