Author: Minerva

MIT271 
Technology & Human Values
March 14:
Rights
Natural Rights
•	Either:
•	God-given
•	Self-evident moral truths (based on human purposes)

•	John Locke (1632-1704)
Human rights
•	Human status, independent of laws or institutions

•	Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)
Robert McGinn: 
Troubling Triad
®	Technological maximality (TM)
•	=_df Quality of embodying in one of more of its aspects or dimension the greatest scale or highest degree previously attained or currently possible
•	e.g.?
®	Individual rights (entitlements)
•	e.g. life, liberty, property, procreative rights
®	Increasing numbers of rights-holders (?)
Situations of Technological Maximality
•	INDIVIDUAL
•	AGGREGATIVE:
•	Simple (individually innocuous)
•	Compound
Individual strength in the triad
•	Technological Maximality:
•	Profit
•	Faith in “technological fix”
•	Prestige
•	Gauge of progress
•	Confusion of quantity and quality
•	View of nature as homogenous
•	Democratic consumer culture
•	Traditional Rights:
•	Language obscures dependence on prevailing social conditions, and provides “intellectual inertia”
•	Increasing Numbers
Self-reinforcements 
in the triad
•	Reproductive “rights”
•	TM allows traditional negative rights to be viewed as positive rights
Remedies?
•	Limit rights holders
•	Require limiting traditional rights, e.g. mobility, reproduction
•	Limit TM
•	Require a conditional conception of rights
•	(implicit:  limiting human rights = changing human rights)
Contextualized Theory of Human Rights
•	Empirically determinable basis of human needs to survive and thrive
•	Still functions as a focus to remedy neglect and inequality
Grounds for infringing rights
®	Survival of society
®	Effective social functioning
®	Natural resources vital to society
®	Debilitating financial cost to a society
®	Significant cultural, historical, spiritual or aesthetic value to a people
®	Highly valued social amenity
Compare to Hardin’s “The Tragedy of the Commons”
•	Similar problem?
•	Similar solution?