I don?t get the point? Let?s say we are an ultra-violent species. I don?t believe that we are, but let?s pretend. So, what are your conclusions?
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
Do no harm? Give me a break, most forms of life harm other forms of life.[/quote]
Absolutely. No doubt about it. We have to eat, don’t we? Did I really need to spell out that I was refering to intra-species harm, or are you that eager to disagree? Or do you really think I really live off water?
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
Regarding the less than lethal self defense items, they do not work very well, in spite of what their salesman try to tell you. I am happy with my 357.[/quote]
Of course. So not only MDs (who do swear by the “Do no harm” principle) are idiots, San Jose and European policemen are too (most policemen in this region carry tasers and use them instead of guns, and in a lot of countries in Europe policemen don’t carry guns at all). Interesting. I guess that’s why there hasn’t been a single policemen dead in any of those places in several years, while on places were policemen do carry guns, it unfortunately happens regularly – oh wait – that wouldn’t make sense, would it? Now I’m confused…
And, by the way – a .357 revolver? That’s very disappointing Zap. If you’re going to carry a gun, at least get something a little more impressive and less juvenile – and less likely to be stolen.
(criminals looooove stealing .357 revolvers, because they’re so incredibly easy to sell in the black market, especially to juveniles and women)
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
It amazes me that educated, otherwise intelligent people can be so far away from reality on some issues.[/quote]
At least we agree on something! I?m surprised you didn?t quote Ned Flanders on that one, though:
“I wish we lived in the America of yesteryear that only exists in the minds of us Republicans.” – Ned Flanders, “Home Away From Homer”, May 15, 2005
[quote]orion wrote:
I don?t get the point? Let?s say we are an ultra-violent species. I don?t believe that we are, but let?s pretend. So, what are your conclusions?[/quote]
That “values” and “moral” are simply hypocritical constructs that do little or nothing to help. We’re an inherently evil species that will just distort any “value” in order to give itself permission to do what it wants to anyway…
[quote]hspder wrote:
orion wrote:
I don?t get the point? Let?s say we are an ultra-violent species. I don?t believe that we are, but let?s pretend. So, what are your conclusions?
That “values” and “moral” are simply hypocritical constructs that do little or nothing to help. We’re an inherently evil species that will just distort any “value” in order to give itself permission to do what it wants to anyway…
[/quote]
But wouldn?t that make us a species that has a great need of non-violent ideals? Jesus-Bhudda like? Even if we don?t live up to them 24/7?
Gentlemen, call me crazy, but I have to take issue with what seems to be the assumption underlying this discussion - the assumption that facts are facts, and values are values, and never the twain shall meet. One would drastically misunderstand the origin and intention of modern natural science if one ignored that it was begun and is perpetuated ‘for the sake of the betterment of the human condition.’ Modern natural science cannot be understood outside of this framework. The actions its proponents undertake - as diverse as throwing metal balls with cameras outside of the Earth’s gravitational field and analyzing the ‘social’ behaviors of ants - would cease to cohere as part of a single thing, ‘science,’ unless it is understood that these diverse activities are to be united under the banner of ‘activities conducive to the betterment of the human condition.’
Modern natural science is an enterprise that presupposes and argues by its activity for a certain ‘set of values.’ If one accepts this statement of mine, the question is not ‘can science provide moral order?’ but rather ‘what kind of moral order does science seek to provide?’
[quote]hspder wrote:
And you also ignored my last point: is there any other species capable of genocide?
[/quote]
I know the male dog and the male cat will kill their own offspring. I’ve seen it happen.
So the answer would be yes.
OK, intra-species harm. Good, as that makes more sense, even though I still don’t agree. Just had to clarify that.
[quote]
BostonBarrister wrote:
in which case I’ll talk about crocodiles and sharks and fish eating their own young, or sharks turning on other injured sharks in a feeding frenzy, or wild dogs turning on one another, or great apes inflicting such injuries on each others in territorial fighting that the loser skulks away and dies.
hspder wrote:
Note that I specifically said “most living beings” and that we are one of the “few”. Yes, there are some species out there that are as agressive as we are. I never said there weren’t. However, they are a minority. A very small one in fact, considering there are billions of species on this planet, most of them quite peaceful.
And you also ignored my last point: is there any other species capable of genocide? [/quote]
I didn’t ignore it, though perhaps I should have been more specific. See below.
[quote]
BostonBarrister wrote:
Humans just happen to have developed the capacity to do harm on a greater scale, both among ourselves and to other species – and vis a vis other species, we’ve developed very effective ways to prevent their harming us.
hspder wrote:
If that wasn’t clear before, let me make it clear this time: I’m talking about intra-species harm. The fact that we have actively pursued the capacity to do harm on a greater scale is the scary part. [/quote]
This is what I was addressing with my comment above. We’re the only species that could effect genocide, so it doesn’t mean too much to say we’re the only ones who have done it. We don’t know whether other species would do so if they had the capacity. We’re the only species, as far as I know, that pursues knowledge for the sake of knowledge too, and that fact alone doesn’t make it either good or bad.
I cannot deny the charge of watching too many Discovery specials. I love those things.
However, I do stand by my specific statement, which is that the idea that others of our species who are not close genetic relations are of equal instrinsic value to ourselves is a modern human construct. The ideal of doing minimum harm, especially in self defense, is also a human construct.
If you think about how a lot of animals treat intra-species conflict, there are a lot of dominance behaviors that have evolved in order to obviate lethal conflict. However, when two males are battling to establish dominance, they fight each other pretty hard until one submits. As I noted above, I don’t think it’s an uncommon occurrence for the loser to die from injuries in such fights.
And don’t forget how certain “social” animals tend to treat animals from the same species who are outsiders to their groups – at least male outsiders anyway. They attack them and the outsiders run away.
So, bottom line is, I don’t think the universal “do no harm” principle exists, and I wouldn’t even agree to it myself without caveats for defending myself and my family with as much force as I believe to be necessary.
Genocide indicates an intent to destroy a specific group. So I would say no, since no other known animal has the ability to form these ideas.
[quote]orion wrote:
To make things more complicated, what if science claims that moral is a set of evolutionary psychological adaptations, necessary for a highly social species?
Does that make morals obsolete because they were not given by [insert higher power of your choice here]? Or are they not obsolete because the reasons why they evolved still exist to a large degree? Are they adapted to a much simpler social environment and therefore often misleading in highly complex societies such as ours, i.e. can we still trust our moral instincts? [/quote]
My question is who’s morality is the right morality for everyone to go by? Is there one universal set of morals like there is one more or less universal set of scientific laws that can be applied to most inquiries? I means besides don’t kill each other and don’t steal from each other, what set of morality is appropriate across all cultures and situations?
Interesting debate. Thanks BB.
WMD
[quote]orion wrote:
But wouldn?t that make us a species that has a great need of non-violent ideals? Jesus-Bhudda like? Even if we don?t live up to them 24/7?[/quote]
Again, interesting point…
I do believe that a large part of the world population does have the ability of rationally realizing that peace and non-violence are fascinating and attractive concepts. However, I don’t think that is our nature – I believe our “limbic” ultra-aggressiveness takes over so often it makes our intelligent yearning of peace mostly irrelevant.
I do believe that the Bible’s New Testament puts things very eloquently when it attributes sin specifically to the “Desire of the Flesh”. I like that concept – it’s like it is within our nature to be violent, but we can somehow override it every now and then with our conscience – our highly developed frontal lobe, which, by no accident, is the same part of our brain that drives “spiritual” experiences, the same spirit to which Christians attribute sinless behavior.
Unfortunately, not often enough we do that, and most people just fall to their flesh…
[quote]rainjack wrote:
hspder wrote:
And you also ignored my last point: is there any other species capable of genocide?
I know the male dog and the male cat will kill their own offspring. I’ve seen it happen.
So the answer would be yes.[/quote]
RJ,
I never got your sense of humor, so I really don’t know if you’re joking. In either case, in the remote case that somebody takes that seriously, let me tell everyone what you are describing is infanticide, not genocide – so let me explain what genocide is:
"
Main Entry: geno?cide
Pronunciation: 'je-n&-"sId
Function: noun
: the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group
"
So, to use your example, it would be like Persian cats systematically attacking all Siamese cats. Never seen that happen…
The male dog and male cat intentionally kill and eat their newborn offspring. Therefore, yes it is possible.
I think it is just as valid as your idiotic idea that other animals are capale of human action/reation.
Your pretense of being smarter than the rest of us makes you look really stupid.
[quote]
orion wrote:
To make things more complicated, what if science claims that moral is a set of evolutionary psychological adaptations, necessary for a highly social species?
Does that make morals obsolete because they were not given by [insert higher power of your choice here]? Or are they not obsolete because the reasons why they evolved still exist to a large degree? Are they adapted to a much simpler social environment and therefore often misleading in highly complex societies such as ours, i.e. can we still trust our moral instincts?
WMD wrote:
My question is who’s morality is the right morality for everyone to go by? Is there one universal set of morals like there is one more or less universal set of scientific laws that can be applied to most inquiries? I means besides don’t kill each other and don’t steal from each other, what set of morality is appropriate across all cultures and situations?
Interesting debate. Thanks BB.
WMD[/quote]
I’m no philosopher, as my friends who majored in philosophy would readily tell you, and I’m actually quite an ignoramus about philosophy generally, but I think it would be quite difficult to come up with a universal set of morals that you could reason from nothingness into “the Morals.” I think you need to agree on some set principles from the beginning, and then apply those – or at least a few general principles.
Without something like religion imposing principles, I suppose it just comes down to the majority of people agreeing concerning moral principles. Come to think of it, this is usually what laws are, though I am definitely not advancing the proposition that laws are a consistent set of priciples.
I personally tend to think that you can judge a value system by what the correct application of its principles produces – but I guess that’s still relative, in that you’re applying your own moral principles to judge the results.
I guess that’s why I think a democratically based government system with laws based on consent of the governed is the only legitimate system of government. It’s the only one in which the people get to express their agreement or disagreement with the morals being imposed on them via the legal system.
[quote]rainjack wrote:
The male dog and male cat intentionally kill and eat their newborn offspring. Therefore, yes it is possible. [/quote]
Oh, so you were serious.
[quote]rainjack wrote:
I think it is just as valid as your idiotic idea that other animals are capale of human action/reation.
Your pretense of being smarter than the rest of us makes you look really stupid. [/quote]
Sorry, RJ, but basically you’re not making any sense. Not only you insist on confusing infanticide with genocide – two fundamentally different things – you throw out two statements that are completely unrelated to the current discussion.
If you want to contribute something relevant to this discussion, please do. If not, I’m sure you have better things to do than waste your and everybody’s time with nonsense.
[quote]hspder wrote:
rainjack wrote:
The male dog and male cat intentionally kill and eat their newborn offspring. Therefore, yes it is possible.
Oh, so you were serious.
rainjack wrote:
I think it is just as valid as your idiotic idea that other animals are capale of human action/reation.
Your pretense of being smarter than the rest of us makes you look really stupid.
Sorry, RJ, but basically you’re not making any sense. Not only you insist on confusing infanticide with genocide – two fundamentally different things – you throw out two statements that are completely unrelated to the current discussion.
If you want to contribute something relevant to this discussion, please do. If not, I’m sure you have better things to do than waste your and everybody’s time with nonsense.
[/quote]
Hspder
You posted a link to a website with stun guns, ninja stars, crossbows and pepper spray and advocated that they are better weapons then handguns for self defense.
You then made the statement that San Jose cops use thier tasers instead of guns completely ignoring the concept of escalating force , simply to further your argument.
That is an example of utter nonsense, not what RJ posted. I don’t think you even realize how silly it sounds to those who know better.
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
This is what I was addressing with my comment above. We’re the only species that could effect genocide, so it doesn’t mean too much to say we’re the only ones who have done it. We don’t know whether other species would do so if they had the capacity. [/quote]
Actually ToShinDo had a brilliant comment above that I definitely want to repeat: the fundamental thing here is not capacity to practice a genocide; it’s the capacity of thinking that way (to use ToShinDo’s exact words of “forming those ideas”).
Other animals could have the capacity of practicing genocide. To use my example above, Persian cats could, in theory, chase and kill every single siamese cat they saw. But they don’t. If you look at most genocides in history, they were extremely low-tech and didn’t resort to any complicated weapons. We’ve have genocides since we’ve had history, and some of them didn’t involve weapons at all.
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
We’re the only species, as far as I know, that pursues knowledge for the sake of knowledge too, and that fact alone doesn’t make it either good or bad.[/quote]
Actually, a very, very, VERY small percentage of humans pursues knowledge for the sake of knowledge too. I’ve actually mentioned that a few months ago on another discussion. Especially the US is known for being extremely practical about the pursuit of knowledge; most Americans only pursue knowledge when there’s money in it. Even Edison admitted that in his famous quote:
“My principal business consists of giving commercial value to the brilliant, but misdirected, ideas of others…”
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
If you think about how a lot of animals treat intra-species conflict, there are a lot of dominance behaviors that have evolved in order to obviate lethal conflict. However, when two males are battling to establish dominance, they fight each other pretty hard until one submits. As I noted above, I don’t think it’s an uncommon occurrence for the loser to die from injuries in such fights.[/quote]
I understand that. But my point is that:
a) In reality a very small % of animals does exibit those kind of behaviors. However, they do have a lot more visibility because we are fascinated by behaviors that are similar to ours
and
b) The PRIME intent of a lot of the animals that do practice violence in those situations is not to kill for the sake of killing.
They have some other objective, and if they kill it’s because their adversary wouldn’t stop any other way; with the kind of defensive weapons we have today, it’s (almost?) never necessary to use lethal force to anyone, even a criminal, to force him/her to submit. That has been proven by police forces right here in San Jose over and over again, and in many cases also in Europe.
And to make it perfectly clear: yes, felines, canines and some species of sharks are capable of levels of cruelty that rival our own. However, they are a SMALL MINORITY in the animal kingdom, that consists of several billions of species, most of them peaceful. The fact that they so fascinate us is what brings them visibility on one hand and show how much we deep down like violence so much. It fascinates us, it drives us; it is, indeed, a very big part of what makes us human.
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
And don’t forget how certain “social” animals tend to treat animals from the same species who are outsiders to their groups – at least male outsiders anyway. They attack them and the outsiders run away.[/quote]
Sure. And we do the same. You’ll get no argument from me there, and, honestly, I have no problem with that. I’m talking about using lethal force.
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
So, bottom line is, I don’t think the universal “do no harm” principle exists, and I wouldn’t even agree to it myself without caveats for defending myself and my family with as much force as I believe to be necessary.[/quote]
OK, so I’ll entertain that possibility for a moment: there isn’t a UNIVERSAL “do no harm” principle; in that case, we come to WMD’s argument, so let me answer your answer on that next…
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
…Without something like religion imposing principles, I suppose it just comes down to the majority of people agreeing concerning moral principles. Come to think of it, this is usually what laws are, though I am definitely not advancing the proposition that laws are a consistent set of priciples…
I guess that’s why I think a democratically based government system with laws based on consent of the governed is the only legitimate system of government. It’s the only one in which the people get to express their agreement or disagreement with the morals being imposed on them via the legal system.[/quote]
If majority consensus is the origin of moral things, and legitimacy is a moral thing, this does not mean that the origination of moral things by the majority is good. Rather, it means simply that the rule of the majority is necessary. This is what many people have thought was true ever since Rousseau wrote ‘On the Social Contract.’
But Rousseau does not seem to have addressed the possibility that majority consensus need not be the origin of moral things, or to have indicated why, if the majority consensus need not be the origin of moral things, why one ought to make it that origin.
Most people still hold the opinion that God is the origin of moral things; others hold, and have held, that though men are the origin of moral things, this need not mean that the majority is the origin of moral things.
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
I guess that’s why I think a democratically based government system with laws based on consent of the governed is the only legitimate system of government. It’s the only one in which the people get to express their agreement or disagreement with the morals being imposed on them via the legal system.[/quote]
OK, to make sure that everybody is clear on that, first I’ll have to say I do agree that I strongly believe in a democratic system, at least as the least bad of our options of government.
So I agree with the essence of you argument. However…
Do you agree with me that what you describe doesn’t really give you any assurance that everybody is fairly treated, and, in reality that it does not answer WMD’s great point about who comes up with THE standard to follow?
My point is: isn’t it true that the opinion of the majority doesn’t necessarity carry necessarily any “truth” or “goodness” to it – that it is just what “most” people think?
Or, as Gandhi would put it:
“In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place”
If that’s too vague, here’s something MLK Jr. said:
“An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.”
[quote]hspder wrote:
Sorry, RJ, but basically you’re not making any sense. Not only you insist on confusing infanticide with genocide – two fundamentally different things – you throw out two statements that are completely unrelated to the current discussion.
If you want to contribute something relevant to this discussion, please do. If not, I’m sure you have better things to do than waste your and everybody’s time with nonsense.
[/quote]
You haven’t made sense with a goddamned thing you’ve said thus far. You have been manhandled by everyone on here, and you refuse to see it.
Excepting my attempt to get you to see the utter lunacy of your thought processes, you have been beaten down with everything but the kitchen sink.
Now you try to put your elitist uniform back on and tell me to sit down and shut up? Please - that egghead bullshit may play at Stanford - but I’m not having any of it.
I think you would do best to go back from whence you pranced, and heed your own advice. And I quote,“If you want to contribute something relevant to this discussion, please do. If not, I’m sure you have better things to do than waste your and everybody’s time with nonsense.”
[quote]hedo wrote:
That is an example of utter nonsense, not what RJ posted. I don’t think you even realize how silly it sounds to those who know better.
[/quote]
If that is true, why do you resort to personal attacks rather than enlightening us poor ignorant ones? Oh tell us, please, what is so silly? How does the concept of escalating violence – which I’m obviously completely oblivious to – justify people lawfully packing a gun?
Explain to me why do you reject the off chance that the concept of escalating violence was exactly what prompted police forces all over the world to shed their guns, rather than carrying more firepower.
(and, by the way, I don’t think rainjack really needs a wingman to help him; he’s a big guy, more than capable of defending himself)