Might Makes Me Right?

Hm. Let me play devil's advocate...

Where do rights come from? Before anyone presupposes that rights exist (When they are concepts that reflect not on states in nature but on mindsets of people who share them), how can we determine that the collective choice of democracy is indeed the endresult and right result?

Let me put it this way- When one has might and uses it to rule (And uses it to maintain said rule), that's not a right to rule, it's a fact. That IS rule so long as it goes on. Now, let's replace might with "placed by majority". One has the will of the majority behind them to get into power, and that may help one maintain power, but is it really a right in the strictest sense?

Right is defined as "that which is just, morally good, legal, proper, or fitting."

Quite an open-ended word to work with. Let's take it one at a time...

Just is fairness. If the ruler is fair, then he is right in this sense. If he oppresses everyone fairly, he can rule like that and it'd be in a sense right.

Morally good is a subjective term. Why? Because while there are objective moral laws, there are subjective ones as well. Unless the objective morality was realized through reason, supported, and made into established rational fact, it could not be used in this sense. However, there's a multitude of different moral goods according to each and every individual. Depending on the person or situation, the ruler may be right for a second, and wrong for a second. He or she might be right for their entire rule, or wrong, or a mixture of both. This can't be established objectively on many cases- while we could argue that killing a small child is always wrong, banning smoking may be seen as either depending on the party. So how can we objectively determine a ruler to be morally good when the term itself is subjective?

Legal. Hell, the leader IS legal in somuch as they make the rules. In this case, might is clearly right.

Proper? Subjective. Eating with your elbows on the table isn't proper, but I'm sure Bush can still be president if he has bad table manners or speech etiquette.

Fitting? Could we be more vague?

So really, I'd argue that might is right CAN be argued as correct if you look simply at the definition of all the elements involved. Do I believe or feel it's right? No. But from what I've concluded here, it is possible to argue that it is so.

Originally posted by Pandemoniac
Superiority might not grant you rightful domination in the view of the public, but as long as no-one is able to stop you, you get away with it.
It has been done many times in history.

I agree completely.

Originally posted by WrathfulDwarf
[b]I can kick your ass and beat you into a bloody pulp! I'am far more bigger than most of you and have enough energy and power to dominate all of you. I should be leader because I'am above you all! No one can contradict me. I have many men and women who obey and follow my orders. I have conquer them and thus I govern them. My strenght is enough to dominate any opponent. If you dare challenge me I will defeat you! My confidence is supported by my mighty strength. Cunning games or tricks will not work on me. I'm far too smart to be fooled by anyone.

Only a more powerful person than me can be my master. If such a person even exist in this world. I will challenge him or her and defeat them. I will not yield to no one. I'd much but rather perish than to be rule by someone else.

I rule! I dominate! I control you!

WD now begs the question.....Having power gives me the right to rule? [/B]

Hmmm, does it give give you the right to rule? Not really, but it definitively gives you the means.

Originally posted by lil bitchiness
Hmmm, does it give give you the right to rule? Not really, but it definitively gives you the means.

Originally posted by lil bitchiness
Hmmm, does it give give you the right to rule? Not really, but it definitively gives you the means.

I think the means to powr would be what a ruthless ruler would desire. If you have powers who would dare oppose you?! A ruthless brute doesn't care reputation or ethics. He cares about strenght and power.

Originally posted by Janus Marius
Hm. Let me play devil's advocate...

Where do rights come from? Before anyone presupposes that rights exist (When they are concepts that reflect not on states in nature but on mindsets of people who share them), how can we determine that the collective choice of democracy is indeed the endresult and right result?

Let me put it this way- When one has might and uses it to rule (And uses it to maintain said rule), that's not a right to rule, it's a fact. That IS rule so long as it goes on. Now, let's replace might with "placed by majority". One has the will of the majority behind them to get into power, and that may help one maintain power, but is it really a right in the strictest sense?

Right is defined as "that which is just, morally good, legal, proper, or fitting."

Quite an open-ended word to work with. Let's take it one at a time...

Just is fairness. If the ruler is fair, then he is right in this sense. If he oppresses everyone fairly, he can rule like that and it'd be in a sense right.

Morally good is a subjective term. Why? Because while there are objective moral laws, there are subjective ones as well. Unless the objective morality was realized through reason, supported, and made into established rational fact, it could not be used in this sense. However, there's a multitude of different moral goods according to each and every individual. Depending on the person or situation, the ruler may be right for a second, and wrong for a second. He or she might be right for their entire rule, or wrong, or a mixture of both. This can't be established objectively on many cases- while we could argue that killing a small child is always wrong, banning smoking may be seen as either depending on the party. So how can we objectively determine a ruler to be morally good when the term itself is subjective?

Legal. Hell, the leader IS legal in somuch as they make the rules. In this case, might is clearly right.

Proper? Subjective. Eating with your elbows on the table isn't proper, but I'm sure Bush can still be president if he has bad table manners or speech etiquette.

Fitting? Could we be more vague?

So really, I'd argue that might is right CAN be argued as correct if you look simply at the definition of all the elements involved. Do I believe or feel it's right? No. But from what I've concluded here, it is possible to argue that it is so.

I like you. You are an intelligent bugger, or rather one who looks on boths sides of the hand.

Simply, it is not for any of us to decide what is right or what is wrong, even a great conqueror cannot decide for us even though he or she may force us to do so physically. In the eyes of a brutish conqueror, he or she is right in the way he or she thinks like we all think we're right in our own point of views. The reality a conqueror may see might perhaps be complete domination over all of mankind to the unending of the world making he or she right for deciding the lives of his or her people for what he or she may consider to be for the greater good. Eventually, such rulers fall victom to his or her own flaw he or she considered a minor insignificance, and still view the world the way he or she have always viewed it, and may not become humbled. Rulers in this manner will still believe he or she was right in the way he or she ruled his or her people.

Therefore, he or she judged the good from the bad to the best of his or her ability with only knowledge available to he or she. Considering such, what makes us think we know right from wrong of today?

boo boo double post...

Bah... my grammar is off.

What is a right?

Supposedly, every human has certain unalienable rights that are self-evident. From the constitution.

Ofcourse morality is subjective, like Janus said, so that statement is questionable because it has no objective basis.

My conclusion, is that in order for a human to have those defined rights, there would have to be a God with an absolute code of morality.

God is an unknown, so until he is proven there can be no argument in favor of absolute rights.

Originally posted by Great Vengeance
What is a right?

Supposedly, every human has certain unalienable rights that are self-evident. From the constitution.

Ofcourse morality is subjective, like Janus said, so that statement is questionable because it has no objective basis.

My conclusion, is that in order for a human to have those defined rights, there would have to be a God with an absolute code of morality.

God is an unknown, so until he is proven there can be no argument in favor of absolute rights.

Oh heck, these sudden 'deep' meanderings into the relativeness of morals and what we can really consider to be 'right' strikes me as being a waste of time, as it often is in so many deabtes whenever anyone plays the sceptic card. Such a tiresome irrelevance- it's getting away from what WD was really getting at with his first post.

What I said earlier:

"Humanity has rather long since worked out that right to rule comes from mandate of the people, not brute force."

... really sums up the debate as far as it can be usefully argued. If you start getting into the relativity of all of it then it is an almost total waste of time to ask any question like this at all, because it will just be answered in the same way regardless of the question. Which is pretty much the way Phoenix above answers it... very snoresome. That whole line of thinking is a philisophical cul-de-sac. It makes all arguments go nowhere. To my mind, it has also always betrayed a lack of anything more than the most surface analysis of the subject.

By any standard by which our civilisation exists today, then no, it does not give the right. Looking into it more deeply than that has no value. The very word 'rights' in of itself implies an objective standard and if you don't think any such thing can truly exist then you don't really have a contribution to make to the debate, as that is basically saying the debate does not exist.

Numerous threads exist to discuss scepticism, and whether morals are relative or not. Do that kind of arguing there. In this thread, though, you have to accept certaun premises to make the question worth answering at all.

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WD, your answer to Lil seems self-defeating. You are saying, basically, the warrior doesn't care about 'right'. So how can you have envisioned that he has such right?

Originally posted by Ushgarak
Oh heck, these sudden 'deep meanderings into the relativeness of morals and what we can really consider to be 'right' strikes me as being a waste of time, as it often is in so many deabtes whenever anyone plays the sceptic card. Such a tiresome irrelevance- it's getting away from what WD was really getting at with his first post.

What I said earlier:

"Humanity has rather long since worked out that right to rule comes from mandate of the people, not brute force."

... really sums up the debate as far as it can be usefully argued. If you start getting into the relativity of all of it then it is an almost total waste of time to ask any question like this at all, because it will just be answered in the same way regardless of the question. Which is pretty much the way Phoenix above answers it... very snoresome. That whole line of thinking is a philisophical cul-de-sac. It makes all arguments go nowhere. To my mind, it has also always betrayed a lack of anything more than the most surface analysis of the subject.

By any standard by which our civilisation exists today, then no, it does not give the right. Looking into it more deeply than that has no value. The very word 'rights' in of itself implies an objective standard and if you don't think any such thing can truly exist then you don't really have a contribution to make to the debate, as that is basically saying the debate does not exist.

Numerous threads exist to discuss scepticism, and whether morals are relative or not. Do that kind of arguing there. In this thread, though, you have to accept certaun premises to make the question worth answering at all.

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WD, your answer to Lil seems self-defeating. You are saying, basically, the warrior doesn't care about 'right'. So how can you have envisioned that he has such right?

Yeah I agree...for practical purposes, moral relativism is useless.

Moral relativism could make more sense in a purely theoretical point of view, but I think it is impossible to act like moral relativism says, we always want to imply a "right" and a "wrong" in everything we do. Even when we try to assume the position of moral relativism we are trying to look right.

Originally posted by Ushgarak
Oh heck, these sudden 'deep' meanderings into the relativeness of morals and what we can really consider to be 'right' strikes me as being a waste of time, as it often is in so many deabtes whenever anyone plays the sceptic card. Such a tiresome irrelevance- it's getting away from what WD was really getting at with his first post.

What I said earlier:

"Humanity has rather long since worked out that right to rule comes from mandate of the people, not brute force."

... really sums up the debate as far as it can be usefully argued. If you start getting into the relativity of all of it then it is an almost total waste of time to ask any question like this at all, because it will just be answered in the same way regardless of the question. Which is pretty much the way Phoenix above answers it... very snoresome. That whole line of thinking is a philisophical cul-de-sac. It makes all arguments go nowhere. To my mind, it has also always betrayed a lack of anything more than the most surface analysis of the subject.

By any standard by which our civilisation exists today, then no, it does not give the right. Looking into it more deeply than that has no value. The very word 'rights' in of itself implies an objective standard and if you don't think any such thing can truly exist then you don't really have a contribution to make to the debate, as that is basically saying the debate does not exist.

Numerous threads exist to discuss scepticism, and whether morals are relative or not. Do that kind of arguing there. In this thread, though, you have to accept certaun premises to make the question worth answering at all.

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WD, your answer to Lil seems self-defeating. You are saying, basically, the warrior doesn't care about 'right'. So how can you have envisioned that he has such right?

So... you're saying that if we fall into another Dark Age... man would still think that total might over other peoples is wrong? I don't think so. Survival of the strongest will only apply then. The people will worship the strong.

I'm pretty sure if you were born in the year 1100 you wouldn't give this answer.

And as far as saying that nothing exist, my reply is far from it. Merely, my line of thinking provokes the question of "What is truth?" I'm by no means deluded into thinking that nothing exist. I'm pretty sure if I were hit by an impala running 90 mph I'd be sitting in an emergency room for several broken bones.

Numerous threads exist to discuss scepticism, and whether morals are relative or not. Do that kind of arguing there. In this thread, though, you have to accept certaun premises to make the question worth answering at all.

Yay for absolutism.

Ush, you fail to address the point that you can't objectively establish what "right" is; I've already gone over the definition above. You can say something totally democratic and modern like "Humanity has rather long since worked out that right to rule comes from mandate of the people, not brute force." But that isn't an argument; it's an assertion.

Now, the point of the thread is to really dig deep and find out whether or not might makes right in the strictest sense. Looking at the definition of "right", there's so much subjectiveness it's sad. And again, tyranny of majority >> tyranny by one man? Seriously. I realize it's "cool" to play democratic, but look at this from outside of the box, Ush. You need to thoroughly define what right is, and not just make assertions.