Summations Only

How so? What were these standards? They were united on human rights as it related to Nazi Germany. They were united in the conclusion that the genocide of the Jews was wrong. This was made clear in the Moscow Document:

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They noted that "evidence of atrocities, massacres and cold-blooded mass executions which are being perpetrated by Hitlerite forces in many of the countries they have overrun and from which they are now being steadily expelled". They went on to state that Germans would be sent back to the countries where they had committed their crimes and "judged on the spot by the peoples whom they have outraged".

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This lead to the drafting of the London Charter which included three types of crimes: war crimes, crimes against peace, and crimes against humanity.

If they were simply a product of beliefs then they would not be self-evident nor inalienable.

Did Pluto only exist once we discovered it, or did it exist prior to its discovery? Human rights are the same. Enlightenment philosophers like Locke discovered human rights. They did not invent them.Secondly, how does a society take away human rights? We always have them. What the agreement allows for is a State that protects those rights. A foreign power or tyrant could only violate our human rights, not take them away. What you are talking about is the social contract. Human rights are the ideal, and the social contract built on these human rights will always fall short of that ideal. I will not argue that all governments fall short of the ideal, but that doesn't make the ideals go away. Wiki actually has a decent write up of Locke's notion of the social contract:

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John Locke's conception of the social contract differed from Hobbes' in several fundamental ways, retaining only the central notion that persons in a state of nature would willingly come together to form a state. Locke believed that individuals in a state of nature would be bound morally, by The Law of Nature, not to harm each other in their lives or possession, but without government to defend them against those seeking to injure or enslave them, people would have no security in their rights and would live in fear. Locke argued that individuals would agree to form a state that would provide a "neutral judge", acting to protect the lives, liberty, and property of those who lived within it. While Hobbes argued for near-absolute authority, Locke argued for inviolate freedom under law in his Second Treatise of Government. Locke argued that government's legitimacy comes from the citizens' delegation to the government of their right of self-defense (of "self-preservation"). The government thus acts as an impartial, objective agent of that self-defense, rather than each man acting as his own judge, jury, and executionerthe condition in the state of nature. In this view, government derives its "just powers from the consent [i.e, delegation] of the governed,".

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The government is allowed to govern the interplay of these liberties as they are delegated by the citizens. To be fair, I am more of a pragmatist than I let on in this thread.

We have already covered this ground. If you found my arguments to be unsatisfactory then it may be better to agree to disagree rather than repeat previous posts. You disagree that empathy and reason can be used to conclude that human rights exist. I think they can be used. I don't see a way past this sticking point. Help me see this from your point of view. What should the document say if human rights really are self-evidence and inalienable? What are you not seeing in this document that should be there if human rights really are inherent and inalienable?

It wasn't the State, culture, or society that established those rights, only the procedures that would be used to punish those who violated human rights.

It seems that this thread is stuck in neutral. Do you guys feel like it is time for summations? If so, I would be more than happy to write mine first and let you guys tear it apart.

I never argued otherwise. They wrote the agreement based on human rights that exist outside of the state, society, or culture.

Could you go into more depth on this one?

But what do we base the rules on? I have argued in this thread that the rules should be based on human rights that can be objectively determined through empathy and reason. Throughout this thread I have argued that we can objectively determine what human rights are. The Golden Rule is a decent approximation. Human rights are not a list of actions that humans are physically incapable of doing. I have never pretended that they are. This comes down to Hume's Is/Ought problem. We don't derive what a society ought to do by what a society is doing. I have said so with the backing of what I consider to be a compelling argument. Do you want your stuff stolen? Probably not. Are you able to determine that another person is sentient like you are and would feel the same emotions as you if their stuff was stolen? Yes. Therefore, you should not steal other peoples stuff because it is something that you do not want done to you. I am arguing that it can be objective because we share the same fundamental emotions and are capable of using empathy and reason. This would be a case of someone ignoring empathy and reason, therefore leading to subjective conclusions on human rights. As much as any objective scientific model.

No, I am arguing that empathy and reason are real. Using these two things we can arrive at the objective conclusion of human rights. It is my stance that these rights exist whether or not a state, culture, or society recognizes them. They have always existed as long as humans have been sentient. A state, culture, or society does not need to recognize these rights in order for them to exist. Violating a person's human rights does not make those rights go away. What you are talking about is the decision to punish those who violate human rights. This is different than determining if these rights exist in the first place.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

You could at least acknowledge that I have put forward an argument for human rights, and then show why that argument fails. That would seem to be more productive than pretending that I never put an argument forward. I never said that they were. I said that one can use reason and empathy to arrive at human rights. Here is the test. I say that not having your stuff taken away for no reason is a human right. We test this by determining if a vast majority of sane people do not like to have their stuff stolen from them.

Where did I move the goalposts?

Why not? In that argument I argue that they do exist outside of any state, culture, or society. My argument is based on the idea of empathy and reason, not the sovereignty of a state or the consensus of a culture. The idea is that we are sentient, we are capable of empathy, and we are able to understand the pain we cause in others. If you think it is wrong for people to kill you without cause, take your stuff without cause, or imprison you without cause then it is wrong for you to do the same to someone else.