Talk:Claim rights and liberty rights

Stalinesque overtones

This is because the deontic concepts of obligation and permission are De Morgan dual; a person is permitted to do all and only the things he is not obliged to refrain from, and obliged to do all and only the things he is not permitted to refrain from.

To a non-philosopher, it's hard to read this without Stalinesque overtones on "permitted"[by whom?] creeping into mind. My impulse here is s/permission/license/. 'License' being a word which, for me—as a non-specialist—has fewer overtones (and, in the view of an armchair linguist, impels less reflection about the unstated Soviet). — MaxEnt 01:39, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Checking a few online dictionaries, I can't find any suggestion that 'license' is any less connected to authority than 'permission', and the Wiktionary articles if anything say more about law and legality with regard to 'license' than they do 'permission' (which is only "usually" from a figure in authority in the first Wiktionary definition). To my ear "license" has more tones of allowed-by-a-legal-authority than just the "allowed" simpliciter that "permission" implies, too. (The latter of which is the intended meaning; the deontic concepts don't hinge on reference to any specific authority, just "allowed-ness" and "required-ness" in the abstract; "may" and "must" to use simpler words). In any case I don't see why you draw a connection to Stalin or the Soviets specifically rather than authoritarianism more generally? Is there some history of Stalin or the Soviets especially (ab)using the (English?) word "permitted" that I'm not aware of? --Pfhorrest (talk) 05:13, 12 May 2017 (UTC)