Re:An Orangutan Has Some Human Rights, Argentine Court Rules
by Retra on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @10:41PM
(#8791443)
Only if you assume different cultures can't or shouldn't share knowledge and experiences. But of course, that's not true. It's is a fairly simple matter to assume that someone thinks differently from you.
I'm not talking about in-group/out-group thinking, but _generally applicable_ constraints on human behavior. Economics, psychology, science, etc. Things that can be optimized on _arbitrary_ cultures using techniques that are already known to succeed everywhere.
Rights do not fit into this picture. Rights are not based on measurable and general principles, but upon cultural expectations handed down through tradition.
So you have replaced a debate about values and shared definitions to one predicated on groupthink. Basing your moral decisions on shared experiences and cultural knowledge leads to the exact kind of in-group/out-group thinking that the idea of rights was designed to combat. It isn't a perfect moral framework, but it is one that has achieved a great deal of good in the last few centuries.