War On Drugs
       |           

Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
Did you miss your activation email?
April 27, 2024, 06:04:29 PM
News: Election Simulator 2.0 Released. Senate/Gubernatorial maps, proportional electoral votes, and more - Read more

  Talk Elections
  General Politics
  Political Debate (Moderator: Torie)
  War On Drugs
« previous next »
Pages: 1 [2]
Author Topic: War On Drugs  (Read 3228 times)
opebo
Atlas Legend
*****
Posts: 47,009


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #25 on: March 10, 2005, 10:24:23 AM »

All actions effect the society at large.  All laws enforce morality.  To pretend otehrwise is foolish.

The only way anyone can credibly claim that either of these statements is untrue is that some effects on society are indirect, and can be obscured or denied, and some laws enforce a morality that is so commonly accepted that it does need seem to be an imposition at all to most.  But both claims remain true nonetheless.

Both of your claims are beside the point.  'Society at large' doesn't exist except as a conception in individual brains.  The same with 'morality' - it is just a heirarchy of preferences in an individual brain.  Any common ground on 'moral' issues is just a compromise.  Society at large is a balance of millions of individual interests, sometimes conflicting, sometimes in alliance. 

In other words there is no interest or point of view in society at large, since it isn't a person.  Therefore to attribute preferences to it is meaningless.  A more realistic way of looking at society is to see it as a compromise between the only kinds of moral heirarchies that exist - individual ones.  Therefore any law that individuals make by compromising with one another are created for practical reasons, and there is no need to make any fallacious and hypocritical claims to an objective morality.

For example is correct to say 'I don't want to be killed and I want to work with others to reduce killing, even to the point of interfering with my own freedom to kill', not 'killing is wrong'.  The former statement you can be sure of, the later really says no more than the first, though it appears to claim a universal truth that has no relationship to our knowledge of ourselves.
Logged
The Duke
JohnD.Ford
Junior Chimp
*****
Posts: 9,270


Political Matrix
E: 0.13, S: -1.23

Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #26 on: March 10, 2005, 07:22:20 PM »

Actually, my point was relevant.  Diblle's argument is that you should have the liberty to do anything that only affects you, regardless of moral judgements of whether the behavior is right or wrong.

If I can establish that all actions affect someone else, even in a small way, then I have defeated his argument.  Hence, my comment was relevant.
Logged
John Dibble
Atlas Icon
*****
Posts: 18,732
Japan


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #27 on: March 10, 2005, 07:29:16 PM »

Actually, my point was relevant.  Diblle's argument is that you should have the liberty to do anything that only affects you, regardless of moral judgements of whether the behavior is right or wrong.

If I can establish that all actions affect someone else, even in a small way, then I have defeated his argument.  Hence, my comment was relevant.

Actually, the key word in the libertarian philosophy is 'harm', not affect, if you haven't noticed. And applying some common sense to it doesn't hurt either, Ford - you are the one that is taking it to it's utmost extreme.
Logged
Pages: 1 [2]  
« previous next »
Jump to:  


Login with username, password and session length

Terms of Service - DMCA Agent and Policy - Privacy Policy and Cookies

Powered by SMF 1.1.21 | SMF © 2015, Simple Machines

Page created in 0.218 seconds with 12 queries.