Generally speaking, rights and responsibilities seem to go hand-in-hand. Yet in the discourse of human rights, there is seldom talk of human responsibilities - although human rights are in a sense responsibilities of the State towards its citizens. On the one hand, this makes sense, because to establish a set of human responsibilities to be taken as seriously as human rights would mean essentially coercing certain behavior out of citizens, rather than merely providing them with a platform for self-realization, as human rights do. It seems, however, that the quality of a society is not dependent merely on the freedom of its members, but also on their involvement and consideration for one another. Given this consideration, I am curious as to whether any philosophers have elaborated on a theory of "human responsibilities", to complement our current human rights scheme. If so, what do these responsibilities look like?

Here are a few things you might want to look at. In 1997, the InterAction Council drafted a UniversalDeclaration of Human Responsibilities, see www.interactioncouncil.org/ In 2002 the Fundacion Valencia Tercer Milenio published a Declaration of Responsibilities and Human Duties, available at http://globalization.icaap.org/content/v2.2/declare.html Somewhat more detailed and useful are some of the General Comments produced under the auspices of the United Nations (see http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/gencomm/econ.htm). As one example, see General Comment 14 on the human right to the highest attainable standard of health. Onora O'Neill has long written about the need to achieve greater clarity on who is required by human rights to do what for whom. See her books Towards Justice and Virtue and Bounds of Justice . And, if it's permissible, I'd also mention my own book World Poverty and Human Rights: Cosmopolitan Responsibilities and Reforms.

Is it true that knowledge is the same as truth

You are asking whether it is true that T=K (knowledge and truth are the same). From your asking this, I conclude that you don't know whether T=K. If truth and knowledge were the same, then lack of knowledge would be lack of truth. So, assuming T=K is true, we derive the conclusion that T=K is false. Better then to suppose that knowledge and truth are not the same. And of course they aren't. Something may be true and yet not be known by many or not be known by anyone at all. For example, take the following two sentences: "with optimal play, white can always win in chess" and "it is not the case that, with optimal play, white can always win in chess". One of these sentences is certainly true; but no one yet knows which one it is. (Or, if anyone does now, they haven't told me, so I don't know which is true.)

There's a logical scenario which often comes up in discussions around the question of voting. We all know the conversation... Person 1: I don't vote because my vote has no impact on the outcome of the election. Person 2: Not on it's OWN it doesn't, but if everyone thought that, no one would vote, and THEN what would happen?! Person 1: But I don't decide whether all those other people vote, I only have control of my 1 vote! My question here relates not to whether or not one should or shouldn't vote, or to the voting example alone, but rather to the logic of this situation. For this example let us assume (for the sake of the point I am interested in) that it is universally agreed that all people (including Person 1 and 2) agree that nobody voting is an outcome that everyone wishes to avoid. And also assume (despite the conversation above!) that everyone decides privately whether to vote or not, such that their decision cannot influence others decisions) Finally assume that the election involved has...

I don't think there's a named fallacy here, but I do think the principle proposed by Person 2 is unsound. If this principle were sound, then it would be impermissible to remain childless even in a world as overpopulated as ours. The principle can be revised to be more plausible. When many people in some group are making a morally motivated effort to achieve a certain good that would not exist (or to avert a certain harm that would not be averted) without their effort, then one has moral reason to do one's fair share if one is a member of this group. This sort of principle against free-riding on the moral efforts of others can explain why one should generally vote and do so conscientiously -- at least unless one has conclusive reason to judge that enough others are already acting and that one's own effort will therefore add nothing to the outcome. But there is also a more direct explanation of why one ought to vote. As philosopher Derek Parfit has argued, the extremely low probability of one...

It seems the general consensus that human dignity is the basis for human rights. However, it seems to me that human dignity makes more sense as the goal of human rights program; that is, in applying and respecting a set of human rights, we ought to be aiming to help everyone live dignified lives. So how is it that dignity shows up as the justification of human rights, rather than their goal?

Why should there be any incompatibility between dignity being both a goal and a justification? On the face of it, there seems to be harmony: if A is a worthwhile goal and B serves this goal, then B can be justified by appeal to A. Example: the goal of having a good job is served by having a good education and so obtaining a good education is justified by the contribution this education makes to winning a good job. Similarly in your case: the goal of protecting the dignity of human beings is served by instituting human rights and so instituting human rights can be justified by its contribution to protecting human dignity.

From an ethical perspective, what does potential count for? My motivation for this question stems directly from a discussion on abortion I once had. In general, it seems to me to be evident that the fetus is not yet a person, but it is a potential person, and it seems that potential might count for something. For example, if we consider the case of a child who has the potential to become a masterful musician, but deny him the ability to ever play music, it seems that a moral wrong has been done.

What does potential count for? I don't think there is a general answer here. One important variable concerns the relation between the potential time-slice person who never came to be and the entity whose development into that time-slice person was disturbed. When these two are closely related, then potential may count for a lot. When you prevent a very talented and highly trained athlete from traveling to the Olympics, then you deprive this person of her chance of a medal; and this seems quite serious because here the person prevented and the person who would have competed are very closely related (the same mature person a few days apart). But suppose the opportunity to compete in the Olympics was closed off much earlier by the parents who sent the first-grader to the chess club rather than to the gymnastics club, so that she becomes as chess lover rather than a gymnastics lover. While the world may have lost a great gymnast, this is not a substantial loss for her (because gymnastics never came to mean...

Is there an infinite number of colors? It occurs to me that, given our neurophysiology, there is only a finite number of colors that any human can actually see (the same could surely be said for any animal whatsoever). In order to claim that there is an infinite number of colors, then, I think that you would have to be able to talk about colors which are only "in principle" perceptible--but it seems weird to talk about colors which no perceiver can actually perceive.

If you are talking about basic colors, then you are right: there are only finitely many of them, and to get beyond them one would then have to bring in "colors" beyond the visible spectrum, and this is indeed weird in the absence of beings that can actually perceive those "colors". But here's an argument on the other side. Suppose we are willing to count as colors all the different shades on the visible spectrum -- between 360 and 750 nanometers, let's say. Suppose these are densely packed so that between any two wave lengths there's always another one. Then we'd have infinitely many different colors all of which we can actually perceive. (There's a serious questions about whether this account is consistent with the latest physics, but set this aside for a moment.) Now you might object that two colors can be different only if (a) we are able to perceive both and (b) we are able to discern the difference between them . Our abilities of discernment are surely limited, and so there are not...

Many people attack moral relativism on the grounds that accepting moral relativism implies that there is no more reason to ever consider anybody's behavior to be wrong, and that it therefore becomes impossible to punish wrongdoers (because there won't be any). For example, moral relativism would imply that we can't intervene in an abusive household or protect battered women whose religious believes would have them submit to their husbands or male relatives. Why is tolerance and abstention assumed to be a fundamental quality of moral relativism? After all, if moral relativism implies it isn't wrong for my neighbour to beat his wife because he believes God allows it, then moral relativism also implies it isn't wrong for me to call the police on him, or for the police to lock him behind bars, or even for me to go over and protect his wife myself, physically if necessary. So why is moral relativism assumed to go hand-in-hand with being passive and (essentially) impotent? Is there really some link that I...

Your argument is fine so far as it goes, and it would be perfectly consistent for you to endorse moral relativism and also to protect the victims of what you consider to be wrongdoing -- for example, by locking up the perpetrators. But it would be difficult to justify such imprisonment as punishment. It is generally thought to be legitimate to punish people only when they are guilty in the minimal sense that they could or should have known that what they were doing was wrong. This is why we generally don't punish animals, children, the mentally handicapped and the temporarily insane. (To be sure, we find other ways to render them harmless in the future, but we don't think they deserve to be harmed for what they did.) Now if moral relativism were true, then there could be many views about right and wrong that are no worse supported than our own views; and then it cannot be said of the persons who acted wrongly by our lights that they should have known that what they were doing was wrong. These persons...

What is it about some situations that make certain problems ethical or moral in nature, and others not? It can't be merely that different parties are involved in a situation - the decision as to whether to ask a person on a date or not is not an ethical one, but a social/emotional one. Harm doesn't seem to be sufficient either - accepting or refusing an invitation to a date likewise doesn't seem an ethical question, even if the person, if rejected, might enter a deep depression. So what is it that differentiates ethical problems from the rest?

You might draw two distinctions here: between a situation and some way of responding to, or acting in, this situation; and between some situation or conduct requiring moral reflection and some situation or conduct being morally problematic. Pretty much any social situation requires some moral reflection: there are almost always conduct options that are wrong in that situation. For example, you might ask someone on a date in a insulting way, suggesting that you'll pay the meal only if you can have your way afterward; or you might decline a date in a humiliating way, saying that you would not want to be seen dead with so ugly a person. Such responses are morally wrong, and you need to be aware of this and avoid them. You also need to be aware that you should not ask just anyone on a date, not your student and not your friend's partner, for instance, and that you should not accept a date with such people even when they ask you out. So while many cases of offering and accepting/declining invitations on a...

I'm sure such situations are familiar to many people, especially those who like to think they consider problems from several angles. Bob does something morally reprehensible (cheats on his spouse, kills someone, vandalizes a home, etc). Jane and Mary are discussing the situation, and Jane offers an explanation as to why Bob committed the act (he was sexually frustrated, he was paranoid and thought the victim was watching him, he learned it from his peers). Mary is then upset or angry that Jane would justify Bob's actions. This often happens even though Jane is not actually justifying anything, and agrees that Bob did something wrong - she's only trying to speculate on why he's done what he's done, for curiosity's sake or to help convince any victims that it's not their fault. Yet it would seem that Mary is assuming an explanation for a morally reprehensible action is the same as (or implies) a justification of that action. That, then, is my question: isn't it easy to disentangle explanations of...

I think your question is too broad. There is no general answer here, because much depends on what explanation is being offered for the behavior. An explanation of an action may justify it, may excuse it, may be a reason to forgive it, or may be none of the above. To justify an action is usually understood as claiming that the action was justified and therefore was not morally reprehensible after all. Using your example, perhaps Bob and his wife had agreed on a divorce and, while waiting for the divorce to become final, also agreed that it would be alright for them to date others. In this sort of situation, one could plausibly maintain that Bob does nothing wrong when he has an affair that he does not disclose to his wife. Or, to use another of your examples, perhaps the person Bob killed was in the midst of an attack upon an innocent person which Bob could stop only by shooting the attacker. The "none of the above" case at the other end of the spectrum is illustrated by explanations that confirm...

If causality is a category of perception as Kant claims why are so many scientists unfazed intellectually by the claim that the Big Bang theory must be an incomplete theory of the universe because the existence of the big bang must have been caused by something prior to the big bang? Personally I side against the scientists in my firm belief that they are defying commonsense in their rejection of the idea that the existence of the universe at the time of the big bang must have had a prior cause. So scientists seem to be rejecting the idea that all occurrences have a cause.

According to Kant, causality is among the organizing concepts through which our mind unifies its experience. Like space and time, causality as well is then not objective (i.e. wholly independent of our mind), but still "empirically" objective in the sense that we cannot help but structure and anticipate the world of our experience as causally ordered. This sort of account explains your "firm belief" that an uncaused cause defies commonsense. But it also cautions us against claiming any knowledge of what the world might really be like, apart from how our mental faculties are organizing it for us. The very strength of our conviction that nothing like an uncaused Big Bang could possibly have happened -- the strong feeling that we know this "a priori" -- would suggest to Kant that this belief discloses something about ourselves (about our way of organizing and unifying experience) rather about the world we inhabit. And so physicists could actually appeal to Kant in rejecting your belief as a...

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