"We have no non-question-begging way of figuring out who has which rights and which rights outweigh others. We love rights (and duties, rights' frumpy older sister), because they are handy rationalization devices, presenting our subjective feelings as perceptions of abstract moral objects. (...) We can use "rights" as shields, protecting the moral progress we've made. And we can use "rights" as rhetorical weapons, when the time for rational argument has passed. But we should do this sparingly. And when we do, we should know what we're doing: When we appeal to rights, we're not making an argument; we're declaring that the argument is over."
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Academics from the United StatesPsychologists from the United StatesNon-fiction authors from AustraliaUtilitarians
Original Language: English
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Joshua Greene, Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them (2013), p. 350
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Joshua_Greene
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Joshua Greene
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