Book: Contemporary Moral Problems: The Nature and Value of Rights by Joel Feinberg
Library Reference: N/A
Amazon.com Reference: http://www.amazon.com/Contemporary-Moral-Problems-James-White/dp/0495553204/

Quote:“Even if there are conceivable circumstances in which one would admit rights diffidently, there is no doubt that their characteristic use and that for which they are distinctively well suited, is to be claimed, demanded, affirmed, and insisted upon…Having rights, of course, makes claiming possible; but it is claiming that gives rights their special moral significance.”

Learning Expectation: On this sub-chapter on Contemporary Moral Problem, I am expecting to:
• Further understand the Nowheresville.
• Acquire the importance of having rights like what Feinberg keep on emphasizing.

Review:
Feinberg start his Nature and Value of Rights asking everyone to imagine Nowheresville, a world like our own except people living here doesn’t have any rights. We are asked, as his reader to imagine that this place is does have abundant generosity and a person gives empathy very easily. They also have a high level of expressiveness, courtesy and politeness both in public and private discourse. But, like what I said on the first sentence they don’t have any rights.

Then Feinberg takes us on a journey in examining the consequences, if there will slight changes were made to the Nature of Nowheresville. He introduces duty, but it was not the action that is due others and can be claimed through rights. They now have the duties required by the law and under pain of penalty, but they don’t have duties to others and entail their rights. Duties here are meant the idea of something due to someone, and thus paying our dues becomes paying that which we owe others and they can make a claim to. Keep in mind that this does not have to be any kind of monetary debt, but something that naturally arises either from (a) the inherent worth of an individual such that the realization of his needs are someone’s debt, or (b) the establishing of a contract which binds two or more people together as to what each owes the other, given the obtaining of certain circumstances.

Because Nowheresville lack of duties, if some is at fault for hurting us, example someone break your car window because they are playing baseball near on your parking area. We can complain that they were wrong but because they have no right and duty, we have no moral justifications for making any claim that they have a duty on fixing what they have broke. Feinberg said that those thing, when we are a Nowherevillians doesn’t cross our mind because the person has no moral duty to us, therefore they have no responsibility on what they did. We can make a complaint, but not regarding to moral duties.

The important conclusion yielded from his thought experiment – or what he is claiming as important – is that no matter what else Nowheresville has, if it does not have the idea of rights then something “morally important” is missing

What I have learned:

On this sub-chapter, I learned that no matter what kind of good traits you have, if you don’t have any duty to others, you will just think that what you do is always right. You, as a person will not do something to payback what you have done, because like what the Nowherevillians, you don’t have any rights and any duties towards others.

The duties that we know is something that give us moral values because we think that we need to do something in order to pay the damages that we cause to other people. Rights are also something that makes us claim what other people done to us. This is what entitles us, and other people as well to be fair.

Review Questions:

1. Describe Nowheresville. How is this world different from our world?
2. Explain the doctrine of the logical correlativity of right and duties. What is Feinberg’s position on this doctrine?
3. How does Feinberg explain the concept of personal desert? How would personal desert work in Nowheresville?
4. Explain the notion of a sovereign right-monopoly. How would this work in Nowheresville according to Feinberg?
5. What are claim-rights? Why does Feinberg think they are morally important?

Answers:

1. Nowheresville, a world like our own except that people do not have rights. As a result, people in this world cannot make moral claims when they are treated unjustly. They cannot demand or claim just treatment, and so they are deprived of self-respect and human dignity.

2. The doctrine of the logical correlativity of rights and duties is the doctrine that all duties entail other people’s rights and all rights entails other people’s duties. John Feinberg says that his answers are a sense of yes and no. He said, etymologically, the word duty is associated with actions that are due someone else, the payments of the debts to creditors, the keeping of agreements with promises, the payment of club dues, or legal fees, or tariffs levies to appropriate authorities of their respective.

3. Personal desert is when a person is said to deserve something good from us what is meant in parts is that there would be certain proprietary in our giving that good thing to him in virtue of kind of person he is, perhaps, or more likely, in virtue of some specific thing he has done.

4. Sovereign monopoly is about the latter case that he could be said not merely to deserve the good thing but also have a right to it as his due; and of course we will not have that sort of things in Nowheresville. That weaker kind of proprietary which is mere dessert is simply kind of fittingness between ones party’s character or action and another party’s favorable response, much like that between humors, laughter, or good performance applause.

5. The conceptual linkage between personal rights and claiming has long been noticed by legal writers and is reflected in the standard usage in which “claim rights” are distinguished from other liberties, immunities, and powers, also sometimes called “rights”, with which they are easily confused.

Discussions Questions:

1. Does Feinberg make a convincing case for the importance of rights? Why or why not?
2. Can you give a noncircular definition of claim of right?

Answers:

1. I do think that Feinberg make a convincing case for the importance of rights because in the Nowheresville, people doesn’t believe in rights.

2. Claim right is to have a right is to have a claim against someone whose recognition as valid is called for by some set of governing rules or moral principles.