Linguistic disputes about social human rights. A legislative view

FRANCISCO GARCÍA GIBSON

CABA

Workshop; Primer Workshop de la Red Reino Unido-América Latina de Filosofía Política Analítica; 2017

British Academy

Arguments about social human rights often involve arguments about the meaning of the term "human rights". Why do we care at all about the meaning of terms, when we could easily avoid the discussion by stipulating a different term for each competing concept? What exactly are we trying to do when we engage in disputes about meaning?In this presentation I argue that term meaning matters because moral, legal and other rules we accept are expressed using terms, so the meaning of those rules depends on the meaning of those terms. On one view, disputes about the term "human rights" are attempts to "find out" the meaning of the term The alternative view claims that those disputes are attempts to "establish" or "choose" what the meaning of those terms (and rules) should be. In this article I defend the latter view by arguing that (among other reasons) this view is more transparent regarding the real intentions of disputants.