KitemanSA wrote:When was the last time you heard someone distinguish between "crime" and "vice"? They are both illegal (against the law), but a vice is NOT a crime. Think about it. Crime is when you involve someone in an action involuntarily (act immorally to another). Vice is when you do something that may be bad for YOURSELF (act unethically to yourself). Failure to distinguish those simple concepts is the lawyer's bread and butter!
Technically, prostitution is a vice even in Nevada. Vice has nothing to do with the law... drinking, cigarette smoking, prostitution, and so forth are all vices. Salvia abuse, for instance, is a vice but not a crime.
Crime means, in all situations, breaking the law. They range from petty offenses through felonies.
There are also civil laws, where breaking them is technically called an offense or infarction, which are theoretically a tort against the adhesion contracts of society (such things as OSHA infarctions and such).
All this is common usage. None of it requires any special description. And if you think something that is a criminal activity is not a crime because it is ALSO a vice, you are confused.
I don't want to be a wet blanket, but just saying--reading the ethics rants by folks who have never had a single, undergrad ethics class, is like reading a grade schooler tell Post Doc Physicists how physics ought to work.
Dopey past all understanding.
Why is it everyone thinks they're a philosopher? I've never understood.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis
KitemanSA wrote:When was the last time you heard someone distinguish between "crime" and "vice"? They are both illegal (against the law), but a vice is NOT a crime. Think about it. Crime is when you involve someone in an action involuntarily (act immorally to another). Vice is when you do something that may be bad for YOURSELF (act unethically to yourself). Failure to distinguish those simple concepts is the lawyer's bread and butter!
Technically, prostitution is a vice even in Nevada. Vice has nothing to do with the law... drinking, cigarette smoking, prostitution, and so forth are all vices. Salvia abuse, for instance, is a vice but not a crime.
Crime means, in all situations, breaking the law. They range from petty offenses through felonies.
This is where you and I part ways. As you say "vice has nothing to do with the law" I reply "crime has nothing to do with the law", though lawyers would have you believe it is.
Vice is an ethical infraction. Crime is a moral infraction. Understand that I define moral infraction as doing something WRONG, i.e., immoral, i.e. criminal. Breaking the law is doing something illegal. They truly are seperate concepts though lawyers would have you confuse them. Your fuzzy thinking is their best friend!
"Illegal" and "criminal" only are able to approach synonymity when you have a fully informed jury that is ready, willing, and able to toss out bad law, saying "this is no crime" and provide a court of justice rather than its perversion, a court of law.
You may detect that I have low regard for law and lawyers!
GIThruster wrote: I don't want to be a wet blanket, but just saying--reading the ethics rants by folks who have never had a single, undergrad ethics class, is like reading a grade schooler tell Post Doc Physicists how physics ought to work.
Dopey past all understanding.
Why is it everyone thinks they're a philosopher? I've never understood.
A philosopher is one who loves understanding, or as WordNet at Princeton records "a wise person who is calm and rational; someone who lives a life of reason with equanimity". One who spends all his time in college reading OTHER philosophers without having an original thought of his own is an educated moron. I am an original philosopher!
Ok, maybe not a MORON, but an educated dufus none-the-less.
GIThruster wrote:I don't want to be a wet blanket, but just saying--reading the ethics rants by folks who have never had a single, undergrad ethics class, is like reading a grade schooler tell Post Doc Physicists how physics ought to work.
Dopey past all understanding.
Why is it everyone thinks they're a philosopher? I've never understood.
Dude, this is teh interwebz. We all are philosophers, lawyers, physicists, rocket scientists and climatologists here.
GIThruster wrote:I don't want to be a wet blanket, but just saying--reading the ethics rants by folks who have never had a single, undergrad ethics class, is like reading a grade schooler tell Post Doc Physicists how physics ought to work.
Dopey past all understanding.
Why is it everyone thinks they're a philosopher? I've never understood.
You Kant always Goethe what you want,
But if you try sometimes, you get what you Nietzsche.
Diogenes wrote:Don't forget that at base nature, man is a beast.
Still
I see someone thinks very lowly of humans and thus himself.
That could explain it!
Actually, I think I got the cause and effect backwards, but it comes down to the same end result.
Anyway, it seems to me that Diogenes does not trust himself with the effects of drugs (not at all unreasonable) and thus does not trust anybody else with same (quite unreasonable, though there are indeed others that can not be trusted).
I have little experience with drugs (direct or indirect), but I know that there are those that can be trusted with alcohol and those that cannot. An obvious example is your quiet drunks (I tend to fall into this group, and my brothers seem to) and your violent drunks (I've seen plenty of both sorts), though not all quiet drunks can be trusted (for other reasons, eg neglect, etc).
KitemanSA wrote: Sorry, don't get your point here.
You have a complex control system. Let's say it's a computer. Let's say it is able to process data and output results. Let's say it works very well and is virtually foolproof. This represents cognizant sapience.
Now let's say you introduce randomizing code into the program, or a virus that erases or moves data while it's being processed. You no longer have any cognizant sapience. What's more, you've damaged the programming in such a way that it now has a much higher error rate and is not longer trustworthy.
Why should you trust it's decisions?
I think you are mischaracterising the experience. Drugs themselves don't actually do anything to the brain, they interact with neurochemicals that are already there and manipulate them wrt input, output, or perception. For instance, LSD's hallucinations are essentially a biochemical form of creating a virtual simulation. I suspect when/if we create brain/computer interfaces to augment our minds to boost intelligence and memory, that chemicals like LSD will be used on a neuron by neuron, nerve by nerve basis to generate heads up displays within the visual cortex.
We aren't near that sort of thing yet by any means, but playing around with LSD today is really no different from running fractals graphics programs on your Mac.
They certainly do one thing to the brain. They flip the "I like it" switch. If the feeling is intense enough, the person is addicted.
KitemanSA wrote: This is about the time called "quickening" which seems a reasonable dividing line between "is not", and "is" sapient. It also seems a good place to say "beyond this point, you have had time to decide, so continuation shall be taken as constituting your agreement (volunteering) to carry the now sapient being to term".
Now see, this is where exactitude dies. You misspeak. You have already chosen. Tampering with a previous choice is choosing twice. You ought to say, "you have had time to change your decision. "
Has she? You are somehow omnicient to know that every female ever to reach quickening has chosen to be in that condition. Thank you, god, for that clarity.
Chosen to have sex which causes that condition, yes. One does not need to be an omniscient God to see this, merely an individual who sees things as they actually are.
I am not going to bother answering the rest of your crap.
KitemanSA wrote: Do you really believe that it is moral to kill people because you have a disagreement with them?
Not for disagreement. For disagreement on something I consider fundamental to my ability to survive. Yes, any disagreement along those lines is, in my opinion, ample justification for killing them.
Wow. Diogenes says "I'm so weak and incompetent that your recreational activites are a deadly threat to me. I have the right to kill you!" Sick!
KitemanSA wrote: Yet again you fail to make the important distinction. It is not a crime because it is felonious. It is felonious because it is felonious. And yes they can jail you for committing a felony, but that doesn't make it a CRIME i.e. WRONG, per-se.
You are going back and forth between polar and rectangular coordinates. It's difficult to keep up with which side of a particular word definition you are using.
A lot of people don't try to argue two separate sides for the word "Crime."
Actually, you have it backward. Most people use the word "crime" for multitudinus meanings and thus can't think worth a sh!t. I DO distinguish between the meaning, with precision, and I have informed you specifically, and repeatedly, how I define them. You on the other hand seem to WANT to fog you brain with "fuzzy" meaning. That characteristic is what will bring about the demise of our civilization. It is YOUR fault! (Well, you and hundreds of millions like you )
Yes, you have precision alright. You can find a distinction between two halves of a hair on a gnat's A$$.
KitemanSA wrote: Sometimes you make statements like you are finally getting it, then you make a statement like this. To continue to try or to give you up as a lost cause?
I see you as splitting hairs without justification, and making distinctions which are not in evidence.
Which I see as evidence that you may not be capable of understanding. Oh whell.
That at least one of us can't, i'll agree with. You're the guy defending chemical mindf*cking. That you might have trouble saying what you mean is understandable.
Diogenes wrote: Pointing a firearm at someone without having a good and legitimate reason for doing so, (such as they are a criminal trying to rob or assault you.) is both morally wrong and legally wrong.
In this case, the word "Crime" means wrong in both definitions.
Until you can understand how incorrect this statement is, you will never understand morality.
Not the multifaceted KitemanSA version, certainly. Somehow I don't think it will bother me.
Drugs = Drug effects. Drug effects = Neglect. Ergo Drugs = Neglect.
Seems pretty simple to me.
But the bolded, underlined one is not correct. Many people use drugs without neglecting their children. Those that DO neglect their children will look for any excuse. Don't give it to them. Drug use is NOT an excuse for immoral behavior. Punish the immoral behavior, not the excuse. GROW UP!
Some do not.
Fine, what percentage of the population should we throw away ?
Diogenes wrote: You have a complex control system. Let's say it's a computer. Let's say it is able to process data and output results. Let's say it works very well and is virtually foolproof. This represents cognizant sapience.
Now let's say you introduce randomizing code into the program, or a virus that erases or moves data while it's being processed. You no longer have any cognizant sapience. What's more, you've damaged the programming in such a way that it now has a much higher error rate and is not longer trustworthy.
Why should you trust it's decisions?
Would you throw away a computer because it got a virus, or would you remove that virus, reload the code, and trust the computer again? Drugs are a self removing virus and the brain has a self repairing, re-loading code. I wouldn't want to trust the computations while the computer is invected, but I am not so wasteful that I would throw it away either. What throwing away will cause is the computer producers will cause the creation of more and more viruses so they can extract ever more $ from you. Gee, where did I hear that "wallet extraction" phrase before?
You haven't had a chance to read my post to intlibber, so i'll point out to you that drugs trip the pleasure switch. Once tripped, you can't un trip it.
The most dangerous effect that drugs have is addiction, which is caused by flipping that pleasure switch.
You tell me how to erase that component of the virus infection, and you might have an argument.
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