[FRIAM] Revising the American Revolution

[uǝlƃ ☤>$]

Well, I'm not fluent enough to know how deeply social contract thinking had embedded itself in the people who *liked* the document at the time. But social contracts are only one, very debatable, construction for "inalienable rights". Just because it makes the most sense to you, doesn't mean it provides the solid foundation you're looking for. It looks more like postmodernist sand, to me. You modernists, who faithfully buy into Grand Narratives that fit your priors would be suckered in by it. But I don't.

A stronger foundation would be one grounded in physics, chemistry, and biology ... and I suppose a "harder" psychology and sociology we might develop one day.

On 10/26/21 12:45 PM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
> Look.  Rights are things we give one another by incurring obligations.   The document should have  read: "All people are created equal and they are endowed by their association with certain unalienable obligations, basically, not to get in one another's way more than is absolutely necessary and to help one another when the chips are down.  "  It's funny because it's a declaration of independence; it never occurred to them that they had to write a declaration of association.   Hence the constitution, six years later.  
> 
> Nick 
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> 
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> Nick Thompson
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of u?l? ?>$
> Sent: Tuesday, October 26, 2021 12:08 PM
> To: friam at redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Revising the American Revolution
> 
> Ugh. Sorry for this: Holton, not Houlton: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woody_Holton
> 
> And the semantic slippery slope from moral equivalent to inalienable rights is just nonsense, trickery that should never be forgiven. Now, where I disagree with Dave is that it might be possible to establish some intrinsic properties of living systems (e.g. negentropy) that do imply intrinsic rights. So the moral equivalence lies somewhere in the technical definition (perhaps via integrated information theory or somesuch). But the extension to "rights" would then be "Every negentropic kernel has the *right* to *try* to maintain/increase order within -- and thereby increase disorder without." I.e. a "right to life". But even if they fail in their execution, they were still negentropic for at least a little while. And they are equal in that temporally and spatially scoped technical sense.
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> On 10/26/21 10:22 AM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
>> I agree with Houlton that “All men are created equal AND they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights …”  is a pretty good place to start.  You will recall that I even think this leads in theory to a prejudice against inheritance and in practice to taxing the crap out of rich people, in which category I count most of us.
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>> With respect to Dave’s “Boo God” comment, I of course agree.  My only acquaintance with god was as something that came into being when my father hit his thumb with a hammer.  But it is fascinating to read the above words in context.  See https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript <https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript>
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-- 
"Better to be slapped with the truth than kissed with a lie."
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