The BBC recently commissioned an "international polling firm" called GlobeScan to determine various public opinions on the internet and internet access. There were 27,973 participants across 26 countries, a sizable amount of which (14,306) had internet access at the time of taking the poll. For the report as it was made available to the public, please click the following link, noting that it will bring up a PDF file:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/08_03_10_BBC_internet_poll.pdf
Of particular interest to me are the responses to the following proposition: "Access to the Internet Should Be a Fundamental Right of All People." 50% of respondents strongly agreed, 29% somewhat agreed, 9% somewhat disagreed, 6% strongly disagreed, and 6% did not know or did not respond.
The normative nature of this question-- "should", rather than "is", seems odd to me, particularly concerning what is commonly meant by "fundamental". The US Supreme Court, in Roe v Wade (410 US 113) defined a "Fundamental Right" as a right that is "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty" (see Section VIII for the source of the quote). Clearly, however, internet access did not exist at times when ordered liberty existed, and thus it is not implicit in the concept of ordered liberty. Even if it were the case, however, that internet access was a fundamental right (implicit in the concept of ordered liberty), I'm going to side with Kant and argue that "should" implies that it's possible that something may or may not be manifested. If I tell you that you should go to class, that implies the possibility of you not going to class. If a scientist states that a test should work, the implication is that the test might not work, given certain contingencies. I would not, however, state that the sum of two and two should be four; I would state that it is equivalent to four.
If this is correct, then one ought not (read: should not) claim that one should do something if that something is fundamental, because fundamental means implicit-- it is already contained within. If free speech is a fundamental human right, the question of whether or not it is one is moot. If internet access is implicit in the idea of ordered liberty, it is analytically contained within the idea-- even if one has not discovered it-- and there is no question of whether it should be. By analogy, one does not debate whether the sum of two and two ought to be equivalent to four; while one might debate whether the sum of two and two is equivalent to four, whether it ought to be is a moot question, because we are speaking analytically, in the context of a predetermined system. In the case of rights, the system is ordered liberty, according to the USSC. One might debate whether this system ought to be followed, but if one accepts the system, one by extension accepts that which is implicit in the system. Being implicitly contained follows from the system, and one cannot pick and choose what follows; if I choose the system of classical logic, I am stuck with [(not a) or (a)] being tautologically true. I can reject classical logic, but, if I do not, I cannot reject that which is implicitly contained, and thus the "should" question here is meaningless.
In conclusion, the pollsters ought to have asked if internet access is a fundamental right, not whether it should be. While it seems intellectually untenable to hold it as such, that sort of move seems far less problematic than the question of whether it should be one.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
BBC: Pick and Choose Your "Fundamental Rights"!
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7 comments:
I'm not sure how applicable the United States Supreme Court's definition of fundamental rights is in a survey administered to 26 countries. If it were a survey administered only to the United States, your argument would stand. However, in this case the test was not only administered by an entity based outside the U.S., the U.S. was only one of the countries taking the survey. Therefore, it would make little sense to apply a system so specific to the United States to the wording of the survey questions.
That being said, the question may still have been worded poorly. After all, when people speak of what should and should not be a right, are they speaking of the nature of rights themselves, or are they speaking of a government's recognition and support of those rights? The question doesn't really specify what exactly it's asking, but I tend to lean toward the latter because of the inclusion of the word "should."
I forgot to include my full name in the previous comment:
April Gunn
April,
Thanks for the comment! Presumably, a definition is applicable to anyone using the word; if a cow is defined as a four-legged squishy thing by the Supreme Court, I would either contend that the Supreme Court's definition is wrong (there are four-legged squishy things that I would not consider cows, not all cows have four legs, and not all cows are squishy), or my definition is wrong. However, presumably, the Supreme Court is an excellent source for definitions, because it is intellectually rigorous and, we hope, politically clear-cut.
As the pollsters did not specify a definition for "Fundamental Rights" in the poll, I went to an authority. If you check out the link I'll provide below, even Merriam-Webster cites this USSC decision as the definition:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fundamental+right
So, unless other people have different definitions of Fundamental Rights (in which case the poll is useless, as they would be polled on different actual things), the USSC's definition is not only useful, but vital.
As long as a particular definition is being used within the same context then yes I would agree with Zach here that a definition is applicable to anyone using the word. But like Raisin Girl said, using the words fundamental rights for an international survey seems to go outside the 'system';that is, ask a question conserning fundamental rights outside of the United states (or even liberal democratic countries) is testing the limits of contextual power.Rights based ethics is a cultur specific phenominon. Since this is the case the word 'should' works well with an international audience because it seems to be the case that there is a probability that someone in a far corner of the world might choose to reject rights altogether. Perhaps they can provide two forms of the same question depending on the audience. One for liberal democracies and the other for everyone else. Or maybe its a moot question. Its like if an east asian philosipher asked if the internet should be in line with the Tao.
Zach, great post. Another aspect here that it’s important to keep in mind is that by their asking “should x be a fundamental right,” it is presumed that such things already exist. So far so good – we can go with that for now. It is also apparent that they are likening “fundamental rights” to what I would actually consider a “liberty,” more properly. As I made reference to in the comments section of my post “Self-Interest Rightly Understood,” liberties may be granted or taken away by the State. It is the job of the government to recognize liberties/freedoms and preserve them, their duty to give as much freedom to an individual as is appropriate and tenable. This is a quite different from, I believe, what you or I usually consider a right to be, which is something that is inherent and exists regardless of the government’s recognition of it. (Whether these things exists or not is not really in question here, though, I suppose, but that’d be a good topic for debate.) The poll seems to be using “fundamental right” in a confused way, a way not quite intended by the Court, or the traditional conception of rights and liberties that one would read about from modern (Locke, Hobbes, Montesquieu) political philosophers. Substitute “liberty” or “freedom” in for “right,” and it seems like a better fit. Marriage, for example, is a liberty that helps the state maintain social order and is proper for civic life; a basic right, on the other hand, might be the thoughts inside your head reading this right now – whether or not the State recognizes your thinking as a liberty or not is irrelevant, unlike your marriage.
As I mentioned, an earlier post of mine makes reference to Tocqueville, so I don’t think it would be too wrong to quote him a little here: “After the general idea of virtue I know of none more beautiful than that of rights, or rather these two ideas are intermingled. The idea of rights is nothing other than the idea of virtue introduced into the political world.” (Dem. in Am., p. 227)
Would you mind clarifying this sentence? “If free speech is a fundamental human right, the question of whether or not it is one is moot.” Do you mean, if it is a fundamental right, the question of whether or not we/the government/anyone recognizes it is moot? If not, I’m not sure you’re correct there. You’re already saying that IF blah-blah, then the IF part doesn’t/didn’t matter. Aren’t you still required to answer the if before you conclude that you didn’t need to ask it?
Oh, and in reference to your response to April’s comment, hope as much as you may, but I do believe that nothing is ever “politically clear-cut,” with the Supreme Court being far from exempt in that regard!
Sorry, here’s some more that I meant to add this to the first part. The modern view of rights, then, are of actually intrinsic, natural, an unalienable things humans have by birth (well, at least the males, or white males, rather, have them… others are speculative). This is in contrast to the contemporary view, which questions such strange things. Just as natural law is questioned – where did it come from? How do we know it? – so too are rights. Instead, we have seen the trend of thinking thinks like law and rights (now, liberties) to be made rather than revealed. They are made by human hands and can be taken away when the state reaches out its arm. Perhaps it is a more humble view for the government to take: instead of following some divine will, and a divine law with natural rights, everything is manmade. The state is fallible, including those who recognize, keep, and define rights/liberties (members of the legislative, executive, and judicial branch, respectively). In this sense, it makes sense to say whether a “right” should be this or that, because there is not such thing existing without our making it such. It is not inherent or revealed, but recognized by society. I believe Hume writes pretty powerfully on this, if people are interested.
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