The Temporal Rights theory of natural rights is profoundly simple as the following axiom illustrates: 

Any self-existent, bounded agent in the universe exercises natural dominion by effecting or constraining change. Such dominion demonstrates the existential authority of that agent’s natural rights.

The Temporal Rights vocabulary is then: An entity that effects or constrains change is called an “operator”, the exercise of its capabilities is called an “operation”, and the sphere of its operations is called a “domain”. The authority revealed by its capabilities is its existential, natural, Temporal Rights.

And the terse definition of a Temporal Right is: the authority of an operator to operate.

Such is the power of ultimate simplicity.

Temporal Rights is a breakout insight into the nature of nature, an existential point of view that breaks through the material boundary of physics, revealing the coincident moral universe, and establishing a coherent political philosophy.

A Brief Summary

This will introduce the ontology in summary form, which will be followed by a more in-depth investigation. Finally, a definitive, philosophically rigid explication will be found in an extensive footnote.

The universe consists of operators.

An operator is an agent able to effect or constrain change: subatomic to supergalactic forces.

The abstraction called a “right” is drawn from the existential authority demonstrated when an operator operates.

Interactions of operators demonstrate constraints and augmentations existentially effected upon one another’s operations: upon one another’s rights.

The abstraction called “morality” is drawn from the interactions of rights.

The moral adjudication of rights is accomplished by the Dependency Stack.

A Bit of History

Fifty years ago, when I first encountered this paradigm, I had no idea of its far reaching implications. I think that is because I only wanted a secular basis for natural rights and having found it went on about drafting the Bicentennial series of articles that the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) had asked me to do. I forgot about the beaver and the tree I had visualized back then. It has taken the past several years, working now and again in my spare time, for me to be able to articulate the scope and power of these natural rights in the few words above.

Once I had done that, I began to realize that because it was profoundly simple, it might be a powerful concept that could reveal other existential facts about the universe. In just the last few months I have discovered that it helps explain consciousness, merges dichotomies and silos of thought, demonstrates that ethics is intrinsic in the structure of the universe, explains where natural law got its authority, promises to imbue artificial intelligence with morality, reveals errors in the taxonomies of biology, anthropology, and social sciences, and gives animals and the environment natural rights. It is contending for a place in philosophy as a powerful unification theory of everything (TOE).

Temporal Rights Provides Peace Amidst Chaos

Back to the discussion of the ontology of Temporal Rights. I want to ensure that this connection between operators and their rights is imprinted on your mind at a level that an existential concept deserves. Otherwise, you will not realize the profound differences it can make in your understanding of the world you live in day to day, or the consequential benefits that understanding can provide. This is profoundly fundamental so it has the power to change you perspective.

Once you see the world through this lens, you will understand it so much better, it will surprise you. You will find peace in understanding and joy in comprehending how the world works. It will show you the patterns that persist over chaos and provide a more philosophical, more objective, more positive view of your life. So I am going to belabor this a bit.

You own and have dominion in the sphere within which you operate. You are an agent exercising your authority (dominion or agency) when you use your capabilities. But more to the point, you have existential authority to do that. Your dominion is necessary for your operations. On the other hand, you are not alone; there are a hundred other operators in your domain exercising their rights. Some of these, like the earth operating its gravity, you can be grateful for. Others may be preventing or impeding your desired operations. That is the world we live in, but recognizing that every entity you can identify in your surroundings is an operator, wielding its powers as the agent that it is, brings your environment alive, warms your soul, and gives you the feeling of unity with the universe that has been absent in the Western Thought culture you grew up in.

But I want to help you recognize the universality of Temporal Rights by changing your point of view to a third person. So let me introduce my friend, the beaver. He gave birth to Temporal Rights.

The Objective Observation of Existential, Natural Rights in Nature

Please visualize a beaver as it fells a tree. You notice that it both possesses and exercises power and dominion over the tree’s trunk and its life. The beaver is exercising his agency, his prerogative, his privilege, authority, power, and license to harvest that tree. He is not asking for a permission he doesn’t need, he already has the authority. The authority is patently existential and that authority is the source of the natural rights of the beaver. There are several aspects to this scene that we need to discuss.

This is not an arbitrary attribution that attaches authority to capability but an existential and structural fact. If it had no dominion, it could not operate. Looking about, we notice all the animals display this authority. Then we notice that even trees have capabilities and therefore rights. These demonstrations of authority and rights appears everywhere. The lichens slowly dissolve the rocks, and the sun keeps the earth captured in orbit while the earth holds on to its moon. 

This is a recognition that the universe is not only filled with operators, but it consists of operators: they are the components of its structure, the bricks and mortar of its being. The tree and beaver scene is filled with thousands of operators. The beaver operator consists of nested operators, its eye, the lens, the cells, the proteins, the molecules, etc.

You and the beaver are immersed in both collisions and collusions of natural rights. The beaver is held in place by colluding with gravity while his rights collide with the rights of the tree so he can build a lodge and dam for his wife and family. (Beavers are monogamous.) He unknowingly colludes with the water loving plants and animals that flourish in his pond, and collides with the predators who threaten him. His violations of trees and bushes enables him to collude with the property rights of mud, branches, and rocks to build a dam that frustrates the rights of water molecules to continue down hill. Those molecules enforce their rights sufficiently from time to time to violate the rights of the mud and branches of the dam, but his dominion rules as he utilizes his authority to patch it up. This complex scene displays the balance of nature from which we can learn a lot. The agency or rights of the operators of the universe make it operate. Anywhere you turn your attention you see rights being exercised.

The discussion presented here is a bit superficial. A complete, detailed analysis of the semantics and principles of the Temporal Rights ontology follows this chapter as an extensive footnote.1

Eastern Thought Merges with Western Materialism

Temporal Rights has the integrity to honor the law of the jungle by demonstrating the authority of that law. Operators exist in a swarm of overlapping domains, and that is what makes all processes in the universe possible. If domains did not overlap, there would be neither change nor progress. The beaver killing the tree is also the law of the jungle and looking about we see a moral event every time an operator violates the rights of another. This saturates the universe in morality and shows that what seemed pure material physics is simultaneously normative ethics, an important section of the humanities. That the paradigm is a breakthrough is demonstrated by the fact this very fact. A raw physical and material phenomenon like a beaver killing a tree has traction in the moral universe.

We have a tendency to see things as opposites, which casts them as contending forces. The law of the jungle seems brutal and nasty, but there is a better way to view life, and I hope that the following discussion will reveal this. The simple truth is that we can paradigmatically change our minds to view the inevitable conflicts positively. Instead of agonizing each “problem” up close—fixating on apparent dysfunctions—we can adopt the longer view that Temporal Rights reveals.

Consider the opposing flows of nutrients and waste products across a cell membrane: at the microscopic level, this domain is awash in opposing, conflicting capabilities of the various operators at the membrane. But the result is the essence of life, of a beautiful symbiosis produced precisely from that conflict. A courtroom or a divorce can look like hardcore conflict, and rightly so, but the longer view reveals a methodology of resolution leading to harmony and freedom to grow. All this requires is a change of paradigm, a shift in perspective, a change of mind. 

My goal for Temporal Rights is a happier world based on patience and humility, waiting for the inevitable resolution that time and nature are forced to deliver. Not just waiting, of course, but always moving forward wherever opportunity affords. Let me show you one small example.

The conflicts between teenagers and parents is legendary. They talk past each other, each side claiming the rights they feel so strongly about while not understanding their fundamental reality. If they all had a vocabulary of Temporal Rights, they first of all would understand where those rights originate, and they would also have the tools to openly and cogently discuss them. Half the frustration in these combative scenes stems from the fact the all parties know they have rights but cannot articulate what or why they exist. The anger naturally follows the frustration. 

Meanwhile, these scenes exhibit a pattern that repeats ad infinitum throughout the universe. Galaxies, stars, planets and earthworms live in similar domains where natural rights in collisions and collusions “make the world go around”. This is a recognition that the universe is not only filled with operators, but it consists of operators: they are the components of its structure, the bricks and mortar of its being. The tree and beaver scene is filled with thousands of operators. The Temporal Rights paradigm can be applied at any level of interest, but only to entities with self-existence.

When seen through the Temporal Rights lens, the universe comes alive, a beautiful organism awash in ethics, rights, and dynamic order by constraining chaos.

Nature’s Existential Authority is Natural Rights

This definition of natural rights has definite semantic aspects; some will say “definite issues”. To understand the universe, we must be careful with this challenge. For example, we have a choice as to whether we ascribe the idea of rights/authority to the powers displayed. But the more important issue is the working of the perceiver of these things – the human mind.

We visualized the beaver exercising his power over the tree and the existential authority it demonstrated, but when we try to verbalize these observations, we recognize that the switch from visualization to verbalization inflicts modifications on the prior comprehension. Immediate voids are formed during the transition. This happens because our semantics are limiters and comprehension is squeezed into the pigeonholes of prior knowledge. And the pigeon holes may do a significantly poor job of representing the reality that we just saw. We reduced a “picture worth a thousand words” to a small fraction of those words. In artificial intelligence bots this appears in hallucinations so we should not be surprised if we see that repeated in our intelligence. It is a warning to be very careful.

There are two links in the capability equals authority equals rights chain. I will deal first with the capability equal authority link. I have already talked about the existential authority displayed by the beaver, but I want tight, irrefutable logic to reign here. 

If we choose not to attribute authority to these operators, we strip them of their official, authoritative positions and relegate them, and ourselves, to cold, lifeless, entities battling out our meaningless places in the universe. The operations of agents of change become just reactionary causes and effects devoid of authority. Moreover, that denial reveals a contradiction: the operating critic must exercise his authority in order to make the denial. But there is another problem here.

This view demands that the human will and the power to choose, the ability we recognize as a most important aspect of our lives; this denial of conscience, judgment, and choice flies in the face of our everyday experience. We know we have choices because we make them constantly, and the sense that we can exercise our willpower in the choosing is in many ways the essence of our lives. Those choices are prima facie evidence of our authority to be agents for ourselves. That fact cannot be reconciled with the idea that we are only physical causes and effects in a strictly mechanical universe. This establishes us as operators with existentially recognized authority over ourselves. 

With respect to the second linking of authority to rights, I offer this proof. You may reject the idea that the demonstrated authority can be correctly recognized as natural rights, but you cannot reject the underlying structure without rejecting the capability itself. The existence of a capability gives the operator agency, actionable power that defines its essence as described above. Authority and agency exhibited simultaneously in a human is called a right. Temporal Rights simply asks you to stop recognizing rights as exclusive to humans and to recognize that a universal point of view actually makes more sense. That’s the paradigm shift. It’s actually a very small shift when recognized this way, but the implications are universal and profound. It is not unlike the shift in point of view that Galileo recognized and with similar changes in a multitude of other points of views required when this foundational one is adopted. Were that not so, this book would have ended right here.

You may say that the whole idea of rights is an abstraction, and that is correct; we abstract a right from its corresponding power. But it is an abstraction only to the extent that it is a description of a reality and not the reality itself. It is therefore an appropriate label for an existential reality.

Or, you may say that attributing rights to every agent in the universe is just metaphysical claptrap, a clear anthropomorphizing of physics. Let’s adopt that theory for a moment. First, there is the self-evident fact that this position awards natural rights to humans. If not, then I refer back to the previous paragraph. If so, the question arises, “What of a chimpanzee: does it possess a right to adequate space to live in, or can it morally be constrained to a cage as small as possible? If that is immoral, then the chimp has rights. If chimps have rights, why not chickens, worms, and bacteria? You cannot draw a line anywhere down that spectrum without obvious arbitrariness.

If you should venture to say that the whole idea of rights is a fabled fiction, the Temporal Rights paradigm responds: “OK, but then you have no right to your opinion, and therefore it has no authority and may be dismissed with impunity.” To deny the nomenclature of rights, you must change the common definition of the word, and that destroys this conversation.

The “bottom line” for the Temporal Rights view is this: it reveals a pattern that is repeated literally ad infinitum throughout any sphere of interest in the universe one may choose, and because every agent has natural rights, that includes everything: physics, chemistry, all the social sciences, economics, politics, government, personal relations, family relations, psychology, etc etc. 

But this is only the beginning. Within each such areas of interest, there is a depth to be recognized, and Temporal Rights finds application at each level where a bounded operator demonstrates existential authority.

These rights are ubiquitous.

Revisiting the tree and the beaver scene, we see that there are almost an infinite number of operators, each one exercising its rights and capabilities, restraining and assisting other operators. The beaver, an intelligent creature, is killing the tree to build a dam or a lodge to support its family. Earth’s gravity is authoritatively pulling down the chips whose materials the tree, also an intelligent creature, once “knew” how to lift into place, etc. The tree’s intelligence is a “computer program and procedures list” embedded in the seed that gave it life. These insights show the earth and all its operators as intelligent agents exercising their natural rights in an awesome, lively dance celebrating their existence.

These natural rights are profoundly intrinsic.

Each operator has sufficient existential authority in its domain to operate.

This intrinsicality cannot be surpassed.

These natural rights are profoundly inalienable.

The property right of a stone to the space it occupies can only be violated by violating the stone itself. But then it is not a stone anymore, but two stones, each with its own property right. This principle is found to reign with every operator. It is impossible to change the rights of an operator without altering the operator’s capabilities which capabilities are the essence of the operator and the definition or description of its being.

This inalienability cannot be surpassed.

These natural rights are profoundly immutable.

The exercise of operations or capabilities may be completely frustrated, but the latent capability and its corresponding right remain. If an operator is damaged sufficiently to alter its capabilities, it is no longer the same operator. Some rights may be destroyed but they can be destroyed then may also be restored thus restoring the operator to it full being. An operator may acquire capabilities and when it does its corresponding rights are enlarged.

This immutability cannot be surpassed.

Universal Natural Temporal Rights

I have shown that the Temporal Rights point of view is existential, unavoidable, and irrefutable and that it grounds natural rights with a force superior to any previous theory. It demonstrates the authority of natural law and illustrates an existential characteristic of the natural world that has heretofore been alluded to for centuries in poetry, songs, and exciting fictional adventures: that morality is embedded in the fabric of nature.

There will be a tendency to limit natural rights to sentient operators, but that is an arbitrary choice, for there is no clear demarcation between what we call living and non-living.

If we are going to claim any kind of rights for ourselves, then we have already ascribed to the existence of rights and the attachment of rights to the operators of the universe is comfortable. Nevertheless, there is a rigorous proof of the necessity of this attachment in the footnote below.

From a strictly practical standpoint, this attribution of rights to animals, plants, and all the lesser things provides a solid basis for respect and a kind of reverence for all things: air, water, animals, plants, even the soil, to say nothing of fellow humans. It enlivens the universe and points out the morality that is everywhere supported or violated. A window becomes your friend as it intelligently passes information through while blocking the weather. A friendly floor holds you up while a friendly planet holds you down. These are operators in conflict, and their conflict gives the stability needed for flourishing. Everywhere you look, Mother Nature holds you against her breast, sometimes comforting, sometimes scolding, but always instructing to keep us in balance with our neighbors and ourselves.

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1

Detailed Explication of the Temporal Rights Ontology

The ontological foundation of the Temporal Rights framework rests on a few rigid logical structures grounded in independent, objective, observable characteristics of the universe: an Operator, Operations, and Intelligence. Ethics, morality, and freedom are derived from these.

Temporal Rights lie at the intersection of accountability, agency, culpability, authority, morality, power, justice, and guilt. Unfortunately, the English language makes a definitive statement in this complex circumstance a tedious task. English enables beautiful poetry, but a poetic definition of a critical concept simply will not do. It becomes a semantic but tractible challenge requiring some redundancy to ensure communication is precise. We begin with dependency stacks of dependency statements, wherein each statement describes a clear, logical, observable hierarchical relationship between two characteristics. Each stack is an interlocked progression of these statements, creating a spectrum of dependency rooted in existence.

The Operator – Operations Dependency Stack

• Matter can exist without structure, but structure cannot exist without matter.
• A structure can exist without a capability beyond the structure itself, but such a capability cannot exist without a structure.
• Capabilities (operations) and operating structures (operators) exist.

The Intelligence Dependency Stack

• Matter can exist without structure, but structure cannot exist without matter.
• A structure can exist without embedded information, but information cannot exist without a structure.
• Embedded information can exist without logic, but logic cannot exist without information.
• Logic can exist without directing intelligent operation, but intelligent operation cannot exist without logic.
• Intelligent operations can and do exist.

Notice that both stacks are identically founded and that a branching occurs in the second dependency statement: one takes the capability (operational) branch, while the other takes the informational (intelligence) branch. This demonstrates the fact that information (data and logic) are the result of the [this is incomplete]

This is coherent with the fact that operations are executed upon matter in all cases whatsoever, but operations embedding information in material structures are a special case of operations. This is coherent with entropic perspectives, but here it demonstrates something far more insightful and fascinating; viz. that the universe is not a domain of cold, matter blindly obeying external laws, but is instead exhaustively and properly characterized as a single, unified continuum of intelligent operators exercising their inherent temporal authority through operations—some of which embed information and logic into itself to direct higher-order intelligent operations. The universe is both alive and a moral edifice.

The Temporal Rights Ontology is Unique

It is not unique in its fundamental processes, arguing from a base of existence or using dependency as a vehicle of proof. Aristotle did this a while back, as I recall, but he, and as far as I have been able to determine, all the others have not recognized that a falling rock killing grass is a moral event. The entropic point of view comes close in the majority of entropy works, but stops short of recognizing that even a small amount of destruction of a high-order structure is a moral violation – it has only a proto-morality. The fact that animals live by the destruction of the lives of lower animals gives us the intuition that these are moral events, but we cannot base a philosophy on intuition. However, the discovery of the Temporal Rights point of view began with exactly that intuition.

The Question

When a tree root splits a boulder, it exhibits the necessary and sufficient power to effect that change in its domain. This is irrefutable, objectively observable, existential power. That leaves the question for Temporal Rights, “Is the attribution of authority to that power inherent, or just necessary, or even proper?” We are going to address the narrower topic of justice first, and then expand that into morality or ethics generally and universally.

The human will and the power to choose; the existence of conscience and judgment are experienced every day. We know we have choices because we make them constantly, and the sense that we can exercise our willpower in the process we call choosing is in many ways the essence of our lives. Those choices are existential evidence of our authority to be agents for ourselves. [Those who believe in pre-determinism would reject this conclusion out of hand.] That fact cannot be reconciled with the idea that we are only physical causes and effects in a meaningless universe. That, in turn, demonstrates that there is more to this than raw physics, unless we take the useless amoral point of view that everything is predetermined and our sense of free choice is a profound illusion. This seems to establish our natural authority, which we call rights. But this intuition can be grounded existentially in the following manner.

Justice

Justice Dependency Stack (rigorous long-form, beginning with the Intelligence Stack base)

1. Matter can exist without structure, but structure cannot exist without matter.
2. A structure can exist without embedded information, but embedded information cannot exist without a structure.
3. Embedded information can exist without logic, but logic cannot exist without embedded information.
4. Logic can exist without directing intelligent operation, but intelligent operation cannot exist without logic.
5. Intelligent operations can exist in a single operator without any other operator sharing its domain, but justice cannot exist without at least two operators whose domains coincide (overlap in space, time, or exercised capabilities).
6. Two operators with coincident domains and intelligent operations can exist without any capability of one being capable of infringement upon the other’s structure, embedded information, logic, or intelligent operations, but infringement (or the realistic potential for infringement) cannot exist without such coincident domains in which one operator’s intelligent operations can affect the other’s lower or higher capabilities.
7. Operators with coincident domains and potential for infringement can exist without mutual recognition of each other as agents possessing capabilities, but mutual recognition (via AIMM: Agent recognition and Intrinsic mapping of the other’s capabilities) cannot exist without the realistic potential for infringement. [need to fix out of context reference to AIMM]
8. Operators can mutually recognize each other as agents without any mechanism of mutual prevention, but mutual prevention (the calibrated ability of each to block or limit infringement upon the other’s capabilities) cannot exist without mutual recognition.
9. Mutual prevention can exist without monitoring of emergence or adaptive feedback, but effective justice (non-arbitrary, ongoing resolution and balancing of conflicts over shared domain elements while preserving each operator’s fractal intelligence stack) cannot exist without monitoring of emergence and adaptive feedback loops between the operators.
10. Justice exists as the emergent higher-order capability of operators with coincident domains to maintain reciprocal non-infringement and balanced coexistence of each other’s capabilities — from matter and structure through embedded information, logic, and intelligent operations — through mutual recognition, mutual prevention, and monitored feedback, thereby strengthening the autonegentropic cohesion and persistence of all involved operators across scales.

This version keeps the full rigor of the original intelligence stack as its foundation, branches cleanly at the point where a single operator’s intelligent operation is no longer sufficient, and flows upward into justice without introducing dualism or external authority. The fractal nature remains intact: the same intelligence pattern (structure → information → logic → intelligent operation) must be preserved in every operator for justice to hold.

The stack is now fully grounded in existence and builds justice as a natural, relational extension of the fractal intelligence capability.

1) Justice: We recognize that justice is an abstract concept, and that fairness and equality of values are real issues. It is a deeply held intuition that even a pre-ambulatory infant senses. Take away their (sense of ownership) toy, and they will respond with their one-word vocabulary, emphasized the only way they know how: loudly. They know they have been robbed. This is an intuition of an abstract principle.

We point out, in passing, that if there is only one person, justice is meaningless, so justice is a relational abstraction. This explains why many theories of natural rights and government begin by postulating a person living in isolation.

2) Natural power (capability) is abstracted to produce a natural, Temporal Right, which is, at that point, an abstract attribution of authority. However, as we shall soon see, this attribution cannot be dismissed without dismissing the abstraction we call justice, i.e. if there are no rights, there can be no justice.

Then, to achieve a structure for justice, all of its components must exist in the same realm or sphere so they can logically and coherently relate to each other. This is an abstract layer where (1) justice, and (2) authority of natural rights are logically connected. Rights are the necessary tools (derived from existential capabilities) that enable the process required for justice to even be conceived, let alone accomplished.

So natural rights, Temporal Rights, are abstract but not arbitrary because they are grounded in physical and logical reality. Hence, rights are inherent in operator’s capabilities. From the beginning of my research into natural rights, I worried that Temporal Rights were just an arbitrary attribution of abstract rights to powers; of authority to power. My intuition was half right: they are abstract but not arbitrary.

Hence, in the most technical sense, Temporal Rights are not intrinsically but only practically demonstrated by the capacities of operators. In the text of this present book, Temporal Rights are treated as practically intrinsic because they are absolutely required for the existence of justice and morality, and those are required for peace and progress, and both of those are required for our continued existence.

Morality

Interactions of operators demonstrate constraints and augmentations effected upon one another’s operations, i. e., upon one another’s rights. Morality is the name of that realm or domain of thought.

A moral event occurs when the operations of one operator alter the conditions under which another operator can continue to exist or operate. This is simply the generalization of the discussion of justice.

The many-layered Dependency Stack of operator capabilities demonstrates the natural hierarchy of the importance or weight of moral events.