Re: Crime and punishment in cyberspace - 3 of 3

[Patrick Juola <juola@suod.cs.colorado.edu>]

  > 
  > Well, that's one view of rights.  However, most attempts to base so 
  > called natural rights (i.e. rights that are somehow intrinsic to human 
  > existence) have been largely unsuccesful.  It's a tough argument to make.
  >
  Seems to me the 'inalienable rights' that are mentioned in our founding 
  charter carry this argument quite well. I suspect they also 'prove' them
  as well.

Proof by declaration of self-evidence?  ``We hold these truths to
be self-evident.... that [all humans] are endowed by their creator
with certain inalienable rights."  If, for some reason, I claim that
the right to liberty is *not* self-evident, it can be very difficult
to convince me otherwise.

This is one of the difficulties of natural-rights arguments; that they
tend to assert certain rights (right to privacy, right to property,
right to personal space, right to free speech, &c) axiomatically when they
are often the subject of the discussion.

Patrick