RIGHTS NOTES
Rights Theses
1. Rights entail duties. No duty, no right. (right/duty correlativity)
2. Duties entail (effective) enforcement. No enforcement, no duty. (from Bentham)
3. Rights entail (effective) enforcement. No enforcement, no right. (from 1. and 2.)
4. In a state of nature, there is no (effective) enforcement.
5. There are no natural rights. This is the Bentham/Crawford view. (from 3. and 4.)
6. There are no natural duties. (from 2. and 4.)
2a. Duties entail privileges to enforce.
2b. Duties do not entail (effective) enforcement. (denial of 2)
4a. In a state of nature, there are privileges to (no duties not to) enforce duties. (This is consistent with the nonexistence–even the impossibility of–natural duties. It follows from what Thomson calls the weakness of privileges, i.e., the fact that a privilege is simply the absence of a duty.)
6a. Natural duties are possible, despite nonenforcement. (from 2a and 4a)
5a. Natural rights are possible, despite nonenforcement. (from 1 and 6a)
7. Moral properties and relations pertain to individuals and individuals only. No moral judgment is meaningful unless it is equivalent to a proposition about individuals.
8 Duty is a relation.
9. The only duties that exist hold between individuals or an individual and himself or herself. (from 7. and 8.)
10. If p entails q, and q is (nonvacuously) an n-ary relation, then p is an n-ary relation.
11. Rights are relations. (from 8. and 10.)
12. The only rights that exist are rights that individuals hold against individuals, possibly against themselves. If there is no individual against whom a putative right is held, there is no right. (from 7. and 11.)
13. “x ought to have a right” does not entail that x has a right. (from 5.)
14. “It would be wrong to deny x a right” does not entail that x has a right. (from 5.)
15. “It would be right for x to have a right” does not entail that x has a right. (from 5.)
16. “x has a privilege against y that x” does not entail that x has a claim right against y that x. Privileges don’t entail claims. (Hohfeld)
17. “x has no duty against y that not- x” does not entail that x has a claim right against y that x. (16. and privilege/no duty correlativity)
18. “x has a claim right against all y that x be allowed to do z” does not entail that x has a privilege to do z. Claims do not entail privileges. (Thomson’s thesis)
19. “x has a claim right against all y that x be allowed to do z” does not entail that x has no duty not do do z (from 16 and privilege/no duty correlativity)
20. Possibly, x has a duty not to do z and a claim right against all y that x be allowed to do z. There may be a right to do wrong. (from 17)
21. Women in macho cultures have a right to equal treatment, whether or not that right is protected by or even consistent with prevailing local law. (If this is true, then there is at least one natural right, and natural rights are both possible and actual).
22. Women had no right to vote, although they ought to have had, before they were legally enfranchised.
23. Women had a right to the establishment of procedures to enfranchise them, before they were legally enfranchised.