Place the Silly Quote

Wherein a law of logic is abused for vile purposes and forced to bear an insufferable burden:

The source of man's rights is not divine law, but the law of identity.  A is A - and Man is Man. (emphasis added)

Comments

[Jared Woodard]

That has to be Ayn Rand.

[Mike Z]

A=A
therefore, A has rights

How illuminating.

I will place it in the recycle bin.

[Scott Hagaman]

Jared wins.

[Dr Pretorius]

So, the claim is that we have rights by virtue of our status as human beings simpliciter, and thus that any particular man has rights by virtue of being identical with someone (that man) who has rights?

Well, it's not a fallacy outright, is it?

(I am a little confused about the A is A thing, though - isn't A generally taken to stand in place of a sentence? I didn't think you could apply predicates to sentences, at least not in the first order logic.)

[Scott Hagaman]

I take it that the "is" involved is the "'is' of identity" rather than the "'is' of predication" or the "'is' of constitution" or the "'is' of existence". So "A" should just be read as a variable occuring on both sides of the identity sign. Surely Rand is not predicating "manhood" of "man"?

If Rand is claiming that x has rights in virtue of being identical with something (itself) that has rights, then that's hardly illuminating. A Gricean norm of conversation is being violated if Rand is here offering us an analytic truth. But that's not what she says. She says the "source of man's rights" is the "law of identity". That's just bizarre. The law of identity cannot be the source of any rights. Being identical with something that has rights doesn't get us to the source of any right.