A Semi-Full Critique of Feinberg

In one of the posts below is a short-hand critique of Joel Feinberg's article "The Nature and Value of Rights" from the Patrick Hayden text on the Philosophy of Human Rights. In the link provided here, I develop the critique into a 12-page paper. Basically I say that there is no way to make sense of Nowheresville and have it be a useful thought experiment, therefore we should pitch it. While I think that I make a good point or two, overall I wouldn't rate the paper that highly. Part of the problem is that I had to apply the critique to an actual case example, so it made moving from the purely conceptual realm to the real world a bit choppy. I certainly did not have the space to give a step-by-step argument for how I would transition from the conceptual to the actual, and I think the paper suffers for that reason. Plus I had to drop what I thought was a pretty good critique in order to make the paper a reasonable length, so that was too bad. Nonetheless, it is not without its merit and potential to generate comments.

http://students.washington.edu/mainwt/A%20Critique%20of%20Feinberg.htm