How Thai authorities use online doxxing to suppress dissent

So where do these universal “rights” come from? Do they reflect some fact of human biology? Of course they do not.

Of course it's up for debate. Debate is what gave the notion of "inherent worth"[1] intellectual and popular credence in the first place. You forget that human beings were historically categorized according to a chain of being with the clergy and royalty (rather conveniently) at the top. One's worth to $DEITY and the world was determined by the height of the seat one sat on. This arrangement of affairs was treated as an unquestionable given for thousands of years in civilizations across the world. To suggest otherwise would have been treated as insanity or denounced as heresy.

The existence of Inherent worth thrives upon the fact that those who debate it depend on it. To suggest it's beyond questioning turns the idea into an article of faith.

> Are cultures that decide you have no worth as a human being based on your skin color, or religion, or caste, or last name, equal to those that don't?

Until midway through the 20th century in certain parts of the world, this was accepted as fact. In other parts of the world, such as sub-Saharan Africa of all places, it's still the case today.

[1] A more rigorous term for what you're referring to is self-sovereignty. Strictly speaking, the term "inherent worth" is a contradiction in terms.

It of course can be debated and @rayiner is doing a good job debating it, but IMO the worth of any individual human being is as factual and certain as 1+1=2. I'm happy to debate it but you have a hill to climb if you want to change my mind.

Then I definitely agree with you.

Over 2000 years of philosophy would say hell yeah it's debatable.

Without some belief in a "higher power", there is nothing inherent about anything to do with humans. Sure, we can CHOOSE to ascribe every human as having value and a sanctity to human life that means we should harshly react to those who take human life for granted or cause suffering, and I absolutely and emphatically take that view, that human life is important and humans have a right to things like dignity.

But pretending that it is "inherent" is a lie. It's a thought terminating language game. Pretending that such dignity or rights are inherent only plays into those who wish to remove them. They must be CONSTANTLY and AGGRESSIVELY defended and fought for BECAUSE they are not inherent.

If we do not enforce human rights, they do not exist.

Human rights are an outcome of a regulated society. Rights can only exist when a "higher power" DOES exist, so without a god to enforce things, we must make our own higher power to enforce rights. The State.

The only inherent rights in nature are physics, chemistry, and biology. They aren't very conducive to society in general, and certainly not one that wants to build smartphones or farms.

But as you say these things are cultural. Such ideas never found an audience in Asia.

They think you are wrong, because they say they are right.

e.g. many conservative religious people might agree that everyone has “inherent worth” given by God, yet disagree that implies a right to free speech, if one understands that right as including speech they view as immoral (e.g. blasphemy, pornography). Some religious people might even argue that (from their viewpoint) immoral speech inherently harms the human dignity of those who produce and consume it, and hence prohibiting that production and consumption respects their inherent worth rather than violating it

Whereas, conversely, other people might question the meaningfulness of “inherent worth” on philosophical grounds (e.g. from a positivist perspective it is rather dubious-it isn’t something you can empirically measure and it is unclear how to define it in the language of natural science), yet simultaneously favour the policies (e.g. expansive free speech rights) you seek to ground on it for other reasons-e.g. a person might support expansive free speech rights, even while rejecting the idea of “inherent worth”, simply because they find personal enjoyment in that right’s exercise