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Ritalin comments on Open thread, Nov. 3 - Nov. 9, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Understanding how rights work:
This topic still confuses me greatly. Let's take the example of the "Right to Life, Liberty and the Security of Person". Can a "Right to Cryogenic Treatment" be argued from there? Would that, in turn, simply entail that I get to sign up for cryogenic treatment without obstacles and cannot be forbidden from doing so (for instance, cryo is illegal in France), or could it be spun otherwise?
A right is a shortcut in consequentialism (or another normative ethics) turned into a lost purpose. Different rights can and do contradict each other, since they were derived in different circumstances. Thus you can argue for or against anything, by stretching the domain of validity of a suitable right. It all depends on how connected, influential and persuasive you are. Hence lawyers.
What'd be the difference between that and an ethical injunction?
I am not an ethics expert by any stretch, so I can only guess. It seems like the opposite of a right, restricting what you can do rather than enabling.
They are two sides of the same coin. "The right to circulation" tells people "you can go wherever you want", and tells States "you can't demand a travel permit every time someone wants to move". "The right to live" tells people "you may go on living if you want" but also "you can't stop people from living if they don't consent to it". The freedom to do something restricts another person's ability to stop you from doing that.
Yes, this is correct.
Ethical injunctions aren't things that are argued in front of courts. Courts argue about rights.
The right to life is a pretty recent idea.
The US constitution for example have a right not to be deprived of life without due process. It has a right to not to be tortured (cruel and unusual punishment) no matter what.
In the US some cryonics folks have registered a religion that allows them there cryogenic treatment without interference. Freedom of religion is actually a constitutional right in the US. In the case of abortion "pro-life" is also a position mainly argued from a position of religion.
The France state is strongly secular and you don't get many expectations just because you register a religion. Especially one without tradition such as the one of the cryonics folks. The French state doesn't allow any religion to block autopsies simply by claiming that they have a special burial ritual that forbids autopsies. That's why there's a different situation concerning cryonics in France.
At the moment no court considers a cryonic person alive. If it would then the whole scheme of using insurance contracts that trigger on the death of a person wouldn't work to finance cryonics in the first place.
How about rephrasing it as a "right to a chance to live again"?
That's nothing that's found in any constitution or international treaty. It would be possible to create laws that grant rights to cryonics but at the moment we don't have them.