If you take this position, what's the use of defining a concept of "rights" at all? The very notion is meant to describe something retained by individuals irrespective of their relations with others, as a means of establishing consistent boundaries within which we undertake those very relations.

If you're going to locate the origin of rights within the context of those social relations, how could you distinguish a violation of one's rights from merely not having those rights in the first place? What purpose could the notion serve here?

It's not a position to take as much as a description of reality.

I think you're confusing my observation of the reality we live in with some sort of endorsement (which does not exist).

I thought I was pretty clear that my position is that I am glad we have enshrined a belief system that cites the premise that we have certain inalienable rights. In our case, this ideal is adopted, and our claim to those rights are enshrined into law.

>The very notion is meant to describe something retained by individuals irrespective of their relations with others, as a means of establishing consistent boundaries within which we undertake those very relations.

As I said, I believe rights do exist. I simply am aware of the fact that we, as people, grant them to ourselves and others. Rights being granted by a higher power or some outside authority...that is an illusion, and just one belief system among many of one group of people granting the rights (among many groups).

Edit: But really, the simplest way to illustrate my point is that if you tell me you have inalienable rights, and I smirk and say "says who?", what will you answer? Just because we wish to have intrinsic protections in our existence doesn't mean we do.

A purely empirical description of reality would, of course, regard the notion of "rights", "government", and "society" as mere abstractions that have no autonomous existence, and are merely ideas in the minds of human beings.

An explication of this empirical understanding would recognize that human beings use abstract ideas to mediate their experience of the world, and that the value of ideas is to be found in the utility they provide to those who bear them.

So, accepting the reality that we live in is one filled with human beings who mediate their experience of life - and their relationships with each other - via conscious ideas, the discussion turns to evaluating the utility of those ideas; there's no other "reality" to explore.

This is completely consistent with what I've been saying. The fiction of a set of inalienable rights granted to us by an omnipotent power is a fiction, or 'abstraction' if you will.

Couldn't agree more with this post.

But we can indeed explore the empirical existence of the ideas that human beings employ in their undertaking of life, and make useful distinctions between those which have their origin in the nature of the individual prior to his social relations, and those which are a product of the social relations themselves.

Personally, I regard them as one in the same. The State is just a proxy of the will of the community one finds himself in, and Divinity just a proxy of man's will subscribed to and enforced by other men of belief.

Neither are omnipotent, but rather omnipresent as long as one finds himself surrounded by other people, and while they are not omnipotent, they are plenty powerful, -especially compared to a lone individual in most cases.

Communities don't bootstrap themselves - they evolve out of the willing participation of individuals, and when the meditative mechanisms of that community fall to the manipulation of one faction or another, communities can and do break apart.

Taking the existence of a stable social framework for granted is very dangerous, and the concept of "rights" is one of the tools we employ precisely to protect that social framework's substantive foundation.