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It would seem that there has been some debate in the “blogosphere” recently — which I have not followed — about whether or not animals have rights. (The answer is no.) In this post, I wish to consider a much more important question: do humans have rights?

James Bartholomew, author of the interesting book The Welfare State We’re In, recently argued for the negative in a shocking post entitled “Human rights do not exist”, itself adapted from an article Bartholomew had published in The Daily Express.

Bartholomew’s basic argument is that the concept of rights was developed by political revolutionaries to make people feel justified and virtuous in opposing the existing social order. He cites the French and American Revolutions as prime examples. Here is the crucial section of his post:

So that’s where we got the idea. It was a clever justification for rebelling. You could even call it a kind of ‘spin’. During the French revolution, the rights they were demanding were “Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite!”. But the human rights which people insist exist keep on changing. That, indeed, is one of the reasons for believing that they don’t genuinely exist. Rights under human laws exist, of course. And people create legal rights based on their notions of human rights. But human rights themselves do not exist.

Or, if they do, who created them? Now that our society is secular, nobody claims any more that they were created by God and if they did make such a claim, they would find precious little support for it in the Bible. There the emphasis is on how human beings must be good and worthy of heaven, not how they can demand one thing or another.

Proponents of the idea of human rights think these rights exist independently, without having been invented by us. If so, what is the evidence for their existence? The modern world is meant to be scientific and want proof of things. Where is the proof that human rights exist?

There are a number of dreadful philosophic errors at work here. It is impossible to mount a full defence of rights in the space of a blog post, but I shall try to give the essential aspects. The worst of the errors implicit in Bartholomew’s view is an epistemological one: it relates to the question of what it means for a concept or an idea, such as “rights”, to “exist”. Philosophers call this the “problem of universals”, and it is one of the central issues in philosophy.

Note the alternative Bartholomew offers. Either rights exist “out there” in the world, as a real external thing like a house or an apple, or they do not exist at all: they are simply arbitrary creations designed to serve subjective human purposes, having no factual or scientific validity. This reflects the two main schools of thought in the history of philosophy on the problem of universals.

The first, termed “realism”, is exemplified by Plato of ancient Greece. Plato thought that ideas existed independently of man (hence the term “realism” — this school holds that concepts are real existing things), not in this world but in a higher, supernatural dimension, which he referred to as the world of Forms. We cannot perceive the Forms directly, Plato said, but every human being possesses an eternal soul; this soul existed in the world of Forms before being born into a human body, at which time it forgot all about the Forms. The process of gaining knowledge, for Plato, was a process of remembering what the soul knew before birth, of discovering the concepts which exist in this supernatural dimension. (Religion also falls into this tradition: it is only a small step from Plato to making the highest of the Forms into a being with a personality called God, and turning the world of Forms into heaven.)

The other main school of thought is called “nominalism”, and is exemplified in modern philosophy by thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes. This school holds that concepts do not exist at all independently of man, and that there is no objective basis for them, no facts of reality which justify grouping things together under the heading of a concept. Nominalists point to things like the “borderline case problem” — where does red turn into pink? at what height does a tall man turn into a short one? — as evidence for this view. For a nominalist, any concept or idea is just an arbitrary way of grouping things together; some groupings may be more “convenient” and useful than others, but there is nothing about the things in reality which justify this grouping. Clearly, on the question of rights, this is the way Bartholomew is leaning.

Prior to the twentieth century, the best thinker on the problem of universals was Aristotle: he is essentially a realist, but he holds that concepts do not exist as independent entities in a supernatural dimension but exist in things in this world as common features. For example, there is no supernatural Form called “redness”, existing apart from any red things: there is only the common feature of redness existing in each red thing. If there were no red things, there would be no redness. This view is much better than Plato’s in that it leaves much less room for supernaturalism, but it is vulnerable to many of the same arguments (such as the borderline case argument) and the nominalists have no difficulty in dismissing it.

It was not until the twentieth century that this problem was finally solved, by the Russian-American philosopher Ayn Rand. She identified the split between realism and nominalism as a false alternative. Realism holds that conceptual classifications are facts of reality independent of human consciousness: even for Aristotle, if every mind capable of conceptual-level thought was destroyed, each red thing would still contain a sort of tag saying “this is red”, waiting to be discovered by the next conceptual mind that came along. Nominalism holds that concepts are independent of existence, merely arbitrary creations of the human mind. Rand’s revolutionary view is that concepts are neither independent of existence nor independent of consciousness: instead, they are constructs of human consciousness which act as its tools for understanding reality. They are mental integrations of facts of external reality, as perceived and organised by the human mind.

Concepts, then, are human inventions, constructs of consciousness — but this does not make them subjective. We must classify real particulars on the basis of features which those particulars actually possess in reality, constantly bearing certain guiding principles in mind. (There is a huge amount more to be said about this: even in her book Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, the most comprehensive account of her view of concept formation that she ever wrote, Rand only laid out the basics.)

The conceptual level of consciousness is man’s unique means of survival and is what gives rise to all his distinctive achievements, such as novels, computers, skyscrapers and philosophies. It enables man to live on earth with his unique form and degree of success. Unlike lower forms of consciousness, it does not function automatically: men must exercise choice over its operation. This is what gives rise to the need for philosophy in the first place. When we perceive groups of concretes with similar features, we must decide whether or not to group them together into a concept, and this decision must be made by reference to the sum total of the knowledge we currently possess, including the causal connections between the entities we perceive.

For example, when we perceive a red ball, a red rose, a red road sign, red blood et cetera, and we see the causal significance of colour in our everyday lives (e.g. these red berries are dangerous, red road signs tend to mean danger, red liquid running down my arm means I have cut myself) it is necessary to form a concept like “red” to designate it. By contrast, when I look at my watch, a king’s crown, a planetary orbit, and a ship’s mooring rope tied around a bollard, I see that they all have the common feature of encircling something (my wrist, the king’s head, a star and the bollard), and yet this commonality has no causal importance — it does not lead to any significant common consequences for this group of entities — which is why we do not form a concept such as “encirclist”. (There can be cases where it is optional whether to form a concept or not — see Rand’s book for more details.)

How is any of this relevant to the issue of rights? Rand had strong views on the concept of rights, which she explained in her essay “Man’s Rights” in the collection The Virtue of Selfishness. She defined rights as “moral principle[s] defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context”.

This would include some rights which are widely recognised today, such as the right to life (provided that is taken to mean the right to take those actions necessary to support your life rather than the obligation of others to keep you alive), and its corollaries such as the right to property, the right to free speech, and the right to free association. However, it would exclude others, such as the “right” to taxpayer-funded health care, or the “right” to an education for your child, since these are nothing to do with freedom of action and impose a positive obligation on other people.

For Rand, the purpose of rights is to protect the individual from compulsion by his fellow human beings. (Bartholomew’s view, by contrast, seems to be that rights, if they existed, would be about people “demand[ing] one thing or another” from each other, which, unless the demand is “leave me alone”, is not legitimate.)

One of Rand’s crucial identifications is that concepts are hierarchical, in the sense that there is a certain necessary order to their development. For example, before one can master calculus, one must understand algebra, and before that one must learn arithmetic. The concept of rights also has a place in a hierarchy: it cannot be considered or understood without more basic knowledge. The main prerequisite for an understanding of rights is an understanding of ethics: what is the standard of value by which a man’s actions should be judged? Rand was an advocate of what she called rational egoism, holding that a man should act in his own long-term rational self-interest, and that his proper standard of value is his own human life. (She argued for this, in essence, by examining the hierarchy into which the concept of “value” fits — see her essay “The Objectivist Ethics”.)

It follows that in politics, the principle of human social interactions should be a life-serving one: one which, if followed by each individual under normal human circumstances, would serve each individual’s interests. The primary social requirement of human life is freedom: the freedom to think about how best to serve one’s own interests, and the freedom to act on one’s conclusions, to the extent that others’ equal rights are not violated. Rand argued for this at length, from observation: I refer you to her essays for more details.

Notice how this answers Bartholomew’s criticisms of rights. Because Rand’s views hold man’s life as the standard of value, and the extent to which a principle will serve man’s life is a matter open to scientific and rational inquiry, there is nothing arbitrary, subjective or unscientific about Rand’s ethics, or her politics. Her every prescription is derived from observation of the world, and can be evaluated by observation of the world. Her ethics and politics, therefore, are no less scientific than physics. (Her view that man’s life is the standard is itself objectively and scientifically derived, by inference from perceptual fact.)

Thus, when Bartholomew says that human disagreement about rights means that rights don’t really exist, an Objectivist (Rand called her philosophy Objectivism) would react in the same way as a physicist would if you told her that the fact that people disagree about the fundamental laws of physics means that there are no such laws. Disagreement about a fact does not change the fact. If two men fall off a tall building, the fact that they disagree about the law of gravity does not change the fact that they will both shortly hit the ground and die. So it is with rights: the fact that people disagree about rights does not change the fact that some principles put forward as rights would legitimately serve man’s life, and others would not.

Who created rights? Bartholomew is quite correct to say that the Bible provides no foundation whatsoever for rights: if you arbitrarily claim, as the Bible does, that obedience to and love of God is man’s highest end, there are no grounds for saying that political principles must serve human life here on earth as determined by our best scientific inquiry. All one can say is “My God says you must behave like this, a claim of which I have no rational evidence and which I expect you to accept on faith. Obedience may or may not serve your life and happiness here and now: it will get you to heaven, but I have no proof of that either.” Politically, this cannot lead (and historically never has led) to anything except religious tyranny.

The truth is that man created rights. Rights are creations of human consciousness. But that does not make them arbitrary or subjective. Rights were created for a particular purpose: to serve human life. They can be objectively, scientifically assessed and proved on that basis.

“Proponents of the idea of human rights think these rights exist independently, without having been invented by us,” says Bartholomew. You can now see that he is quite wrong. Rights, in the last analysis, are facts about the external world, as perceived and organised into principles of social interaction by human consciousness. They are meaningless outside their proper context and without the necessary antecedent knowledge. Without human consciousness, there would be no rights: in that sense, rights are an invention. But they are not an arbitrary one: without them, a fully life-serving human society is impossible.

“Where is the proof that human rights exist?” he asks. My answer: compare the United States with North Korea, Britain with Zimbabwe, Canada with Cuba. While no country today is a perfect exemplar of respect for true rights, there are mountains of evidence to demonstrate that the extent to which a country is pro-rights is the extent to which it is pro-life (in the true, rather than the anti-abortion, sense of the term). Rights mean freedom, and freedom means the ability to think, to create values, to trade peacefully with others, and (barring accidents) to live successfully on earth. There is as much proof for the validity of rights as there is for the fact that the earth revolves around the Sun.

Bartholomew is not responsible for the majority of the philosophic errors in his essay: they are omnipresent in the history of philosophy, and it took an epochal genius like Ayn Rand (whom Bartholomew has probably never read), building on another epochal genius, Aristotle, to solve the problem. But later in his post, he veers off into the absurd. Quoting from him again:

If human rights had an independent and true existence, they would have been around at all times, in all countries. Yet somehow, we are to assume, the vast majority of civilisations that have ever existed never noticed them. It is part of the vanity of modern times to be quite comfortable with the idea that we are much cleverer and more perceptive than, say, Socrates or Confucius.

Newton’s laws of motion were not discovered until the Renaissance; Newton’s achievement was one of monumental genius. Obviously, the laws were in operation all along, even when not yet discovered, but the human understanding of them which Newton made possible facilitated great advances in engineering and other fields which enhanced man’s standard of living enormously. It is a simple fact that mankind’s knowledge is greater today than it was in the time of Socrates or Confucius (which is not the same as saying we have a more moral society today, or that there were not great thinkers among the ancients).

Man staggered on through centuries of brutality and stagnation before the discovery of rights, but the laws of his nature existed and were fully operational the whole time. It was still a fact that freedom is a requirement of human life: it had not been fully identified yet, in terms of moral principles and limitations on state power. It was a great achievement on the part of John Locke and the Founding Fathers to discover the principle of true rights, and thus help to create the most pro-life society in human history, the United States of America. It is ridiculous to invalidate a principle on the basis that it was discovered by human beings at a particular point in time, but that is what Bartholomew’s view seems to amount to.

What Bartholomew appears not to grasp is that moral principles are not lightning bolts from the beyond, stating “thou shalt act thus”, but are fundamentally conditional in nature. To borrow from Ayn Rand: you must eat, if you want to live. You must work, if you want to eat. You must think, if you want to work. You must protect individual rights, if you want a society where human beings can live successfully to their highest potential. These are facts, which, like all other facts, have to be discovered by man (although they require a greater-than-average intellectual ability to identify). The ultimate end is man’s life, and this necessitates a certain type of society. QED.

“Ah yes,” someone might say, “human rights are an intellectual fantasy, but they are a jolly useful one. The idea has done a lot of good, furthering human happiness and bringing down tyrants.”

Is that true? I accept it may be possible that, in some circumstances, the idea might have helped a bit. But there are thousands where it has not helped at all. It is not doing much good in Zimbabwe right now. And there are a great many instances where it has led humans into stupidity or cruelty.

I fail to see how conditions in Zimbabwe, a country whose government is based on the exact opposite of rights — the absolute power of the state — are any kind of reflection on the merits of rights! As for whether “in some circumstances, the idea might have helped a bit”, let us consider the second paragraph of the US Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. (My emphasis)

Yes, it’s fair to say that the concept of rights “might have helped a bit” in creating the most moral, the most pro-life society in human history! Continuing to quote from Bartholomew:

The French Revolution led to a ‘reign of terror’. Thousands who had done no harm to anyone were guillotined. All this was fed by a sense of righteousness that the concept of human rights encouraged.

A sense of righteousness can be justified or unjustified. There is nothing wrong with a legitimate, deserved sense of righteousness, and there is such a thing as human righteousness, contrary to the guilt-ridden peddlers of Original Sin. It is perhaps true that people with an irrational sense of certainty, one not based on the facts, are among the most dangerous human beings. But if all humanity had all sat around in moping non-judgementalism, we would never have risen out of the swamp and the cave.

From the inventors of fire-starting and the wheel to the greatest scientists, philosophers and businessmen of the modern day, the people who see reality for what it is and speak and act accordingly have always been mankind’s greatest benefactors. Without rights, or at least some precursor to them granting them some measure of freedom from compulsion, those people would never have achieved what they did. And without rights, who knows what advances humanity will miss out on in future — and what advances of the past it will lose?

Once again, I hope it is clear that the difference between good and bad philosophy is the difference between life and death. This is what makes it so vital to study the subject and correct its historic errors. If the scientific, fact-based concept of rights is allowed to die, there is nothing but death ahead for any of us.

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