I find that point of view completely unsupported and, quite frankly, absurd on the face of it. I don't say this to denigrate the view - I know that many people take it. I'm just trying to illustrate how unsupported I think it is.
As I was expressing to Algor, it's mainly a semantic issue. You're opinion is that the term "right" is bound to legal fiction. If we need a different word for quintessential and natural human propensities that promote the being and don't impose on others without contract to do so then so be it, but the term natural right suffices for me. Those propensities are not opinions, but to call it something using the term "right" I suppose is an opinion if you enter the conversation with a locked down use for the term "right".
Sorry, I'm not sure what "to the degree you make contract for them" means in this context. Could you expand?
Many humans lack opportunity to express their sexual nature with another when it arises in themselves. Social authority has made laws against both rape and prostitution. If you try to satisfy the urge using rape, you soon find that you do not have an open an unopposed avenue to this satisfaction as the other may resist or report the violation. It causes a social harm that we do not want to live with.
But you can enter a contract with someone for it. The phenomenon of unopposed sexual contract entered by two parties has become a part of the human landscape regardless of any authority's declaration of what they think our rights are to engage in it. It's more than us just saying "we think we should be able to...." because we actually express it, strongly, over any authority's desire to suppress it.
Of course. But does the desire for (say) sex make it a right? How about the desire to live? What does it even mean to say that I have a right to life while I'm being chased by a bear? What does it mean to say that I have a right to eat if I'm stranded in the Sahara?
No guarantee of satisfaction of what we need to be free to pursue.
I think that's, at bottom, my problem with rights. Unless they are actually explicitly granted/ensured by some governing body, I don't think that expressing them means anything more than "I think I/you should be able to...".
This argument of what one merely "thinks" is their right cuts both ways. In the prostitution example the authority "thinks/believes" they have the right to suppress it. This example shows us that their perceived authority over this phenomenon is complete artificial nonsense in the face of human reality and something much deeper than mere legal declarations are in play in the human fabric.
Perhaps I should put it to you. What is the difference between these two statements:
- I believe that every person should be free to act as they will without harming another
- Every person has the right to be free to act as they will without harming another
Nothing really substantial. The former is merely declaring a belief while the latter is declaring what one actually has (a right) - which is also merely a belief.
A right in the way you define it is merely an authoritative belief or attitude towards human actions. So I would add the statement to be considered:
- Every person expresses what they are regardless of beliefs and/or rights declared by authorities. Harmful and unwelcome expressions meet natural resistance by those they harm and artificial resistance by authorities forced to maintain social order in the face of some upheaval in it. Benign expressions only meet artificial resistance by an authority that merely thinks it holds a "proper belief" about some benign social actions as there are no victims to cry foul.