Re: 2004 Presidential Election.
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Instar said:
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Jack Simth said:
Bearing in mind, that this is a question of ethics, and as such is fundamentally unarguable on several levels, here is a roundabout and incomplete attempt at one:
Let's start with something else. Something that the supermajority...
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Argumentum ad populum. logical fallacy.
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So choosing a starting point where most there is a high probability of a match as a starting point to argue from is automatically a fallacy? Interesting definition you have there.
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Instar said:
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Jack Simth said:
...of people believe is wrong: Murder. Murder is illeagal. ...
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No, murder is a wrongful killing. By definition, murder is wrong. Sorry to argue semantics, but that is the correct definition.
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 A minor point of semantics there - call it randomly killing someone is wrong. It's pretty immaterial nit-picking.
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Instar said:
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Jack Simth said:
...It is also called wrong in the Bible. ...
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Relevance?
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Jack Simth said:
... Obviously, murder is a religious issue, ...
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No, actually, it is not.
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Apparently you missed a chunk of the conversation - Will was basically saying that the state shouldn't be allowed to restrict marriage to one man and one woman on the basis that it was a religious issue; it's a religious issue because it is defined Biblically. Murder is also defined Biblically, and it's not an strickly cultural issue because there are vastly different definitions of it in different cultures.
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Instar said:
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Jack Simth said:
and the state has no right to intervene. Perhaps it is an ethical issue, instead. With ethics, things ultimately lie on fundamental, unproveable assumptions ...
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Not so. Ethics makes very few assumptions.
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I didn't say they made many of them; I said they made Fundamental assumptions; the use of fundamental usually implies a small number of them.
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Instar said: The assumptions made in ethics usually pass the reasonable person test, that is, thigns a sane person would agree to.
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Except, of course, that many of the schools of ethics disagree on those selfsame assumptions - Kantian ethics would ignore feelings as much as possible, on the assumption that reason is the best guide to ethics, as it is all that separates man from beast, and that nature hasn't provided an essentially perfect guide in our emotions. Meanwhile, there are a number of emotional schools of ethics that take the exact opposite approach, saying let your feelings guide you. Both types of school contain reasonable people, yet they can easily disagree on their assumptions. Moreover, they can never really convince each other, as both cases are fairly reasonable and there can't really be any true evidence on such a fundamental level. Further, they come to different conclusions in the end - sure, they all agree on the obvious things (a fourty-year old man in good health is a person; a rock is not), but they disagree on the nitty-gritty (Are monkeys people? Are unborn human children? Eating meat okay? Be a vegitarian? A veagan?).
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Instar said:
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Jack Simth said:
...(some samples: with Kant's "pure logic", one must first assume: 1) that logic is applicable to ethics, 2) that "better" is something to be strived for, and 3) Kant's definition of what has intrinsic value; with self-interest or extended self-interest ethics, one must first assume that personal consequences matter in questions of ethics [not a given in all schools of ethics]; "feels good" ethics usually assume that it either doesn't matter anyway or that nature/God/whatever has provided the ultimate guide when producing your feelings (or that it is an evolutionary process, and if your ethics are flawed, they are supposed to cause you problems), or some variant; with God centered ethics, even assuming that the existence of God and every event statement in the Bible is wholly accurate in every detail, one first needs to assume that the created ethically ought to obey the rules laid out by the Creator; et cetera; et cetera), which are religion-like in nature. Murder penalties are therefore unconstitutional, and thus the state has no right to interfere on that basis.
You can replace "murder" in the above with virtually anything that's illeagal (with minor tweaks to the rest of the text), really - (in no particular order) rape, incest, theft, drug abuse, tax evasion, kiddie porn, gay marriage, or prostitution, to name a few. The above is complete bull, of course. But how can the case be argued that it IS bull? More specifically, can you debunk the above for murder, rape, incest, theft, kiddie porn, et cetera without also debunking the above your favorite issue: gay marriage, especially considering that it uses a good portion of the same basic approach that you used to say that gay marriage should be okay?
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This is crap dressed up as philosophical musings. Sorry to burst your bubble, but you misconstrue ethics completely.
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Being insulting now? Is that what you are reduced to? There's no point in continuing this, then, is there?
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Of course, by the time I finish this post, it will already be obsolete. C'est la vie.
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