Amidst Backlash, Dawkins Doubles Down on Down Syndrome

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
41

[quote]xXSeraphimXx wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]jj-dude wrote:

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]Bismark wrote:
Here’s an interesting question: should mentally disabled individuals be free to reproduce? [/quote]

Here’s another one: should non-mentally disabled individuals be free to prohibit mentally disabled individuals from reproducing?[/quote]

The right question is who decides and how? Unless you can answer that, assume you or your children will not be allowed to reproduce because I can guarantee someone can always argue that someone is “dumb”. First time we have a disagreement, I will swear on a stack of bibles you are an idiot. I’m sure you will return the favor. Where does that leave our kids? What’s more, anyone that gets to make these decisions has the power of life and death over you and your family. If the mentally deficient are a burden when unborn, they are more so when they need care. Publicly mandated euthenasia is a horrible idea.

So I’ll ask those of you who have advocated this: Who gets to decide, how do they decide and you’d better start this off by admitting your kids will be first in line for this process.

(There is no reason in the world for us to be having this discussion in the first place.)

As always full of shit,

– jj[/quote]

Who the hell is advocating euthanasia? We’re talking about deciding if a mentally disabled individual should reproduce. Who should decide? Well, who decides the other stuff in their life? A guardian? If they’re not capable of entering into a contract or making decisions about their own health and so on then it’s a no brainer - their guardian decides. You cannot argue that their guardian doesn’t have that right. What decision the guardian makes is a different story.
[/quote]

If the guardian is to make that decision is the guardian then responsible for the child? [/quote]

Not necessarily but in most cases yes as it would be the guardian’s decision to choose who the guardian of the child should be. I don’t know the legal ins and outs but the law is usually based on the reasoning of the “common man” so I assume that it’s as I described.

42

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:

[quote]Bismark wrote:

[quote]tedro wrote:

[quote]Bismark wrote:
Here’s an interesting question: should mentally disabled individuals be free to reproduce? [/quote]

Of course they should be free to reproduce. Are the mentally disabled not worthy of liberty?

Whether or not they should reproduce is another question, but no one has the right to take that liberty from them.[/quote]

Not when it is detrimental to society at large, no.[/quote]

Society is an imaginary group label with no significance in the actual world. It has no feelings, it has no rights, it can take no action. Only individuals have those things. I could come up with a term to represent all the left handed people named David in the world. Let’s call them david-left-ites. But applying that label doesn’t create an entity comprised of those people with anything other than individual will, or rights, or feelings. It’s nonsense to say X action hurts david-left-ites. Or david-left-ites deserve Y because they are no more a thing because I apply a group label than if no such label existed. But people do the very thing with terms like society or government. If you really boil it down to the rational logic of what is being claimed, it’s pure nonsense. There is no such thing as detriment to an imaginary object. And if you are justifying your morality using such terms that’s all your morality is, nonsense.[/quote]

Err…okay. So if some guy is running loose with the Ebola virus no one has the right to quarantine him and thereby take away his liberty right? How could he be a danger to society? Society is only a label; an abstraction right? And why road rules? What individual can you point to that is being specifically protected? If society is only an abstraction then who needs them? Not a very sound argument. The fact that society cannot be personified does not mean that the collective interests of the people don’t exist.[/quote]

Um, in that case the individuals in danger or individuals who care about individual human life certainly have the right to end the threat to themselves. Because a dude with a disease is a threat to an individual human person. That is what a virus does. It attacks an individual. There is no disease or virus that has ever attacked anything other than an individual. Which is why it’s nonsense to claim you are stopping him to protect something that can’t actually be attacked by the virus.

You are conflating no societal interest with no interest at all. There is no individual item or directive that ever can fulfill even being a societal interest. Because every individual has their own interests. You are talking make-believe.

If someone threatens an individual that is a david-left-ite, there can be a right to stop him, but not to protect the interests of the “organism” known as david-left-ites. And to say that David-left-ites are an imaginary thing and imaginary things don’t have rights or feelings doesn’t mean I don’t think someone could stop a killer of one happening to belong to that group. Again, this is nonsense.

43

[quote]xXSeraphimXx wrote:]

If the guardian is to make that decision is the guardian then responsible for the child? [/quote]

Can’t say about american legislation. In real life the guardian is most often also the parent. They already have a child for life.

44

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:

[quote]Bismark wrote:

[quote]tedro wrote:

[quote]Bismark wrote:
Here’s an interesting question: should mentally disabled individuals be free to reproduce? [/quote]

Of course they should be free to reproduce. Are the mentally disabled not worthy of liberty?

Whether or not they should reproduce is another question, but no one has the right to take that liberty from them.[/quote]

Not when it is detrimental to society at large, no.[/quote]

Society is an imaginary group label with no significance in the actual world. It has no feelings, it has no rights, it can take no action. Only individuals have those things. I could come up with a term to represent all the left handed people named David in the world. Let’s call them david-left-ites. But applying that label doesn’t create an entity comprised of those people with anything other than individual will, or rights, or feelings. It’s nonsense to say X action hurts david-left-ites. Or david-left-ites deserve Y because they are no more a thing because I apply a group label than if no such label existed. But people do the very thing with terms like society or government. If you really boil it down to the rational logic of what is being claimed, it’s pure nonsense. There is no such thing as detriment to an imaginary object. And if you are justifying your morality using such terms that’s all your morality is, nonsense.[/quote]

Err…okay. So if some guy is running loose with the Ebola virus no one has the right to quarantine him and thereby take away his liberty right? How could he be a danger to society? Society is only a label; an abstraction right? And why road rules? What individual can you point to that is being specifically protected? If society is only an abstraction then who needs them? Not a very sound argument. The fact that society cannot be personified does not mean that the collective interests of the people don’t exist.[/quote]

Um, in that case the individuals in danger or individuals who care about individual human life certainly have the right to end the threat to themselves. Because a dude with a disease is a threat to an individual human person. That is what a virus does. It attacks an individual. There is no disease or virus that has ever attacked anything other than an individual. Which is why it’s nonsense to claim you are stopping him to protect something that can’t actually be attacked by the virus.

You are conflating no societal interest with no interest at all. There is no individual item or directive that ever can even fulfill even being a societal interest as every individual has their own interests. You are talking make-believe.

If someone threatens an individual that is a david-left-ite, there can be a right to stop him, but not to protect the interests of the “organism” known as david-left-ites. And to say that David-left-ites are an imaginary thing and imaginary things don’t have rights or feelings doesn’t mean I don’t think someone could stop a killer of one happening to belong to that group. Again, this is nonsense.[/quote]

You’re playing a semantic game. The “interests of society” means the interests of the individuals within the society. Just as the “interests of the group” means the interests of the individuals within the group. Basically you’re trying to obscure the obvious - that profoundly disabled people cost society in terms of the costs associated with their care.

45

yeah, society is “an imaginary group label with no significance in the actual world.”
But so is the individual : an imaginary group label of organs, cells, bacterias, etc.
And so is the cell : an imaginary group label of molecules and atoms.
Which are an imaginary group label of quarks and quanta.

Methodological individualism is a sophism.
Don’t like something ? don’t want to care about it ? Don’t want to actually study it : say it’s an abstract concept that doesn’t really exist.

46

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:

[quote]Bismark wrote:

[quote]tedro wrote:

[quote]Bismark wrote:
Here’s an interesting question: should mentally disabled individuals be free to reproduce? [/quote]

Of course they should be free to reproduce. Are the mentally disabled not worthy of liberty?

Whether or not they should reproduce is another question, but no one has the right to take that liberty from them.[/quote]

Not when it is detrimental to society at large, no.[/quote]

Society is an imaginary group label with no significance in the actual world. It has no feelings, it has no rights, it can take no action. Only individuals have those things. I could come up with a term to represent all the left handed people named David in the world. Let’s call them david-left-ites. But applying that label doesn’t create an entity comprised of those people with anything other than individual will, or rights, or feelings. It’s nonsense to say X action hurts david-left-ites. Or david-left-ites deserve Y because they are no more a thing because I apply a group label than if no such label existed. But people do the very thing with terms like society or government. If you really boil it down to the rational logic of what is being claimed, it’s pure nonsense. There is no such thing as detriment to an imaginary object. And if you are justifying your morality using such terms that’s all your morality is, nonsense.[/quote]

Err…okay. So if some guy is running loose with the Ebola virus no one has the right to quarantine him and thereby take away his liberty right? How could he be a danger to society? Society is only a label; an abstraction right? And why road rules? What individual can you point to that is being specifically protected? If society is only an abstraction then who needs them? Not a very sound argument. The fact that society cannot be personified does not mean that the collective interests of the people don’t exist.[/quote]

Um, in that case the individuals in danger or individuals who care about individual human life certainly have the right to end the threat to themselves. Because a dude with a disease is a threat to an individual human person. That is what a virus does. It attacks an individual. There is no disease or virus that has ever attacked anything other than an individual. Which is why it’s nonsense to claim you are stopping him to protect something that can’t actually be attacked by the virus.

You are conflating no societal interest with no interest at all. There is no individual item or directive that ever can even fulfill even being a societal interest as every individual has their own interests. You are talking make-believe.

If someone threatens an individual that is a david-left-ite, there can be a right to stop him, but not to protect the interests of the “organism” known as david-left-ites. And to say that David-left-ites are an imaginary thing and imaginary things don’t have rights or feelings doesn’t mean I don’t think someone could stop a killer of one happening to belong to that group. Again, this is nonsense.[/quote]

You’re playing a semantic game. The “interests of society” means the interests of the individuals within the society. Just as the “interests of the group” means the interests of the individuals within the group. Basically you’re trying to obscure the obvious - that profoundly disabled people cost society in terms of the costs associated with their care.[/quote]

No, when you are basing your morality of the interest of “society”. Many times that can mean something very very different than when you replace the nonsense term with the reality of individuals. Since there isn’t even a single interest that could be agreed upon for all individuals, you are referring to averages or personal evaluations of what is best for others. This is NOT real interests of all “societal” individuals. The results of such moral calculations are very different. You are then weighing a big negative for 1/300,000,000th of (US) society versus a wildly subjective mild positive for 299,999,999/300,000,000ths. In individual terms you can really only talk about exact direct effects on individuals. You really only have the effects on the mentally disabled and the offspring. The rest is obscure “hurting” of some people somewhere forced by OTHER actors to cover expense that is unquantifiable on individual terms. No individual would claim the right to stop someone down the street from having kids. 2 people wouldn’t. but at some point we confuse the issue by substituting what is an individual action for that of a mythical collective in order to claim exactly what no individual would. “For the good of society” is the mystical summation of those individuals desires/rights into a trump card over the minority. It is more than semantics when the topic is something like eugenics.

47

[quote]kamui wrote:
yeah, society is “an imaginary group label with no significance in the actual world.”
But so is the individual : an imaginary group label of organs, cells, bacterias, etc.
And so is the cell : an imaginary group label of molecules and atoms.
Which are an imaginary group label of quarks and quanta.

Methodological individualism is a sophism.
Don’t like something ? don’t want to care about it ? Don’t want to actually study it : say it’s an abstract concept that doesn’t really exist.
[/quote]

This is not a coherent argument for a person who believes in individuals being endowed by their creator with human rights, will, and value.

Though I agree with you, for an atheist that is the logical conclusion.

And I admit that there is a counter argument for which I have no rebuttal should someone care to claim it. That society was created with innate rights and not the individual.

48

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:

[quote]Bismark wrote:

[quote]tedro wrote:

[quote]Bismark wrote:
Here’s an interesting question: should mentally disabled individuals be free to reproduce? [/quote]

Of course they should be free to reproduce. Are the mentally disabled not worthy of liberty?

Whether or not they should reproduce is another question, but no one has the right to take that liberty from them.[/quote]

Not when it is detrimental to society at large, no.[/quote]

Society is an imaginary group label with no significance in the actual world. It has no feelings, it has no rights, it can take no action. Only individuals have those things. I could come up with a term to represent all the left handed people named David in the world. Let’s call them david-left-ites. But applying that label doesn’t create an entity comprised of those people with anything other than individual will, or rights, or feelings. It’s nonsense to say X action hurts david-left-ites. Or david-left-ites deserve Y because they are no more a thing because I apply a group label than if no such label existed. But people do the very thing with terms like society or government. If you really boil it down to the rational logic of what is being claimed, it’s pure nonsense. There is no such thing as detriment to an imaginary object. And if you are justifying your morality using such terms that’s all your morality is, nonsense.[/quote]

Err…okay. So if some guy is running loose with the Ebola virus no one has the right to quarantine him and thereby take away his liberty right? How could he be a danger to society? Society is only a label; an abstraction right? And why road rules? What individual can you point to that is being specifically protected? If society is only an abstraction then who needs them? Not a very sound argument. The fact that society cannot be personified does not mean that the collective interests of the people don’t exist.[/quote]

Question is, SM, which one of you and DD’s positions is subordinate to the other? Or, which one is more fundamental?
[/quote]

You know my position. Natural rights trumps utilitarianism in most cases. I’m very much against abortion and euthanasia. But a serious discussion requires intellectual honesty. This is such a thing as the interests of society and there are cases where a utilitarian argument has to be made.

49

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:

[quote]kamui wrote:
yeah, society is “an imaginary group label with no significance in the actual world.”
But so is the individual : an imaginary group label of organs, cells, bacterias, etc.
And so is the cell : an imaginary group label of molecules and atoms.
Which are an imaginary group label of quarks and quanta.

Methodological individualism is a sophism.
Don’t like something ? don’t want to care about it ? Don’t want to actually study it : say it’s an abstract concept that doesn’t really exist.
[/quote]

This is not a coherent argument for a person who believes in individuals being endowed by their creator with human rights, will, and value.

Though I agree with you, for an atheist that is the logical conclusion.

And I admit that there is a counter argument for which I have no rebuttal should someone care to claim it. That society was created with innate rights and not the individual.[/quote]

“Society has no right because it has no soul” and
“Society has no right because it doesn’t exist”

are two very different things.

I can understand and respect the former, but the latter is absurd.

And you can’t denounce the “collectivist” notion as mystical when your individualism is clearly rooted in mysticism.

50

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:

[quote]Bismark wrote:

[quote]tedro wrote:

[quote]Bismark wrote:
Here’s an interesting question: should mentally disabled individuals be free to reproduce? [/quote]

Of course they should be free to reproduce. Are the mentally disabled not worthy of liberty?

Whether or not they should reproduce is another question, but no one has the right to take that liberty from them.[/quote]

Not when it is detrimental to society at large, no.[/quote]

Society is an imaginary group label with no significance in the actual world. It has no feelings, it has no rights, it can take no action. Only individuals have those things. I could come up with a term to represent all the left handed people named David in the world. Let’s call them david-left-ites. But applying that label doesn’t create an entity comprised of those people with anything other than individual will, or rights, or feelings. It’s nonsense to say X action hurts david-left-ites. Or david-left-ites deserve Y because they are no more a thing because I apply a group label than if no such label existed. But people do the very thing with terms like society or government. If you really boil it down to the rational logic of what is being claimed, it’s pure nonsense. There is no such thing as detriment to an imaginary object. And if you are justifying your morality using such terms that’s all your morality is, nonsense.[/quote]

Err…okay. So if some guy is running loose with the Ebola virus no one has the right to quarantine him and thereby take away his liberty right? How could he be a danger to society? Society is only a label; an abstraction right? And why road rules? What individual can you point to that is being specifically protected? If society is only an abstraction then who needs them? Not a very sound argument. The fact that society cannot be personified does not mean that the collective interests of the people don’t exist.[/quote]

Um, in that case the individuals in danger or individuals who care about individual human life certainly have the right to end the threat to themselves. Because a dude with a disease is a threat to an individual human person. That is what a virus does. It attacks an individual. There is no disease or virus that has ever attacked anything other than an individual. Which is why it’s nonsense to claim you are stopping him to protect something that can’t actually be attacked by the virus.

You are conflating no societal interest with no interest at all. There is no individual item or directive that ever can even fulfill even being a societal interest as every individual has their own interests. You are talking make-believe.

If someone threatens an individual that is a david-left-ite, there can be a right to stop him, but not to protect the interests of the “organism” known as david-left-ites. And to say that David-left-ites are an imaginary thing and imaginary things don’t have rights or feelings doesn’t mean I don’t think someone could stop a killer of one happening to belong to that group. Again, this is nonsense.[/quote]

You’re playing a semantic game. The “interests of society” means the interests of the individuals within the society. Just as the “interests of the group” means the interests of the individuals within the group. Basically you’re trying to obscure the obvious - that profoundly disabled people cost society in terms of the costs associated with their care.[/quote]

No, when you are basing your morality of the interest of “society”. Many times that can mean something very very different than when you replace the nonsense term with the reality of individuals. Since there isn’t even a single interest that could be agreed upon for all individuals, you are referring to averages or personal evaluations of what is best for others. This is NOT real interests of all “societal” individuals. The results of such moral calculations are very different. You are then weighing a big negative for 1/300,000,000th of (US) society versus a wildly subjective mild positive for 299,999,999/300,000,000ths. In individual terms you can really only talk about exact direct effects on individuals. You really only have the effects on the mentally disabled and the offspring. The rest is obscure “hurting” of some people somewhere forced by OTHER actors to cover expense that is unquantifiable on individual terms. No individual would claim the right to stop someone down the street from having kids. 2 people wouldn’t. but at some point we confuse the issue by substituting what is an individual action for that of a mythical collective in order to claim exactly what no individual would. “For the good of society” is the mystical summation of those individuals desires/rights into a trump card over the minority. It is more than semantics when the topic is something like eugenics.[/quote]

You’re slipping into epistemological solipsism here. The reason society exists at all is due to shared interests. Once you ignore the interests of the collective there is no society.

51

[quote]xXSeraphimXx wrote:

[quote]angry chicken wrote:

[quote]Bismark wrote:
Here’s an interesting question: should mentally disabled individuals be free to reproduce? [/quote]

The question is, do mentally disabled people have the mental state to consent to have sex. By our current laws, they most certainly do NOT. Therefore, anyone having sex with a mentally disabled person is committing rape. Since rape is clearly illegal, we have already answered our question: mentally disabled people are not allowed to reproduce.[/quote]

What if they are both mentally disabled?
[/quote]

Then NEITHER of them can LEGALLY consent to have sex, duh…

52

[quote]3I
No, when you are basing your morality of the interest of “society”. Many times that can mean something very very different than when you replace the nonsense term with the reality of individuals. Since there isn’t even a single interest that could be agreed upon for all individuals, you are referring to averages or personal evaluations of what is best for others. This is NOT real interests of all “societal” individuals. The results of such moral calculations are very different. You are then weighing a big negative for 1/300,000,000th of (US) society versus a wildly subjective mild positive for 299,999,999/300,000,000ths. In individual terms you can really only talk about exact direct effects on individuals. You really only have the effects on the mentally disabled and the offspring. The rest is obscure “hurting” of some people somewhere forced by OTHER actors to cover expense that is unquantifiable on individual terms. No individual would claim the right to stop someone down the street from having kids. 2 people wouldn’t. but at some point we confuse the issue by substituting what is an individual action for that of a mythical collective in order to claim exactly what no individual would. “For the good of society” is the mystical summation of those individuals desires/rights into a trump card over the minority. It is more than semantics when the topic is something like eugenics.[/quote]

Did you say semantics, lol.

53

[quote]angry chicken wrote:

[quote]xXSeraphimXx wrote:

[quote]angry chicken wrote:

[quote]Bismark wrote:
Here’s an interesting question: should mentally disabled individuals be free to reproduce? [/quote]

The question is, do mentally disabled people have the mental state to consent to have sex. By our current laws, they most certainly do NOT. Therefore, anyone having sex with a mentally disabled person is committing rape. Since rape is clearly illegal, we have already answered our question: mentally disabled people are not allowed to reproduce.[/quote]

What if they are both mentally disabled?
[/quote]

Then NEITHER of them can LEGALLY consent to have sex, duh…[/quote]

And neither of them can be charged either so where does that leave us? Once the threat of sanction is removed the law is for all intents and purposes null and void.

54

[quote]kamui wrote:

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:

[quote]kamui wrote:
yeah, society is “an imaginary group label with no significance in the actual world.”
But so is the individual : an imaginary group label of organs, cells, bacterias, etc.
And so is the cell : an imaginary group label of molecules and atoms.
Which are an imaginary group label of quarks and quanta.

Methodological individualism is a sophism.
Don’t like something ? don’t want to care about it ? Don’t want to actually study it : say it’s an abstract concept that doesn’t really exist.
[/quote]

This is not a coherent argument for a person who believes in individuals being endowed by their creator with human rights, will, and value.

Though I agree with you, for an atheist that is the logical conclusion.

And I admit that there is a counter argument for which I have no rebuttal should someone care to claim it. That society was created with innate rights and not the individual.[/quote]

“Society has no right because it has no soul” and
“Society has no right because it doesn’t exist”

are two very different things.

I can understand and respect the former, but the latter is absurd.

And you can’t denounce the “collectivist” notion as mystical when your individualism is clearly rooted in mysticism.

[/quote]

It may not have a “soul” but the crowd is an entity that exists extrinsic to the individuals within. The individuals in a crowd undergo a process of “deindividuation” and lose much of their own autonomy and identity. The concept of the collective is as real and mystical as the concept of the individual.

55

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]angry chicken wrote:

[quote]xXSeraphimXx wrote:

[quote]angry chicken wrote:

[quote]Bismark wrote:
Here’s an interesting question: should mentally disabled individuals be free to reproduce? [/quote]

The question is, do mentally disabled people have the mental state to consent to have sex. By our current laws, they most certainly do NOT. Therefore, anyone having sex with a mentally disabled person is committing rape. Since rape is clearly illegal, we have already answered our question: mentally disabled people are not allowed to reproduce.[/quote]

What if they are both mentally disabled?
[/quote]

Then NEITHER of them can LEGALLY consent to have sex, duh…[/quote]

And neither of them can be charged either so where does that leave us? Once the threat of sanction is removed the law is for all intents and purposes null and void.
[/quote]

Or did they rape each other and both should be charged?

In the state of Kansas if two children under 15 have sex, they have committed statutory rape against each other and both could legally be charged, although I don’t know if it has ever been prosecuted.

56

[quote]kamui wrote:

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:

[quote]kamui wrote:
yeah, society is “an imaginary group label with no significance in the actual world.”
But so is the individual : an imaginary group label of organs, cells, bacterias, etc.
And so is the cell : an imaginary group label of molecules and atoms.
Which are an imaginary group label of quarks and quanta.

Methodological individualism is a sophism.
Don’t like something ? don’t want to care about it ? Don’t want to actually study it : say it’s an abstract concept that doesn’t really exist.
[/quote]

This is not a coherent argument for a person who believes in individuals being endowed by their creator with human rights, will, and value.

Though I agree with you, for an atheist that is the logical conclusion.

And I admit that there is a counter argument for which I have no rebuttal should someone care to claim it. That society was created with innate rights and not the individual.[/quote]

“Society has no right because it has no soul” and
“Society has no right because it doesn’t exist”

are two very different things.

I can understand and respect the former, but the latter is absurd.

And you can’t denounce the “collectivist” notion as mystical when your individualism is clearly rooted in mysticism.

[/quote]

In this case they aren’t different. The assertion is that the collective has special rights granted it by some authority. The assertion is that it has a natural worth or soul if you want to call it that.

Nor do I deny collectivism on the basis of mysticism. I actually already noted this earlier. I deny the collectivist argument because they assert the reality and rights of a collective while denying the mysticism demanded of the argument. As mentioned earlier, if someone wants to assert the god given natural rights of collectives, I don’t have a counterargument. I just don’t know anyone willing to do that.

57

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:

[quote]Bismark wrote:

[quote]tedro wrote:

[quote]Bismark wrote:
Here’s an interesting question: should mentally disabled individuals be free to reproduce? [/quote]

Of course they should be free to reproduce. Are the mentally disabled not worthy of liberty?

Whether or not they should reproduce is another question, but no one has the right to take that liberty from them.[/quote]

Not when it is detrimental to society at large, no.[/quote]

Society is an imaginary group label with no significance in the actual world. It has no feelings, it has no rights, it can take no action. Only individuals have those things. I could come up with a term to represent all the left handed people named David in the world. Let’s call them david-left-ites. But applying that label doesn’t create an entity comprised of those people with anything other than individual will, or rights, or feelings. It’s nonsense to say X action hurts david-left-ites. Or david-left-ites deserve Y because they are no more a thing because I apply a group label than if no such label existed. But people do the very thing with terms like society or government. If you really boil it down to the rational logic of what is being claimed, it’s pure nonsense. There is no such thing as detriment to an imaginary object. And if you are justifying your morality using such terms that’s all your morality is, nonsense.[/quote]

Err…okay. So if some guy is running loose with the Ebola virus no one has the right to quarantine him and thereby take away his liberty right? How could he be a danger to society? Society is only a label; an abstraction right? And why road rules? What individual can you point to that is being specifically protected? If society is only an abstraction then who needs them? Not a very sound argument. The fact that society cannot be personified does not mean that the collective interests of the people don’t exist.[/quote]

Question is, SM, which one of you and DD’s positions is subordinate to the other? Or, which one is more fundamental?
[/quote]

You know my position. Natural rights trumps utilitarianism in most cases. I’m very much against abortion and euthanasia. But a serious discussion requires intellectual honesty. This is such a thing as the interests of society and there are cases where a utilitarian argument has to be made.[/quote]

And we differ in opinion, which is fine. BUT note that you are asserting special rights of a collective that do not derive at the level of an individual. Something I believe is completely immoral.

58

[quote]tedro wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]angry chicken wrote:

[quote]xXSeraphimXx wrote:

[quote]angry chicken wrote:

[quote]Bismark wrote:
Here’s an interesting question: should mentally disabled individuals be free to reproduce? [/quote]

The question is, do mentally disabled people have the mental state to consent to have sex. By our current laws, they most certainly do NOT. Therefore, anyone having sex with a mentally disabled person is committing rape. Since rape is clearly illegal, we have already answered our question: mentally disabled people are not allowed to reproduce.[/quote]

What if they are both mentally disabled?
[/quote]

Then NEITHER of them can LEGALLY consent to have sex, duh…[/quote]

And neither of them can be charged either so where does that leave us? Once the threat of sanction is removed the law is for all intents and purposes null and void.
[/quote]

Or did they rape each other and both should be charged?

In the state of Kansas if two children under 15 have sex, they have committed statutory rape against each other and both could legally be charged, although I don’t know if it has ever been prosecuted.[/quote]

In order to establish guilt the prosecution has to demonstrate “mens rea” - if someone is insane or mentally deficient they cannot be of a guilty mind.

Actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea - “the act is not culpable unless the mind is guilty”.

59

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:

[quote]Bismark wrote:

[quote]tedro wrote:

[quote]Bismark wrote:
Here’s an interesting question: should mentally disabled individuals be free to reproduce? [/quote]

Of course they should be free to reproduce. Are the mentally disabled not worthy of liberty?

Whether or not they should reproduce is another question, but no one has the right to take that liberty from them.[/quote]

Not when it is detrimental to society at large, no.[/quote]

Society is an imaginary group label with no significance in the actual world. It has no feelings, it has no rights, it can take no action. Only individuals have those things. I could come up with a term to represent all the left handed people named David in the world. Let’s call them david-left-ites. But applying that label doesn’t create an entity comprised of those people with anything other than individual will, or rights, or feelings. It’s nonsense to say X action hurts david-left-ites. Or david-left-ites deserve Y because they are no more a thing because I apply a group label than if no such label existed. But people do the very thing with terms like society or government. If you really boil it down to the rational logic of what is being claimed, it’s pure nonsense. There is no such thing as detriment to an imaginary object. And if you are justifying your morality using such terms that’s all your morality is, nonsense.[/quote]

Err…okay. So if some guy is running loose with the Ebola virus no one has the right to quarantine him and thereby take away his liberty right? How could he be a danger to society? Society is only a label; an abstraction right? And why road rules? What individual can you point to that is being specifically protected? If society is only an abstraction then who needs them? Not a very sound argument. The fact that society cannot be personified does not mean that the collective interests of the people don’t exist.[/quote]

Um, in that case the individuals in danger or individuals who care about individual human life certainly have the right to end the threat to themselves. Because a dude with a disease is a threat to an individual human person. That is what a virus does. It attacks an individual. There is no disease or virus that has ever attacked anything other than an individual. Which is why it’s nonsense to claim you are stopping him to protect something that can’t actually be attacked by the virus.

You are conflating no societal interest with no interest at all. There is no individual item or directive that ever can even fulfill even being a societal interest as every individual has their own interests. You are talking make-believe.

If someone threatens an individual that is a david-left-ite, there can be a right to stop him, but not to protect the interests of the “organism” known as david-left-ites. And to say that David-left-ites are an imaginary thing and imaginary things don’t have rights or feelings doesn’t mean I don’t think someone could stop a killer of one happening to belong to that group. Again, this is nonsense.[/quote]

You’re playing a semantic game. The “interests of society” means the interests of the individuals within the society. Just as the “interests of the group” means the interests of the individuals within the group. Basically you’re trying to obscure the obvious - that profoundly disabled people cost society in terms of the costs associated with their care.[/quote]

No, when you are basing your morality of the interest of “society”. Many times that can mean something very very different than when you replace the nonsense term with the reality of individuals. Since there isn’t even a single interest that could be agreed upon for all individuals, you are referring to averages or personal evaluations of what is best for others. This is NOT real interests of all “societal” individuals. The results of such moral calculations are very different. You are then weighing a big negative for 1/300,000,000th of (US) society versus a wildly subjective mild positive for 299,999,999/300,000,000ths. In individual terms you can really only talk about exact direct effects on individuals. You really only have the effects on the mentally disabled and the offspring. The rest is obscure “hurting” of some people somewhere forced by OTHER actors to cover expense that is unquantifiable on individual terms. No individual would claim the right to stop someone down the street from having kids. 2 people wouldn’t. but at some point we confuse the issue by substituting what is an individual action for that of a mythical collective in order to claim exactly what no individual would. “For the good of society” is the mystical summation of those individuals desires/rights into a trump card over the minority. It is more than semantics when the topic is something like eugenics.[/quote]

You’re slipping into epistemological solipsism here. The reason society exists at all is due to shared interests. Once you ignore the interests of the collective there is no society.[/quote]

I’m not ignoring them, I’m denying they exist. And yes, that means there is no society, which is exactly my point.

60

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:

[quote]Bismark wrote:

[quote]tedro wrote:

[quote]Bismark wrote:
Here’s an interesting question: should mentally disabled individuals be free to reproduce? [/quote]

Of course they should be free to reproduce. Are the mentally disabled not worthy of liberty?

Whether or not they should reproduce is another question, but no one has the right to take that liberty from them.[/quote]

Not when it is detrimental to society at large, no.[/quote]

Society is an imaginary group label with no significance in the actual world. It has no feelings, it has no rights, it can take no action. Only individuals have those things. I could come up with a term to represent all the left handed people named David in the world. Let’s call them david-left-ites. But applying that label doesn’t create an entity comprised of those people with anything other than individual will, or rights, or feelings. It’s nonsense to say X action hurts david-left-ites. Or david-left-ites deserve Y because they are no more a thing because I apply a group label than if no such label existed. But people do the very thing with terms like society or government. If you really boil it down to the rational logic of what is being claimed, it’s pure nonsense. There is no such thing as detriment to an imaginary object. And if you are justifying your morality using such terms that’s all your morality is, nonsense.[/quote]

Err…okay. So if some guy is running loose with the Ebola virus no one has the right to quarantine him and thereby take away his liberty right? How could he be a danger to society? Society is only a label; an abstraction right? And why road rules? What individual can you point to that is being specifically protected? If society is only an abstraction then who needs them? Not a very sound argument. The fact that society cannot be personified does not mean that the collective interests of the people don’t exist.[/quote]

Um, in that case the individuals in danger or individuals who care about individual human life certainly have the right to end the threat to themselves. Because a dude with a disease is a threat to an individual human person. That is what a virus does. It attacks an individual. There is no disease or virus that has ever attacked anything other than an individual. Which is why it’s nonsense to claim you are stopping him to protect something that can’t actually be attacked by the virus.

You are conflating no societal interest with no interest at all. There is no individual item or directive that ever can even fulfill even being a societal interest as every individual has their own interests. You are talking make-believe.

If someone threatens an individual that is a david-left-ite, there can be a right to stop him, but not to protect the interests of the “organism” known as david-left-ites. And to say that David-left-ites are an imaginary thing and imaginary things don’t have rights or feelings doesn’t mean I don’t think someone could stop a killer of one happening to belong to that group. Again, this is nonsense.[/quote]

You’re playing a semantic game. The “interests of society” means the interests of the individuals within the society. Just as the “interests of the group” means the interests of the individuals within the group. Basically you’re trying to obscure the obvious - that profoundly disabled people cost society in terms of the costs associated with their care.[/quote]

No, when you are basing your morality of the interest of “society”. Many times that can mean something very very different than when you replace the nonsense term with the reality of individuals. Since there isn’t even a single interest that could be agreed upon for all individuals, you are referring to averages or personal evaluations of what is best for others. This is NOT real interests of all “societal” individuals. The results of such moral calculations are very different. You are then weighing a big negative for 1/300,000,000th of (US) society versus a wildly subjective mild positive for 299,999,999/300,000,000ths. In individual terms you can really only talk about exact direct effects on individuals. You really only have the effects on the mentally disabled and the offspring. The rest is obscure “hurting” of some people somewhere forced by OTHER actors to cover expense that is unquantifiable on individual terms. No individual would claim the right to stop someone down the street from having kids. 2 people wouldn’t. but at some point we confuse the issue by substituting what is an individual action for that of a mythical collective in order to claim exactly what no individual would. “For the good of society” is the mystical summation of those individuals desires/rights into a trump card over the minority. It is more than semantics when the topic is something like eugenics.[/quote]

You’re slipping into epistemological solipsism here. The reason society exists at all is due to shared interests. Once you ignore the interests of the collective there is no society.[/quote]

I’m not ignoring them, I’m denying they exist. And yes, that means there is no society, which is exactly my point.
[/quote]

That’s insane.