Two major threads in Western thought give rise to popular, yet erroneous views of the nature of rights. I examine the nature of these notions of rights in light of their epistemological and ethical foundations. I demonstrate, with a simple, real-world example, a situation in which these approaches are inadequate. I then turn to a third position in the Western tradition that nicely fixes the problems encountered by the others. Finally, I demonstrate how this position handles the real-world situation on which the other approaches fail.

Each of the positions discussed can be distinguished from the others by its answers to these three questions: “What are abstractions?” (The Problem of Universals), “What are values? ”, and finally, “What are rights?” I consider each in turn.

We begin with the question concerning the nature of abstractions. Nominalism is the doctrine that abstractions (universals) are arbitrary mental constructs, that words are labels that we attach to arbitrary groupings of entities. “The word nominalism comes from the Latin word for ‘name’ and denotes the doctrine that there is no objective meaning to the words we use — words and concepts don’t pick out any actual objects or universal aspects of reality, they are simply conventional symbols or names that we happen to use for our own convenience.” (Saint-Andre) Nominalism correctly identifies the fact that universals are formed in the mind, but fail to strongly connect universals to the world around us. This has lead many nominalists (such as David Hume) to reject knowledge of the world beyond raw sense data.

Realism holds that universals exist in the external world. Moderate realism, advocated by Aristotle and others, holds that they exist in the objects that they describe. Extreme realism holds that universals exist apart from the objects that they describe. Important philosophers who argued for extreme realism include Plato and Immanuel Kant. The key problem of realism is the difficulty to reconcile human knowledge with the external nature of universals. Have you ever seen FLOWER¹?

The major types of ethical positions founded upon realism and nominalism are deontology and utilitarianism. These positions differ most prominently on their basis for the justification of actions. I focus on ethical justification for this reason and also because rights are primarily used to justify actions (and prohibitions thereof).

The ethical systems of most major philosophies and religions can be described as deontological. “A deontological ethical theory is one which considers a type of action as good or bad in itself, without regard to consequences relative to an ultimate end.” (Armstrong) The metric for judging types of actions varies from ethical system to ethical system, but the essential nature of the system remains the same. The Golden Rule, a common rule of many systems of thought across social and temporal bounds, is typically employed as a deontological constraint. “Kantianism² is the prime example of a deontological theory[.]” (Saint-Andre)

Deontological ethical systems commonly depend on a realist epistemology. Deontological constraints are imposed upon you from outside yourself, be they from God or another source, and it is your ethical duty to adhere to these constraints. Similarly, in realism, universals are external to your mind, and you may not be able to understand them at all, yet they are what you have to go on. They are just shadows on the wall of the cave.

Consider the formation of a theory of rights rooted in and justified by a deontological moral code.³ Look no further than traditional conservatism, for it fits this bill very well. “For Burke and classical conservatives, liberty is worthwhile only when it is properly ordered. Individuals should be free from obstacles to pursue their goals, but only when their goals do not threaten the social order; if they do, then their freedom should be restricted.” (Ball and Dagger 98) In this system, it is required that each individual fulfill the duties and obligations imposed on him or her by his or her socio-economic status, and rights do not extend to actions which disturb the social order.

Utilitarian ethical theories root the justification of action in the action’s consequences. The definition of “utility” is one of the major distinguishing characteristics which differentiates utilitarian theories from one another. The most prevalent utilitarian viewpoint is “social utilitarianism.” This is the view that actions should maximize the sum of each individual’s happiness in society. Each individual, actor and other alike, are counted singly. This can lead to the claim that, in different societies and in different periods of time, what is right and what is wrong can substantially vary and makes your decision depend on potential mistakes of others.

Rights in the nominalist/utilitarian tradition are commonly understood to be arbitrary constructs of particular societies at particular times. This viewpoint holds that rights are social constructs, which are constituted by a society for general utility. This is commonly the justification for instituting rights to such things as welfare and health care, which are said to generally leave everything better off. It may be worse on some people than on others, but that is not weighed highly. This is similar to the justification of the persecution of religious groups in mainland China.

Here is a situation which very nicely illustrates the problems with these approaches to rights: Consider a camper, trapped in the forest during an unexpected and violent snowstorm. If he doesn’t find a source of warmth and shelter, he or she will most certainly die. The camper comes upon a cabin, locked and boarded up by its owner for the winter. What does the camper do? Should he or she break into the cabin for the evening, or take his or her chances with mother nature?⁴

There are a variety of answers to this question that can all be reasonably based on the previously described views on epistemology, ethics, and rights theory. To follow the realist/deontological thread to its logical end, however, is to conclude that the camper has a duty to respect the rights of the cabin owner and to hope to find another kind of shelter. Here we see clearly illustrated a conflict between the camper’s right to life and the cabin owner’s right to property within this system. Conversely, if we conclude that it is right for the camper to break into the cabin, we have concluded that the camper should do something that rights theory tells him is wrong. Either way, we end with a contradictory note. Of what use is a contradictory theory in a non-contradictory world?

Let us try applying a nominalist and social-utilitarian rights theory to this situation. The negative effects of the camper dying (grief of close ones, as an example), probably outweigh (in the camper’s view) the negative effects on the owner (again, as seen by the camper). But the owner may very well disagree, and may even go so far as to suggest that, to best affect the general utility, the camper should freeze to death. Since nominalism lacks a method for dealing with such disagreement, and utilitarianism can be used to argue to either side of the argument, the camper is left without a way to effectively make any decision in the matter whatsoever.

Since both the realist/deontological and nominalist/utilitarian notions of rights fail to decently handle situations as described above, then a foundation for rights which does handle such situations should be sought. The Western tradition offers an alternative that does just that: the conceptualist / eudaimonist⁵ tradition.

Conceptualism offers a coherent and straightforward solution to the problem of universals. It rejects the arbitrary nature of nominalist universals while also rejecting the externality of realist universals. Conceptualism is “[t]he doctrine that holds that universals are mental entities or activities that a conscious subject uses to denote concretes with noticed similarities, and that each conscious subject forms its own concepts through a process of abstraction.” (Ray) For example, consider the process of forming the concept ANIMAL: Upon observing several different living things which move in and interact with the world in similar ways, the mind abstracts away the particular differences of the observed living things and notes their similarities with one another, thus creating the concept (universal) ANIMAL. Conceptualism avoids the realist mistake of assuming ANIMAL exists in the world, for the only evidence we have to go on are the animals. Conceptualism also avoids the nominalist mistake of arbitrary grouping. ANIMAL denotes not an arbitrary group of concretes, but an open-ended set of concretes that have discernable similarities and differences. Historically, conceptualism has been advocated by later Aristotelians, John Locke, and more recently by Ayn Rand.

It is important to note that conceptualism regards concepts and their definitions as arising in a context of knowledge. For instance, a child may define “person” to be “a thing that walks and talks like mommy and daddy do.” This definition does correctly identify the referents of PERSON, but as the child grows into an adult, he or she will need to modify the definition to best capture the essential nature of the referents of PERSON. (Rand 43–45)

The ethical position founded in conceptualism is consequentialist egoism, or eudaimonism. Consequentialist egoism regards the moral worth of an action to be determined by its consequences in relation to the actor’s happiness. The extent to which an action is judged as good is the extent to which the action helps to realize the actor’s (eudaimonic) happiness. This position holds that, because we are all human beings with essentially the same nature, our interests in regard to our own happiness are congruent with one another.

An additional word should be said about the between utilitarianism and eudaimonism. While utilitarianism is commonly (and rightfully) considered a consequentialist ethical theory, it is distinguished from eudaimonism in that it, where it focuses on the consequences of the action in relation to the general utility, consequentialist egoism focuses on the consequences in relation to the actor’s ends.

A conceptualist and eudaimonist approach to rights theory views rights as principles which individuals take into account during the decision-making process, because they help the individual better achieve happiness. Rights are derived from and subservient to life. Rights are universal, in that each person possesses them by virtue of being a person. That is, each and every referent of the concept PERSON is in possession of them. Rights are also individual, in that they are attributes of each individual person. PERSON does not have rights, only people do. Thus, this approach differs from conceptions of rights as derivative of and subservient to the “common good” or some such equivalent concept.

We are now equipped to see if and how a view of rights resting on a conceptualist / eudaimonistic base can handle the situation considered earlier. Before, we were stumped by the apparent conflict between the legitimate desire of the camper to live and the rights of the owner of the cabin. By using the conceptualist, eudaimonistic approach, we see that, in this situation, the correct thing for the camper to do is to make use of the cabin. We also see that, given the situation, the camper is not interfering with the cabin owner’s ends. Assuming the camper makes the effort to minimize his disruption of the cabin and to make any restitution necessary (for a broken window, for example), then there is no rights violation. This approach to the problem does not encounter a conflict between rights and their moral underpinning. Additionally, it does not require the camper to needlessly sacrifice his or her own life for nothing.

Both the realist/deontological and nominalist/utilitarian notions of rights fail to be useful in real-world situations due to their flawed philosophical foundations. The conceptualist, eudaimonistic notion of rights handles these situations nicely, because it is rooted in a rich epistemological and ethical foundation for living on this earth.

Notes

1. Throughout this paper, I follow the following convention: when using a word to denote itself as a word, I enclose the word in quotes, like so: “Flower” is a noun. When I use a word to denote not the word-as-word but instead the concept (universal) to which it refers, I place the word in all caps, like so: FLOWER is a concept. ↩
2. In his Fundamental Principles for the Metaphysic of Morals (1785), Kant explicates his deontological system of judging actions: “That an action done from duty derives its moral worth, not from the purpose which is to be attained by it, but from the maxim by which it is determined, and therefore does not depend on the realization of the object of the action, but merely on the principle of volition by which the action has taken place, without regard to any object of desire.” ↩
3. Historically, many political theories justified on deontological grounds have not been rights-respecting (the Divine Right of Kings, for example). Because of this, I restrict my analysis to only those political theories justified with deontology which also advocate rights. ↩
4. The forest cabin thought experiment was invented by Jimmy Wales during a discussion of emergency ethics on the Atlantis electronic mailing list. The archives of the mailing list are available at its web site: http://objectivism.cx/~atlantis/mailing-list/. This thought experiment was fleshed out over the course of many messages by many different people, such that it is difficult to attribute it, but nevertheless I wanted to give credit where credit is due. ↩
5. I’d like to note that my use of the label “eudaimonism” for the third ethical theory in the paper may be somewhat unconventional. I tried to pick a single word which captured as much of the essence of the position as I could, while avoiding antagonistic connotations. For instance, “selfish,” while perhaps being more exact, nevertheless carries unfortunately inaccurate and confusing connotations which could frustrate my purposes. “Consequentialist egoism” is perhaps the best choice, and in this paper I use it and “eudaimonism” interchangeably. This is potentially confusing. So much has been written about Aristotle’s concept EUDAIMONIA and so many interpretations have been offered; I fear that the reader, perhaps being aware of some of these interpretations, will see consequentialist egoism and eudaimonia as incompatible, when they are not. ↩

Works Cited

1. Armstrong, Ari. “Rand’s Consequentialist Theory of Rights.” http://www.oneimage.com/~ari/iphil/oistconsequent.html
2. Ball, Terence, and Dagger, Richard. Political Ideologies and the Democratic Ideal. New York: Addison-Wesley, 1999
3. Kant, Immanuel. Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals. Project Gutenberg’s Etext version, translated by Thomas Abbott. http://www.knuten.liu.se/~bjoch509/works/kant/princ_morals.txt
4. Rand, Ayn. Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. New York: Meridian, 1990
5. Ray, Carolyn. Identity And Universals: A Conceptualist Approach to Logical, Metaphysical, and Epistemological Problems of Contemporary Identity Theory. Ann Arbor: Bell & Howell Information and Learning, 1998. http://www.olist.com/essays/text/ray/diss/index.html
6. Saint-Andre, Peter. The Ism Book: A Field Guide to the Nomenclature of Philosophy. http://www.monadnock.net/ismbook/

Completed for Political Theory (VA466, Professor Thad Smith) at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Winter Term, 1999–2000.

I would like to thank the wonderful people subscribed to objectivism.cx’s peer review mailing list for their invaluable feedback on this paper. It would most certainly be worse off without their thoughtful suggestions.

Those readers who are not computer geeks may have missed the allusion in the title to this paper.

Post-Writing Thoughts

I think that there is a lot more to be written on this. Due to academic constraints, this paper had to be rather limited in size. It could use a good fleshing-out. Here are some of the points that I’d like to see clarified in essays of their own right:

1. The claim that […]our interests in regard to our own happiness are congruent with one another in paragraph 17 rests on a large foundation of inductive evidence. It would be really interesting to research a defense of this claim.
2. I’d like to write some case studies, above and beyond the one rather contrived example in this work, which clearly illustrate the issues from different perspectives.
3. I’d like to take some historical documents which describe rights (e.g. the Declaration of Independence, the Fundamental Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, etc.) and consider them in the light of this work.

Perhaps I’ll work on this more when I actually have time to spare (March 2000 at the earliest).

If you have any questions, comments, or other issues with this paper, feel free to contact me about it. Please direct flames to /dev/null.