>its legitimacy is recursive (its legit because enough people say it is)

It is recursive down to a group level and not an individual level though, which makes it stronger than other things that are recursive. "The State" can be recursive down to an individual level, anarchy exists for example. Even within pure anarchy though, there is still some sort of implied social contract.

"i would argue it currently holds no legitimacy due to relying purely on force and coercion (i cannot build my own home and farm my own food anywhere on the planets surface ie it is illegal for me to leave the social contract as they apply to every square cm of the globe)"

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This logic is self defeating because if you don't follow a social contract then there is no such thing as ownership of land. There are no laws at all. Your implying that an entire civilization out to destroy itself so people can see what it's like to live without one. The reality is a social contract is a necessary component of a civilization, so no level of enforcement can be coercion so long as you are in that civilization.

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> Laws under these regimes can be compared to an illegal contract. This can include a contract where one party acted under duress, coercion, or fraudulent information. Under our legal system, contracts like these would be voidable,...

Hence, the failure of social contract theory to handle explicit rejection of consent.

Your existence wasn't a crime the action was because straight could and had been charged with sodomy. The law definitely was used to target gay people though and was wrong. No victim, no crime.

The social contract is an after-the-fact justification rather than the basis for society.

Negligence is a little difference as it involves an action first to create the situation in which walking away is immoral. Truly an exception that proves the rule, without prior action and intentions behind those action then any claims of rights violation are probably a form of rights violation themselves.

As in, claiming someone isn't your slave and giving you free food becomes a rights violation because you're fabricating their responsibility with the intent of depriving them of the ability to simply walk away. Something similar happens when states build walls to keep people in. This is why a standard of guilt is necessary in this argument.

And finally why I stand by my right to walk away until you prove this responsibility was voluntarily chosen with informed consent.

The whole notion of “externalities” — recipients of one’s actions that can be safely disregarded and walked away from without consequence, troubles me deeply, and very much puts the “dismal” in “dismal science”. We clearly evolved in a world where externalities abounded, and could be counted on. Is our species capable of handling a world where there aren’t, and cannot be, any externalities? I hope so, but I’m not at all sure.

And how would you stop someone owning private property whilst maintaining the word "libertarian"?

It seems to me the only principle underlying is that of self preservation. People have figured out that social groups prolong life for the individual - as long as they - despite what they must profess - continue to cover their own asses, first. It is the biggest lie around, that half or more aren't willing to put the good of the many ahead of their own interests, but they pretend that they do.

> so man madedness does make an argument against anything?

I'm going to assume that there is a "not" missing between "does" and "make".

And this is the kind of useless statements that only make sense within the vacuum of philosophical discourse.

You know, there are a lot of iffy man made scientific stories about something called "oxidation", but I guess it being man made means that it's equivalent to all other man made stories. Hey, how about we go for a fun little duel of equal man made ideas! I'll grab my gun, and you go grab your pheonix-feather core wand. My bullets can't pierce your Protego Maximus, and I'm sure you can Expelliarmus me before I shoot you in the head.

> No, rights are not physical or materially real; that does not make them “fake” or contrived. Rather, they could be thought of as more or less useful in understanding material processes and relationships, in this case between people.

I agree with this. Imaginary concepts can certainly be useful, and I'd definetely say that rights are one of those, and a good thing for humanity overall. All I object to is the speaking of rights as if they are a discrete and "real" concept that can be discovered.

> Your argument is essentially the premise of Empiricism. But what you and the Empiricists fail to grasp is that everything we comprehend is man-made. Our conception of a physical rock is just as much a psychological construct as a notion of natural rights.

First of all, I understand the underpinnings of this argument. I understand the fact that we can never truly peer behind the veil of our own cognition. But this is just philosophical masturbation, and you do not act by those words even as you say them. Yes, all concepts exist to us only within our own cognition, but that does equate purely imaginary concepts with ones based in what we perceive as "physical reality". If you disagree we can perform a simple experiment: Take your notion of natural rights, and then throw it at my head. Then I'll go find an sensory object that I conceive off as a valid equivalent to my psychological construct of a rock, and I'll throw it at yours. I hypothesize that the effects of these actions will be somewhat different.

Yes, purely imaginary concepts such as "natural rights" can have a much bigger impact on the world than any amount of rock throwing, because we act upon them. I'm not saying they are not a part of physical reality. The brain is real, and what goes on inside one has real consequences. Technically, if we're being strict about it, there is no line distinguishing imagination from "reality". However, imaginary ideas are fundamentally flexible in a way that differs significantly from "reality". You and I can have completely different conceptions of the meaning of the word "rights", and the best we can hope for as a resolution is the agreements and disagreements of ourselves and others. Meanwhile, our conception of rocks might differ significantly, but the rock will have the same structure, mass and velocity, independent of whose head it is thrown at.

> Certainly, our words and arguments are constructed psychologically and socially.

Agreed

> But that doesn’t alter the purpose of the debate. In fact, it justifies it. If our words were perfectly consistent with the nature of reality, there would be no such thing as a debate, since a perfect word would need no elaboration; and if they were completely discordant, then there would also be no utility gained from engaging in debate.

Well, the debate would be significantly different if we were discussing our relative conceptions of rocks. For one, we could put forth hypotheses about rocks and come together to perform experiments on one. In doing so we could agree whose conception of a "rock" most closely correlates with the common sensory impulses we get from observing rock-related experiments, and get some idea of whose conception most closely matches what we think of as "reality". We have an external "judge" upon which to test our words and conceptions, and we can refine them both as a result. We might start with "rock", but end up with "Foid monzosyenite". Anyone else studying the same rock by the same methods, and given the same tools, time, intellect and rock studying passion would end up with more or less exactly the same name (ok perhaps not the same name, but the same conception).

But we are discussing an inter-imaginary concept, which makes for a very different debate. By debating we can refine our inter-imaginary set of logical precepts, and even agree on a set definition of the word. Let's say that, after a fierce debate, we agree that we both agree on what a right is, and that we have the right to self-determination and life. Tomorrow we meet someone that used the same logic to arrive at his right to determine the lives of others, and that proceeds to bash our heads in with a foid monzosyenite.

Did he not have the right to do this or not? Did he violate our rights by determining to take our lives, when we had just agreed that we had a right to live? But what about what his opinion that he has the right to take our lives? Who has the better definition of the word? I'm sure the debate would have been interesting and useful, as we elaborated on our understanding through rhetorical interaction. I'm also sure that whatever psychological concept and word we would have had for them, rock, foid monzosyenite or lumpy smashy thingy, if we had one we could have hit his rock with our rock and they would have gone "clunk" and perhaps saved our heads to self-determine yet another day.

This turned into a pretty long and stupid argument from my side. My point is that all words and psychological constructs are not created equal, and that this does in fact make a pretty significant difference.

> If they come from our imagination, they have no moral weight

All moral concept comes from our imagination. It is a purely inter-imaginary concept. Are you saying that morality itself has no moral weight, because it does not exist outside of the mind? Morality has consequence in reality because we act upon it, but that does not make it any less imaginary than Harry Potter.

> Your imagination can't make anyone else do anything, like respecting your entitlements.

This is simply wrong, especially when you consider that I said "our imagination" and not "my imagination". I was specifically referring to inter-imaginatory concepts, and in this sense you are replying to a strawman. However, let met offer two rebuttals, one to the straw man argument you are making(1), and another as if you had dealt with my actual argument(2).

1 - I imagine myself entitled to own a pet cat, and I have this pet cat in my posession. You pick up the pet cat that I imagine myself owning, and start to leave. Imagining my entitlements to be disrespected, I act upon those imaginary concepts by yelling "Drop the cat or I will punch you in the face". You, imagining that being punched in the face is something you do not want, proceed to drop the cat.

There, my imagination just made someone else respect my entitlement. Yes, my imagination did not act directly as if by some form of telepathy, but it imagined a set of noises that did pretty much the same thing. The only physically observable phenomenon were a set of vibrations in the air, and yet by medium of those vibrations my imagination found a way to make the other person imagination imagine a set of very unpleasant consequences to their actions, and made them do something else.

Yes, technically it was my voice - a physical thing - that made someone else do something, but the words to say came from my imagination. If you want to say that the fact that any physical action happened at all disqualifies this argument, I'd liken that a bit to saying that the triceps muscle cannot affect anything because it is in fact my hand that hits you when I punch. Yet, I can concede the fact that this is a semi-valid rebuttal, and to that I'd like to remind you of the fact that it is a rebuttal to a strawman argument that I never made in the first place.

2 - I imagine myself entitled to own a pet cat, and I do have this pet cat in my posession. You also imagine me entitled to own the cat that is currently in my possesion. Both of our imaginations share an acceptance to numerous imaginary concepts, such as ownership, entitlements and so on. In addition, we both imagine that punching someone in the face is an acceptable and likely response to trying to steal someones pet cat. Since we both imagine myself as the owner of the cat in currently in front of us, you imagine that you will be punched in the face if you take it, and so you do not do this.

In this scenario "our" imagination, the imaginary concepts that we both share or our inter-imagination, guided both our actions. You might have wanted to have the cat, but you accepted the inter-imaginary concept of "pet owner" and the consequences of violating certain entitlements that come with that role. Incidentally the cat, a third part in this scenario, almost certainly would not accept being "owned" by anybody, had it understood what this meant. It did not share our inter-imaginary reality, and would have happily gone with anyone that would have fed and petted it.

The final section doesn’t say much except that the state doesn’t create rights and the US founding fathers considered rights. Leaving aside that the Bill of Rights was literally and amendment to the Constitution and that several key rights were left out, this doesn’t really answer the question at all, it just asserts that some other people considered the question.

Its still all just make believe.

We assume and think and take for granted, there is no universal law that says this or that when it comes to existence.

poorly.

rights and morals are determined by popularity and force (pretty much all of history stands as evidence, you necessarily claim morals and rights are objective yet have not proven it at all)

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It's important to examine ideas on their own merit and within a vacuum. But it's also important to acknowledge that we carry our own biases and perspectives into our examination of these ideas and to consider why these ideas and thinkers are popular enough that we're talking about them now. Also if we're going to use these ideas as a basis to comment on public policy we need to examine them within the context under which they're being applied. If we want to place Rothbard's ideas within the context they were written we need to consider that on this topic he's writing against a backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement and that while his ideas are often used by Libertarians as a defense of individual rights Rothbard's conception of individual rights was influenced by who he considered worthy. I am not necessarily criticizing OP for referencing Rothbard, who was a prolific and influential writer, but at the same time in the context of amateur discussions of philosophy on this subreddit I don't think it's necessarily out of line to point out the nature of the non-academic organizations who have made his papers available online.

They are constructed in the sense that they derive from the hypothetical social contract, where free people accept certain reasonable non-rejectable principles (as described here). All of ethics is constructed in this metaphysical sense.

Yet rights exist in that we have certain rights that can be violated, as in reference to the social contract. The piece discusses this in the last section.

this part (italic quote below) (from the first link) did not seem consistent (but I might be splitting hairs) - the second element of it does not seem to follow from the first part. it is too much of a physical to metaphysical jump so the logic doesn't translate well. I don't think it makes sense to suggest that a lack of sensation of free will means that we do not indeed have it, and that we cannot be held responsible. Many people often feel/think that they have less choice or no choice when there is often always a choice - the perception doesn't always correspond with the reality. The definition of agency freedom probably needs to be less constricted. I would suggest rewriting it, considering the logic of the sentence - i.e. it doesn't ring as valid / the logic seems off; you didn't mean it ironically correct? I think it stems from the definition - the meaning of the word 'agency' transcends a persons feeling/sensation. I believe agency has more to do with capacity to act and responsibility for such action - the whole ought implies can discussion in ethics.

"For example, we say that a chair exists because we perceive a chair to exist. We don’t call a chair “something that causes the perception of a chair, but which objectively we cannot call a chair since its existence as such is subject to our perceptions of it.” Instead, we call it a chair.

The same goes for free will. If we do not have the sensation of free will, then we don’t have free will and, therefore, can’t be held responsible."

I think the whole dynamic occurs on a slightly more complex level than this link describes. or maybe I just come at it from a different interpretive priority - I do think we are sort of on the same page in a variety of ways. But, the factors that contribute to behavior are subconscious and conscious so I don't see freedom as the ideal term to use - i see freedom as an overused concept in philosophy, particularly American philosophy. I am unsure how to accurately describe the distinction between the linguistic functions of the terms other than to say that I prefer the term sovereignty as an existentially derived primary right rather than freedom as some sense, quality, or capacity that someone possesses. I am more interested in the primordial existential state of being and how this translates to higher-order ontological principles as axiomatic to normative and political discourse - i.e. how we arrive at the higher-order principle and then see how this relates to our right to self determination and ethics/morality. I did appreciate how the phrase higher-order principles was used, but without a stated basis for this/these principles how can it be objective? The project of objectivity in morality and ethics seems like a faulty way of thinking to me - I ontologically categorize ethics and morality as subjective not objective. I think many people want to base ethics and morality on objectivity because of the concrete priority humans have. I see this as more of a will to power type approach, rather than seeking the necessary relational approach implied by the metaphysical category of being.

it did occur to me that you could be using the term objective in the sense of not being biased - i was using it here to refer to the correspondence our framing has with objective, concrete tendency.

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In the second link I wasn't sure I agreed in part because of definitions and tracking meaning and interpretive priority, but I thought it might be good to suggest that It might bare more fruit to reference and predicate the free will/determinism debate as more spectral rather than as dichotomy. For example, we do have free will in certain ways, but we also have limits to this, which might be considered deterministic. if you think about the it from subconscious to conscious there isn't really a hard line - sometimes we are explicitly aware and other times we are on autopilot - it isn't an either/or proposition. Free will and determinism occur simultaneously at different thresholds of conscious experience.

I’ll categorically reject that notion. We recognized rights before the city-State emerged.

I agree with what you’re saying. Most people who make arguments about natural rights have not clearly defined what a right even is. Most take it to mean this right which is conferred to you by the laws of nature, or of some spiritual or natural moral obligation that is correct just because the morality of the universe deems it so. It’s a self referencing argument that has no basis. It’s true because it is.

The only logically consistent way you can define a right is that which is based on what you personally value. A personal value is an axiom because it is a self evident phenomenon, and natural rights are corollaries that stem from that axiom. As a social species, we value certain things such as cooperation, compassion, and mutually beneficial behaviors because that is what we evolved to do. This is why people generally agree on what a right should be but aren’t able to describe a logically consistent basis for why they feel that way. They are afraid to admit their values have no logical basis outside of biology.

Many other species of animals don’t have the same values as us. Many female spiders will cannibalize their mates after breeding. Hyenas will brutally murder their prey. Lions will murder the offspring of their competitors. We would say that no human has the right to act this way, but why do we then apply a different standard to animals? They certainly don’t feel guilt about their ways. It is because their values are different from ours. This also why some will disagree on whether or not a particular “right” should even exist in the first place. Should I have a right to own a gun? What about a tank? What about a nuclear bomb? At what point does owning an increasingly deadly weapon no longer become a right? The answer depends entirely on your values and what you deem appropriate. So it is with rights themselves.

They are not nature's rights I guess.

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I’m not taking about the right to be happy.

The problem is that those of wealthier upbringing get to think about survival less than poor people. It gives an advantage.

It’s actually about trying to find ways to reward people with high mental fortitude, but their poverty keeps them from really gaining the momentum to intellectualize their minds.

The goal is to see the wealthy and weak willed displaced from power

Of course intellectualization comes after survival. That’s my point!

“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”- Stephen Jay Gould