Crime and punishment in cyberspace - 3 of 3
Patrick Juola
juola at suod.cs.colorado.edu
Fri Jun 10 08:45:57 PDT 1994
>
> Well, that's one view of rights. However, most attempts to base so
> called natural rights (i.e. rights that are somehow intrinsic to human
> existence) have been largely unsuccesful. It's a tough argument to make.
>
Seems to me the 'inalienable rights' that are mentioned in our founding
charter carry this argument quite well. I suspect they also 'prove' them
as well.
Proof by declaration of self-evidence? ``We hold these truths to
be self-evident.... that [all humans] are endowed by their creator
with certain inalienable rights." If, for some reason, I claim that
the right to liberty is *not* self-evident, it can be very difficult
to convince me otherwise.
This is one of the difficulties of natural-rights arguments; that they
tend to assert certain rights (right to privacy, right to property,
right to personal space, right to free speech, &c) axiomatically when they
are often the subject of the discussion.
Patrick
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