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Chapter Eight: Self-Evident Truths? Imaging a World
Without Rights
Learning Objectives of Chapter Eight
2. Recognize different kinds of rights.
4. Create a schema characterizing a right.
5. Locate the rights at issue in the major ethic questions raised in previous chapters.
SUMMARY: Chapter Eight defines rights and duties and explains their correlative
relationship. The chapter discusses how rights shape our understanding of morality and
how a world without rights would be different. It also applies the concepts of rights and
duties to some of the ethical questions that were introduced in previous chapters.
Self-Evident Truths?
A right is a moral obligation. The inverse is our duty
not violated. That idea is the logical correlativity of rights and duties.
A World Without Rights
A lack of rights does not necessarily mean a lack of morality, because there are still
duties. But without rights, duties are not obligations that are owed to anyone they
are imperfect.
Taxonomy of Rights
Schema for characterizing a right:
A right is a claim to something, against someone that ought to be
recognized as valid.
A Right is a Claim to Something
A right-claim specifies what we have a right to. Two forms:
A Right is a Claim Against Someone
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Rights are Claims that Ought to be Recognized as Valid
According to what should rights be recognized? The answer varies with the kind of
right.
Legal rights: claims whose recognition is called for by the law.
Examples of Rights
Google in China as a Case of Negative Rights to Information
Arguing that Google should not have censored the Web in China is premised on a
Guidant as a Case of Positive Rights to Information
Guidant had a consequentialist justification for not disclosing the defect it can
Fundamental or innate rights are the rights we have by virtue of being human. Rights
also arise from our voluntary actions (ex. making a promise grants a claim of right to
someone else against the promise maker).
Shareholder Primacy as a Case of Property Rights
The idea of rights suggests another possible justification for the shareholder primacy
view: