Monday 14 February 2011

Thoughts On Legally Enshrined Human Rights

In what is evidently a continuing stream of consciousness and curiosity on the concept of 'human rights' I appear to have now written this:


Human rights are often divided into distinct categories of ‘natural’ and ‘legal’. I’ll deal with ‘natural’ or ‘inalienable’ human rights in more detail in another blog post perhaps, if the momentum for this topic stays with me, but for this post I want to look at legally enshrined human rights because this is the manifestation of such beliefs in an officially sanctioned form. This is how groups attempt to gain international acceptance of their beliefs. Drawing up a declaration of rights is a statement both of those beliefs and the conviction to uphold them. It may be a declaration to defend them with force, or of the anticipation that every right-thinking government will adopt them as of undeniable value and validity. The Declaration of Independence is a famous example, but a much more recent and secular one is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

The UDHR was drawn up in 1948 as a response to the atrocities of the Second World War. It was the first global expression of rights to which all human beings are considered inherently entitled and is made up of 30 articles reproduced in full at the end of this post).

Freedom of thought, for example, is defined under Article 18 in the UDHR as:

“Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.”



The above sentence is a good place to start demonstrating what a minefield this exercise is. One aspect of life for some Islamic people is the practice of female circumcision. Although not part of any official religious text it’s been adopted by many Muslims as a religious observance, but has been condemned as brutal and entirely unnecessary mutilation by the many who oppose its practise. This, to me, nullifies any effect Article 18 hopes to enshrine and calls into question how we should interpret freedom “to manifest … religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.” The UDHR as a whole is not without its critics either. In 1982 the Iranian representative to the United Nations, Said Rajaie-Khorassani, described the UDHR as “a secular understanding of the Judeo-Christian tradition", which could not be implemented by Muslims without trespassing the Islamic law. The Organization of the Islamic Conference officially adopted the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam as an alternative to the UDHR and which includes the "freedom and right to a dignified life in accordance with the Islamic Shari’ah".

In relation to Article 25 on rights to health, Andrew Bissell (a supporter of ‘objectivism’) argued:

"Health care doesn’t simply grow on trees; if it is to be made a right for some, the means to provide that right must be confiscated from others...no one will want to enter the medical profession when the reward for years of careful schooling and study is not fair remuneration, but rather, patients who feel entitled to one’s efforts, and a government that enslaves the very minds upon which patients’ lives depend."

This is a good example of how ‘freedoms’ in actuality can become enslavements. Not only can individual articles in practice remove rights, as a whole a declaration can have the opposite effect it is intended to make. To quote Philip Alston:

“If every possible human rights element is deemed to be essential or necessary, then nothing will be treated as though it is truly important.”



There are also issues with the interpretation of some of the ‘freedoms’. For instance Article 26 stipulates "...education shall be compulsory", but to make a thing compulsory is to remove freedom of choice. John Holt, in Escape From Childhood, says:

“No human right, except the right to life itself, is more fundamental than [the right of a person to peacefully follow their own interests]. A person’s freedom of learning is part of his freedom of thought, even more basic than his freedom of speech. If we take from someone his right to decide what he will be curious about, we destroy his freedom of thought. We say, in effect, you must think not about what interests you and concerns you, but about what interests and concerns us.”



Somewhat controversially, the UDHR includes the word ‘compulsory’ once and ‘compel’ twice.

Human rights can also be split into civil/political rights, and economic/social/cultural rights. The UDHR holds the two groups to be indivisible as only in combination can the different rights successfully exist. Critics claim that the two groups require, by their nature, very different approaches and so cannot be treated as indivisible. In The No-Nonsense Guide to Human Rights, Olivia Ball and Paul Gready point out that some civil rights are reliant on progressive and vague legalities, while some social rights are precise and well-defined by the observable needs of individuals.

Further criticism asserts that the UDHR is rooted in liberal, Western and/or imperialist perspectives and so cannot be considered universal. Some Asian critics such as former Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, and former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir bin Mohamad, claim that individual freedoms and liberties are prioritised lower in Asian values than in Western values. Lee Kuan Yew and Mahathir then went on to assert that this made Asians more suitable for authoritarian regimes than for democracies, which itself was not received without criticism, including a response from Mahathir’s own deputy Anwar bin Ibrahim who accused him of offending “our traditions as well as our forefathers, who gave their lives in the struggle against tyranny and injustices”. However, there is evidence to support at least the first part of the claim, that Asian don’t tend to put themselves before their social groups. In ‘Cognitive social psychology: the Princeton Symposium on the Legacy and Future of Social Cognition’ Gordon B. Moskowitz describes the interaction of implicit self-regard and culture. He says:

‘Research on the relation between culture and self-concept suggests that the members of Eastern and Western [culture] understand and evaluate the self quite differently.’



In ‘Handbook of Child Psychology: Theoretical models of human development’, William Damon and Richard M. Lerner describe how research suggests Asians emphasise the fundamental interrelatedness of all individuals within a group and that this relationship, rather than individual freedoms, is the influencing factor to consider:

‘From an East Asian cultural perspective a … European American style – distinct positive and attribute based – is not a mature, fully civilised form of human agency. A strongly held, clear sense of self signals childishness because it entails failure to take full account of and show sufficient regard for the relationships of which the self is part.’



It’s also worth noting that when speaking Japanese there is no fixed word or meaning for ‘I’ as there is in English. In Japanese the equivalent of ‘I’ in a sentence such as “I carried the bag to the car” is changed to reflect the relationship of the carrier of the bag to the owner of the bag. If it’s his boss’s bag the social subordination is reflected in the word used. What we in Europe consider to be a concrete, unchanging self neither holds up cross-culturally nor in psychological research. Language shapes and directs thought. The labels we use in our definitions of words and concepts create models of them in our minds. What we then consider ‘reality’ is our own constructed mental model assembled from our personal, subjective experiences within the context of our own culture. If the concept of ‘me’ is dependent on where I grew up then how can the concepts of what is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ not be? How can there be inalienable human rights when it appears the concept of the individual human being is not itself an inalienable thing?

This is social relativity. Each individual’s perception and interpretation being wholly and subjectively constructed according to where they are and how they got there; like photons passing a spinning black hole, in their own relative space-time they experience travel in a straight line, behaving as they always do; but to an outside observer their path is a spiral. As a culture we are beginning to accept the notions of relativity in physics, happily using satnav systems every day that incorporate Einstein’s theories to allow for the different pace of passing time on the surface and in orbit. Yet in our own individual experiences we rely on information provided by our intuition and evolved perceptions, despite scientific evidence that they can be, and regularly are, fooled. We cling to our personal narratives, confabulating our way across the gaps, assigning supernatural powers to any unexplored detail of science and wishing fervently for magic in our fiction and our festivals.

If human rights truly were inalienable I don’t believe there would be any need for documents such as the UDHR to attempt to define them. The articles would indeed be “self-evident” and would apply to any person in any culture under any circumstances. I don’t think the evidence allows for that conclusion. Humans are complex and highly flexible things so any attempt to define morals and behaviour is going to be a tough job, and in all likelihood it would need updating every few years for each cultural group. Yes it would be nice if there really was a book of rules we could all refer to and check what’s ok and what’s not, but that concept is a compromise of our personal freedoms at best, a contradiction of them at worst (see my earlier blog post for my take on the logic) and in a more tangible, less philosophical way it undermines one of the most important aspects of adult human life – taking responsibility. As an emotionally mature adult I have the responsibility and multiple occasions to make choices of what is right or wrong, what is necessary or optional, what is a good decision or a bad decision. I won’t always get it right, but I hope for a general trend in improvement. I’d even say we measure someone’s maturity and wisdom by observing their track record in decision-making and responsibility and comparing it to our expectations for someone of their age. If the basis of those decisions is already enshrined in our genes or our psyches how can any moral decision I make be said to be mine? I’m not looking for a god or a politician to tell me what’s right. I’ll read the words and take in the meanings, but in the end the decision of what is right and wrong sits with me. The combined experiences of humanity seem to back this up. Perhaps this is especially so when we consider the behaviour of victims of atrocities because it’s at the extremes or when normality breaks down that we begin to see how things really work. All the theorising and postulating amounts to little more than rhetoric until it’s put to the test in unusual circumstances. Let’s all hope we never really have to find out how our beliefs hold up under extremes.

Appendix

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Article 1

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 2

Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

Article 3

Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and security of person.

Article 4

No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

Article 5

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.

Article 6

Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

Article 7

All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.

Article 8

Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.

Article 9

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

Article 10

Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.

Article 11

Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.

No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.

Article 12

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Article 13

Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.

Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

Article 14

Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.

This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 15

Everyone has the right to a nationality.

No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.

Article 16

Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.

Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.

The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

Article 17

Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.

No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

Article 18

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Article 19

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Article 20

Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.

No one may be compelled to belong to an association.

Article 21

Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.

Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.

The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

Article 22

Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

Article 23

Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.

Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.

Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

Article 24

Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

Article 25

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Article 26

Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.

Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.

Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

Article 27

Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.

Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

Article 28

Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

Article 29

Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.

In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.

These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 30

Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

Thursday 10 February 2011

February and Other Mysteries

Yesterday I heard a DJ complaining about February, with it’s “silent r” and its fewer days. “What’s that all about, Febyoory?” he wittered.

fɛbrʊəri, or fɛbjʊəri gets its name from the Latin ‘februarius’, which in turn comes from februa, the name of a Roman purification feast held in this month. Precise speakers insist that the r should be pronounced, but it doesn’t flow easily for everyone so most people replace it with a y sound: Feb-yoo- rather than Feb-roo-. This is now becoming the accepted standard. Three seconds on AskOxford.com would have told him that, as it did me, and no doubt explanations for the fewer days could be found with a little more digging.

I have to conclude that his question was entirely rhetorical. He had no desire to find out the answers, only to find a subject which his listeners could relate to. And I suppose it’s likely that many English speakers will at some point have wondered about the seemingly redundant and obstructive first r in the word, so the DJ was sure to have connected with a lot of people on some level.

But what kind of people? With exabytes of digital information within easy and almost instant reach, in an age of smart phones, i-pads, laptops, Google, Android and Wikipedia, who is still left in the dark about such trivial things? Presumably a fairly big proportion of radio listeners tuning in to DJs that fill their air-time with inane rhetoric. They must feel the inclination to listen to these topics and even, in the case of some shows, to phone in and discuss them live on air.

So what purpose does it serve to question without seeking answers? I think the answer to that is it provides people with commonality, bonds of shared incredulity and tutting at the state of things. It allows the head-shaking grumblers countless opportunities to vent the Victor Meldrewisms that tend to bubble up in us when we feel out of our depth, like a kind of irritation version of nitrogen narcosis. I also think this, along with titillation and confirmation bias, is among the last few remaining purpose of most newspapers.

So what’s the problem? For me the problem is it’s lazy. It reinforces our existing fears and prejudices. It’s the reverse of scientific thinking because it doesn’t seek answers, it seeks only consensus of opinion. It’s a form of confirmation bias itself, on a grand scale. A mutual agreement to banish thought and reason and to lock thought patterns into disapproval. Entrenched dissatisfaction with trivial and often transient matters, such as pronunciation or fashions, provides the opportunity to conserve energy by resetting the default attitude towards any process requiring effort to condemnation. It removes the need to re-assess our model of the world to fit the new or the or to acclimatise ourselves to the unexpected.

Remember the flightless birds of New Zealand. Evolution follows the rule of ‘use it or lose it’ and it favours anything that conserves energy. If we as a species make a virtue of ignorance we make it an attractive quality, which in turn risks it becoming an adaptive trait. Our huge and costly brains came about through necessity during periods of ever-more complex problem solving, both technical and social. Now everything is done at the push of a button and we have less need to think for ourselves. Our intellectual wings have been superseded by a cultural miasma which buoys us up and along whatever path we slouch our way into early in life. As we’re less and less inclined to think for ourselves or to challenge our long-held and safe beliefs we’re more and more likely to lose our ability to discern between truth and comfort.

Tuesday 8 February 2011

Response in Discussion on Immutable Human Rights

Part of an online discussion with Roland, this response was too long and too wide-ranging to comfortably fit on the Facebook page where the conversation began.


One of the problems with the idea of immutable human rights is that the evidence from history and cross-cultural studies doesn’t back it up.

The luxuriously comfortable world of the domesticated and educated classes of late 20th Century/early 21st Century Europe causes a skewed perspective. It’s a cognitive illusion to assume that what you know is a) correct and b) a general rule.

Secondly, for there to be immutable human rights they must be encoded in us somehow. There are 2 means by which this is generally thought to happen – evolutionary selection for a genetic predisposition (often called ‘instinct’, which means nothing), or by divine decree.

The problem with that is it’s not logical. If one follows the logic it goes round in a big circle and falls over. Lookie-see:

1) If a feeling that we have certain definite rights is genetically pre-programmed into our brains then we are not free to choose how we feel or to review and change our beliefs. We are enslaved by a perspective that dictates our feelings from within, so in this case the argument for a right to freedom is self-contradictory. If you are genetically pre-determined to feel you have a right to freedom you have no choice in this and therefore you are not free.

If you discount genetic pre-determinism (as many do, because it’s a very hard notion to live with) then perhaps a pre-disposition is a better option. But pre-dispositions are by their nature less precise and so the concept of immutable rights – perfect, unchanging, precise, inviolate doesn’t fit. Plus perfection isn’t found in a natural system. Nature is vague, imperfect and imprecise, hence bio-diversity, niche specialties and speciation. This universe does not contain anything of absolute unchanging perfection. That is fundamental to the laws of physics and a root cause of the existence of matter itself dating back to approx 380,000 years after the start of this universe. So any form of encoded and precisely defined behaviour cannot be unchanging in the natural, physical world. It can only be tied to a particular species in the form of tendencies towards certain behavioural traits. But remember that even the concept of ‘species’ is a category that collapses under scrutiny. A species is just a snapshot in a bio-diverse process that is utterly mutable and constantly subject to change, frequently radical. It’s the antithesis of immutability. If these immutable rights belong instead to all species then where is the evidence in the natural world? Are animals capable of evil?

If you’re not looking for evidence and acting purely on belief, what is it in your philosophy that makes humans so special that they have rights other animals don’t? What, must be asked, is ‘human’ anyway? Would a fully sapient, self-aware android have human rights? What if it was self-aware but shaped like a big goldfish or flower? Does a human with serious brain damage have less rights than you or I? Are human rights a virtue of our form or of our intellect? A combination? Any way you answer that it can’t explain logically how rights can be attached to an AI and simultaneously to a biological person in a vegetative state. If you remove the rights of the brain damaged aren’t you at risk of making a value-judgement on what makes a life worthwhile? The judgement seems to be made from an emotional perspective and emotions are out of our control. That brings us back to the earlier idea of being pre-determined or pre-disposed to feel that way.

Also consider the fact that there was at no point in our ancestry a ‘first human’. Any cut-off point from now going backwards to our ape-like ancestors that one may decide is where the human/non-human boundary exists has to be an arbitrary decision. There is no point genetically or palaeontologically where humans arise, just a seamless blend from one ancestor’s DNA to another’s all the way back to the first post-RNA slime. Where do you arbitrarily assign ‘human’ rights on that chain? If you do it too recently you’re saying ancestors who are a bit too hairy and hunched don’t have the same rights. If you go back too far who’s to say where you stop? Monkeys? Fish? It’s an illogical proposition and can only be explained in terms of mutability and context, like all categories and emotional responses.

2) If human rights have been enshrined in us by a benign deity then freedom is again removed from the equation. If your perceived freedom is only made sacred by virtue of a supernatural power then it’s not by choice. Even the definitions of what’s fair and just are suspect because they are not your own definitions, they’ve been presented to you by a god and you’ve been constructed to feel comfortable with them and as if they’re your own. It’s a theological cognitive illusion and the result is the same. You as an individual play no part in the process and by definition are not free to choose other than whether to obey or defy the dictum of the god. Your ‘choice’, if any, is to be ‘good’ and obey or be ‘bad’ and defy. That leads to all sorts of problems, not least that of culpability. If a god has instilled in all humans a knowledge of right and wrong then ignorance is no defence and any tribesman in Papua New Guinea can be held as a ‘sinner’ for not subscribing to the same view of right and wrong. Sound familiar? Perceived permanence of a natural form of justice, by a process of logical deduction, leads us to religious persecution and the obliteration of freedom of choice. What’s morally right and wrong in comfortable, well-nourished European suburbs is not necessarily the same as what’s right and wrong in a rapidly depleting jungle at the edge of the world. Or on the game reserves of Africa where poachers are shot dead to protect endangered species. Does a rhino on the verge of extinction have more rights than a human simply due to the numbers?


To say that human rights are immutable – i.e. established and maintained outside of human decision making processes - and to promulgate the view that human rights are inviolate, is to ignore the efforts made, the blood spilled and hardships endured, by our European ancestors in establishing what we now perceive to be our deserved rights as free and intrinsically valuable individuals. As voting, fairly emancipated people we generally think of our society and ourselves as deeply connected and that we deserve respect. That view is very ‘Western’ and very modern. Yes it’s been a feature of philosophers’ discussions for thousands of years, but when they discussed the freedoms of men in antiquity they meant men. Not women, not children, and certainly not slaves or even lower classed men. The boundaries of moral certainty move as a culture changes. They are not fixed.

These days there would probably be much agreement on feeling uncomfortable about abuse of power or strength and individuals deserving respect, not being judged purely on how useful they are to society. But that view isn’t universally held even now and historically the opposite has been held by many cultures many times, always justifying it to themselves with arguments couched in their own philosophical and sometimes theological ideals. Such views are artefacts of cultures, just as our own feelings on human rights are. But, as ever, environment and genetics co-exist and shape each other. The key issue here being that they are shaped and thus they change.

On the evidence I’ve seen, I don’t believe there are consciously ‘evil’ people doing ‘evil’ deeds in the world. I think there are very different views of what’s acceptable and what’s desirable and that ‘evil’ is open to interpretation. (For an inevitable Star Wars interlude, to me Palpatine is at his least convincing when he’s melodramatically portrayed as knowingly villainous. I don’t buy it. Dictators are usually driven by a desire to ‘better’ society by draconian means and so aren’t evil in their own eyes).

There does appear to be a genetic link with an inter-personal value system that pre-disposes one to certain feelings, including how we see society itself and our position in relation to it. I forget the details, but this TED talk is where I heard about it. If I remember correctly, whether we are left or right wing, libertarian or fascist, is merely a matter of where we are on the spectrum as defined by our individual phenotype and the culture in which it arises.

http://blog.ted.com/2008/09/17/the_real_differ/

Actually, Haidt has a few TED talks on this subject so I’m going to go listen to them all and see what he says before I write anything else.

http://www.ted.com/search?q=haidt