[MUD-Dev] Declaration of the Rights of Avatars

[Paul Schwanz - Enterprise Services]

> > Geoffrey said:
> > > If we buy the argument that rights in the vw can never be more than
> > > favours granted the players by the Creator, then you raise an
> > > interesting point.  Would it not be a more successful 
> > exercise to use
> > > the theory of divine (as opposed to natural) rights when trying to
> > > formulate a Declaration of the Rights of Avatars?
> >
> Phin responded: 
> > Since the vw is not merely co-existent to the rw, but rather 
> > a subset of it, the 
> > divine right of the creator of the vw would be subject to 
> > whatever natural or 
> > divine rights exist in the rw.  Doesn't this bring us right 
> > back to the OOC 
> > issues which inspired Raph's original post, since divine 
> > rights are IC, but 
> > Divine and Natural Rights are OOC? :-)
> > 
>
Geoffrey countered with: 
> Cool twist - but I have to pose a question back at you...
> 
> While the nuts and bolts of the vw are a subset of the rw, are not the
> emotional/mental imaginings/reactions of the vw's inhabitants on par in
> their severity as the imaginings/reactions of rw inhabitants to their own,
> unique stimuli?  And if so, is the vw a true subset of the rw, or a separate
> reality formed by the same bricks and mortar - and therefore capable of
> sustaining its own set of rights - which are purely political (therefore
> mental) abstractions?
> 

Ahhh...you have exposed my presupposition.  I hate it when people do that. :-)  
You are quite right.  In claiming that the vw is a subset of the rw, I 
presupposed that reality determines perceptions and that perceptions are in 
fact a subset of reality.  If instead perceptions determine reality and all 
realities are subsets of our perception, then my point falls apart.  Isn't it 
interesting that these attempts to discover the nature of a vw keep coming back 
to our own personal view of the rw?

This could quickly degenerate ("degenerate" in the sense that it perhaps strays 
a bit too far from MUDdom) into an epistemological debate. :-)  But to answer 
your question, IMHO, a vw is capable of sustaining its own set of rights only 
if you presuppose that reality is a subset and not a superset of the 
emotional/mental imaginings/reactions that you mentioned, which leads _me_ to 
believe that a vw is not capable of sustaining its own set of rights.  YMMV.

--Phinehas


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		"All things are permissable,
			but not all things are expedient."
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