Rights

The first study available in the experimental studies section is that of 'rights'.You may be interested to listen to the 2002 Reith Lecture onBBC Radio 4 given by Onora O'Neill. 

The second tab down in the selection menu on the left provides access to the home page of the automated web resource created by the knowledge study tool following the construction of the mini rights map. The map itself is also available from this resource and can be found here. If you hover the cursor over nodes on the map, the name of the node should appear and you can jump to that node to read the information about it by clicking the mosue button.

Each knowledge node page from the web resource contains all of the information that was collected about it pluss the information which the tool has derived itself. The rest of the resource provides more analytical information about the study so what appears here will be more of a general discussion about the mini study.

Comment on the Knowledge Area

The map certainly makes it clear that we need to understand precisely what rights are intended to mean in a 'civilised' society. Even the brief study here has had to delve into the meaning of civilised society a little because that seems to be a crucial part of rights. Apart from knowing what rights are, or rather mean, it also seems important to consider the desirability of rights from our social perspective. Along with desirability, the value of rights must also be considered, what they cost and what the implications of having them are, as well as other things, as yet missing from the map. The sustainability of rights seems to require quite a lot of prerequisite knowledge with respect to this small map. If rights cannot be sustained than there seems little point in granting them in the first place. Along with this, it seems necessary to understand who rights are intended for and whether rights, once granted, should always be sustained. To fully understand the implication of rights, the map shows that both responsibility and duty must be fully known.

It will be useful to take a look at the web resource and consider the definitions and summaries of the knowledge elements identified. It is easy to start from the home page and then work down from the main areas page. Each knowledge node page contains a simple three row table which allows the user to link to the knowledge that is prerequisite of the current node, or go back up to the node above. An alternative way to investigate the information is to use the map to see where nodes are and then link to them from there, returning to the map before looking at each subsequent node.

Comment on the Knowledge Risks

The third tab down in the section menu provides access to a little more information about the risk analysis. However, it should be noted that risk analysis is based on the parameter values that I have assigned and which can be seen on each knowledge node page from the web resource.

General Study Comment

The knowledge node which seems to be require fundamental understanding based on this mini study is that of 'duty'. Duty supports, or is ultimately prerequisite of, 35% of the entire map. Duty is clearly an important component of rights. Maybe we sometimes forget this.