Does a ticket inspector have the right to see your ticket on a train? He may do in some jurisdictions where it is a criminal offense to fail to show your ticket to him. However, more normally, you have no duty to do so. The matter is purely contractual. The railway company may refuse to transport you on the grounds that you are in breach of contract. You may say that the inspector's behavior was rude or that the check was onerous, discriminatory, or not proportionate. A test case may be brought in the Civil Courts to establish a precedent. However no indefeasible rights are involved nor can the individuals concerned be said to be acting on the basis of one overriding goal. The ticket checker is not trying to maximize either profit for the company or the pitiless detection of fraud. The passenger may have refused to show his ticket because he felt the inspector was rude or else to protest the train being over-crowded or not running on time. My point is that unless it is an offense not to show your ticket and unless inspectors are obligated to check every ticket- as may be the case during war-time- then no rights are involved. The question is about what it is reasonable to do and to expect under a commercial contract.
Amartya Sen believes differently. He thinks the British Rail inspector on his regular train to Oxford had an 'instrumental right' to see his ticket. This was not the case. He could claim an obligation to do so but the ticket holder may have had a superior right not to show it. The British Rail inspector would then have made arrangements to put off the passenger at the next stop. However the passenger could sue for breach of contract. To take an example, a season ticket holder who happened to be colored refused to show his pass to a ticket inspector who recognized him well enough and knew he was travelling legally. This was racist harassment and no part of his duty. In that particular case, the gentleman got an apology and a rebate after he complained to the Branch Office.
Economists may, falsely, think a Right is an 'endowment'- like gold coins which you have locked up in your safe. The Law however judges claims by trying to decompose them into rights of different sorts (Hohfeldian incidents) and looks at who has superior rights in any given situation. Here, there is a right's claim but no right till a claim is upheld. But there may be no remedy provider for the right's claim. The suit could be infructuous.
However, if as Amartya Sen has argued, human beings, by nature, have a passionate desire for justice then a just 'natural' claim, not admitted by the law, would nevertheless gain a remedy from the species at large. Sen quotes Bentham- 'Right, the substantive right, is the child of law; from real laws come real rights; but from imaginary laws, from “law of nature” [can come only] “imaginary rights.” However if human beings can't be imagined as doing anything by supplying a remedy to any violation of 'natural' rights, then, even if the thing had no legal form, nevertheless the remedy would be supplied and thus rights which Bentham declared to be 'imaginary' would be as effective as legal rights.
To take an example, it was unjust that Madoff defrauded his clients. Ordinary people from across the world came forward to contribute money to make 08his victims whole despite the fact that those victims were wealthy and upper class. Moreover, Batman beat up Madoff and carted him off to jail where the Easter Bunny shat in his mouth while he was sleeping.
Sen writes- 'It is easy to see that Bentham’s rejection of the idea of natural “rights of man” depends substantially on the rhetoric of privileged use of the term of “rights,” seeing it in its specifically legal interpretation.
In other words, Bentham privileges the real over what is imaginary. This is a mere rhetorical device. I imagine that Amartya Sen scours the streets for dog turds which he eagerly devours. It would be a mere rhetorical device to suggest that nothing of the sort happens in reality. Thus it really is the case that Sen eats dog turds.
However, insofar as human rights are meant to be significant ethical claims,
'Sen only thinks ethical claims are significant because he eats dog turds' is a significant ethical claim. I have a human right to make this claim. Ergo, respect for human rights entails affirming that Sen eats dog turds.
the pointer to the fact that they do not by themselves have legal or institutional force is obvious enough, but also quite irrelevant to the discipline of human rights.
Not if the reason they don't have legal or institutional force is because they can't do so without crashing the Justice or Administrative system. If the discipline of human rights concerns an incompossible world then it is on the same level as assertions like 'Sen eats dog turds'.
The appropriate comparison is, surely, between:
(1) a utility-based ethics (championed by Bentham himself), which sees intrinsic ethical importance in utilities
and thus attaches utility to legal rights with incentive compatible remedies and political freedoms with strong institutional safeguards both of which are things people are willing to pay money for
but none in
wholly imaginary
human rights or human freedoms
Sen says that legal rights and legal freedoms don't have utility. But Bentham could see- as we can see- that people pay money to keep current their remedies for rights violations. We are happy that a portion of our taxes go towards the judiciary and towards the running of parliament. Wealthy people may contribute more money to bring test cases or to finance particular political campaigns. It is a fact that having rights and freedoms uses up scarce resources. But, in an uncertain world, these things are a useful 'hedge'.
Sen says
(any role that the latter can have in the utilitarian system is, thus, entirely instrumental),
We have seen that this is not the case. A contingent asset provides utility because it reduces the 'regret' we might later feel for not having taken proper precautions
and
(2) an ethics that makes room for
assertions like 'Amartya eats only dog shit' which must be treated respectfully by those who affirm
the fundamental significance of human rights (as the advocates of “rights of man” did), linked with a diagnosis of the basic importance of human freedoms and the obligations generated by that diagnosis
Amartya, if he really believed his own shite, would be obliged to debate me on the dog turd issue. Standard economic and standard philosophy both provide an immunity to Amartya. He could say 'I gain no utility by talking to you' or 'your assertion is not 'justified true belief'. I have no obligation to debate a contumacious liar.'
Sadly, Amartya managed to evade learning standard Econ or Philosopher. As a Philosopher Economist, he compounds two obvious errors by speaking of capabilities or 'doings' and 'beings' as if they constituted a well defined set or were associated with a connected configuration space. This error can lead, as it does for Sen, to stupid statements like 'Othello after killing Desdemona should not evaluate, morally speaking, the outcome in the same way others would' Yet a full description of the resultant state of affairs includes Othello's moral evaluation which should be qualitatively different to that of an unconnected person. True, Othello will feel worse if he starts thinking of how her mum or dad would 'morally evaluate' the outcome. But he can't trade this off against Iago's pleasure or the incident's comic potential- I mean killing wifey over a hanky is pure Punch & Judy. Fuck would Othello have done if it'd had been dripping with honky jizz? which I assume to be bleck or, I dunno, have glitter in it or some other such marker of white privilege.
We can have no knowledge of 'capabilities' or 'goals' if we evolved by natural selection. Not all members of a species, at all times and in all species, should be able to outrun their predator or their prey. There must be variation and a degree of uncertainty for 'coviability'. Otherwise there could be an extinction event or a degeneration of the species consequent on the removal of selection pressure. A similar point may be made about 'goals'. Seeking to define them may make them self-defeating. Give a football team machine guns and it can score as many goals as it likes after gunning down its opponents.
Consequence based moral evaluation is simply an oxymoron. Morality or 'deontology' is only necessary because we lack omniscience. Krishna in the Mahabharata or Al Khidr in the holy Quran are not constrained by customary morality because they know the true consequences of all actions. But we don't. Human life would have little meaning if we did. Indeed, we wouldn't need language, or economics, or politics or law or education or science or art or, indeed, any method of coordinating activity or communicating with each other. Everything knowable would be common knowledge.
Loose talk or 'rights' or 'goals' breeds stupid bullshit. This may be welcomed by virtue signalling bureaucrats and academics. But it is a nuisance which, we now realize, must be curbed. Why? An Indian may answer 'we must distinguish 'arthavada' from 'vidhi'. The former is a flowery and evocative. The later is the relevant injunction. If we confuse the two we do stupid things and then the injunction loses its utility.
Sen says-
There can, in fact, be little doubt that the idea of moral rights can serve, and has often served in practice, as the basis of new legislation.
Indians know this too well. A very very poor country has been saddled with all sorts of well meaning laws. The result is that it is impossible for most of its people to get a job in the organized sector because, immediately, the employer would be saddled with all sorts of costly obligations.
Moral grandstanding by judges and legislators can do immeasurable harm to the life-chances of the poor. History shows that 'moral rights' are the parents of bad laws which sooner or later are subverted or which fall into desuetude. Genuine refugees whom the people of the country want to let in can't be granted asylum because Equality legislation or 'equal dignity' Human Rights Law says they have to be treated like bogus refugees who want to carry out terrorist acts on our soil and against our people.
It has frequently been utilized in this way, and this is indeed an important use of human rights.
A mischievous one. That is why the thing is now in bad odor around the globe. This should have been obvious. Mathematics had discovered problems of 'concurrency', complexity and computability which showed that Sen's approach was ab ovo nonsense. This may not have been apparent to mathematically illiterate people like Martha Nussbaum but it should have been obvious to R.Gotoh who wrote twenty years ago-
Being qualified as a right implies being recognized as having a universal value.
This is not the case. A right is a bundle of Hohfeldian incidents linked to a remedy by a bond of law. Such incidents may have a personal or local value. They don't have a universal value. I am free to shit in my own toilet and if you prevent me accessing my toilet I can call the police and have you removed from my flat. But where and when I defecate involves no 'universal value'.
It describes a political ideal of equality in its highly abstract form.
No it does not. A political ideal must have a political not an abstract form. It is a different matter that a particular political discourse may have more abstract or more concrete forms.
Yet, in the exercise of a right, we must consider
only Hohfeldian incidents, nothing else
differences in personal characteristics
absolutely not. The right is the same regardless of personal characteristics. However a superior right might vest in some other person by reason of some idiosyncratic characteristic- e.g. being mad or underage.
or social contexts,
in some social contexts a superior right might vest in others- e.g. people at a party may restrain a drunk and belligerent person without violating her rights.
since the extent to which individuals can concretely exercise rights might differ greatly according to the differences in personal characteristics or social contexts.
This is wholly irrelevant save in so far as a superior right arises for the reasons outlined above.
To respect every individual impartially, we must
stop kissing our Mummy and hugging our Daddy. We should listen to a homeless dude rather than our teacher. Also, if we respect ourselves by wiping our own bum we must go around wiping everybody's bum.
set up public rules of the effectiveness of rights,
No. It is enough if courts can decide on such matters. Rules don't have to pre-exist 'Judge made law'. Provided smart people are employed as judges and judgments are protocol bound, effective rights will obtain to a greater or lesser degree.
Gotoh is Japanese. No doubt he feels his country is remis in not having public rules re. the effectiveness of my right to fart as often I like provided I don't actually shit myself.
which will direct each individual in concrete terms the doings and beings he/her can actually realize depending on his/her will.
I can control some of my farts. Clearly I do have effective farting rights in some places but perhaps not in others. Does Gotoh really propose to dedicate his life to enabling me, in concrete terms, to gain more effective rights in this manner? No. He (or she) thinks farting is childish and rude. He wants to focus on something abstract and high minded. But rights must be about things that matter to people. Virtue sigalling is a bigger nuisance than farting in this connection.
A Coherent Goal-Rights System mainly focuses on this problem.
It is useless shit. Sen had written
It is considered as a pluralistic coherent-value system, in which different kinds of values are appropriately balanced under certain criteria, which intends to overcome certain kinds of dualism such as goal-based vs rights-based, or individualism vs. holism .
But anyone can do this in an infinite number of arbitrary ways- if it were worth doing. The question is whether there is a non-arbitrary, or canonical, way to do it. The answer is no. This does not matter provided we have a protocol-bound, buck stopped, method of adjudication which isn't too costly or dilatory. True there will be 'hysteresis' effects- i.e. a historically arbitrary element will obtain- but provided 'elasticity' (i.e. responsiveness) is high or can be increased then ergodicity will prevail. Under certain conditions, we might say there is a 'natural' or canonical solution which is robust and can become common knowledge and thus is 'coherent'. We may go further. We may speak of a 'harmonious construction' as obtaining between the outcome and what lawgiver's intended.
But that is not possible with a mere 'goal-rights' system because reasoning about it is not protocol bound, buck stopped, and linked to a 'concrete model' with hysteresis related asymmetries which, it may be, we are concerned to overcome. In other words, the thing- like every other thought-turd that came bubbling out of Sen's sententious head- is shit.
“There is an important “social choice” question as to whether the future generations’ claims should relate to living standards in general,
Yes. That is all they should be concerned with. It would not be rational for them to want things which are valuable to us but which would not be valuable to them by reason of their superior technology. No doubt, one or two future eccentrics may say 'I wish I lived in olden times when the smell of horse-shit filled London's streets' but this is mere talk. If they really wanted to smell horse-shit they could spend money to that end.
or also to particular features of it, such as the entitlement to have “fresh air” as a “natural inheritance,” not to be outweighed even if they are generally better off
improved technology will mean their 'fresh air' will be less polluted than ours.
(just as the right of a non-smoker not to have smoke blown onto her face is not taken to be compromised by her general living standard—no matter how high)”
but secondary smoking is a health risk. Sen, with his typical fatuity has hit on the worst example possible. Air quality directly affects 'general living standard' because it affects health and longevity.
(Sen, 2002, p. 545).
Impartiality, generality, publicity, non-reduction, and priority (not to be outweighed without any justification) are characteristics that every kind of political values including right and social goal should satisfy.
Nonsense! Procedures should be impartial, as far as possible. But 'rights' and 'goals' are not procedures. They pre-exist the political realm and are juristic or economic as the case may be. Political values may involve trying to change the juristic and economic and sociological and psychological and aesthetic, etc. background. But that background is independent of 'political values' as are the procedures by which such values gain expression or effectiveness.
It can be observed that the essential characteristic of a right is that it is ultimately attributed to an individual (to his/her will or interest). For example, Ronald Dworkin calls it a “trump” by which an individual can demand “equal concern and respect” from society.
It turned out that such 'trumps'- e.g. 'equal dignity'- were a nuisance. They must be pruned back so that claims involving Hohfeldian incidents can become justiciable in a proportionate and sensible manner.
On the other hand, it is known that the exercise of a right by one individual might restrict the realization of the rights of other individuals, either directly or indirectly (for example, through the obstruction of certain social goals). The purpose of this paper is to explore a way to balance social goals and rights, the right to civil freedom, the right to well-being freedom, and the right to political freedom, using Sen’s idea of a Coherent Goal-Rights System.
But this is what courts and legislatures get paid to do! Why reinvent the wheel? I suppose Gotoh thought Sen must be smart because he got the Nobel. But Sen wasn't smart. He got a prize for being brown.
Before I proceed further, I ought to comment on the distinction between the problem of what matter is qualified as a right and the problem of the extent to which an individual can concretely exercise his/her rights. Or, in other words, the qualification of a right and the effectiveness of a right respectively. Being qualified as a right implies being recognized as having a universal value at least for all human beings, regardless of any difference in individual characteristics or social contexts.
The right to be beautiful is a right of this type. It has no meaning in law or economics. In Sanskrit it would be called 'arthavada' not 'vidhi'- i.e. mere puffery without any content.
On the other hand we all do have the right to discharge natural functions- e.g. farting- though others may have a superior immunity with respect to having to smell our farts.
Let us consider a set of doings or beings of an individual, each of which is physically realizable depending only on his will.
In which case the thing is not a set. Why? One 'doing' of an individual is deciding what 'set' means. Suppose this coincides with whatever we say is the 'set' of his doings and beings, then that set contains its own definition. Thus set is not a 'primitive notion' and thus can't be subsumed under the rubric of axiomatic set theory. Suppose our 'set' does not coincide with what he thinks is his 'set'. Then, one or other or both have an arbitrary element or are unknowable. There is no underlying mathematical object which has any natural or canonical connection to what we are speaking of.
The n-tuples of individual doing or being actually chosen by him (not being left within his inner will) constitutes a social state.
No. They only constitute some unknowable collection of things. They don't constitute anything. A social state arises by social interactions or failures to interact which arise for a Societal reason. It is not a collection of things chosen by any individual.
Now, if this constituted social state can be clearly separated again corresponding to the original profile of doings or beings without any external influence, it might be natural to attribute each part to an individual.
No. It would be arbitrary, not natural at all. There is no 'natural' way of getting the 'original profile' of any one unless we control their will such that they must agree it would represent their own 'doing'. Calling the thing something it is not- viz. 'constituted social state'- is simply a case of telling stupid lies.
The libertarian assertion that any individual choice of his/her own actions should not be publicly interrupted can be understood as reasonable in this context.
No. It may be interrupted. The libertarian is at liberty to put an end to that interruption without attracting disapprobation from fellow libertarians. Indeed, they may help her do so- purely as a matter of their own free choice.
However, a social state constituted by individuals’ actions is not necessarily clearly separable among individuals.
If 'doings' are well defined then, by Yoneda lemma, separability must be achievable because all interactions can be traced back to individual 'doings' and 'beings'. It may be argued that there may be 'emergent effects' but the human consciousness can take account of them such that doings and beings are 'Muth rational' or represent a 'reflective equilibrium'.
The problem of course, is that doings and beings can't be well defined if
1) we evolved by natural selection because otherwise we'd be too easily 'hacked' by a predator or parasite
2) God created us with the specific purpose that we should find this path to him. But then this is just an exercise in theology. Just pray to God and don't bother with this complicated but useless stuff.
A combination of each individual’s doing or being might form a non-separable symmetrical common state—such as trust of (or friendliness between, harmony with)
this is separable but discontinuously slow- i.e. there are 'topological holes'. Gotoh must have discovred that 'friendliness' and 'harmony' are marred by death or absence or 'change of manners' which causes us to feel the agony of bereavement or other loss.
one another, being married to (or cooperating with) each other—or an asymmetrical common state, such as one harming others.
Both help and harm can be asymmetric or symmetric.
Moreover, it might induce some external, uncertain, and irreversible influences not only on human beings but also on other creatures and even nature itself far beyond the current time and space.
But if there is a Kripkean 'end of Time' then we know there is some 'separable' way of explaining even the most complex or non-deterministic process- at least potentially. Moreover, it would be quick and cheap to verify a proof of such a thing even if its calculation or proof was in another time class.
In addition, it is a reasonable assumption that a society includes individuals who are not physically able to realize even some basic doings or beings depending only on their own will.
We are all born in that way and many will die in that condition. Oikeiosis- our natural bonds and affiliations- takes care of the problem sufficiently well that our species survives, though we can always exert ourselves such that the race flourish more and more.
In this case, even if there is an obvious way to separate a social state and attribute each part of it to each individual, it seems a less reasonable thing to do.
For a given purpose- sure. But this 'Goal-Rights' bullshit is aiming at abstraction and generality.
On the contrary, it seems more reasonable to regard a social state constituted of individuals’ doings and beings as a common pooled value,
only if it corresponds to an actual pooling equilibrium. Otherwise, cheap talk goes a begging. Bullshit walks, Money (a costly signal) talks.
and to search for a fair rule of distributing.
If Djikstra's dining philosophers can't find such a rule to break concurrency deadlock or livelock, how can we? Witsenhausen's counterexample is a similar result which came out more than 50 years ago. Sen's sententious shite ignored developments in maths to virtue signal as if he himself really was a Saint like Mother Theresa.
So much for Gotoh. What a waste of a good person's time! Still, her country is rich so good luck to her.
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