That definition of “inherent”’is only one of many. Most meanings do not carry the connotation in permanent and inviolable.

Indeed you have to use context or queries to understand the meaning sometimes.

For example humans inherently have two hands, two eyes and a heart. However, I’d just you’d argue that removing a hand means it didn’t exist or that you aren’t human anymore. We have heart transplants and artificial hearts as well as external cardio circulatory machines. Again, the heart has been removed, thus violating the definition you choose for inherent.

By your definition choice there is nothing inherently human. Thus I find the application of that definition universally as you indicate is entirely devoid of use as it essentially eradicated the word.

Bravo! Another sees that article as I do.

What you are either forgetting, or perhaps never knew, is that the concept of inherent human rights came from the Judeo-Christian tradition. As I remember, it goes something like, "God created them male and female, and declared it good." There is also a line about humans being "fearfully and wonderfully made". This is the historical context on which the concept of humans having inherent rights originally came from. Atheists reasoned that they could come to the same "rights" without a creator. The basis for such "rights" being inalienable was that only a powerful (perhaps not all powerful) creator was in a position to be able to guarantee such rights should such a creator choose to do so. Now that a large portion of society, including Galt's Gulch, has abandoned the concept of such a creator, the basis for inherent, inalienable rights is at best flimsy.

Finally, I didn't say that rights were endowed by a creator. Those who wrote the Declaration of Independence did, and all throughout this thread, I have argued that the premise of a creator made the inalienability of rights into the Declaration's biggest weakness.

But you earlier said that “if one rejects the notion of a creator, then all rights are alienable (i.e. They can be taken away by other humans.).” Now you’re saying that rights do not exist at all. If that’s the case, then the “notion of a creator” has nothing to do with the concept of rights, and this invalidates your earlier argument that rights are endowed by a creator.

Inherent means "existing in something as a permanent, essential, or characteristic attribute." If someone can "violate" a right to the point where one cannot exercise it any more, such as via murder or significant physical or financial injury, then it cannot any longer be called inherent. A right is only a right if it cannot be permanently taken away from someone. Consequently, in my mind, there are no rights, period.

More precisely, the decrease in entropy from the increase in order is accompanied by a bigger change in enthalpy (deltaH) such that deltaG is less than zero. See my other comment below. You are getting into chemical engineering and materials science, both of which I know far better than philosophy.

Spontaneous self-organization does indeed happen without consciousness in an attempt to get to a minimum energy configuration. The more common term for it is self-assembly, and I used to be an active researcher in this area. Proteins, clays, and metals all aggregate via a common mechanism, although only a few people (including me) have studied it. Such self-organization lowers the Gibbs free energy in the system.

That being said, spontaneous self-organization does not result in consciousness, let alone an act of will. An act of thought consumes energy and will not happen spontaneously.

A right, inherent or otherwise, can be violated by another person or group constraining one's ability to exercise that right through force or fraud. Having a right doesn’t make one immune to injury by others. The Objectivist moral code forbids violating others’ rights, it doesn’t make such violations physically impossible.

Simply put... Groups do not get assigned rights.
Since a "Country" is a group. This is true.

But the concept isn't existing... It's free association. Does any group of people have a right to freely associate? They should. Because they do it individually where rights exist.

Now, does a country have "rights". I can only see abuse from saying yes.
Can or should a country protect their borders?
YES. Is it a right? (yes, but of the citizens, IMO, not of the country itself). It's more like an obligation of a country... Otherwise... it's not a country.

LOL... They are asking "Then what purpose do you serve?"

Ayn Rand states that our only fundamental right is a right to life, and the right to property is its only implementation. With this, I can agree. What I do not see is how anything but the right to life could be inherent.

If a right can be taken away, one should reasonably ask whether it is a right at all; certainly an "inherent right" cannot be taken away. Otherwise, it would not be inherent, by definition.

As I recall, you are right that organization requires the expenditure of energy in order to invest a construct with higher organization. I think part of their explanation was that a decrease in entropy (or an increase in order) in a localized area must be offset by an increase in entropy elsewhere. Kaufmann also has put forth some updated theories in the recent article How the New Science of Biocosmology Redefines Our Understanding of Life. ( https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-... ) Also this (with link to download PDF): https://arxiv.org/abs/2204.09379

True, but one can not prove an absence. One may only prove a presence. And therein lies the inherent conundrum of the atheist: they assert that "god" can not exist but create for themselves an impossible straw man since they can not prove their position. The theist on the other hand has something they can point to and pursue.

"Atheism simply entails the refusal to ascribe the universe that we experience to an alleged "higher being" or supernatural entity."

So a more accurate term then is anti-theist rather than atheist. I can get behind that.

"They were dictatorships that happened to be atheistic."

Distinction without a difference. They enforced their belief system which included their "anti-theism." My point is that anti-theists have no moral pedestal from which to perch and lobby theists. Better for all of us to examine the individual belief sets be allowed to worship what we will. Better yet if we choose one which allows for freedom and tolerance of others. :)

As to the claim that there is spontaneous self-organization without consciousness, I'm not familiar with the two works you cite but I have to admit I am skeptical of the claim simply due to entropy. Organization requires the expenditure of energy in order to invest a construct with higher organization. An object left to its own machinations breaks down into simpler units rather than combining into more complex ones. This is especially true as complexity builds (such as would be necessary for a living organism). The notion that somehow there is a workaround for entropy seems to defy the normal mechanics of the material universe.

That being said, I'll see if I can squeeze in a quick look at the references. Thanks for including them in our discussion!

" I just simply don't buy the notion of complete unbelief in anything."

One can believe in what one can see, hear, feel etc. and still be an atheist. Atheism simply entails the refusal to ascribe the universe that we experience to an alleged "higher being" or supernatural entity.

"I would lump in the former Soviet Union under Lenin/Stalin and Communist China under Mao as atheistic dictatorships."

They were dictatorships that happened to be atheistic. They attempted to impose the totality of their beliefs on their subject populations, not simply their atheism. In essence, such dictatorships were no different in kind from dictatorships that imposed their worldview, including their religion, on subject populations that had different religious beliefs.

No human endeavor can violate a law of nature. Human cultural success is from understanding and using those laws of nature.
Humans can escape hunger and bad weather by using materials that exist and can be fabricated - again using nature's laws.
Yes, Nature gives nothing. It has no volition, it offers resistance to taking only to extent of pre-existing natural laws.
Yes, nature neither gives nor takes rights. (But what are these rights?). The US Constitution (and Supreme Court) are wrong - there are no natural rights. Benign deities are from human wish thinking. Rights, surely, are claims, I demand your money, do not take mine, my right to life.. These are achievable only by defense, strength, conquest or cooperation with other humans and the understanding of nature. No rights can be or will ever be got from giving way to subservient hallucinations. It has been tried for long enough, throw that stuff out. That is where Objectivism is a guide - life as a heroic venture, rights can be defined and agreed, the logical way is to propose rights as 2-way, the same for all, that is the only way to get agreement, long term, and appealing to (enlightened) self-interest. Agreements only last as long as one individual or group is motivated not to gain power and overcome the others. There is no other way, there is no authority for appeal.

JB, elsewhere you say that
-without a Creator, rights are alienable. Agreed, thus the need for eternal vigilance.
- some humans are evil (put aside definitions). Yes. So, agreements with others, human laws, must allow for that.

Yes, even to cooperate with Hamas, it may be necessary, we may need people with such narrow minded dedication.
The test. When humans come into contact with creatures of superior intelligence, and they may be our own creation, it may be soon.

(If I had more time I would have made all that shorter, as well as sensible!)

"Nature has no consciousness and no will."
Nature has no stars or planets either, but both arise from nature acting through its laws (in this case, the laws of physics). Consciousness and will can likewise arise from nature. There is no need for them to be ascribed to some alleged supernatural being.

If nature gave us nothing, then we would not exist. Nature gives us much more than mere boundary conditions – it gives us the preconditions that made our lives possible, and the means of sustaining and enriching our lives, and the mental and physical tools to continue improving our lives.

Our rights are inherent in our nature, with or without an alleged creator. The ability to exercise these rights can be taken away (including by religious authorities), whether one believes in a creator or not. A creator is not necessary or sufficient to explain rights, any more than he/she/it is necessary or sufficient to explain the universe or anything in it.

Premise 1 is false – spontaneous self-organization without consciousness does exist. References for this assertion: two books, Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos by M. Mitchell Waldrop, and At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity by Stuart Kauffman.

Since Conclusion 2 follows from Premise 1, it is also false (or at least does not follow from Premise 1).

What I am saying is that Objectivism would only work for a society that excludes non-Objectivists by using Galt's oath as both an admission requirement and a requirement for continuing to be allowed in such a small society.

Yes, you are right about the better example. My biggest problem personally is that I have a Dagny-like personality and (probably incorrectly) think that I have too much worth saving.

Perhaps my biggest problem with Atlas Shrugged was how little argument there was between what are clearly Type A personalities. Can you imagine Rockefeller, Carnegie, and JP Morgan resolving their differences as easily as the main characters in AS? And yet Rockefeller et al. did manage to figure a way to work together to elect McKinley in 1896, before fighting a little bit more after that and eventually Carnegie and Rockefeller becoming philanthropists.

Then you’re saying that the Objectivist moral code is inadequate for any society. A society of any significant size will include non-Objectivists, criminal or otherwise.

Objectivism is entirely compatible with cases in which “everyone acts in their self-interest and yet are opposed to one another.” That statement applies to competition of any kind. Objectivist morality simply prohibits the use of force by anyone who doesn’t like the outcome of the competition. A better example would be John Galt’s efforts to hasten the economy’s collapse vs. Dagny’s attempts to save it from collapsing. Both were acting in their self-interest as they saw it. Neither of them was violating Objectivist morality.

I would lump in the former Soviet Union under Lenin/Stalin and Communist China under Mao as atheistic dictatorships. They certainly went to great lengths to persecute and/or eradicate traditional religion and set themselves up as the replacement "gods" of those cultures. They embraced "atheism" as their respective national creeds. And they were directly responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people - estimates are as low as 80 million and as high as double that.

"Atheism, by definition, is a lack of belief. "A-theism". Just as amorality is a lack of morality, not a moral code itself."

It is impossible to live without a moral code. One can choose moral relativism - where one is making it up as one goes along - or moral universalism - where one believes in a common set of values which apply to everyone. In the case of moral relativism, one simply places themselves and their hedonism in the place of any other god. Moral relativism is self-worship: a belief in one's self - foolish as though that may be.

For moral universalists, one has to profess some standard higher than one's self - more "perfect" or "divine" than one's self to aim at. That standard may be embodied in an exemplary being such as in many formal religions (Christianity, Jewry, Islam, etc.) or simply an idea (Buddhism, Objectivism, etc.). But the belief in an standard external to one's self is a belief in something. One can not believe in nothing: nihilism is literally a dead end.

To examine things in another light, let's look at basic economics. Economics only exists when we perceive self-interest. Self-interest hinges entirely on the perception that an action will lead us to a better state than the one we presently occupy. But the inherent "better" in such an evaluation automatically presupposes some external to which a comparison is being made, that external being either a universal standard or an imagined one, in other words a "belief."

So to me, I just simply don't buy the notion of complete unbelief in anything. In my mind, it's self-deception. Observation of life and recognition of self-interest tell me that human beings automatically gravitate toward something different than what they have and the mere fact that self-interest exists tells me that it is not a choice to not believe in anything, but a choice of what something to believe in and pursue.

"A creator cannot create existence, including its own existence."

I think this is where people play mental gymnastics and work themselves into a froth over nothing. Many people use "creation" in this sense to violate the laws of conservation of energy/matter by asserting that such can be suddenly instantiated from nothingness. I don't believe in any such definition of creation. Creation in my book is the organization of the existing into something of a higher state. Changes the entire dynamic of the question.

For example, time only matters to this universe: our minds can't wrap around the idea of a universe without it. We can't really posit the nature of eternity - it is beyond us. I think that there is also the notion that the physical - what we can see and touch - is all there is. Once one accepts that time didn't exist until it was created and the universe we see didn't exist until it was spread (Big Bang?), one can realize that we know a lot less about "existence" than we think we do.

The other metaphysical problem you bring up is: how does one derive consciousness from unconsciousness? It's the same question but implicates us as well by derivation. If we consider ourselves "conscious," we either have to accept the notion that consciousness can pop out of nowhere (spontaneous generation) or we have to accept the notion that consciousness must be a byproduct of other consciousness. We can work ourselves into a tizzy about these things and drive ourselves mad (Sartre and others) or we can accept the fact that there are some things it will be impossible for us to know in this life without help.

Here's how I look at it.
1) Higher states of organization require two things: will and impetus/action.
2) We see higher states of organization present, therefore will and impetus/action exist.

Simple proof:
?A->B
!B:!A
B
B:A
A->B

I will even to some extent argue with "A living human is part of nature and has no choice but to obey nature's laws." There are many organisms, particularly humans, that modify their own localities to suit their needs, wants, and wishes.