Senator Rónán Mullen wants an abortion Referendum

[stringjack]

My intuition here (well, obviously not my original intuitions, since it's a counter-intuitive position...my considered intuition?) is that it might actually be correct to say that I'm not violating your rights in the above cases, once the idea of a right is "properly" understood.

I would probably try to avoid the reductio not by redefining exercising of a right, but by appealing to some other duties (duties of care or obligations to avoid causing harm or something like that) which do not correlate with rights.

The problem, as far as I can see it, is that those duties would, by a remarkable coincidence, turn out to have exactly the same shape as (would be extensionally equivalent to) the duties that would exist if the right were actually to remain in place while you're incapacitated. (Moreover, why would we think that those duties would vanish once you woke up? Rights would seem to become almost entirely redundant on this account, since non-rights-based duties would proliferate so.)

[zavi13]

The economy's in bits, the future of the EU is in doubt and war threatens the Mid East (again!) so this paragon of RC piety wants another fecking abortion referendum, GOB$HITE!

[Mercurial]

That's true, but a slightly different case. This particular example just targets the thought that we can't permissibly restrict the liberty of one innocent person in significant (but not enormous) ways for the purposes of protecting an innocent third party. (A more straightforward example takes it that the patient is prone to violent uncontrollable rages and poses a threat to innocent third parties, but the virus example scales more easily, I think.)

It has to be true, (to avoid the *most* implausible of implausible conclusions at least) that we can quarantine the disease-carrier.

What seems to be doing the work above is the balance of the harm imposed on the quarantined person weighed against the benefit to the innocent third party.

Would that sort of approach match up with our intuitions if we tried a couple of different scenarios where the scales were tipped one way and the other? It also seems unapologetically utilitarian (not that I would necessarily have a problem with that).

Suppose I need to borrow your car for an hour to drive my sick aunt to a hospital. Suppose, alternatively, that I need to take your entire life savings to pay for a (very, very expensive) taxi that will take us to a hospital. The level of the burden imposed on you seems relevant. (If you think the temporary/permanent distinction applies differently in the kidney case, my suspicion would be that it's the bodily integrity element that's doing the real work in that example, and so the case doesn't test the temporary/permanent distinction.)

So, the temporary/permanent distinction is significant to the extent that it related to the severity of the burden imposed? That seems right.

[Luachara]

Not only is it now three human lives, but it magically and retrospectively become three human lives from the time of fertilization.

And there are people here who argue their view that each individual human life begins at conception is not based on theology. Imagine!

I have to reject the case for life begining at fertilization.

Would the single soul divide into three souls as well Ronan ?

[Hitch 22]

Imagine the hysterical debates we would witness:

Ivana Bacik: You want to chain teenage girls in the basement and force them to give birth like breeding sows!

Ronan Mullen: You have some cheek! Tell this Ivana - if a new born child was here on the table would you smash it's head to pieces with a sledgehammer or not??? Yes or No????!!!!

[Mercurial]

The problem, as far as I can see it, is that those duties would, by a remarkable coincidence, turn out to have exactly the same shape as (would be extensionally equivalent to) the duties that would exist if the right were actually to remain in place while you're incapacitated. (Moreover, why would we think that those duties would vanish once you woke up? Rights would seem to become almost entirely redundant on this account, since non-rights-based duties would proliferate so.)

I take it that the original problem is that we can't have a scenario where we're forced to conclude that it's permissible to kill Old Uncle Bob for the inheritance once he nods off after dinner.

So, non-rights based duties fill that gap, and your worry seems to be that they fill up everything else too and push rights out of the picture entirely.

I think the work that rights-talk can do, that duties can't, is to offer a descriptive account of where the power lies to enforce underlying normative duties. An account of our interests, and these non-rights based duties, provides the fundamentally important "stuff" and then an account of who possesses what rights (and who ought to possess what rights) helps to give us a picture of how the ability to enforce these duties has been distributed and (in conjunction with our understanding of the content of the duties) how it ought to be distributed.


Or something.

(I really wish Hillel Steiner was still full-time)

[Radix]

I don't think it's coherent to say that someone has a right to something if they cannot exercise that right.

Well just supposing you were in an indefinite coma in hospital tonight, do you not have a right to your breakfast (albeit intravenously), in the morning?

And were you a wealthy man who had signed everything over to me in the event of your death, would you mind terribly if I exercised your comatose right not to have any breakfast rights?

[Mercurial]

Well just supposing you were in an indefinite coma in hospital tonight, do you not have a right to your breakfast (albeit intravenously), in the morning?

There's nothing I can do to waive or enforce the duties of other people to provide me with breakfast in that situation, so (on my preferred conception of rights) it would be true to say that, while I am in the coma, I don't possess the right to be fed.

The important point is that to deny someone has a right to X, on this view, is to say something about that person's capacities. It does not preclude the possibility that other people might retain duties towards me, even when I am in a coma.

From a practical perspective, what we really ought to be paying a lot of attention to in such cases is precisely which people do possess obligations towards me and which people have the power to enforce those obligations. In order to ensure that I am taken care of in my coma, we need to make sure that someone else is feeding me, and that some appropriate authority else has the power to enforce this duty on my behalf.

In other words, saying that I have a right to be fed isn't going to be much use unless we can pick out which people have the power to ensure that I am fed.

[Radix]

There's nothing I can do to waive or enforce the duties of other people to provide me with breakfast in that situation, so (on my preferred conception of rights) it would be true to say that, while I am in the coma, I don't possess the right to be fed.

The important point is that to deny someone has a right to X, on this view, is to say something about that person's capacities. It does not preclude the possibility that other people might retain duties towards me, even when I am in a coma.

From a practical perspective, what we really ought to be paying a lot of attention to in such cases is precisely which people do possess obligations towards me and which people have the power to enforce those obligations. In order to ensure that I am taken care of in my coma, we need to make sure that someone else is feeding me, and that some appropriate authority else has the power to enforce this duty on my behalf.

In other words, saying that I have a right to be fed isn't going to be much use unless we can pick out which people have the power to ensure that I am fed.

The intravenous tube (umbilical cord), that connected you to your Mum and sustained you for nine whole months, didn't have rights, but it delivered rights.

Right?

[LamportsEdge]

Ronan Mullen is one in a long line of people representing rotten constituencies much like the British parliament had its rotten pocket boroughs in the 18th and 19th centuries.

I'm fairly pissed off with these failed priests representing no-one but the catholic church in the Oireachtas. If obvious proxies like him are being paid Senate salaries and expenses to launch catholic ideology like some bishops secretary then the end of the Senate can't come quick enough as far as I am concerned.