The Objectivity Of Individual Rights
Philosophically Explained
Sovereignty Is Of The Individual
It's a metaphysical fact all humans are sovereign because it's inextricably part of our nature to think, judge, choose and act to sustain our lives. No matter if peasant or emperor.
✅ 1. History Of Sovereignty
Historically, “sovereignty” meant:
A. Medieval & Early Modern Period
Sovereign = the supreme ruler, the one with final authority.
Power was justified by divine right or hereditary authority.
This was subjective, not rational.
B. Enlightenment (Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau)
Sovereignty began shifting from a ruler to the people:
Hobbes: sovereignty = necessary absolute authority to avoid chaos
Locke: sovereignty = individuals, who delegate limited powers to government
Rousseau: sovereignty = the “general will” (collective)
C. Modern Liberal Philosophy
Sovereignty becomes: the ultimate moral authority resides in the individual, not the state.
✅ 2. Objective Definition Of Sovereignty
Sovereignty is the inherent authority, derived from capacity, of a rational being to govern their life, exercise their judgment, and act according to their values, limited only by the equal sovereignty of others.
This means:
Sovereignty originates in nature, not society.
It is not granted by rulers, majorities, priests, elites, or governments.
It is inherent in the type of entity a person is:
a self-directing, concept-using, choice-making rational agent.
This makes sovereignty inviolable, unearned, and unranked.
Sovereignty is the basis of why humans have the right to liberty and thus are moral agents.
We have the right to liberty, to act, because we are sovereign by the nature of being an intelligent organism which must think and volitionally reason to survive.
Sovereignty = Conceptually conscious being which must use volitional rationality to live.
✅ 3. Sovereignty Is Objective & Universal
Sovereignty rests on these factual premises:
Life is the ultimate value.
Reason is the means of living.
Choice is the mode through which reason operates.
Therefore, freedom (the power to choose) is the necessary condition for life.
From these, sovereignty emerges as a logical necessity, based on actuality.
✅ (1) Judgement is personal
No one else can think for you.
No one else can experience your values.
No one else can choose your actions.
This alone makes each man and woman sovereign by metaphysical fact.
✅ (2) Intelligence differences do not negate sovereignty
Why?
Because sovereignty is based on:
the capacity to be an agent,
NOT the degree of intelligence.
A human with 90 IQ still:
Thinks
Chooses
Values
Acts
Experiences pain and joy
Can be harmed
Can be coerced
Survives via reason (even if at a lower level)
The kind is the same; only the degree differs.
Sovereignty is based on kind, not degree.
✅ (3) If one person’s sovereignty is denied, sovereignty collapses for all
If Person A can override Person B’s choices “because they are smarter,”
then a smarter person can override Person A’s choices for the same reason.
This dissolves sovereignty entirely, creating a chain of domination with no principled endpoint.
It is inherently unstable, contradictory, and ungrounded.
✅ (4) The only consistent principle is: all rational beings possess equal sovereignty
“Equal” means:
equal moral authority over their own life,
not equal abilities, virtues, outcomes, or knowledge.
✅ 4. A Defense Against Elitist Objections
OBJECTION 1
"Only the intelligent should be sovereign, because only they can rule well."
Answer:
Sovereignty is not measured by competence but by metaphysical identity.
Humans are self-directing beings by nature.
No amount of intelligence gives someone access to another person’s consciousness.
To claim otherwise is:
Logically inconsistent
Impossible to apply universally
A gateway to tyranny
Based on a false premise:
that sovereignty comes from ability, not identity
OBJECTION 2
"The masses are too stupid to rule themselves."
Answer:
Rule themselves = make choices for their own lives,
NOT govern a nation.
You don't need high intelligence to:
Choose your job, partner, home
Protect your values
Learn through trial
Avoid harm
Pursue happiness
Sovereignty = self-direction
not political expertise.
OBJECTION 3
"We are superior; therefore we have superior rights."
Answer:
If superiority determined rights, then:
The stronger could kill the weaker,
The faster could enslave the slower,
The charismatic could rule the shy,
AI (stronger intellect) would have the right to dominate humans,
Animals or aliens with superior senses would have rights over humans.
It collapses into might makes right — which cannot be universalized, cannot be justified, and cannot be applied without contradiction.
Even the mightiest can't stay mighty for long...
OBJECTION 4
"Some people don't use reason, so they forfeit sovereignty."
Answer:
Failure to use reason does NOT dissolve sovereignty.
It only dissolves your ability to flourish.
Rights are lost (temporarily suspended) only when one initiates force.
Not when one is ignorant, mistaken, irrational, or foolish.
OBJECTION 5
"Hierarchy is natural, so political hierarchy is justified."
Answer:
Hierarchy of talent is natural.
Hierarchy of rights is not.
Mixing the two is a category error.
Rights protect the low-performing from predation by the high-performing —
and protect the high-performing from being dragged down by the low-performing.
Rights are the universal equalizer.
✅ 5. Everyone Benefits When Everyone Is Sovereign
When all individuals are sovereign:
✅ 1. Trade replaces coercion
Everyone gains
Innovation increases
Wealth rises
Cooperation replaces parasitism
✅ 2. Mutual respect becomes the only stable mode of interaction
Coercion results in:
Endless conflict
Instability
Paranoia
Repression
Destruction of value
Freedom produces:
Trust
Specialization
Prosperity
Long-term flourishing
✅ 3. Even the "elite" benefit more from freedom than domination
History shows:
Tyrants always fall
Controlling others is expensive
Controlled populations produce less wealth
Oppression breeds rebellion
Innovation dies under tyranny
No tyrant is safe
A world of sovereign individuals is the most profitable world for everyone.
✅ 6. Individual Sovereignty
Sovereignty = the inherent authority of a rational being to govern their own life.
It is:
Derived from human nature
Grounded in reason
Universal
Equal
Inalienable
Non-hierarchical
Consistent with survival
The only stable moral principle
The only structure that maximizes prosperity
The strongest defense against elitism and domination
We are ALL sovereign. It's not a matter of semantics, it's a fact of our identity as human beings.
✅ “Why is sovereignty the authority to think, judge, choose, and act for oneself?”
Because no one else can do those for you.
Thought is non-transferable, judgment is non-transferable, choice is non-transferable, responsibility is non-transferable.
Sovereignty is simply the name for the basic fact that your mind is yours alone.
This also knocks down paternalism and authoritarianism instantly.
“Life is a biological fact.
Sovereignty is a psychological fact of a conceptual consciousness.”
This provides a two-part foundation:
A being that is alive has something to protect.
A being that can conceptualize how to protect that life has rights.
This already knocks out speciesism, elitism, divine command claims, or arbitrary hierarchies.
✅ How Sovereignty Is Derived From Volitional Rationality
Co-dependence:
Life gives the basis; sovereignty gives the method.
Rights protect the method so life can continue.
The interconnecting hinge between life and sovereignty is volitional reason.
That link is crucial because it explains why conceptual consciousness is special and why only certain beings can participate in a rights system.
Volitional Reason and Rights (succinct formulation):
A rights-bearing being must possess volitional reason: the capacity to choose whether to think, evaluate, judge, and act.
Volitional reason is what makes conceptual consciousness possible, and conceptual consciousness is what makes moral agency possible.
Without free choice in cognition, there can be no genuine judgment, no responsibility, no reciprocity, and no grasp of the Golden Rule of equity.
A being without volitional reason cannot understand rights nor participate in a system of mutual non-violation.
Thus:
Life provides the value to protect; volitional reason provides the method of protecting it; sovereignty is the expression of this fact; and rights are the social recognition of sovereignty.
✅ 7. Taxonomy Of Sovereignty
Sovereignty isn’t a sliding scale of human worth. It’s a classification of how a rational being can exercise their natural rights at different stages or conditions of life. Every human being holds core rights by virtue of their nature. What varies is their practical capacity to exercise certain liberties and responsibilities.
✅ 1. Sovereign Adults
These are mature individuals with the full cognitive, emotional, and moral capacities required for independent, volitional life. They can understand rights, form contracts, take responsibility for their choices, and engage in reciprocal moral agency.
They possess full sovereignty and exercise the complete set of adult liberties and duties.
✅ 2. Immature Sovereigns (Children)
Children are sovereign in kind but not yet fully in function. Their rights are real, but their capacity to exercise complex liberties is still developing.
They require guardianship, not because they lack moral worth, but because they have not yet acquired the judgment needed for self-direction.
The role of guardians is custodial and preparatory: protecting the child’s life and nurturing the growth of their future sovereignty.
✅ 3. Supported Sovereigns (Assisted Adults)
These are adults who retain legal sovereignty but need structured support to navigate certain decisions or responsibilities.
Examples include adults with mild cognitive impairment, certain mental health conditions, or situational limitations (like recovering from trauma or illness).
Supports may take the form of advisors, trustees, financial stewards, healthcare proxies, or decision-aids.
The purpose is always to maximize autonomy, not replace it. The adult remains the primary agent; assistance merely stabilizes or enhances their decision-making.
✅ 4. Impaired Sovereigns (Temporary or Progressive Loss of Capacity)
This category includes adults experiencing substantial but not necessarily permanent loss of rational capacity: traumatic brain injury, dementia, psychosis, severe neurological illness etc.
They retain their inherent rights but may lack the competence to safely exercise certain liberties.
In these cases, provisional guardianship may be imposed, strictly limited in scope and subject to regular review.
The goal is restoration where possible and protection where necessary, with respect for the individual’s prior values, wishes, and identity.
✅ 5. Permanently Non-Sovereign Humans
These are individuals whose intellectual or neurological impairments are so severe and irreversible that they will never develop (or never recover) the capacity for conceptual judgment or reciprocal moral agency.
Examples include profound intellectual disability, catastrophic brain damage, anencephaly, or irreversible states, such as old age, where higher cognition is permanently absent.
✅ How, Not If
Sovereignty describes how a human being exercises their rights, not whether they have them. The degree of capacity shapes their responsibility and liberty.
✅ How to teach someone they're sovereign with 3 questions
1. Can anyone else think for you?
2. Can anyone else make all your choices for you?
3. Can anyone else experience all your values for you?
No, you must think, choose and act to survive biologically and psychologically. You are sovereign by metaphysical fact of being human.
Your particular nature and identity as a living individual makes you irrefutably sovereign.
You don't have a choice about it, just as you don't have a choice about being human.
You're a self determined, fully autonomous, moral agent.
Anything and everything you do is up to you.
Your life is your own, it belongs to you and only you.
You're responsible for all your judgements and accountable for all your actions.
You're not a robot or ai automaton.
You have self mastery, which means you have the power to think and act for yourself.
With great power comes great responsibility, use it wisely.
Rights Of Individual Moral Agents Defined & Explained
Rights are conditions of existence necessary for proper survival. Rights are moral principles that define and sanction mans freedom of action in society. You have the right to perform any action which does not unjustifiably cause harm or violate consent.
There are no gay rights, woman's rights, trans rights, religious rights or corporation rights.
There is ONLY rights of the individual.
Everyone's rights are equal.
✅ The Objective Defense Of Rights
Below is a fully integrated, philosophically consistent, and undefeatable rights structure which is resistant to every known objection from:
Utilitarians
Collectivists
Statists
Religious moralists
Skeptics
Moral relativists
Elitists / technocrats
“Superior beings” arguments
Nihilists
Postmodernists
This is a rigorously objective catalog of rights, built on:
Metaphysics (what man is)
Epistemology (reason as method)
Ethics (life as the standard)
Politics (rights as conditions of survival for moral agents)
It is strong enough to anchor an entire philosophy or ideological system.
✅ 1. The Foundation: What Rights Are
Rights are the objective existential conditions required for a moral agent to survive according to its nature.
A right is not:
A wish
A permission granted by others
A collective bargain
A government invention
A social convention
A right is:
✅ A fact of reality
✅ Discovered, not invented
✅ Derived from the requirements of life
✅ Necessary for beings who must act by reason
✅ The negative boundaries that forbid others from initiating force
** Rights ≠ desires
** Rights ≠ resources
** Rights ≠ entitlements
** Rights = freedom from coercion so that one can act to sustain life.
✅ 2. The Source of Rights: The Nature of Rational Life
Rights come from three objective facts:
1. You are alive (Life as the standard)
You are a life form.
To live, you must act.
To act, you must choose.
To choose, you must think.
So life → choice → thought → action → freedom → rights.
2. You are volitional and rational (agent, not automaton)
You are an egoic life form.
Humans as conceptually egoic entities survive by reason, not instinct.
Therefore anything that destroys reason destroys survival.
Rights protect the space in which reason functions.
3. You are an individual consciousness (not hive-minded)
You are an individual egoic life form.
You have your own body, mind, needs, values and goals. There is no such thing as a collective consciousness, stomach or bladder.
Therefore your survival requirements cannot be collectivized.
From these three facts, rights emerge as necessary survival conditions.
✅ 3. The Hierarchy of Rights
Rights form a strict order, each dependent on the former.
1. The Right to Life (base right)
This is the root of all rights.
Definition:
The right not to be killed or harmed unjustifiably.
Derived from:
The fact you are a living organism with the capacity for volitional rationality
Who must maintain biological integrity
Without life, no other rights are possible, because NOTHING else is possible.
2. The Right to Liberty (action)
This means:
Freedom of action in all things that do not violate the equal rights of others.
You must act to sustain life:
Eat
Work
Earn
Move
Think
Choose values
Pursue goals
Action requires freedom.
Therefore liberty directly follows from life.
3. The Right to Property
Property = the material means of survival.
You need food, clothing, shelter, tools and resources to live.
You obtain these through the use of reason and labor.
Without property rights:
Your actions are futile
Your time is stolen
Your planning becomes impossible
Your survival becomes dependent on the whims of others
If you have no right to property, you have no right to life.
4. The Right to Privacy
Privacy is derived from:
Liberty
Property
You need privacy to think freely, act freely, and own your own information.
You cannot live rationally if coerced into forced disclosure.
Because you have the right to property, you have the right to privacy in your property (in your house with curtains closed).
5. The Right to Self-Defense
Because rights are real and your life depends on them:
You must be able to defend yourself.
Self-defense flows from:
Right to life
Right to liberty
Right to property
If self-defense were forbidden, rights would be pointless abstractions.
6. The Right to Voluntary Association
This includes:
Trade
Cooperation
Culture
Community
Contracts
Assembly
Because humans survive and flourish through cooperation, not isolation.
✅ 4. What About “Rights to” Social Goods?
Such as:
Right to food
Right to housing
Right to health care
Right to education
These are not rights.
Because they require:
Someone else’s labor
Someone else’s property
Someone else’s time
Any “right” that necessitates violating another person’s actual rights is not a right but a claim of enslavement.
Thus:
Rights are always negative (freedom from coercion), not positive (demands on others).
✅ 5. “Self-Ownership”: True or False?
This is a problem in political philosophy.
Rothbard and Rand disagree here.
Let’s clarify the paradox:
✅ You cannot “own yourself” because:
Ownership is a relation between a subject and an object
But you are the subject
You cannot be both owner and owned in the same sense
This is why Rand rejects the phrase “self-ownership.”
✅ BUT self-ownership is metaphorically useful because:
It expresses:
Sovereignty
Independence
Liberty
Self empowerment
Rothbard used it to assert individual supremacy over ones own body and labor.
✅ The Correct Solution
Use a concept that:
✅ Forms the basis of liberty
✅ Avoids metaphysical contradiction
✅ Keeps the political force of “self-ownership”
✅ The right concept is:
Sovereignty
A moral agent is the sole sovereign authority over their body, mind, actions, and labor.
Self-ownership is symbolic; sovereignty is literal.
Sovereignty includes:
Self control
Self determination
Self governance
Non-interference
Personal jurisdiction
Responsibility
Agency
Autonomy
WITHOUT literally implying that you “own yourself” as a piece of property.
Self-ownership = metaphorical expression of sovereignty.
Sovereignty = literal fact.
✅ Why The Right To Liberty Derives From Sovereignty
Liberty is the political/civilizational expression of sovereignty.
Sovereignty =
The inherent authority of a rational being to think, judge, choose, and act for itself.
Liberty =
The social condition that prevents others from overriding that sovereignty.
Thus:
Sovereignty is metaphysical (a fact about your nature).
Liberty is political (what society must not interfere with).
Liberty exists because sovereignty exists.
Not the other way around.
✅ 6. How To Crush The Argument “Rights Are Subjective”
Use these three undefeatable points:
✅ 1. Rights are derived from biological facts, not opinion
You need:
Food
Oxygen
Shelter
Freedom of movement
Freedom to think
Freedom to act
Without these, you suffer and die.
Rights express the factual conditions required for survival.
No subjectivity.
✅ 2. Rights are universal to all moral agents
This blocks cultural relativism, gender, divine command theory, elitism, and speciesism.
✅ 3. Rights are the only way to prevent chaos
Without rights:
Force becomes the arbiter
Justice becomes irrelevant
The strong dominate the weak
Nobody can plan
Nobody can cooperate
Society collapses
This is not theoretical—it is historical fact.
✅ 7. List of Objective Rights
Primary Rights (non-derivative)
Right to Life
Right to Liberty
Right to Property
Right to Sovereignty (self-determination)
Derived Rights
Right to Privacy
Right to Self-Defense
Right to Voluntary Association
Right to Contract
Right to Reputation (protection against fraud and defamation)
Conditional Rights (contextual, require consent)
10. Right to Delegated Authority (work place, voluntary organizations)
✅ 1. Hypocrisy & The Golden Rule Of Equity
TGROE = Treat others as you wish to be treated.
Equity is the anti-hypocritical standard.
Equity = Treating others justly and fairly in accordance with the situation.
Hypocrisy = Treating others in ways you know is wrong or in ways you would not want to be treated.
Rights only apply where choice and responsibility exist in reciprocal form.
The principle that rights require the ability to understand reciprocal constraints is solid. It’s the moral agency threshold.
The deeper rule isn’t kindness but non-contradiction:
If you claim you may do X to others but others may not do X to you,
you invalidate the entire logic of rights.
This is universalizable, objective, and not culturally dependent. It also blocks elitist claims that “some are fit to rule others.”
✅ 2. Rights As Protective Concepts
Rights are conceptual protection against other moral agents violating your sovereign exercise of existence.
They are derived from an intelligent agent’s capacity to understand the golden rule of equity.
If you claim the right to violate someone else’s rights, you’re admitting you don’t believe in rights at all and you forfeit your own.
Any being that refuses to grasp a basic moral symmetry, “don’t do to others what you don’t want done to you,” is rejecting its own status as a rational, moral agent. A creature unwilling to recognize consent, reciprocity, and non-coercion is functioning as an animal, not a rights-bearing person.
The moment you violate another’s rights, you suspend your own.
And because all normal human minds are capable of understanding rights — we are volitional, rational, conceptual beings by nature — there is no legitimate excuse for violating them.
✅ 3. Rights Are Social
Rights Don’t Exist on an Island Alone
Ethics = how an agent should act to sustain its own life.
Rights = rules that apply when multiple sovereign agents coexist.
Rights are not about survival needs (food, water, shelter).
They are about interpersonal boundaries.
You alone on an island have ethics but no politics/civilization/society.
✅ 4. Wanting To Live: A Crucial Principle
Rights presuppose value; value presupposes life;
life presupposes the desire to continue living.
You don't need anything to survive unless you want to live.
The argument:
✅ I. Rights exist because living beings must act to remain alive
Life is conditional. If you want to live, you need to take rational action to sustain yourself.
✅ II. Action requires choice
Action is not automatic.
You must choose to eat, move, breathe, work and think.
Choice requires freedom.
✅ III. Choice presupposes wanting to live
If someone says “why should I live?”
They have already confirmed:
They want to speak
They want to ask questions
They want to continue existing long enough to hear the answer
The very act of engaging in argumentation presupposes:
The arguer wants to live.
Otherwise they’d remain silent and die.
True nihilists don't spread nihilism, they fade into nothing.
Nihilism = Anti value, anti purpose, anti life (all is meaningless)
✅ IV. Therefore rights emerge from the fact:
To live, you must act.
To act, you must choose.
To choose, you must be free.
To be free, you must have rights.
This cannot be argued against without using the very capacities that rights protect.
✅ V. Arguing against life, desire and value is logically contradictory
Desire is part of survival ethics.
If you are acting, you are valuing life.
Every action, including argument, presupposes the desire to remain alive long enough to complete the action.
So:
If someone argues that rights don’t exist, they’re implicitly asserting the right to speak uninterrupted.
If someone claims domination is valid, they implicitly deny the validity of domination applied to themselves.
If someone claims only the strong should rule, they must accept that someone stronger than them could justifiably dominate them. They never do.
If someone claims nothing has value, they clearly value that statement enough to utter it. It's a self contradiction.
If someone claims they desire nothing, they've demonstrated their desire to share. They defeated themselves.
Thus:
Every argument that denies rights presupposes rights.
Every argument that denies value presupposes value.
Every argument that denies desire presupposes desire.
✅ 5. Formulation Of Rights
Rights are the objective conditions required by conceptually conscious beings to sustain their lives through voluntary, non-contradictory, rational action.
This argument is devastatingly strong because it ties rights to:
Biology
Psychology
Potentiality
Capacity
Reciprocity
Everything is consistent.
Everything is interlocked.
Nothing contradicts.
No elitist can break it.
No faith-based tyrant can override it.
No AI or alien can claim superiority as grounds for domination.
How Rights Apply To Humans, Animals, Ai & Aliens
If humans can dominate animals because of a “kind difference,” then would aliens or AIs with a “kind difference” over humans have the right to dominate us?
✅ 1. Why Humans Can Use Animals but Not Vice Versa
Humans are superior in kind (rational, conceptual, volitional).
This difference grants:
✅ the right to use animals as resources for survival
❌ but NOT the right to cause unnecessary suffering.
This is grounded in OBJECTIVE biological and metaphysical facts:
A. Animals cannot reason conceptually
They cannot understand rights, principles, contracts, consent, justice, long-term planning, value hierarchies, etc.
B. Rights apply only to beings capable of moral agency
Which requires:
Conceptual consciousness
Rational capacity
Ability to understand moral responsibility
Ability to reciprocate rights
Ability to participate in contractual social interaction
Animals cannot reciprocate rights, therefore:
They do not have rights
—but
humans have duties to treat them humanely.
This is not a contradiction.
Rights are moral claims between equals.
Duties are moral obligations on the superior toward the inferior.
Animals are alive but not sovereign.
Humans are sovereign because they have conceptual consciousness.
Therefore animals get moral consideration & status (no cruelty),
but they do not get rights (no reciprocity or moral agency).
Animals have protection but not rights.
This allows arguments against alien or AI dominance later, because sovereignty is a property of being a moral agent, not a property of being stronger, smarter, or faster.
✅ 2. WHY ANIMALS DO NOT HAVE RIGHTS
Animals:
have a form of consciousness
have emotions
choose perceptually
have some cognition
But they cannot:
form concepts
integrate abstractions
project long-range values
use logic
consider non-immediate consequences
reciprocate moral duties
understand rights or obligations
This is the key distinction:
Humans are conceptual agents.
Animals are perceptual agents.
Rights are moral-political principles governing interactions between conceptual agents.
Animals cannot:
respect rights
violate rights
understand rights
reciprocate rights
enter contracts
evaluate justice or injustice
Therefore they cannot possess rights, but they can be given ethical protections (no cruelty, no torture, no needless suffering) because cruelty corrupts the human soul and violates rational benevolence.
Animals have moral status, but not rights.
✅ 3. The Big Question:
What if aliens or AIs are “superior in kind” to humans?
Would they have the right to:
enslave us?
farm us?
use us as resources?
dominate us?
We need a principle that:
Protects humans
Does not contradict animal ethics
Does not collapse into might-makes-right
Holds under all possible future knowledge
Works for aliens, AIs, uplifted animals, transhumans, etc.
Here is the principle that solves all of it.
✅ 4. The Master Principle:
Rights apply to all beings capable of possessing, understanding, and reciprocating rights.
Rights are not based on:
intelligence
strength
technological capability
evolutionary advantage
Rights are based on:
✅ Moral agency
A being is a moral agent if:
It can understand moral concepts
It can recognize another being’s right to live
It can make choices guided by universalizable principles
It can engage in communication and cooperation
It can be held accountable for its actions
It can engage in reciprocal agreements (contracts)
If a being can do these things, it is sovereign.
Species is irrelevant.
Biology is irrelevant.
Native intelligence is irrelevant.
Origin is irrelevant.
This means you can say, with perfect consistency:
“Humans have rights because they are moral agents.
Animals do not have rights because they are not moral agents.
Aliens or AIs that are moral agents would have rights equal to humans.
Aliens or AIs that are not moral agents would not have rights, but we would have duties toward them similar to our duties toward animals.”
This avoids all contradictions, and is 100% defensible.
✅ 5. Does a superior being have the right to dominate humans?
Case 1: The superior beings are moral agents
Example:
Rational aliens
Superintelligent AIs with moral reasoning
Posthuman beings with philosophy
Any being capable of universalizable ethics
No, they cannot dominate us.
Because the ability to reciprocate rights triggers mutual sovereignty.
Just as:
adults cannot enslave children
geniuses cannot enslave average people
stronger humans cannot enslave weaker humans
high-IQ people cannot enslave low-IQ people
Even if the ability gap is enormous, the equality of moral agency remains.
Moral agency = moral equality = equal sovereignty.
Case 2: The superior beings are NOT moral agents
Example:
A predatory alien species with zero concept of ethics
A hyperintelligent being that is incapable of moral reasoning
A hive-mind that treats individuals as irrelevant
In this case:
They do NOT have rights
They CANNOT understand or reciprocate rights
They behave like predators, not moral agents
They are more like an animal or a natural disaster
We have the right to defend ourselves absolutely.
Morality does not apply to them—but it applies to us.
Total self-defense is justified, up to and including lethal force.
We don’t condemn the lion as “evil,” but we retain the right to shoot it.
✅ 6. Could aliens “farm” humans ethically?
Almost certainly no, unless humans became:
incapable of moral judgment
incapable of rationality
incapable of consent
incapable of reciprocal agency
If humans lost all moral agency and became purely biological organisms without rationality, then—in theory—the moral status shifts.
But this is hypothetical in the extreme.
If humans remain moral agents:
no alien or AI has the right to dominate them.
✅ 7. WHAT ABOUT ALIENS OR AI?
Any being that can:
(1) reason conceptually,
(2) act autonomously,
(3) understand rights,
(4) reciprocate rights—
is a sovereign moral agent.
Thus:
a highly intelligent alien = rights
a truly conscious AI = rights
a machine learning system without autonomy = no rights
Objective rights scale universally.
✅ 8. Does intelligence superiority justify domination?
No.
Because rights are not based on intelligence.
If intelligence conferred rights:
smarter humans could enslave dumber humans
AIs could claim unlimited dominion
future augmented humans could claim dominance over baseline humans
This collapses into:
Ability = Rights
which collapses into:
Might Makes Right
which collapses into:
No morality at all.
This benefits no one, especially those at the top (as they are always afraid of betrayal)
Therefore:
Intelligence differences cannot define rights.
Moral agency must define rights.
✅ 9. The Strongest, Most Universal, Undefeatable Formula
✅ RIGHTS belong to all beings capable of moral agency.
✅ DUTIES belong to moral agents toward beings incapable of moral agency.
✅ NO BEING may dominate a moral agent.
✅ Self-defense against non-moral agents is always justified.
This provides a system that:
protects all humans
would protect aliens if they are moral agents (and us from them)
protects AIs if they are moral agents
does NOT collapse into speciesism
does NOT contradict animal ethics
does NOT permit “elites” to claim supremacy
is universalizable across all forms of life and intelligence
It is the most consistent, objective, and philosophically resilient solution.
This is objective ethics in action. It's not fantasy. It's reality.
Rights Of Children, Disabled, Elderly
Rights begin from birth and depend on the potential for rationality.
✅ 1. Why The Right To Life Is Universal And Applies From Birth
Here is the strongest, undefeatable argument:
✅ Rights protect the conditions required for moral agency
Rights do not apply because one is currently rational.
Rights apply because:
One is the kind of being whose nature requires rationality to survive.
This includes babies, the unconscious, the sleeping, the injured, the elderly, and the temporarily irrational.
A newborn does not need to be a moral agent to have rights.
It needs rights because it will become one—and because without rights it cannot survive long enough to do so.
Potentiality → Actuality defense:
A baby has the volitional, conceptual nature of a human, even before reasoning.
Having rights does not require the current exercise of rationality, but the potential for rationality.
Otherwise:
Sleep/unconsciousness/comas eliminates rights
Sedation eliminates rights
Uneducated adults have no rights
Brain injury eliminates rights
Stroke victims have no rights
Moments of anger eliminate rights
Infants have no rights
Alzheimer’s patients have no rights
Anyone in grief, shock, fear, or mental fog loses rights
Psychosis eliminates rights
This can lead to abuse, torture, rape and "justified" murder.
Contradiction.
The system collapses.
Therefore:
✅ Rights apply to the kind of entity, not the momentary mental state.
✅ Human infancy is part of that entity’s life cycle.
✅ Rights begin once individualized, at birth.
✅ 2. Child Guardianship
Children are:
Immature sovereigns
Not yet capable of full moral agency
Developing the capacity for rights-exercising rationality
Thus the correct position is:
Children have rights from birth, but not full liberty.
They have guardianship until they can responsibly exercise sovereignty.
This avoids contradiction while protecting the innocent.
Child guardianship is a temporary rights-bridge.
A child has full moral worth and a future claim to full sovereignty, but lacks the cognitive development right now to exercise judgment, consent, self-direction, or responsibility. So guardianship works like this:
The child retains the right to life. No one may harm them, and their future autonomy must be protected.
The guardian (typically the parent) applies the child’s liberty for the child’s sake. Not for their own agenda. They act as if making choices on behalf of the future adult.
Authority is limited to what is necessary for survival, development, and protection. Feeding, education, guidance, healthcare, safety.
Guardianship dissolves as capacities develop. Rights aren’t granted at 18 by magic; they phase in as the child becomes capable of understanding, choosing, and taking responsibility.
✅ 3. Role Of Guardianship
Guardianship of children, injured adult, disabled person, elderly etc.
Guardianship = Temporary Fiduciary Authority. It’s an agent (trustee) to patient (beneficiary) relationship that protects a developing or impaired person’s future.
Ward = The one in protective custody of the guardian.
Purpose: Preserve the child’s or incapacitated person’s potential for flourishing and eventual exercise of full sovereignty.
Rights and guardianship work like this:
A right is a moral restriction on the initiatory use of physical force.
Physical force is damaging to any human organism, regardless of age, gender or intelligence.
Humans share the same biological and psychological architecture that makes rationality possible.
Therefore the default position is protection, not domination.
It's the guardians duty to protect the immature of incapacitated sovereign ie. their ward.
Developmental delay or immaturity does not change species-identity.
Future rational agency is enough to grant the right to life now.
Otherwise you trip into infanticide, eugenics, selective murder and authoritarian hierarchy.
✅ 4. What “Protection, Not Domination” Means
It means that the proper moral stance toward any human being is to shield their future agency, not to exploit or rule them simply because, at the moment, they might be weak, undeveloped, impaired, or nonrational.
Why?
Because every human being shares the same biological and psychological architecture that gives rise to rational agency, even if it isn’t currently expressed.
So:
The moral status tracks the kind of being they are, not the mental state they are in.
This is the core reason the stance toward them is protection (to safeguard the emergence or restoration of agency), not domination (treating the temporary lack of agency as permission to violate, own, or enslave).
✅ 5. Why the “alternative” leads to domination
If you reject protection as the default, you implicitly accept domination.
Here’s how that slide happens:
If rights depend on current rational performance, then:
• People with IQ differences have different rights
• The powerful can own or farm the weak
• The disabled can be disposed of
• Rights become a sliding scale
• Moral hierarchies become authoritarian
• “Might makes right” becomes defensible
This is precisely the "logic" used by:
• Infanticidal tribes
• Eugenicists
• Totalitarian regimes
• Caste systems
• Chattel slavery
Every oppressive system in history rests on the idea that some humans are “more human” than others because of differences in mental capacity.
✅ 6. Why this matters for rights “from birth”
Rights are not rewards for performance.
Rights are protections for the type of entity you are.
Since every human shares:
• The same biological structure
• The same ego-capable brain architecture
• The same developmental trajectory toward rationality
…you treat every human as a rational agent in principle even before they are a rational agent in practice.
The capacity defines the entitlement, not the momentary expression of the capacity.
So:
• A baby has rights.
• A drunk person has rights.
• A temporarily insane person has rights.
Otherwise, rights become conditional on performance, which destroys rights altogether.
✅ 7. The core principle
If the organism is fundamentally the kind of being built for rational agency,
then its momentary lack of rational agency does not remove its rights.
Rights exist:
not because you are reasoning right now,
but because you are the kind of being that can reason at all.
That’s the entire argument in one line.
Protection preserves that potential.
Domination destroys it.
✅ 8. Intellectual Disability
Rights are split into two layers:
a) Primary (inviolable) rights:
Right to life, bodily integrity, not being abused or enslaved.
b) Competence-based liberties:
Contracting, owning certain property, using weapons, medical decisions (gender transition), etc. (These rights are conditional upon current capacity)
This avoids the problem of treating disabled people like animals.
They may not be fully sovereign, but they are not animals either, because they share the same species-identity and potential architecture, even if injured.
The justification:
Rights are based on species-identity, not current cognitive performance.
A damaged rational faculty is still a rational faculty by kind.
This protects them but allows necessary guardianship.
Liberties can still be restricted (such as driving, contracts, gun ownership), but the baseline right to life and not being harmed remains intact.