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The Firm But Untidy Correlativity of Rights and Obligations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

David Braybrooke
David Braybrooke*
Affiliation:
Dalhousie University
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Extract

The correlativity of rights and obligations is one of the few stock topics in the basic repertory of English-speaking philosophy th-t is considered suitable for assignment to philosophers specializing in political philosophy (even so it is a topic that must be shared with ethics). It is a topic perennially discussed, chiefly (I think) for reasons that have little to do with its importance: namely, just because it is a recognized topic and because it appears to be a safely tidy one that lends itself readily to being tidied up further by formal or quasi-formal considerations. For my part, I wish more effort went into discussing less tractable subjects like the individuation of rights and their delimitation vis-à-vis one another.

What I have to contribute to the subject of correlativity, returning to the scene of my comments on David Lyons’ paper, “The Correlativity of Rights and Duties,” is mainly a stint of annual or biennial repair-work, designed to restore the obvious — the truth that rights do imply obligations and cannot be understood without accepting this implication.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 1 , Issue 3 , March 1972 , pp. 351 - 363
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1972

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References

1 Nous, Vol. IV, No. 1 (February 1970), pp. 45–55; with an abstract of my comments and of comments by Marcus G. Singer following, pp. 56–57. The paper and the comments were contributed to a symposium at the Western Division Meetings of the American Philosophical Association in St. Louis, May 1970.

2 Ibid., pp. 47–48.

3 Ibid., p. 53.

4 Lyons argues at one point (p. 53 again) that if it is “a contingent matter” whether some obligations specially related to speaking in public are imposed, their “existence would not be implied by … the right to speak publicly.” But what would the contingency be but a contingency about the content of law or morals? Would not this content affect the definition of the right to speak publicly? If it were a contingent fact that the right has to be defined or understood so as to include mention of obligations specially related to it, why should the fact not suffice to found an entailment?

5 Cf., Belnap, Nuel D. Jr. “Entailment and Relevance,” The Journal of Symbolic Logic, Vol. XXV (1960), pp. 144–146CrossRefGoogle Scholar, where to ensure relevance in entailments a principle of relevance is adopted, which stated for the propositional calculus says, if A and B have no propositional variables in common, then A does not entail B.

6 Taken together with the paragraph next but one just preceding, ibid., pp. 52–53.

7 My original interpretation was the one that I am about to set forth; the previous interpretation, ascribing to Lyons an attempt to argue that at most a material implication held between the rights in question and the obligations, was suggested to me by my colleague Richmond Campbell. In conversation at the time of the symposium. Lyons told me that it was his intention to offer an argument of this kind, so I have given it first place here. But I think the text of his paper can bear either interpretation; I suspect that he himself was not entirely clear about his intentions when he wrote the paper; and I believe that this second interpretation is well worth exploring in any case because of the peculiar importance of the questions which it raises to understanding the nature of the working social devices with which we are familiarly acquainted under the heading of ‘rights’.

8 The inclination to think on these lines might be reinforced by a certain intuition about entailment that would escape the net cast in my discussion above. Campbell has suggested to me that one might think that the truth of the statement expressed by the candidate-formula about obligations not to interfere may be some sort of necessary truth in itself; and one might intuitively wish to resist any automatic move from Necessary-q to Necessary- (if p then q). Psychologically, I suppose, the resistance may both gain color from and give color to an aversion to multiplying superfluous implications. But of course, in the present case, all the intuition amounts to, clearly appreciated, is that establishing the obligations embraced in the candidate-formula does not amount to establishing the implication from the right; and that point is not at issue.

9 I assume that one can safely say that an implication from A to B exists if and only if it is true that A implies 8. It is more difficult to say what the existence of an obligation (or of a right) amounts to. I would treat the existence of an obligation (or a right) as equivalent to the existence of a social rule; but when does a social rule exist? It exists when it can be ascribed to a human community; and it can be so ascribed on three grounds—on the ground that members of the community acknowledge it; on the ground that they conform to it; and by deduction from rules ascribed on the first two grounds. Acknowl· edgement alone does not suffice (though maybe conformity alone does in some cases). It is unreasonable to ask for unanimous acknowledgement or perfect conformity; but it is difficult to say how far short of unanimity or perfection the evidence may go and still support the existence of a rule. For purposes of this paper, I can, however, avoid the full impact of these difficulties by assuming (1) unanimous acknowledgement of first principles (2) conformity by every member of the community to some at least of the obligations entailed by the first principles. Some members may conform to the obligation not to interfere with N's doing X; other members may not.

10 “Rights, Claimants, and Beneficiaries,” American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. VI, No. 3 (July 1969), pp. 173–185.

11 At one point in the symposium paper (p. 50) Lyons contends that there is “nothing” in an active right like N's right to speak freely in public that “corresponds” 10 the power of someone who has a passive right (e.g., to be repaid a debt) to insist upon it or waive it as he chooses. It is true, N cannot give up his right to speak freely; but it is in his power to exercise the right or not to exercise it; and in his power, too, to seek help from the authorities against attempts to infringe the right, or let the infringements go without protest. In real-world institutions, there is nothing like the perfection or economy that would take the latter choice out of N's hands; and the former choice would remain his under any relevant perfections. Indeed, it is just because it is useful to give individual persons a basis for taking their own initjatives that rights are accorded them in the first place.

12 op. cit., pp. 53–54.

13 I proceed this way, by reference to someone's testimony, because I wish to cover cases in which the right is in practice often violated and people within the community are frightened to protest; and cases in which a community, to which N belongs, is being contemplated where no one else has perhaps heard of the right; as well as cases in which the person testifying is speaking of practices currently conformed to in his own community.

14 Lyons, ibid., p. 48.Google Scholar

15 Wright, G. H. von Norm and Action (London, 1963).Google Scholar