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mvassilev
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posted December 01, 2012 12:11 AM |
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But just because something makes sense rationally doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.
What exactly do you mean by this?Quote:
the idea of what right and wrong are is inherently an emotional response
Here's the problem: different people have different emotional responses to the same issue. A hundred years ago, someone's emotional response to a mixed-race couple with an African-American male would be "Lynch the ******!" Does that mean it would be right for them to do so? If the idea of right and wrong are fundamentally emotional, as you claim, I don't see on what grounds you can say that the racist is wrong.
People have moral intuitions that manifest as emotions, but whether or not someone has a certain intuition is irrelevant to what morality actually is. If something is good for human well-being and happiness, it's good - even if some people are naturally aversive towards it.
Also, rationality and emotion are not necessarily opposed to each other. As Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote,Quote:
[O]ur emotions arise from our models of reality. If I believe that my dead brother has been discovered alive, I will be happy; if I wake up and realize it was a dream, I will be sad. P. C. Hodgell said: "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be." My dreaming self's happiness was opposed by truth. My sadness on waking is rational; there is no truth which destroys it.
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gnomes2169
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posted December 01, 2012 01:06 AM |
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Mvass, I'm going to stop answering you until you take my posts entirely in context, or did you think I added that bit about rationality tempering emotion to appease you? I don't care that much about your opinion.
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Yeah in the 18th century, two inventions suggested a method of measurement. One won and the other stayed in America.
-Ghost destroying Fred
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mvassilev
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posted December 01, 2012 01:15 AM |
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Then I don't understand what you mean by this:Quote:
Emotions cannot be separated from what is morally right or wrong, because every human has emotions (maybe not a full set as is the case with psychopaths and sociopaths, but they still have some), and so emotions should not be absolutely ignored for the sake of "Fairness,"
Could you clarify?
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gnomes2169
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posted December 01, 2012 01:22 AM |
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Ah, after your edit I can see something that might actually be a source of confusion. So sure, I'll clarify. One moment... Human beings, as creatures that have emotional responses to stimuli and have their own perspectives on life, have an emotional response to what they consider to be right or wrong. The logical, rational explanation for why something is right or wrong comes after the fact, that gut reaction that tells you what you should or shouldn't do or condone from your fellow man. This "Gut feeling" will always exist, and it is this that laws are based. Logic and reasoning certainly justify and also clarify and modify laws so that the come closer to this property that humans would call "Fair," but it is a bi-product or refining measure rather than the cause of a law, moral, etc. Something that gives meaning beyond, "It's bad to do W," by stating that, "It is bad to to W because of XYZJHLIMP... etc, etc."
Ie, laws in their base forms are emotional responses shared on a society-wide level that may or may not be refined by logic. A sign of a society maturing is the refinement, justification and broadening of these laws (Applying reason) so that they make more sense and are more applicable to specific situations. A notable example of refinement would be weeding out "Unfair" laws like property laws for slaves and expanding laws so that other groups can partake in the norms of society (voting for women, gay rights, freedom of religion, etc).
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Yeah in the 18th century, two inventions suggested a method of measurement. One won and the other stayed in America.
-Ghost destroying Fred
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mvassilev
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posted December 01, 2012 01:25 AM |
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And what exactly does "rationality tempering emotion" mean? Give some examples. How would it work in practice? How do you decide whether to go with "rationality" or "emotions"?
(Sorry about the confusion with edits, post your response below this one.)
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gnomes2169
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posted December 01, 2012 01:39 AM |
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As stated in my edit, laws start out as emotional responses to a problem (disgust, fear, hatred, envy, etc) and evolve from that point by ways of rationality and reasoning. Except taxes. Taxes are entirely rational in construct, being a bi-product of people trying to figure out how to keep large groups of people together.
Notable laws: Amendments to the United States constitution, Labor rights, The illegality of murder, Establishment of what a war crime is (all of those laws and definitions), etc. None would have been established if people had no emotional response to the situation, it would be the only rational way because that was the way things were. Emotions were the "Kick starter" if you will.
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Yeah in the 18th century, two inventions suggested a method of measurement. One won and the other stayed in America.
-Ghost destroying Fred
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mvassilev
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posted December 01, 2012 02:00 AM |
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You say that reason can (and should) be used to refine and broaden laws, but isn't there a contradiction between that and laws based on "gut feelings"? If the rational justification comes after the fact, as you said, then there's not much use trying to use rational arguments to persuade someone. "I've already decided that it's bad to do W," someone says, "I can justify it by referencing XYZJHLIMP". But then even if you convince them that XYZJHLIMP are not a justification for W, they will (according to your description) still believe in W because it's their emotional response - they just won't have a rational justification for it anymore. (Also, while I think what you describe applies to many people, some people only have rational reactions to political/moral issues, and so they think "principles first" rather than "emotions first". I am such a person, and I know others who are like that too.)
You've brought up many examples of emotional responses to issues being the impetus for laws. It's true that disgust, envy, fear, etc are all much more effective at mobilizing people politically than reason is. But sometimes emotions identify something as a problem when it isn't one at all: for example, the feelings that resulted in laws against miscegenation. Yes, reason (and/or changes in cultural norms) have led to those laws being overturned, but the fact is that those laws existed at some point, and they wouldn't have if laws weren't based on emotion. It's good when the retroactive application of reason leads to changes in unjust laws, but it's even better when reason is applied before unjust laws based on emotion are enacted. It's better to not make a mistake than to fix it.
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Eccentric Opinion
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Invictus7
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posted December 01, 2012 02:38 AM |
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I really don't understand people's obsession that animals somehow "need" to be capable of empathy for humans in order to have rights. Isn't it enough that we are capable of empathy for the animal itself?
@JJ, sure there are many contradictions in law, and this is certainly one of them. But just because this legislation wouldn't be compatible per se with other laws, does that mean we shouldn't pass it? Surely it's a step in the right direction. These things happen gradually, I don't think one can reasonably expect killing animals for food to be made illegal right now.
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gnomes2169
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posted December 01, 2012 02:42 AM |
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The thing about "Rational" laws is that unless something just glaringly doesn't make sense, the laws are more often than not non-existent. No rights are wronged because rationality does not care about right or wrong, only about consistency, or the whole, "If X is true and Y falls into the same category, then Y must also be true" black and white mentality.
Take someone that kills in self defense, for example. Rationally, this man killed another being and thus should be punished for doing so, regardless of it is right or wrong. It makes no distinction between a murder and self defense, just looks at the results. But emotionally (via empathy) we do make a distinction between the two, defining one as good or at least acceptable (in most societies) and one as bad (in every society). Factors and reason are brought in and weigh on the determination of whether something is right or wrong, creating a "Moral grey" area to the law. Such distinctions would be pointless in an entirely rational law system, as consistency would trump any "mitigating factors," and mitigating factors would be ignored entirely as they are emotional appeals and emotion would have no part of the law, nor would it have any influence on how it would be carried out because the law is rational and emotions, as a rule, are not.
This is why I say that many of the things we know as civil rights and laws have their base in emotion. Of course emotional reactions sometimes snow us up really damn bad, and reasoning/ logic is there to pick up the pieces and fix the mess afterwords, but logic and reasoning would not be the thing that tries to solve the problem in the first place. That belongs to the realm of societal morals and norms, to be tempered by logic and reasoning (making the laws fair or removing them) as quickly as possible. I'm not saying that it is the best system evar (that would be one that doesn't need editing afterwords), but I am saying that it is the best thing we have around. Humans aren't perfect, after all. If we were, this discussion wouldn't be relevant.
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Yeah in the 18th century, two inventions suggested a method of measurement. One won and the other stayed in America.
-Ghost destroying Fred
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Tsar-Ivor
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posted December 01, 2012 02:44 AM |
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I have not read the proposed new law in detail, but does the prohibiting of sexual intercourse to animals, count only while they're alive, or also when they've perished?
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OhforfSake
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Initiate
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posted December 01, 2012 02:46 AM |
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Wait a moment, is it illegal to have sex with food now?
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mvassilev
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posted December 01, 2012 02:56 AM |
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gnomes:
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rationality does not care about right or wrong, only about consistency
Yes, but rationality together with some relatively uncontroversial foundational value such as "happiness" does result in a consistent moral framework with right and wrong. If a law or moral rule, rationally analyzed, goes against the selected foundational value, it should be discarded. If a law or moral rule would promote the selected value, it should be adopted.
Why would rationality imply not making situational distinctions? There's nothing inconsistent about laws that allow for killing in self-defense and not allowing killing in any other case. It's true that the rule "Killing should be punished" and the action "Not punishing someone who killed in self-defense" are inconsistent with each other, but why would "Killing should be punished" be the rule? Perhaps the rule is "Killing should be punished except in self-defense." There's nothing inherently irrational or inconsistent about nuanced rules.
You said that rationality "just looks at the results". Are the results of aggressive killing and killing in self-defense the same? In the former case, an innocent person has been killed. In the latter case, someone who initiated force has been killed. The results are clearly not the same.
What's "morally gray" about killing in self-defense? If it's not immoral to kill someone in self-defense, it's not morally gray because there's no immoral element involved.
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Corribus
Hero of Order
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posted December 01, 2012 05:51 AM |
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Edited by Corribus at 07:04, 01 Dec 2012.
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Mvass writes:
Quote:
Yes, but rationality together with some relatively uncontroversial foundational value such as "happiness" does result in a consistent moral framework with right and wrong. If a law or moral rule, rationally analyzed, goes against the selected foundational value, it should be discarded. If a law or moral rule would promote the selected value, it should be adopted.
Yeah, sure, except foundational values like happiness mean different things to different people. If basing laws on what makes people happy was so easy, politics wouldn't be so nasty. 
Mvass is right in one thing, though, and that is that good (fair) laws are usually the result of rational thought rather than emotion. While our original individual concept of "right" and "wrong" may ultimately derive from emotion, the creation of a fair system of laws requires something far more, if only because different people have different emotions. Laws aren't really directly about enforcing what's morally right and morally wrong, anyway.
That said, people forget that even flawless logic can yield wrong poor conclusions if the premises are poor. And when it comes to making laws, premises are necessarily based on beliefs, assumptions and emotions. Sure, rationality can make situational distinctions, but the distinctions made are based on beliefs about what is right and what is wrong. In the case of homicide, we can have laws which distinguish between killing in self-defense and killing for other reasons if we believe such distinctions are necessary and fair. Most people probably feel they are. But some people may believe otherwise. Neither answer is right or wrong, of course. Logic can't lead to a universal truth, or a set of laws that is "right". What logic can do is provide consistency - that is, a set of laws that is internally consistent based on a singular set of input stipulations, which themselves are generally based on morals or philosophical beliefs. In programming language, logic is an algorithm that ensures (if it is applied correctly) the same output every time. If decisions about right and wrong were made by emotional whim, some killers would go to prison and others would go free even if the circumstances were the same. No advanced society can function like that.
But more to the point, most contention in society results not from issues related to application of logic in creating laws, but in the fact that the premises people use to determine laws are based on personal beliefs, and those beliefs vary widely. Abortion isn't a sticky issue because some people are using logic and some people aren't - it's a sticky issue because people believe different things when it comes to defining life, and like any mathematical function, the output variable depends on the input variable. Most people believe killing a living human is murder and should be illegal. OK, but when does life begin? Do you believe life begins at conception? Logic tells you all abortions should be illegal. Do you believe life begins at birth? Logic tells you all abortions should be legal. You can build other contingencies in there, but the foundational quandary remains the same. If we're lucky in situations like this, we can try to use science to make a reasoned decision about how to proceed[1], but when science is mute on a subject, what are we to do?
Well, we make compromises - with each other and with our own ethics. We draw lines, often arbitrarily, to try to please as many people as possible or reach an answer which is the most satisfactory.
We do this also when results of logical deduction yield impractical results.
The simple truth is that I wish society didn't have to kill animals. I'll not go so far to say that I find it immoral, but slaying animals feels wrong to me. And I wager it feels wrong to most people. After all, we make up euphemistic names to refer to many of the animals we eat (beef vs. cows, pork vs. pig, etc.). It's easy to ignore because most people, myself included, are so far removed from the process of slaughter - meat is anonymous by the time it reaches the supermarket.
Animals feel pain and I empathize with that. I don't want to see animals suffer. I believe they are entitled to ethical treatment[2] and some form of rights. The logical deduction from my viewpoint would be to let all animals roam free, for all of us to lead completely vegetarian lifestyles, to not kill a single creature, even by accident - to say nothing of refraining from torture and rape of animals[3]. But a lot of that is not practical at all. Ignoring the absurd like never stepping on a spider and so forth, it's IMPOSSIBLE for humanity to suddenly give up eating meat. Infrastructure isn't there for our species to subsist on a vegetarian diet NOW. Thus outlawing meat eating is not practical, even if it's a logical end to the premise that killing or harming animals is immoral - presuming a plurality of voting humans also felt this way. However there are other logical endpoints to the premise that harming animals is immoral - these include making illegal animal torture, animal abuse, hunting animals to extinction (or hunting animals in general, where not required for population control), poaching animals for their tusks and leaving them to die slow painful deaths out on the savannah, etc. - all of these are perfectly practical laws to have. As blizzardboy mentioned earlier, even if we can't eliminate the consumption of meat NOW, we can help animals out in other ways, and the animals we DO slaughter for meat we can slaughter in the most painless, dignified way possible. Maybe in the future there won't be a need to eat meat, or society will feel differently about slaughtering animals, but for now that's reality we have to deal with.
So sure, it may not be logical to kill animals for food on the one hand and advocate for protecting animals from torture or rape on the other, but that's where the line of practicality lies at the moment. Really, though, if anyone out there doesn't see a difference between a man killing an animal painlessly to feed his family and a man setting an animal on fire just for the pleasure of hearing it squeal, then there's no real common ground for discussion.
As a final remark - let me say that the last page or so of posts between mvass and gnomes is the way that OSM discussions SHOULD proceed. Amazing how much more interesting and productive a discussion is when nobody is calling the opposition's posts "bigotted bull" or "crap" or "BS". Even in disagreement everyone can leave the discussion feeling good about themselves and what they've said.
Notes:
[1] And even science isn’t perfect, because scientific results are open to interpretation as well – interpretations which are filtered through personal biases, emotions, beliefs and all manner of colored lenses.
[2] By the way, “animal rights” doesn’t necessarily have to mean a right to life. It could easily mean a right to a freedom from torture, pain, or whatever. “ethical treatment” is similarly undefined.
[3] I mean, if you want to be really absurd about it, we could deduce that humans have no right to impact animals at all. We should share the land equally with animals and go back to the way it was thousands of years ago. We could just kill off most of the humans to give animals space to be like they once were – but calling this solution to the moral quandary of animal rights impractical would be a colossal understatement. Ultimately we’re left with the question of whether natural animal “society” is more important than human society. Not an easy moral question to answer, but the practical answer of “NO” is quite easy to arrive at. To some extent humans have to act out of self-interest – a practical rejection of a logical solution to a moral quandary. In the end, even moral decisions come down to cost-benefit analyses. 
EDIT:
A final, final remark: I was just struck by the irony of mvass using a paladin as his avatar. I'm thinking a golem would be more suitable. 
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I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're goin', and hook up with them later. -Mitch Hedberg
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mvassilev
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posted December 01, 2012 07:23 AM |
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It's not entirely accurate to frame the issue as "taking your views to their logical conclusion" vs "practicality". You believe that animal welfare is of sufficient value for humans to forgo doing certain things to them. But that's not the only thing you value: you also value social stability, humans being fed, etc. If animal welfare is the only thing you value, then veganism would indeed be the logical conclusion, but there are other considerations - and there's nothing illogical about taking them into account. If you value animal welfare at X1, stability at X2, etc, then, when acting in accordance with your values, you should maximize U = X1*q1 + X2*q2 + ... Xn*Qn (where q is the "amount" of each thing you value, and U is your utility) subject to whatever constraints the quantities are subject to. The simple answer is that while you value animal welfare, you aren't willing to sacrifice everything else to it, so you have to make a trade-off.Quote:
To some extent humans have to act out of self-interest – a practical rejection of a logical solution to a moral quandary.
If someone values their own well-being (or the well-being of humans as a species, or of rational thinking beings) infinitely higher than they value the well-being of animals, then it's not illogical for them to reject animal rights.
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Corribus
Hero of Order
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posted December 01, 2012 08:39 AM |
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Well you can frame it that way if you want, but it's essentially the same thing. When one speaks of abandoning one course of action for another which is more practical, it's implicit that a value judgment is being made (practical = valuing less effort, convenience, whatever). We can use logic to help inform decision making, but ultimately value judgments are always being made (if this, then that; if that, then this; therefore I choose this or that based on these). Values are not always rational, therefore choices are not always rational, therefore logic does not necessarily lead to rational outcomes, even if the process by which those outcomes are obtained is completely rational.
Again, logic provides self-consistent outcomes, not any universal truth or "perfect" system of laws.
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gnomes2169
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posted December 01, 2012 09:05 AM |
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Quote:
Why would rationality imply not making situational distinctions? There's nothing inconsistent about laws that allow for killing in self-defense and not allowing killing in any other case. It's true that the rule "Killing should be punished" and the action "Not punishing someone who killed in self-defense" are inconsistent with each other, but why would "Killing should be punished" be the rule? Perhaps the rule is "Killing should be punished except in self-defense." There's nothing inherently irrational or inconsistent about nuanced rules.
But why is killing in self defense a mitigating circumstance? Why should there be an exception? It would be an inconsistency, and an incredibly unfair one at that. Someone is still dead, after all, and there are more than likely people that cared for that individual as well but who cares about feelings? Those are ignored in this absolutely rational and logical setting, so ignore that one side or the other will leave behind grieving acquaintances (Friends, family, etc), they are both human and if both are productive members of society then the death of either harms society. Why should one killing the other be any less punishable in this situation?
^And that's why I don't like it when I'm not allowed to use empathy. I sound like a damn sociopath. 
Quote:
You said that rationality "just looks at the results". Are the results of aggressive killing and killing in self-defense the same? In the former case, an innocent person has been killed. In the latter case, someone who initiated force has been killed. The results are clearly not the same.
Actually, they are. There is one body either way, and one less member of society in its entirety. Hell, the aggressor could be the person acting in self defense in a situation like this, so he/ she could technically be both roles... and the result remains the same. One side or the other is still dead, at the end of the day. Their reasons may have differed, but a grave is dug for either one (Or a jar is prepared for their ashes... I also don't like having to be politically correct all the time, but it prevents so many arguments along the road).
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What's "morally gray" about killing in self-defense? If it's not immoral to kill someone in self-defense, it's not morally gray because there's no immoral element involved.
Well, I think that JJ would be better at answering this than me, but let's see if I can get the gist of it...
You did kill someone. Regardless of the circumstances, a life was ended and you are the direct cause. But the only reason that you killed them was because the would have killed you otherwise, so you (having a right to live) defended yourself to the best of your abilities and killed him. But still, did you absolutely have to kill him? Was that the only option you had available to you, or was it the first thing you turned to? Obviously if the man was crazy, raving and coming at you with intent to strangle there isn't so much you could do with diplomacy, but couldn't you have knocked him out or somehow disabled him instead? Did he absolutely have to die?
Down that road lies the moral ambiguity and path of madness, and I don't like walking down it and I personally believe that killing in self defense is justifiable, but that is a personal moral response and you will find plenty of people that will disagree with me and they will be perfectly fine listing their rationality and logic behind explaining why it is never justifiable to kill another human being. So who's logic do you follow or believe in cases like this? Who's rationality should be enforced in law? Both are based from personal morals and backed by rationality, correct? So who's is chosen? Well, hopefully the one that has more people to back it up, otherwise you are going to have allot of angry citizens knocking on your front door...
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Mvass is right in one thing, though, and that is that good (fair) laws are usually the result of rational thought rather than emotion. While our original individual concept of "right" and "wrong" may ultimately derive from emotion, the creation of a fair system of laws requires something far more, if only because different people have different emotions. Laws aren't really directly about enforcing what's morally right and morally wrong, anyway.
Yes, that's what I'm trying to say! The evolution of laws that a "fair," "good," and "right," while it starts as just an emotional response, requires guidance and shaping with rational, logical reasoning. I'm just adding that a law will start as an emotional response, since the feeling that there is some social injustice or some great wrong to right is what kick starts a social revolution, sometimes (hopefully) ending in the creation of a rational, fair law, and that as such morals and emotions are the basis for an unfair society as much as they are a mature and equal(ish) society. Rationality, morals and all the other stuff working in tandem to create something that we (or at least a majority of people) see as "Good." I'd like to point out that politicians are really bad at this, but that's a topic for a different discussion.
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Yeah in the 18th century, two inventions suggested a method of measurement. One won and the other stayed in America.
-Ghost destroying Fred
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JollyJoker
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posted December 01, 2012 09:54 AM |
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The sad thing is, that all this good discussing is for nought because it's completely beside the point.
We are talking about a LAW here. A law is a rule for everyone to keep to it, becauser it is enforced. That's why laws are valid for everyone.
The 2nd thing we have to keep in mind, are the fact that there are two levels of "reality" 1) The PERSONAL one; 2) The general one.
The personal level is the level on which sertain animals are cute. Also you may develop relations, whether it's a dog, a cat, a rabbit, a horse, your 3 cows, when you have a small farm, and so on. On this personal level MOST (not all, but most) would never dream of HURTING an animal or even torturing it, be cruel to it (except the handful of whackos who does it in preparation of becoming a serial killer if you can trust the shrinks), and if you do have a small farm, you'll kill poultry, and maybe a pig each year, but you'll do it painless.
However, on the general level animals (and even humans) are just that. It maybe sad, if something bad befalls them, but you can't bear the misery of the whole world on your shoulders.
The difference between 1 and 2 is the reason why, if everyone had to kill and prepare their own meat, today a lot of people wouldn't eat meat, but since the breeding of food and the industrial slaughtering is part of 2) most can live with that.
Back to law. LAWS should be valid for EVERYONE, right? Which in this case is the problem. The bestiality law is in existance (we are talking about a projected amendment here), but de facto it's not.
First there are the religiously motivated exceptions: freedom of religion trumps animal protection - consequentially I am allowed to, well, massacre animals, if my religion tells me to. Keep in mind the discussed judgement about atheism: that atheism is considered as a religion for PRACTICAL purposes because atheists must not have any disadvantages. When you are allowing a muslim a 5 minute prayer pause, an atheist has the same right to make a pause, although he can stare at the wall instead praying.
Consequentially, that means, LEGALLY: if religious groups are allowed to slaughter animals in a cruel and painful way... EXACTLY: everyone else should be allowed as well. Or, MORE CORRECTLY:
SHOULD NOT BE FORBIDDEN.
However, there are other things. What about experiments? In Germany alone, in 2009, 2.76 MILLION animals were killed in experiments, a couple thousand dogs, cats and monkeys among them. statistics
Sure, there are rules - except that in this case the purpose justifies the means: such animals should die painless - except when the experiment doesn't allow that. Cosmetics is an area where animals experiments have been forbidden for the EC - but that's no problem, since in other countries it's not.
What about Hunting? That's most certainly animals torture, right? How many hunted animals are wounded? So shouldn't hunting be forbidden? It's not, though.
And so on. Seals (fur and hide industry in general). If people wrestle around with slippery slopes and human hereditary culture - there is absolutely no need to kill animals for those, right?
I could go endlessly on and on and on - but the only conclusion is this: as long as animals are objects and there is this difference there shouldn't be any LAWS regulating it. Instead, products based on that should have to mandatory have stamps (like with eggs), how the meat was treated and killed (this is done with eggs for a long time now). The same is true for all other products based on animal handling or killing.
That way it's a personal decision for everyone, which is correct at this point of history.
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Ghost
Undefeatable Hero
Therefore I am
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posted December 01, 2012 10:08 AM |
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No animal! 
Religion? Noah flood after the God said you can eat but not sodoma. Ok poop means we eat in the future. Read again from news
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mvassilev
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted December 02, 2012 01:10 AM |
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gnomes:
Someone is dead in both cases, yes, but why does rationality mean overlooking details? Even if you're someone who doesn't value life at all, the two results are different. In the first case, an innocent person is dead, i.e. someone who would not have killed someone except in self-defense is dead. In the second case, a would-be murderer is dead, i.e. someone who wanted to kill an innocent person is dead. They're not the same at all. It doesn't necessarily mean that there's a mitigating circumstance, but the two situations are factually not the same.
But there's even more to it than that. Suppose society adopted the "rational" rule that killing people is equally bad in all circumstances. What wold the consequences of that rule be? People would feel that they couldn't morally defend themselves by killing someone who was trying to kill them. The beneficiaries of that rule would be those who kill innocent people, because they care less about that to begin with. So there's more killing. Then, if you look at the consequences of treating self-defense and murder equally, you realize that you end up with more killing, which is bad.
You raised an interesting question about "whose logic to follow". Two people can have mutually exclusive but self-consistent beliefs. When a debate gets to that point, not much can be done (see my Hierarchy of Preferences topic). But such irresolvable disagreements aren't a high fraction of all disagreements, because most people's beliefs are not internally consistent, and it is possible to convince them of something by helping them make their beliefs more consistent.
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gnomes2169
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posted December 02, 2012 08:23 AM |
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@JJ:
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The sad thing is, that all this good discussing is for nought because it's completely beside the point.
Let's please consider for the sake of discussion that maybe what we are talking about could be pertinent to the creation, modification and justification of law, and I do believe that a constitutional amendment of any kind does fall under that category. In fact, the discussion is further attached to this thread because we are talking about the justification for inconsistent or hypocritical laws and if this is in fact a good system for humans to use. Sure, we are slightly off track with a discussion of whether or not emotions are pertinent to the whole thing or if reason and pragmatism should be the absolute king, but couldn't both be attached to this proposed amendment?
For instance (And this is a very short, very sweet and to the point tie in), this law about bestiality most likely stems from some pet owners or "Animal rights" advocates or some such that are disgusted or horrified that people use animals to attain sexual pleasure, feeling that people have an empathic connection to animals that are "Part of the family" and that any pain or (in extreme cases) torturous behaviors that people enact in getting a sexual high is immoral and should be illegal. It could also be justified rationally, as sexual deviance with an animal that can't or won't fight against it could very well lead to forced sexual deviance or a feeling that a greater range of this kind of deviance is allowed, leading to a rise in rapes and molestation (Which society says is bad, correct?).
HOWEVER, both sides could also apply support against the amendment, couldn't they? Someone might feel spurned that they cannot do what they want with their property, and support bestiality with a kind of righteous indignation and much butt hurt. Others take a more rational approach, wanting to keep consistency within the system. If an animal is allowed to be slaughtered for a basic human need, and sex is defined as a basic human need, then that should be a reason why bestiality is allowed. After all, we can already legally kill certain animals for food, the big difference is...?
And thus, since we can apply emotion and logic to both sides, we have conflict and a discussion. Rah.
So basically, the entire discussion of the amendment is what Mvass and I have been talking about being put into practice. I do not see what is so impertinent about it at all. So I think that I might continue discussing with Mvass... actually, I might be surrendering to a certain degree...
@Mvass:
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But there's even more to it than that. Suppose society adopted the "rational" rule that killing people is equally bad in all circumstances. What wold the consequences of that rule be? People would feel that they couldn't morally defend themselves by killing someone who was trying to kill them. The beneficiaries of that rule would be those who kill innocent people, because they care less about that to begin with. So there's more killing. Then, if you look at the consequences of treating self-defense and murder equally, you realize that you end up with more killing, which is bad.
As I do not like playing devils advocate and hate the whole philosophical, "What makes killing bad" thing, I must admit that I will concede the point. Very nicely done sir, you have won this part of our discussion. *Le bow*
However, you must admit that this is a view that very few people will be able to realize on their own. This absolute logic is very rare and in some places distrusted (Which makes me very, very sad...), and that there are other equally valid and more widely accepted ways to get to the same place. Belief in the right to life, for example (a rather emotional ideal) would give you, the victim, the right to defend your life to whatever means you deem necessary, making killing in self defense justifiable without dragging the whole of society or large quantities of reasoning into the mix. Basically, you have the right to live and the ability to strike back against anything that directly threatens the continuation of your life.
As it's late and I'm most likely no longer thinking straight, I'll just ask you something and be done for the night.
So my question is, if it arrives at the same conclusion but uses a different reasoning or method, does an emotionally based law have any less validity or "Rightness" then a rationally based one?
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Yeah in the 18th century, two inventions suggested a method of measurement. One won and the other stayed in America.
-Ghost destroying Fred
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This thread is pages long: 
