 Must such rights be socially recognized? Even if social recognition allows Green to distinguish natural and legal right, we might wonder if he can distinguish between natural rights and duties and rights and duties recognized by positive morality (see, e.g., Ross 1930: 50–52). The social recognition thesis may seem to preclude making sense of minority rights or unrecognized rights. Green addresses this issue and makes two replies, which clarify the social recognition thesis (LPPO §§137–147). First, he does not claim that particular rights need to be the object of social recognition. It is rather that rights must be contributory to a common good that is the object of mutual recognition. My claim to respect and rights are conditioned on my recognition that others have the same claim to respect and rights, because we are equally moral persons (LPPO §§138; cf. Hinton 2001). Still, this claim might suggest that individuals lack rights if others do not recognize them as equal moral persons, and this might seem to imply a form of moral conventionalism or parochialism, which would be at odds with Green’s own cosmopolitanism. For this reason, it is important that Green insists that the sort of social recognition that rights require is potential, rather than actual, recognition.