Specification and Moral Rights

In this paper, I offer objections to an approach to formulating principles referring to moral rights that has come to known as "specification." These objections (which are directed at all forms of specification, including one recently defended by Hallie Liberto) focus on rights-principles in their role as premises of inferences to conclusions regarding the moral rights of individuals in particular situations. I argue on practical grounds that specified principles have no useful role to play in such inferences, and on theoretical grounds that the specificationist position is self-defeating. This latter argument also suggests an interpretation of rights principles that avoids the objections to which specification is vulnerable.