"'Natural’ is the quality or condition of nature that befits a particular creature."
>>>That's just saying that whatever a creature does is natural. As such it merely describes what is. >>>
In most cases the nature of creatures (exception human beings) and what they do is natural and just is. It is natural for predators to prey and for big trees to shade out seedlings. In the case of human beings they have a dual nature bound in the morality of right and wrong, so what they do is natural also but the 'ought' query has more of an application.
"How do you get from what is to what ought to be?
You don't. What is, is. I didn't make it that way and I've no clue what you mean by 'what ought to be' (exception human beings) but you or I can't change what is nature.
If that's the case how can anything ever be right or wrong?
Rightness and wrongness is bound only in human nature and that is the only way we can get to addressing it. Address it how ever you want as long as it is sensible and we can reason through it in print. I don't even have a problem if you want to say (metaphorically) that we've all eaten of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil. I have no problem going from what is right wrt the natural human condition to what human rights ought to be. You balked at that discussion so we've rewound until we can get at the same point of discussion.
How we get to what ought to be (what would be right) is a gigantic subject. The starting point is not some currently popular social issue, or geopolitical circumstance in the world but the underlying principle of rightness or righteousness if you prefer. From that we can form a principled position then we can go further to address what is right and what is wrong and what ought to be.
Human rightness is established on a regard for the goodness in all, and is the foundation of a healthy society. Rather than a rigid dictate, handed down by social authority to control you, it is the idea that you control, by your free will, the choice of a beneficent path over the corrupt.
Rightness is realized individually through freedom of conscience, which maintains the delicate balance between responsibility for the care of one's fellows and the freedom from oppression by one's fellows that we should all seek individually and on behalf of one another.
If it were given that the world offered only a live and let live existence (ideas #1&2), there would be no cause for human nobility. It is more complicated than that, so we are left with purposeful choice.
The texture of humanity is bound by living well and being well as one amongst others, while bringing harm to none. Our future lies within the dwindling flicker of hope that we can fan the flames of liberty while simultaneously and absolutely extinguishing brutality.
This is such a broad topic that I'm going to stop here, for now, but leave you with this question. As awareness of life in the Universe is founded upon conscious meaning applied to matter, the age old natural question arises… ‘So What?’ What purpose does human consciousness serve, if not to allow human will to liberate self from the grosser endeavors of human existence?
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"A right based on nature regards the essential condition of a creature. We don’t consider it a right of the willow to be concerned for the birds nesting in its branches. We consider such portrayals preposterous except when in a cartoon as personifications, since it is an essential condition of persons to be endowed with that psychological construct. We consider it a right of plants not to suffer needlessly at the hands of human beings, as per pollution. We consider it right for human beings to have concerns about polution. In that sense, all creatures have rights over human beings, the rights to have their well being regarded (as in idea #2)."
>>>I'm sorry, that is just gobbledygook.
You are mistaken. |
