The notion of rights seems pervasive today and there seems to be so many different kinds, or at least rights about so many diverse things. When someone claims them, they appear very sure that they have them, but it is never really specified on what grounds they have them, and perhaps this is just understood by everyone, but it seems to me that it is not clear how they got them or what others are suppose to do when encountering people with so many of them. They are tightly bound up with demands, because they tend to appear in the context of demands – without contentious situations, would we know what our rights were ? It seems that rights will become conspicuous only when the substance of that right ( the thing demanded ) is denied. It is probably not enough that it is simply scarce, because if it WAS scarce, then presumably, everyone who had the associated right would have to settle their dispute on other grounds because the right, which they all share is insufficient to distinguish the claim of one from another and as not everyone would be satisfied ( on account of scarcity )  some other more decisive mechanism must replace it.

Also, rights need to be basic or necessary, fundamental, or the like. . We can imagine a right to clean water but not a right to good wine. That would seem to be a gratuitous extension of something that should probably be reserved for what is actually necessary.  So there are, I think some conceptual limits to the notion of rights which when are worth exploring, and I suspect that it is the limiting cases which really exercise the concept.

s a first cut, I would suggest that rights are not something you have, but are closer to something that you do. I remember once seeing a show where an ?acrobat? spun over a dozen plates on long poles. The distinction i am trying to make is like that between the act of spinning a plate and the plate itself.. Rights are not the plate, they are the spinning that the acrobat maintains. If someone X, then it is the demanding ( and the context that makes this necessary ) that is the right. – this is still not quite right though.

Anyway, this is enough for now. as a theme, rights are interesting because, socially they seem basic, but all social entities are maintained. This is close to Bruno Latour.

so the sort of things I think are relevant here concerning rights are :.

How do people get them ?

Do animals have them ?, did dinosaurs have them ?

Can you loose them ?

Can they be transferred ?

Can they be divided or combined ?

Can they be shared ?

Was there ever a time when there weren’t any ?

 

Also I am interested in developing a pragmatically  grounded theory of rights

Persons can demand X. This is most naturally considered an imperative. Give me X. Do Y. when we speak of someone having a right,

• demands = imperative
• demands + threats = command or order
• demand + incentive = ?
• demand + doom = ?

I am working towards a conceptual theory that treats the “demand” as the basic unit of political action.

 

this will also lead into a few other themes of interest, specifically :

• sovereignty
• territory
• authority
• power