Do RIGHTS have any right to a pure THEORY?
Responding to Adam Haman and Bob Murphy on the cold, hard rights of warm, fuzzy things
A departure from our usual content, I was replying to a podcast episode by my smart buddy Adam (and his smart pal Bob), when I realized I had no hope of keeping it brief. Or especially succinct.
CONSEQUENTLY, I did the only LOGICAL thing: I planned (and then ACTED with INTENT) to publish it as its own post here on the Twadpockle Report.
Adam’s podcast episode
Do ANDROIDS and KITTENS Have Rights? Rights THEORY Revisited | HN122
Haman Nature podcast, Adam Haman
https://hamannature.substack.com/p/do-androids-and-kittens-have-rights
1:06:24 video, 1 May 2025
(audio version here)
Economist Bob Murphy is back and he and Adam are going to solve the pesky problem of children and animals and natural rights. What do we owe our children? Our pets? Our soon-to-be-created digital AGI neighbors? How should we think about such thorny things?
My response, which does not stand alone
... so listen to Adam’s episode first.
Even then, batteries are not included. I covered as much ground as I could in the middle of my morning, without making it a whole thing. Hopefully the links will help or at least provide some entertainment. Good luck.
Stewardship is where it’s at!
And, all of this is the subject of my Awareness Recursion Theory. We make grave errors when we reduce law and contract to words, replace those words with their dictionary definitions, and then proceed to derive rights from them.
Instead,
Body language is not a primitive form of words. Words are an abstract form of body language. And by body language, I mean all behavior. And by words, I mean all COMMUNICATION.
Communicated INTENTIONS are contracts, whether the COMMUNICATION is written, digital, oral, physical, pantomimed, metaphorically poetic, performance-danced, or otherwise behaviorally encoded and received.
Our actions demonstrate a preference for the future state we anticipate those actions will take us to, versus the current state of things. That includes INTENTION, which includes purpose.
You are liable when you INTENTIONALLY put someone in trouble. Your degree of liability depends on all of the above and can only be adjudicated by your peers and their best intuitions, as imperfect as that is, unless/until God volunteers for the job (if He hasn’t already).
Further,
Rejecting consequentialist arguments for stewardship, BECAUSE of their consequentialism, is unprincipled, due to my next point:
Principled logic includes consequentialism, in the form of proof by contradiction, in which we reject propositions based entirely on the CONSEQUENCE of their leading to a contradiction. (Shall we sweep that into Argumentation Ethics?)
Discussion of rights is almost always wrong-headed and should be replaced by discussions of property and the CONTRACT by which its ownership or stewardship was acquired. (This means that when your local government is the steward of a public library, it needs to kick out not only people who are too loud, but also those who are too smelly. And those quietly picnicking in the aisle, even if no one had thought of prohibiting that.)
The RUB:
The human condition is that we are never certain of other people's communicated intentions or how they are received, or the future consequences of our actions.
This previous point really sucks.
The consequentialist in all of us takes that previous point to invalidate all of my points. (But what is the CONSEQUENCE of invalidating them?)
Despite appearances, and all predictable push-back, all of this is 100% anarcho-libertarian.
I could argue that last point longer than you could oppose it. (Unless you are a fellow Ashkenazi Jew; then you may succeed by outliving me.)
Good food for thought.
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> Communicated INTENTIONS are contracts
It seems that intentions are an offer, a negotiation of sorts. It's only a contract if someone accepts it and engages with us. Or can a contract be established by only one party with intentions?
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A right is a valid claim. If I say 2 + 3 = 5 and that answer is "right," it means that based on the definitions of 2, 3, 5, plus and equals, a valid claim has been made. Same thing with other kinds of rights; they're valid claims. A property right is a valid claim. A liberty right is a valid claim. So this ...
> Discussion of rights is almost always wrong-headed and should be replaced by discussions of property and the CONTRACT by which its ownership or stewardship was acquired.
... seems to be an appeal to rights. "the CONTRACT by which its ownership or stewardship was acquired" is an attempt to establish a valid claim, no?
Fascinating stuff, Bernie - as always. I can't decide if you've uncovered part of a brilliant larger meta-theory that explains all human interaction or if you've woven a circular spider's web that will collapse as soon as I start pulling on a thread and examining it.
Or perhaps something else entirely.
In any case, these are fascinating and useful insights and frames that are worth considering. Thanks!