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doireallyneedone11 t1_j74znep wrote

Reply to comment by contractualist in There Are No Natural Rights (without Natural Law): Addressing what rights are, how we create rights, and where rights come from by contractualist

Aren't rights simply social constructs, just as true as morality and religion?

Yeah, I do get their (all of them) practical importance though.

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contractualist OP t1_j76o2i1 wrote

They are constructed in the sense that they derive from the hypothetical social contract, where free people accept certain reasonable non-rejectable principles (as described here). All of ethics is constructed in this metaphysical sense.

Yet rights exist in that we have certain rights that can be violated, as in reference to the social contract. The piece discusses this in the last section.

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