Lyons

I have a couple of questions that occurred to me as I was reading Lyons.

Lyons writes: “The principal assumption I shall make is this. When we regard Mary’s rights as morally defensible, on any basis whatsoever, we also regard them as having moral force. The differences that her rights make to evaluation of conduct obtain, not just in the eyes of the law, but also from a moral point of view” (118). I’m not sure I understand what he means by this. Is he saying that whenever we defend a right on the grounds of morality we grant some amount of force to that right? In other words, is he asserting that the action of defending a right based on morals gives that right some sort of moral power? Also, I am not sure what that last sentence means. I’m not sure what is being “obtained” in the sentence.

On another note, I was having a difficult time understanding the Moral Rights Exclusion Thesis until I reread his explanation on page 115. His example about the right to life helped me to understand why utilitarians often dislike moral rights. The example helped me to see the potential conflict that could exist when one individual makes a decision to protect her own right while at the same time taking an action that could decrease overall utility. But, that leads me to another question. Why does this not apply to legal rights as well? Isn’t it also possible that an individual could take an action to preserve his own legal right while simultaneously taking an action that decreases overall utility? I’m unsure why this exclusion applies to one type of right but not the other.