Aswad
Posts: 9374
Joined: 4/4/2007
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ORIGINAL: Rover
But your assertion that a society *must* abide by your morality as it relates to non-consensual corporal punishment allows for no such consensus. It's an all or nothing proposition. You're contradicting yourself.
No, I was clarifying that a society does not have to abide by my morality in order to be a civilized society.
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Properly stated, capital punishment is the societal consensus that a selected number of peers can determine that it is just to deprive another person of their life.
I stand corrected.
The point remains, though.
Conceptually, you are still saying that a society which accepts capital punishment is asserting that killing is acceptable under given circumstances, and that the circumstances are that enough people join in on the fun. Thus, carrying the arguments to their logical conclusions, you either go by moral absolutism, and say killing is okay anyway, or go by moral relativism, and say that killing is okay if you think it's okay. In both cases, it pretty much invalidates itself, consistency-wise, but if we ignore that for a moment, you're still left with "we're okay with killing, if enough people are in on it".
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You cannot purport to assert the validity of consensus societal morality in one sentence, and then deny it in the next.
I assert the validity of any moral system by subscribing to moral relativism as a philosophy. By extension, I assert the validity of consensus societal morality, as applied to society. But I address the point above that, conceptually speaking, the prevailing consensus in such societies accepts a line of reasoning that, by its extension, justifies the original crime.
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Simply because the societal consensus conflicts with your own morality.
That societal consensus is in conflict with my morality, and that I only give a hoot about what society does insofar as it has the potential to affect me, is a given. This on an ethical level. A personal ethos. But that does not mean that I cannot employ another paradigm for purposes of a given debate, or that I do not have an opinion on the presence or absence of certain values, and so forth.
In this case, however, the argument could fill whole books, as it also has. For me to put this in a coherent and graspable way, with a foundation in logic, takes a lot more effort than it is worth in the context of this derailment. Hence, the half-assed effort on my part, and all the misunderstandings. Usually, I prefer to make a coherent presentation of something up front so as to eliminate misunderstandings and so forth. But, as I said, that would mean days to months of writing.
I could of course resort to rhetoric instead, in which case I would probably start by appealing to the fact that we tend to teach our kids that two wrongs don't make a right, but practice differently in such societies, and that we're either teaching them something fundamentally wrong on a matter of life and death, or we are practicing something equally wrong ourselves.
We have both brought up the argument of self-preservation, however, so the rhetoric would probably need to focus on whether societies have the same rights as individuals in this regard, where one draws the line with regard to irreversible errors, and so forth.
In the end, however, rhetoric is persuasion, and both hold strong convictions, so that could drag on.
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Which, as I noted above, is an all or nothing proposition for you, negating your previously asserted reliance upon societal consensus.
Again, you are conflating two issues. I should have been separating them more clearly. There is the matter of my view as an individual, and there is the matter of my view on social issues, and finally the matter of my arguments inside a different paradigm- that of consensus- which I personally reject. Probably, I should have stuck to one of the above, or at least done a more thorough job of it.
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I'll cede the point, since it is an irrelevant issue to the argument.
I would not say the distinction is irrelevant to what it addressed, so it is only irrelevant to the argument insofar as what it addressed is irrelevant, which depends on the paradigm we're supposed to be arguing inside in the first place. Absent that and definitions of terms, etc., we are really rather ill-equipped to take this debate right now. And I've had this argument, in depth, too many times to put my heart into splitting off a seperate thread for debating the grounds for debate, and then a thread for the debate itself.
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When taking sides in the chicken vs. egg debate, one cannot invalidate the reasonableness of the opposing argument. We must both concede that a logical argument can be made for both sides of this issue.
From the starting point used, I may cede that point, though we did agree that it was a property and a state of affairs, which I think negates it as a causal agent, and thus think invalidates it as a starting point for a causal order. But I think the following may be a more reasonable starting point than the other, being stated in terms of propagation of state, thus obviating the need for any chicken/egg debate:
The initial aggressor, by whatever means, arrives at a state of not possessing the property of a civilized state at an individual level, and then progresses to commit aggression, which propagates this absence of a civilized state unto the target for this aggression: the defender. This establishes a causal starting point for the local scope of the defender, that starting point being the act of aggression. From this, the result is that the defender is placed in a state devoid of the property of civilization, and acts outside this state, with a local resolution that may or may not restore the local state to a property of civilization, depending on whether this person has values that permits that transition under prevailing post-conflict conditions.
With this causal segment, we can progress up and down the chain of causality as needed.
Transposed to the level of a civilization, however, society perceives an individual who has been an initial aggressor, in a state that is- or at least at some point was- devoid of civilization. Based on this perception, it then acts to renounce the same state for itself, which is the starting point of causal order, as this is a choice that parallels the choice made by the initial aggressor in the individual scenario.
Therein lies one of the problems: society accepts the role of initial aggressor, not defender.
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Because society is, as you have previously stated, a consensus of individual morality.
I stated that various consensii are properties that can be extracted from societies, including the consensus of morality, and would elaborate that in a society that bases itself on consensus, then that forms the basis for the morality of society as an entity, at least in theory; practically speaking, a government is usually interposed between the consensus and the actions of the entity.
Societies, however, are a group of individuals distinguishable from- but potentially overlapping with- other such groups, and possessing a cohesion that is usually derived from commonalities, geographic locality, or other factors. A family, for instance, is a society, and one which may in some cases lack a consensus morality.
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And if we both accept that self-preservation is instinctual on the individual level, then society as the embodiment of consensus must also include a need and/or duty for self-preservation as well.
I am not sure it is instinctual. I just said I subscribe to it. And that societies generally allow it, not that this affects my choice in that regard. In any case, work it from the top down then. Humans on a whole, constitute a society called "species", demonstrated through their relation to other societies of the same type (species). By your original argument, then, we have a duty (I can buy need, though we don't live up to our own needs, if so; but I dispute duty) to preserve our society. This opens a whole can of worms, but that is irrelevant to my line of reasoning here, which is that we don't display any sense of duty, nor attend to any need, at this level. Indeed, there is no self-preservation at this level, or several international problems would disappear. Of course, you could argue that this is a matter of there being a critical mass for societies, but that's a different line of argument again.
In any case, I'm not sure any potential right of self-preservation at a societal level extends to internal affairs. If it does, then the implications are downright scary, to the point that the position is untenable to me from a social hygiene point of view. Also, you should note that you are advocating that the entirety of the entity can act in preservation of a single, random individual, without providing qualifiers regarding the mapping of force involved.
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Prevention and retaliation are effective tools for the preservation of social order along with individual and societal rights. Quite effective, I might add. In point of fact, I would say that society is intimately involved in preservation.
Social order is irrelevant to the debate, since you mentioned self-defense, not self-preservation. And since you have established it by analogy to the individual level, there is the matter of transposing this element back across that gap, which pretty much justifies a whole lot of things that end up spiraling down in a cycle of violence until the strongest party wins, something that is indistinguishable from anarchy.
Cuba does a pretty good job of preserving social order. As does China. As did DDR. And Iraq. And Afghanistan under the Taliban regime. Or Tito. Or Vlad Tepeş III. Hitler. Stalin. Those who fought to keep slavery in the US were also trying to preserve social order. Are we seeing a certain pattern here that does not seem like something we want to emulate?
Whether rights are relevant, requires more elaboration on your part.
As to the matter of defense, however, I agree that prevention is effective, although I do not think you have established a rationale for preemptive action. And retaliation should be qualified. When I said retaliation, I was referring to lex talionis, not prison. In Norway, we have prisons, but not retaliation. That is to say, our society does not respond to a crime with other means than (a) regulation of things that are intrinsically elements of society, rather than individual, such as imposing fines, with money being something that after all exists only as an element of society, or (b) imprisonment. The latter is exclusively aimed at prevention, though it is of course not uncommon for people's emotional responses to be out of line with their well-considered opinions; I posit that emotional responses are irrelevant to a notion of self-preservation. In any case, recidivism rates are far lower than e.g. the US.
My point being, physically harsh conditions are not conducive to preservation. Rehabilitation is, however. And where it cannot be reasonably done, you still have the person in custody if we're talking about a jury trial here, so you can lock them up for life, as a matter of defense. If they turn out not to be guilty, then society hasn't murdered someone, at the very least. Using the individual analogy, if I feel that someone who I think has killed someone is a threat to me, then it would not be considered self-defense for me to respond to that threat by exerting lethal force on that person, because there is no immediate threat. Society should be no different in this regard, IMO.
You're really only in a position of self-defense under exceptional circumstances. Flight 93, for example.
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For not mentioning things, you mention them quite frequently.
Well, not naming, then. The judicial line is fairly thin between free speach and incitement.
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Aside from that, I believe it is not only the task of civilized society to do so, there is an inherent duty to do so.
I see little or no support for the position that there is an inherent duty to do so, nor that there is a civilized side to it.
But we can always agree to disagree.
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You may believe otherwise, and may even live in a society in which the consensus agrees with you.
I do, in both regards.
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But other societies, equally civilized, have come to a different consensus.
We would need a definition of civilized to determine that.
The west appears to have a split in this regard, with one nation supporting it, the others not.
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If it's your point to prove that you have some superiority in your morality, that's another issue entirely.
I've never claimed moral superiority. It would be antithetical to my morally relativist position to do so, as I have elaborated. I think a debate about the semantics of "civilized" might be a prerequisite to what I was claiming.
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Frankly, I couldn't care less how superior you may feel and you're welcome to boast of it as loudly and frequently as you may like
~beats chest~
Aoaoaaaah.
Me Tarzan, you ... John. Hmm. Damn.
Jane?!? Where are you? Jane!?
~trots off to find Jane~
Oh... morals? Ah. Sorry, my mistake. No, couldn't care less. 
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No need for all that drama, actually. Twelve people as representives of society, in fulfillment of society's consensus, do so publicly. Furthermore, it's not first degree murder to do so.
You missed my point entirely. What I meant was, if circumstances are not those of immediate self-defense, or so exceptional that one is willing to act in defiance of any law or consequence to the act, then there is IMO no grounds for it. And these twelve people (twenty where I live) do not face any consequences; they are removed from the matter, and may decide whether a person lives or dies on the grounds of how good rhetoric that person has paid for, compared to the other party, which comes down to financial and political interests controlling "justice". It should be first degree murder, IMO. And the person(s) making that decision should face the consequences.
At the very least, the jury should be the executioners.
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That's a legal term which is inappropriate and irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
It is not irrelevant to my proposition that killing should only be done when it doesn't matter whether it is justified.
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In those nations without capital punishment, it's a shame that the state would shirk its responsibility.
If we want to keep the discussion civil, it's probably best to avoid assertions about entities having a responsibility to kill.
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I can't imagine that anyone beyond you and I are even bothering to read this debate, much less enjoying it. *LOL* So I believe that for the time being, we are safe from the ravages of fecal material and oscillating blades.
Quote possibly. I've just got this nagging feeling, like Farglebargle and his debating buddies will enter it soon. In any case, we are hijacking the topic that I wanted to discuss (slave trade), and it's 7am here, so I'll give it a rest for a while.
_____________________________
"If God saw what any of us did that night, he didn't seem to mind.
From then on I knew: God doesn't make the world this way.
We do." -- Rorschack, Watchmen.
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RE: SLAVE TRADE - 
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