J-D

Maybe we don't have the same understanding of what definitions are for.

As a definition, my objections to your definition are threefold. The first point is that, so far as I know, nobody else uses that as their definition of the word 'healthy' when applied to a society. Using a definition that is unique to yourself is always likely to cause confusion. The second point is that there is no connection evident between the way you define 'healthy' when it is applied to a society and the way it is used when applied to other things, such as an organism, an organ, or even (metaphorically) a bank balance. The third point is that people normally think of being 'healthy' as something positive, but in the sense in which you are defining 'healthy' in this context, no reason is apparent why what you call a 'healthy' society should be preferred to an 'unhealthy' society.Well, that's not my understanding of biology. It's my understanding that biologists distinguish between instinctive behavioural patterns and learned behavioural patterns. It's also my understanding that there are other kinds of behaviour, such as reflexes and tropisms, which are not considered instinctive.Is this just bare assertion on your part, or do you have something to back it up.If you have a chain of reasoning in your head, and if when you check your results against the observable evidence you find that it doesn't tally with your conclusion, there are two possibilities: you've made a mistake in your observations, or you've made a mistake in your reasoning. In this case, I suggest that you've made a mistake in your reasoning, evidenced in this statement of it by your use of the word 'arbitrary'. Distinguishing between the born and the unborn is not arbitrary.

long winded fool

And distinguishing between a slave and free man is? Distinguishing between any kind of human when it comes to the right to exist is arbitrary.

long winded fool

So then you disagree that a society which is founded upon laws which are entirely beneficial, and in no way detrimental, to cooperation between individuals for the mutual survival of all members of the species from which the members of the society are drawn is a healthy society?

Do you feel that a society which is founded upon laws which are in some ways beneficial, but in other ways detrimental, to cooperation between individuals for the mutual survival of all members of the species from which the members of the society are drawn is as healthy as it could be?

Do you feel that a society which is not founded upon laws which are in any way beneficial, and on laws which are entirely detrimental, to cooperation between individuals for the mutual survival of all members of the species from which the members of the society are drawn is an unhealthy society?

It seems to me that the only problem you have is with including unborn humans in society, and what difference is there, legally speaking, from including or excluding other "types" of humans?

Sure there is. From dictionary.com:

Healthy: Possessing good health
Conducive to good health; healthful
Indicative of sound, rational thinking or frame of mind

Health: A condition of optimal well-being
Soundness, especially of body or mind; freedom from disease or abnormality

I already gave you over twenty pages worth of reasons. You just reject them, and that's fine, but your reasons for rejecting them stem from flawed reasoning as I have spent the last dozen or so pages pointing out.

Yahzi

You are factually wrong. This is a factual claim, and it is wrong. I will not argue the facts with you; go find some biology, sociology, and psychology professors to argue with.

It makes perfect sense to you because you view sex as merely an act of procreation.

Try, for the sake of argument, to imagine that sex is not solely about procreation; try to imagine that it is also about social bonding. Now can you see the absurdity of your statement? Is it fair that a person should give up social bonding because of some biological risk?

I realize that you think sex is solely about procreation, but if you try my thought experiment, you will see what I have been saying all along:

Your position depends on pregnancy being a morally inescapable consequence of sex.

No, I don't, and neither do you. You are making a distinction between active and passive; but it is an imaginary one.

Suppose those Ethiopian children came into your house and started eating your food. Could you throw them out then? If you say yes, then you have just actively removed them from the enivronment they need to sustain life - an abortion! And if you say no, you have committed hypocrisy - because the only reason those Ethiopian children don't come into your house right now is because men with guns won't let them. It is the direct and immediate threat of death by firearms that stops starving people from flooding across our borders.

I fail to see the value in arguing over current legal standards, given that you adamantly rejected my invocation of current legal standards. If the AZ laws on deadly force do not disprove your case, why would the laws on organ donations support your case?

Yahzi

I thought you supported the death penalty.

Isn't distinguishing between morally upright and criminally violent kinds of humans when it comes to the right to exist arbitrary?

J-D

That's your basic assumption. I don't share it.

J-D

No, you misunderstand me. In that question you are simply restating your stipulated definition of the term 'healthy', as applied to a society. Obviously, by your definition, that is a 'healthy' society. I don't disagree that that is a 'healthy society' by your definition of the term, I disagree that that is a way of defining the term which is helpful to clear understanding.Not by your definition of the term--but so what? I see no reason to strive for a society which is 'healthy' by your definition of the term.By your definition--but why should I care whether my society is 'unhealthy' by your definition?Why do you ask me about the difference 'legally speaking'? You know perfectly well about the legal difference.Bears no relation to your stipulated definition of 'healthy' in the phrase 'healthy society'.No, my reason for rejecting your reasons is that they are all unsubstantiated assertions about the consequences of a society being 'unhealthy' which fail to tally with the observable facts.

long winded fool

That is a blind assertion. Why should I believe it? Can you prove that I am wrong? I notice you do not quote the rest of my post because if you did, you would have to give up this false assumption.

You do not see the fact that we are talking past each other. Let's say you and I are walking down the street and we see Crazy Pete, who lost his family three years ago, wrapping his house up in tin foil. I ask you why he is doing that. You say "because he believes martians are spying on him." I say, "I think he is doing it because he is suffering from a paranoid delusion brought on by severe clinical depression." Which one of us is right? If Crazy Pete told you himself that the reason he was wrapping his house in tin foil is because Martians were spying on him, do you have proof that I am wrong? What if schizophrenic Fran barricades herself into her home and shoots at anyone who gets within 500 yards? I ask you why she is doing that, you say, "Because she believes she is being hunted by werewolves." I say, "I think she is doing it because she is suffering from a paranoid delusion brought on by severe schizophrenia." Which one of us is right? Am I right to say that each is engaging in their own particular behavior, behavior which they each have their own individual reasons for, for essentially the same reason? Yes, Fran is shooting passersby because she thinks werewolves are after her, and Pete is covering his home in tin foil because he thinks Martians are spying on him, but aren't they both doing what they are doing in response to a severe mental disorder? Aren't they both simply suffering from a paranoid delusion? That is the reason. There are no such things as Martians or werewolves or "intimate expressions of profound love and bonding." People think that these things exist, and we all enjoy behaving as though they do from time to time, but what really exists is the complex human imagination, mental defense mechanisms, and the instinctive drive to procreate. These are the real reasons behind human behavior. If you have to assume that sometimes people "just feel a certain way around certain people, or about certain things," then you have not arrived at a sufficient reason. Feelings and beliefs do not come from nowhere.

But I do not view sex as merely an act of procreation, and I have never once uttered the word "moral," and yet my position still stands. Sex is a source of a great many social benefits and problems. It simply has one single origin and that's it. All of the social benefits of sexuality exist because the act of intercourse propogates the species. Even the social problems that arise from sexuality exist for the same reason. We become jealous not because we are "weird" but because we instinctively want our genes to be passed on, and not the postman's, or the babysitter's. We tend to be less sexually attracted to fat people not because we are "shallow," (though we may very well be,) but because we instinctively seek the healthiest members of the opposite sex we can find to procreate with.

If sex is also for the purposes of social bonding, (which, while I agree that this is a definite benefit of sexuality, it is not what sex evolved for) then one cannot give up social bonding by giving up sex unless sex is the only source of social bonding there is. Since I have a great many more friends who I've never had sex with than friends with whom I have, I don't think you can argue this point. Asking people to give up sex is not asking them to give up social bonding. Of course, I never asked anyone to give up sex, I merely said, "if you really do not want to conceive a human, you can succeed 100% of the time by refraining from having sex."

The difference between removing a criminal from one's property and removing a fetus from one's womb is legal responsibility. The offspring of my sexual partner and I is my responsibility for as long as it takes me to safely transfer it to the responsibility of someone else, or until said offspring becomes independently capable of survival. A criminal who invades my property is not my legal responsibility because he is the offspring of someone else. If that criminal is under age, then that other person holds the responsibility of feeding and ensuring that he or she does not violate the laws of society. In addition, a criminal can usually be safely be removed from my property without harm to the criminal, a fetus cannot be safely removed from the womb until very late in the pregnancy. If I call the cops because a starving child has invaded my home, the cops will take the child off of my property and provide it with food until it can be safely transferred to a legal guardian.

As an aside, for the purposes of clarity of the notion of justice and human rights, (since so many here seem to be confused about the issue) if a grown man shoots and kills a small ethiopian girl who has invaded his home for food, his lawyer will have a very tough time convincing a jury that he was in a position to reasonably believe that his life was in danger, and he could reasonably and justly go to jail for such an act. Self-defense begins to break down when the relationship of power between the victim and the killer shifts too greatly in favor of the killer. A grown man who shoots a small child because the child is weilding a pocket-knife is unlikely to get off on a self-defense plea. On the other hand, if a child pulls a pistol out of his waistband, lethal force becomes much more acceptable because the pistol shifts power back into the victim, which gives reason for the killer to believe that his right to life was in danger.

I do not use laws on organ donation to prove my case. I point out that, regardless of current laws on organ donation, it is unjust to destroy a human life in order to take back donated organs. I do not ask you to search the laws of your society to see if I am right, I ask you to be rational. Does it make sense to you if you were a judge in a case to declare that a donor can legally kill a donee without repercussion to get back mistakenly donated organs? Would this be a good precedent to set, do you think?

It is unjust to kill any human for reasons other than self-defense or defense of another. It is unjust because it is logically incompatible with human rights that I demand for myself. If your rights to anything outweigh my right to exist, then I can logically have no rights. If my rights to anything outweigh your right to exist, then the right to exist is not inalienable and I can lose it as soon as I become a human that can be considered a "minority." Without the inalienable right to exist applicable all accross the species, the only "right" is power. As much as I like power, I can see the wisdom in surrendering it in order to ensure that someone else who might decide that I am not worthy of existence does not gain more power than I have.

long winded fool

I don't support the death penalty. I must dishonestly stretch my understanding of human rights in order to find justification for it. Theoretically speaking, destroying a criminal could be justified if it could be shown that refraining from doing so would result in the deaths of innocent people. In practice, this is usually not the case, therefore I do not think that execution is a just practice.

Interestingly enough, while emotionally I am more against the death penalty than I am against legal abortion, I find it much easier to explain the reasoning behind the death penalty than I do the reasoning behind legal abortion. The reasoning behind the death penalty at least attempts to respect human rights. The reasoning behind abortion is no different than the reasoning behind slavery. "We the people reserve the right to grant and revoke 'humanity' in a legal context, and therefore human rights, from anything, including members of our own species, that we see fit. If we all agree that Africans should not have the right to be free, then Africans are not 'legally humans,' and all 'humans' still have rights. If we decide that Africans should have the right to be free, but that unborn humans should not have the right to exist, then Africans become 'legal humans' and unborn humans are no longer 'legally humans,' and 'all humans' can still have the right to exist."

I would feel much more dishonest to argue for legal abortion than I would for the death penalty.