I’m afraid my ability to recall, although in some regards quite exceptional, is not complete.

You should also have total certainty that something in the world is resulting your idea of the keyboard.

Certainly! In addition to ideas, I’m am also totally certain that I experience and of what I experience, regardless of the cause of my experiencing.

That is, I am certain that there is existence apart from myself yet which I am a part of.

I think you might be missing a subtle but crucial point:

You should also have total certainty that something in the world is resulting your idea of the keyboard. That is, you should have total certainty that a “keyboard” is out there, but you may have some doubt as to the totality of what that means (e.g. is it a reflection, a picture, a chocolate shaped like a keyboard, a hallucination from a memory of a past keyboard, etc.).

I’m sure if you search your memories, you will find no recollection of your consciousness creating a keyboard idea whole cloth. The idea must’ve originated elsewhere. And this discovery should not surprise you. It should characterize most (I would say ultimately all) of your ideas.

Meaning that they are not capable of ascribing rights to themselves or to others.

As for keyboards, I have a very high level of confidence in the existence of the keyboard in front of me, but I have a total certainty of the existence of ideas as I am able to apprehend them directly within my mind as opposed to the indirect evidence I have of the existence of my keyboard.

You are in fact stating what I said in a rather different manner. I agree that what we call natural rights are a necessary deduction from observed, and experienced, facts of human nature.

In fact, I think we can observe very similar facts of nature in other social creatures. Even birds have a certain regard for established territories of other birds (within a species).

As animals are not capable of abstract, at least not to the extent that humans do, we do not regard them as having rights as humans do. Well, at least most of us do not.

http://en.scientificcommons.org/34265622

If only our own keynesiacs would pack up and move to North Korea.

I couldn’t disagree more. The only objective rational idea of rights is a concept formed by the observation of certain facts of human nature, and a necessary deduction therefrom. When those facts exist, so do rights. It is not subject to (rational) interpretation or alteration, any more than other mundane observations.

I understand that the subjectivity and emotionalism naturally connected to values (which is the object of rights) are also projected, by some, onto rights, but that is conflation of the two.

It appears natural rights are simultaneously more and less than most people think they are.

In the wild, some other creature may expend effort in taking what another has obtained from nature.

We humans, OTH, having developed the capability of abstract thought, can create and recognize things like money, gods, rights, etc.

I think a sensible person realizes that the idea of rights is human artifice, but we also sensibly should realize that other individuals are not just “my” environment, but also self directed individuals with similar needs and motivations.

Perhaps the greatest development of human society is trade. By engaging in trade, we recognize that there is less risk and greater gains to be had by recognizing rights of possession, than in conquest.

Conquest is often a one shot deal, you kill the other and take what they possessed. but if they created that possession by directed endeavor, the conqueror has destroyed a source of wealth.

So after simple conquest, slavery became the next best thing.
Trouble is that slaves aren’t internally motivated to create more wealth and so require constant supervision. There are other problems as well with slavery, and I don’t wish to dwell there.

An improvement on slavery is serfdom where the serfs retain rights of possession in most of the fruits of their labors and the rest is allocated to their lords.

We have replaced lords with an entire political class and inculcated the serfs with an illusion of freedom by letting them vote for which master will collect their rents, and that’s as far as we have gotten in our social evolution.

- Where do you see this strong argument that “man is inept and incapable” that gives rise to this inconsistency with Burke. All I see is him saying that man can be inept and incapable – indeed that men individually are inept and incapable in important situations. The article (and your response) seem to take these “can be” statements that Keynes makes and turn them into “are always” statements. That doesn’t seem right to me.

- Yes – he does mention the wisdom of the social unit. But it’s important to note that he says “experience DOES NOT SHOW that individuals, when they make up a social unit, ARE ALWAYS LESS clear-sighted than when they act separately” – this isn’t saying “two minds ARE better than one”, it’s just saying “two minds CAN BE better than one”. He’s trying to overthrow an assumption in the discipline that the social unit can never be more clear sighted.

- Why does Keynes have to prove that natural rights don’t exist? If you’re asserting something exists isn’t the burden of proof on you? I’m a de facto supporter of natural rights, and I think practically speaking Keynes was too for the most part. But that’s just because natural rights are a nice thing we invented and as a rule of thumb they have good practical value. But do they actually exist? I’m with Keynes here – of course not. We created the concept of natural rights because they were useful. Even the greatest proponents of natural rights relied on the “self-evident” crutch. The existencce of natural rights has always just been asserted – I’m curious why you think Keynes can’t just assert their lack of existence.

- RE: “In Machan’s defense, we do have to rely on his perception of Keynes. Keynes words are the only words we have to judge in this context.” But the problem is, Machan’s “sense of Keynes” doesn’t even match up to the words he cites!!! I don’t expect it to be a dissertation, but you open to the opinion section of any major newspaper, and the op-eds there do a better job marshalling evidence to back up what they’re saying than this does. It was just poorly crafted in that sense.

“Rights would exist” makes no more sense than saying “gravity would exist”. Rights are not an idealization attributable to a “perfect” world, they are a recognition of the actual world. They are not wishful thinking, they are a mundane fact whether or not anybody violates, likes, hates, wants, or even notices them.Rights in and of themselves do not offer any kind of protection. They are not a physical force like gravity. There is no higher authority that punishes rights violators. They are readily ignored and violated. In fact, one must consciously choose to not violate them.”In the real world”, both the weak and strong must routinely defend their values through force–including putting a roof over their heads to defend against the elements, putting locks on their doors to defend against intruders, exerting themselves productively to obtain food, taking antibiotics to fend off an infection, slapping mosquitos to defend against bites, using weapons to defend against some wildlife, etc.The need and use of your enforcement of your values is actually the background upon which rights is useful. Rather than requiring enforcement in an otherwise peaceful world, rights introduce into a violent world an opportunity for peace. You can’t get the weather to agree not to hail on you, or mosquitos to agree not to bite you. But you often can get another subset of your environment–people–to agree not to interfere with your values.That voluntary noninterference agreement is a recognition of rights. The common nonconflicting set of those agreements stemming from a human’s natural means of survival forms the basis of natural rights.

The world is harsh. But recognizing rights provides an option that is particularly beneficial to “the weak”. The best thing about natural rights, is that there is widespread recognition of the benefits of recognizing rights, and little or no cost to doing so. To gain benefits of natural rights therefore does not “require the help of others”. Though, of course, institutions are commonly created to help do so.

Whether or not such institutions exist, of course, not everyone is going to agree to recognize your natural rights. Having to deal with those people as you would with any other nonagreeable brute element of nature may be a lost opportunity, but hardly a failing or abrogation of the concept of rights.