Some Distinctions about rights:

I. Positive: Conferred by gov't., legal, constitutional

Natural: Possessed by every human, doesn't depend on government or agreement of others. Are there any of these? Bentham says "Nonsense upon stilts."

II. Common: Shared with others. Paradigm: right to walk in the park.

Exclusive: One individual's only. Paradigm: property rights.

III. Ultimate: Not derived from any other principle or right. Are there any?

Derived: Paradigm is Mill's derivation of rights from utility:

Person P has a right to do or have X iff it will maximize utility (total human happiness) if (a) society provides X to P or (b) society or other people do not prevent P from doing or getting X. This latter is a right of non-interference; in Locke, most (or all) rights are like this. Locke will derive natural rights from the natural equality of people.

IV. Hohfeld's categories of legal rights. These are represented here as derived from (legal) duty, hence they are all derived positive rights. Some of these categories may also make sense for natural rights, if natural rights make sense.

1. Bare liberty or privilege: P has no duty (to anyone or to society) not to do X. Example: right to breath air.

2. Claim right (against Q): Q (society or some person) has a duty to let P do X. Example: right to vote implies duty of other persons not to prevent me from voting. "Let P do X" could also mean providing the resources to do X. Important distinction between right not to be prevented and right to be assisted. Killing vs. letting die. Oscar on his lake.

3. Power of P to alter existing legal relations: Example: right to sell something.

4. Immunity of P from legal changes: Example constitutional right to free speech is formulated as "Congress shall make no law respecting the freedom of speech." Each citizen is immune from Congressional alteration of his rights in this matter.

Problem: what is a (legal) duty?

In social contract theory, right is approximately equal to claim-right, with emphasis on non-interference. For example Judith Thompson expresses this tradtional view when she defines the right to life as the right not to be killed unjustly. This is not a right to food, medicine, air, self-actualization, etc., but solely a right not to be killed by a person who is not entitled to do so. If you try to kill some innocent person, and that person kills you in defending herself, then she has not violated your right to life, since her killing of you was not unjust. Modern humanitarian notions, that say that everyone has a right to eat, for example, go beyond this non-interference rights to a right to have or use resources. Not what Locke, e. g., was talking about. As traditionally understood, right are not about distributive justice, or achievement of happiness or well-being, but only about not interfering with peoples efforts to achieve these things. The right to pursue happiness is not the right to get it.

The following assertions are part of the model of human nature assumed in natural rights/social contract theories of government or of justice. These assumptions are still the basis of much of modern economic theory, and are (largely) subscribed to Locke and by Rawls.

I. Economic men (persons) are egoists or self-interested. E. M. is disinterested in the welfare of other people except as the welfare of those others may indirectly effect the E. M. himself. The E. M. is neither spiteful nor altruistic.

II. E. M. has unlimited desires. Opposite of Plato, for example, who said that the natural, happy man limits his desires by the operation of reason.

III. E. M. is a rational calculator of the means to satisfy his desires. Reason does not determine desires, is not a source of values or goals, but is only an instrument to achieve them. (reason is instrumental).

Useful term for this view of human nature: Bargain-Hunting Man. (term from Steve Schlessinger) E. M. uses her brain to get the most desires satisfies for the least cost in effort, risk, etc.

To the above, Thomas Hobbes adds:

IV. E. M. desires glory. Glory can only be obtained a the expense of others, so E. M. is anti-social. This theme is present to varying degrees in other social contract theorists, that humans are not social animals by nature, but are forced to deal with others to satisfy their desires. Opposite of Aristotle's view that man is the political animal, an animal which is social by nature. E. M. view sees individual people as choosing to form themselves into a society, but not as themselves formed by that society. Individuals area seen as the social atoms that come together to form society, the social molecule. The molecule doesn't create the atoms! This kind of thinking is an example of "mechanical theory," theory in which the parts determine the whole, and not vice-versa.