The thing about rhetoric is it can’t afford to ask itself what it means by the words it uses. For example, in justifying Israel’s response to the attack on October 7, the most oft-chanted mantra is that Israel has a right to defend itself. But no one stops to ask what’s meant by a right. If she did she’d have to acknowledge that a right isn’t the kind of thing one can have and hold against all comers. That is, it isn’t some exclusion-conferring fact-of-the-matter. It’s an exclusion-conferring acknowledgement by those expected to respect that exclusion. To say that you have a right to something is to say that I’ve undertaken not to interfere with your enjoyment of it save by your leave. Have the Palestinians undertaken not to interfere with Israel’s enjoyment of occupied Palestine? They have not. So Israel can claim a right to defend itself, but only to whatever parties acknowledge that right. These include most but not all of the rest of the governments in the world. But they do not include Hamas and a number of other pro-Palestinian governments in the Middle East.
Of course by parity of reasoning do the Palestinians have a right to Palestine? Clearly not. So neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians have a right to the land “from the river to the sea”. Then who does? This is the problem with rights-talk. The question presupposes that there’s an acknowledgement-independent fact of the matter about a rights claim. But there isn’t. There isn’t because a right isn’t that kind of thing.
Rhetoric is the art of doing an end-run around what’s really at issue. This is why rhetoric abhors philosophy. And so it should. Philosophy is abhorrent!
Categories: Critical Thinking, Everything You Wanted to Know About What's Going On in the World But Were Afraid to Ask, Social and Political Philosophy
Paulosophical Vimplications 
I agree that the concept of rights in the intercourse between sovereign nations is a rhetorical device and it fails for the reasons you elaborate. If I claim a right to habeas corpus I get sprung from jail only because the state that had the power to arrest me and put me in jail acknowledges that it can’t, by long convention, keep me there without due process. There is an authority — the judge — that I and the police agree will have the power of decision. If it rules for me, the police, by settled agreement, will have to open the cell and let me out. Until one day they don’t, I suppose. But until then there is no minority view that gets a say in whether the writ to release me has validity. The Crown might appeal against my release on the grounds that I’m a walking time-bomb but whatever the competent authority decides, that’s it. No further argument. No vigilantes or paramilitaries can step up and kidnap me into their own prison. (“Habeas corpus? We don’t need no steenkin’ habeas corpus!”) The international order is more like the vigilantes than the police obeying the paperwork.
Where does Right of Conquest fit in here? That does seem to be a right that confers legitimacy on states that expand their borders by force of arms, as Russia seems poised to do if their tanks would only stop blowing up. Does Right of Conquest require jus ad bellum in order to be claimed? Seemingly not, as conquering states that violate jus ad bellum don’t draw a flag on the play and get sent back to their pre-war borders by the umpire. (Only if they lose the war, might their leaders be arrested by the winners and tried for waging aggressive war.) So if Right of Conquest really does exist, then the right of the attacked state is nothing more than the common-sense decision to resist (or not). Surely it would resist (or not) regardless of whether or not the faraway world thought it had a right to self-defence. There can’t be a right to exist as an independent state if a stronger state can conquer you and occupy you “legally”. Rather, the most you can hope for is that your efforts to resist will be successful in driving off the would-be conqueror. But this is not a very satisfying concept of enforceable rights.
The United Nations was supposed to solve all this, wasn’t it?
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Antarctica aside, there isn’t a square inch on this planet that hasn’t seen one people conquered, occupied, assimilated, enslaved, or exterminated by another, and this several times over. So rights-talk is especially nonsensical in this context. As, therefore, is the concept of indigeneity. How did the human race ever succumb to such nonsense? Not a rhetorical question. An interesting one. Now that I’m retired I suppose I’ll have time to try to answer it.
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Ah but you can’t fight a proxy war without rhetoric Paul! How else do you expect Westerners to get behind the “right” side of an ancient Middle Eastern blood feud sand war that intrinsically makes no sense to them unless you use familiar terms like “right to defend” and “indigenous land”!?
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There is the old concept of ally-ship as shared interests, never might what’s “right”. If you are afraid of what an Islamic caliphate would mean for where you live, then you will find that the sand war does make sense to you, as the outcome might matter a great deal, some day in the not-so-distant future. Or it might not. Feeling lucky?
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PAUL: The thing about rhetoric is it can’t afford to ask itself what it means by the words it uses.
REPLY: The more important thing about rhetoric, is that it can’t pick its own nose, wipe its own ass, open its own mouth, or open a dictionary to find out what a word like rhetoric means. It’s just a fricking word. It can’t do anything, let alone ask itself about anything.
PAUL: For example, in justifying Israel’s response to the attack on October 7, the most oft-chanted mantra is that Israel has a right to defend itself.
COMMENT: Israel also has the power to both defend itself and counter-attack.
PAUL: But no one stops to ask what’s meant by a right.
COMMENT: So Israelis should consult dictionaries on “rights” before they visit Moses’ eye for an eye response to murderers. What a Canadian “academic” answer, that is, in response to Israeli citizens being murdered. [Grab your dictionaries boys and girls and define “rights”.That’ll stop murderers dead!].
PAUL: If she did (ask what’s meant by a right) she’d have to acknowledge that a right isn’t the kind of thing one can have and hold against all comers.
COMMENT: So a “right” is alienable??? A “right” ISN’T an infinite number of things which are not rights. e.g. A right is not an Aardvark, a Baker, a Candlestick-maker or … on and on …. to a Zebra. Keep on enunciating individual words which are not the term “right” until the dictionary has been exhausted. Then start on irrelevant phrases. In truth, a right is exactly “the kind of thing one can have and hold against all comers.”, although “most; not all; comers” are able to violate such rights.
PAUL: That is, it [a right KB] isn’t some exclusion-conferring fact-of-the-matter.
COMMENT: Another non-definition of what a “right” is not.
PAUL: It (a right)’s an exclusion-conferring acknowledgement by those expected to respect that exclusion.
QUESTION: Do you mean that my rights or your rights are “exclusion conferring acknowledgments by those expected to respect that exclusion” but who may not respect, not acknowledge and not give a “toot” about my rights or your rights? So our rights are conferred upon us by our enemies! Let’s see!
PAUL: To say that you have a right to something is to say that I’ve undertaken not to interfere with your enjoyment of it save by your leave.
REPLY: So I have a right to the money in my wallet because Paul Viminitz won’t steal it or otherwise interfere with my enjoyment of it, without my leave. Here Paul, take my rather light wallet in your left hand. Here is my knife for you, for your right hand. Now here is the gun with which I’m going to shoot you between the eyes for attempting to steal my wallet, while threatening my life with my own knife, which you borrowed in order to steal my wallet. I’m going to claim that “self defence” at court. What’re you gonna do, besides die?
PAUL: Have the Palestinians undertaken not to interfere with Israel’s enjoyment of occupied Palestine? [There’s a rhetorical question KB] They have not.
PAUL: So Israel can claim a right to defend itself, but only to whatever parties acknowledge that right.
COMMENT: So rights are subjective now! To some individuals or states one has a right. But to other individuals or states one does not have a right. Clever!
PAUL: These [parties; states; persons KB] include most but not all of the rest of the governments in the world. But they do not include Hamas and a number of other pro-Palestinian governments in the Middle East.
BINGO: So per above, “rights” must be subjective. Or we may be simply back at the old modern sophistry game of rights (to some) are not rights (to others), to wit contradictions-in-terms. Rights (babble babble yaddety yak) are not Rights (to terrorists and stone-age people with oil revenues).
PAUL: Of course by parity of reasoning do the Palestinians have a right to Palestine? Clearly not.
QUESTION and COMMENTS: What “parity of reasoning”? The question was does Israel have a right to defend itself? Your answer was, in effect to say: Grab your dictionaries! Ignore your dictionaries! And realize that: Some say Israel does. Others say Israel does not. But the question and non-answer was never “Who owns Palestine?” Ergo: Material/informal Fallacy: Missing the point..
PAUL: So neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians have a right to the land “from the river to the sea.
JUDGMENT: Fallacy of overgeneralizing a non-point.
PAUL: Then who does?
ANSWER: Israelis who are just. And Palestinians who are just. That is because a right is the resolute intention of just persons to grant other persons the goods that are due to them.
PAUL: This is the problem with rights-talk.
REBUTTAL: No. That’s your problem for failing to define a term, to wit “right” and then wandering around until you were off topic (defence) and ended up with ownership.
PAUL: The question presupposes that there’s an acknowledgement independent fact of the matter about a rights claim.
COMMENT: Right. That fact is Lady Justice and her disciples.
PAUL: But there isn’t.
REPLY: There is no Justice and no just persons from the river to the sea! How depressing. No wonder there is no peace. The Lady herself is punishing all those unjust people who do not acknowledge any of her book, her scales or her sword. Hence she keeps shredding everything that steps into her scales. And that is LADY JUSTICE for you — a blind archangel with a Sword.
PAUL: There isn’t because a right isn’t that kind of thing.
TO THE CONTRARY: A right [ius in Latin from which iustitia = Justice is derived] is what just persons acknowledge is due their fellow human beings. And Paul still doesn’t seem to know what a right actually is even though he claims to be a living Platonic form/idea of liberalism. The 7 liberal arts begin with grammar. Perhaps Paul needs a dictionary.
PAUL: Rhetoric is the art of doing an end-run around what’s really at issue.
TO THE CONTRARY: Rhetoric is the art of persuading those who have common law grammar comprehension, without much logic comprehension, to do what is best for themselves, when the speaker is a just rhetorician, or for himself and his personal buddies, when he is a demagogue. Incidently, Paul ended up doing an “end run” around Israeli Self Defense to an ownership issue.
PAUL: This is why rhetoric abhors philosophy.
TO THE CONTRARY: Rhetoric doesn’t wipe its own ass or abhor anything!
PAUL: And so it should. Philosophy is abhorrent!
COMMENT: The love of wisdom (philosophy) is abhorrent to whom? I suppose that must be “The foolish” rather than “Rhetoric”.
Kevin James “Joseph” Byrne
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I don’t know who this Kevin James “Joseph” Byrne person is, nor can I figure what, if anything, might be his agenda. Of course I’m flattered by his attention. Unfortunately he writes so elliptically that I can’t figure out what he’s saying. Perhaps if he’d take the trouble to reconstruct the arguments he takes himself to be critiquing it would help so we could engage in a genuine dialogue. – PV
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I suppose I can work backwards on this one, even though I usually pick on either the false conclusion or the single most weak premise which leads to an absurdly false conclusion. So I’ll start with the last hypothesis, quote:
PAUL: Perhaps if he’d take the trouble to reconstruct the arguments he takes himself to be critiquing it would help so we could engage in a genuine dialogue.
REPLY: Very good. A double hypothesis. In effect
ARGUMENT: Since we’re working backwards from Paul’s last hypothesis, I’ll start with the last 2 terms of Paul’s last premise —> “genuine dialogue”, .
My understanding of a genuine Socratic dialogue is that someone says something which perplexes Socrates, or which offends him [e.g. “Justice is whatever is in the interest of the stronger”; Thrasymachus OR “Philosophy is abhorrent.”; PV]. So Socrates asks the person to rationally justify that simple statement, (which is no argument), by asking simple critical questions about simple statements (which, according to Aristotle, address any or all of the following: 1. genus/class, 2. species/definition, 3. property/convertibly-predicable-attribute/accident or 4. a strict accident among the 9 accidents which may be predicable of substances — the first category of thought and of being), often definitions. [e.g. What is Justice? per the Republic. What is piety? per the Euthyphro KB]
Arguably, to any competent thinker, every living being has both the power and the right to defend its own existence — even inanimate objects, like rocks, are difficult to destroy. So the absurd conclusion that ISRAEL DOESN’T HAVE A RIGHT TO DEFEND ITSELF was the arguably indefensible conclusion of a bad argument which offended me. So my agenda was to critique and to destroy that argument — not “to reconstruct” the argument.
Strictly speaking, no one is required to “reconstruct entire arguments” in order to refute either absurd conclusions, or ridiculous premises, which lead to absurd conclusions. e.g. I ridiculed the first absurd metonym of your argument which was, requote: “The thing about rhetoric is it can’t afford to ask itself …”
As an alleged philosopher once said, quote:
VIMINITZ: Still, as a general rule we’d want to say the onus is on me to defend what I did, whereas the onus is on you to condemn me for what I didn’t.
COMMENT: According to you, by actual PARITY OF REASONING, the onus is on you to defend your argument and your conclusion and it is upon me to condemn you for not arguing well.
QUESTION: How long and how genuine can any argument be between someone like Socrates and someone who, arguably like Anytus, “thinks” that philosophy is “abhorrent”?
POSSIBLE FINAL COMMENT: In a Socratic dialogue, Socrates asks the “expert” questions and you’re the expert according to WHO and WHAT you and the UofL say you are. In this dialogue, I am the ironic “Dummy” who is ignorant and asking the expert my questions. But we can switch in a genuine dialogue and, then I’d tell you that my genuine agenda is to have the University of Lethbridge’s lawyers jailed — both their litigating lawyers and the U of L’s in house counsel also jailed if possible — as a consequence of your law case.
So let’s now do your reply in Socratic fashion, from the beginning:-
VIMINITZ: I don’t know who this Kevin James “Joseph” Byrne person is.
REPLY: I’m a Roman Catholic major-Socratic guy. I’m your dialectical enemy or your friendly dialogue partner. In short, I’m your friendly neighborhood gadfly.
VIMINITZ: nor can I figure what, if anything, might be his agenda.
REPLY: My agenda was to destroy your argument and “gadfly” you. Your above statement is actual rhetoric. You know what I was doing.
VIMINITZ: Of course I’m flattered by his attention.
REPLY: True rhetoric [in both my sense of persuasion of “just” persons and Paul’s of “the art of doing an end-run around what’s really at issue.” KB]
TO THE CONTRARY: You are in contempt of my attention. You don’t like it. You are suspicious of it, which is why you mention “his agenda”. You are anything but “flattered” by my contempt for both your argument and your conclusion. Don’t try to kid an old Irish Kidder like me. The thing about modern professors is that they can’t afford to [meaning they don’t KB] ask themselves what they mean by the words they use. [Paraphrase KB] So they pretend to not know what their questioners mean, as is evident below.
So I ask professors what they mean, as in requote: “QUESTION: Do you mean that my rights or your rights are … conferred upon us by our enemies! (?)” I too can do that game where one puts a bunch of goofy words in between phrases to obscure meanings or in cases of sophists or casuists to utter bunches of words between contradictions in “order” to obscure the contradictions.
VIMINITZ: Unfortunately he writes so elliptically that I can’t figure out what he’s saying.
REBUTTAL: Right! Either Paul is illiterate or Kevin is “elliptical”. So now you have either proved yourself illiterate or described a refutation as “elliptical”. Describing an argument as “elliptical” is no proof of the ellipsis. Describing a question as elliptical means the question is loaded. What questions did I beg? Where is my circular argument if that is what you mean by “elliptical”? How about you, Professor Viminitz, instead, prove to me that you are literate by answering the first question I asked after all the sarcastic actual rhetoric I used to set it up? That question was, requote:
KEVIN (requote from my critique): “(COMMENT:) So a ‘right’ is alienable???”
Or how about you prove to me that you are literate by answering my last question which was, requote
Q. The love of wisdom (philosophy) is abhorrent to whom?
Since I answered the question as “The foolish”, I was telling you that you were foolish. I suppose that was “elliptical” of me. But I wasn’t the guy who said that “Philosophy is abhorrent.” Do you think that in your wildest imagination that an actual philosopher would not go after you for making such a stupid self-refuting utter garbage statement?
I’ve said this to Frances Widdowson before and I’ll say it again:- People like you and Frances made those “wokesters”. You have reaped what you sowed. That is a just recompense. It’s up to actual philosophers, like me, to refute the idiots who sowed and the weeds they produced even when the weeds honestly refuse to answer questions while the sowers dishonestly refuse to answer questions by feigning illiteracy or “gaslighting” questioners as “elliptical” or both. Keep up with the “genuine” assertion and we can invent a new fallacy called “The No GENUINE Dialogue” fallacy. Your move, DIALOGUE-partner.
KB
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Sorry, Kevin. I still can’t follow. Probably my incompetence, since obviously not yours. So I guess we’ll just have to leave it at that.
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Very good. Enjoyed your defense and dialogue skill.
Kevin
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First to both you and Paul: I enjoyed the exchange but admit it made my brain hurt. I followed most of it – the gist – however I don’t have the academics to delve into the details to clearly understand the polemics. The subject of rights gets my attention, as does the abuse of claims to rights, and the weaponization of language in defence of such abuse. I lean towards poet, politician, engineer, surveyor and legalist to support my comprehension of the world that I inhabit.
So, KJ”J”B I couldn’t find much of an online presence of you, admittedly I spent only 5 minutes looking, but did find your link to the AFN resolution and your comments/history on the Kamloops residential school. I appreciate that background. Looking online most KJBs or similar (Byrnes) were obituary notices, clearly not this one. I have been leery of commentators online who are not themselves present and identifiable, and I attribute this reaction to my experience with others who have much to say, usually by proxy, to comment on others from the shadows. I don’t mean to include you in this grouping, but wanted to let you know my reservations. You are after-all of Irish persuasion – so I can identify with the need to speak up when you need to.
Paul, I’ve been reading your blog articles and found that this particular posting attracted replies that interested me most. I also listened to your discussion/interview (1H:50M?) with Prof. Widdowson, and it drove home to me points made by both of you not only the demise of academic institutions and the various battles in the world at large.
I suppose like most ordinary folks, I’d like to hear about solutions and what it would take to find them. Arguing about rights for the peoples occupying the sand from the river to the sea seems (so far) to produce the perpetuation of conflict without an active effort to find and implement a lasting solution. Now, current geopolitics would suggest ‘let em have at er’ won’t be tolerated forever, given the likelihood of further expanding the conflicts and where that might lead.
What are the circumstances required to first, stop the killing and next, to create the institutions that support peaceful coexistence? What are the past examples of world initiatives that have stopped conflict and enabled a durable peace? And might they work here with concerted effort? Having said all that I am aware of the arbitrariness of Israel’s original borders and the occupied ‘disputed’ territories resulting from the past 70 plus years of conflict, but shareable values could at some point discover an acceptable imposed agreed solution. Otherwise ‘might is right’ remains the status quo. And, we can only speculate where that will lead.
DMooreT
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I’m glad that you got the gist of what Kevin was saying. Unfortunately I can only guess. And my guess is that he thinks rights claims are mind-independent facts. So, for example, on his view a woman would have a right to control her own reproductivity, if she did, notwithstanding that no one, not even the woman herself, might think so. It’s not just that this makes a right something very odd. It’s that it renders the concept completely inert. That is, thus conceived it can’t do any work for us. But maybe I’m missing Kevin’s point. – PV
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