So virtue ethics might well be seen to involve personal development that does not have a social implication. Virtue has a broader scope than morality. — Banno

What else does it include? Do you mean one's relationship with the environment? Or are we in soul/karma land now? I'm not against that; I do see a non-religious aspect to the notion: whatever you do leaves a mark on your... personality or whatever; changes you in some way that cannot be changed back. In that context, virtue may include keeping your karmic slate as clean as possible for an unknown future. In some obtuse angular way I haven't worked out, that converges with the tenet of manners: "Behave in a palace as if you were at home, and at home if you were visiting a palace." (which is to say, naturally, not ignoring people)

The sad part is that in order to teach children to become socially functional and responsible adults we must untrain them from simple and pure delights. And enable them with critical thinking, a healthy skepticism, and distrust, so that they do not get exploited or bullied by others that are more clued into adult conduct - broad/large-scale reasoning. — Benj96

Doesn't the quality of that transition depend on the world environment? "We" sophisticated, prosperous westerners with all the potential for advancement and enhancement available to us teach our children differently from the way that "we" subsistence farmers in Karnataka, India, who owe our souls to the sahukar teach our children. Both adulthood and childhood are different in the domes.

Okay

Because psychological wants have no reality? — javra

Because the nature of their reality is not subject to verification. They are processes inside the subjective consciousness of an organism: real to the subject, unreal to everyone else.

If wants are real, then there will necessarily be truth-apt propositions in reference to them. — javra

Why? Is colour true or false? Is size true or false? What about liberty? Music? We know they exist in some way; they have description and measurement and comparison, they may even have value in certain context, but T/F simply doesn't apply, and if applied, doesn't mean anything. Nor does it apply to feelings. Guy sez he feels nauseous. I don't see it. Better show him the bathroom anyway, just in case it's true. And then? What happens is manifest, verifiable; the feeling itself is not. If something happens, we'll have evidence that what he said was true, if it doesn't, we will will never know. Does either result provide us with any useful new information regarding the guy's feeling?

then what would a "want" entail other than that it be fulfilled — javra

Want just is; a function of living. Crocodile wants. Human wants. Wolf wants. Lots of things. Some wants are the expression of needs; if they go unfulfilled, the organism dies. Some are expressions of instinctual or emotional urges - whether healthy or pathological makes no difference - if they go unfulfilled, the organism suffers distress, but usually survives to want it again next mating season, or keeps wanting it until he dies in captivity. Some are ephemeral desires, which, if fulfilled cause momentary joy, if unfulfilled, recur or are forgotten and replaced by new whims. Some wants are considered "wrong" by the animal's community and punished for their very expression; some are accepted as legitimate but limits set on what action the animal is allowed to take to fulfill them. The hungry wolf-cub wants meat; that is considered legitimate. He can wait until all the adults have fed, (right) or nip in between their legs and help himself (wrong - and he's punished). The single male wolf wants to mate (his feeling is acknowledged) but he's a Beta, so his choices are to hang out with an Alpha family until a mate becomes available (the sensible course) leave the pack and try his luck elsewhere (solitary existence is hard), or challenge the Alpha (perilous). There are no moral values attached to these events; it's just the way things are. This bachelor wolf, however, would be breaking the rules (doing wrong) if he tried to seduce a mated she-wolf; he could be killed for that.

either way, they seek fulfillment as far as I know. — javra

They do not seek. They simply occur. We do the seeking.

"underlying want", when a person wants to turn on the radio it's usually because of an underlying want to hear what the radio is playing. — javra

People have reasons for wanting, and some of them have other reasons behind them, and the earliest one we may or may not be aware of can be described as underlying the others, but what I said was I don't believe in a want that seeks anything. It just lies there, until the subject either acts on the superficial want or forgets about it and wants something else.

On what grounds to you conclude that sentience does not have a base underlying want that motivates all others? — javra

I haven't concluded anything of the kind. The drive to survival is an attribute of sentient and non-sentient life forms, in which all motivations are rooted - motivations that sentient creatures experience as wanting. It's generated by the life process and takes place in the organism. It is not an entity in itself; has no desires or will of its own; is not an active agent.

My damn cat just knocked over a bucket of water. I didn't want to mop it up, but I did. I did want to strangle him, but didn't. He was trying to take a drink. He wanted it from that bucket because it is a novelty, or else he was too lazy to cross the room and walk down a short hall to his own water dish (I'll go with novelty: he's a cat) That want was motivated by thirst, which was motivated by a sense of dehydration, which was motivated by the survival drive. What he did in response to this want was not deliberately wrong; it was merely stupid. Therefore not punishable in my books. But I'm still miffed at him.

If you are really interested in the history of education you will love reading Paul Monroe, Ph.D.'s book "A Text Book on the History of Education published in 1910 or James Mulhern's book "A History of Education" copyright in 1946 and 1959. — Athena

I prefer something a little more up-to-date. It's fine that both the Greeks and Americans taught their upper-class boys patriotism, citizenship and Hellenistic and Christian values respectively. Sometimes, in Athens and New England... All I'm saying is that the pink rear-view mirror does not show the whole landscape in its true colours. As for militarism, there were boys of 12 in the Civil War and 14-year-olds enlisted in WWI. That's one side-effect of patriotic fervour I consider unfortunate. Maybe I have a few issues with your characterization of all public education since 1958, but there is no point going into that here.
Suffice it to say, no slant on education could ever have been evenly applied to all states, and whatever way the curriculum was tweaked, it would not have altered the course of technological development.

I claimed that we ascribe value judgments to it: as in, it is of value or not of value ... right / good or wrong / bad in this sense ... — javra

I claim that I do not include myself in that "we". Of course I think illness is bad in the sense of unfortunate, don't wish it to happen, but without a conscious agency, I don't see how it can be wrong. "Illness happens" is just a morally neutral fact, like "Rocks are hard".
The little words can make the biggest, most confusing Santa sacks of ideas. Right and wrong are equivalent to good and bad only in some specified context.

Psychologically speaking, self-cutting is intentionally done for the purposes of inflicting bodily self-harm intended to result in various degrees of emotive euphoria. — javra

It is not done so as to decorate oneself, apropos to tattoos and studs. — javra

So, you hold that wilful self-harm is/ should be evaluated not according to its effect, but the subject's motivation? Does that mean that's it's okay to damage one's body for decoration or tribal identification, but not okay to do it for stress relief?
I could not make that distinction: to me, it's their body, to do with as they wish, so long as no other is being harmed. I mnean sim[ply that I'm not in a position to judge any individual's degree of volition or validity of motive: hence not sure.

Is it not logically possible that ethical judgments can be correct or incorrect? — javra

Yes, I think it's not just possible, but usual. Ethics are set out in systems, with philosophical basis. Any transaction - and even many isolated actions - can be judged according to the tenets of the ethical system to which the actor subscribes.

Such that if one judges that torture is bad, this ethical judgment can be truth-apt relative to the reality of a universally shared, underlying want that seeks to be fulfilled? — javra

No, on two counts. I already stated that it's not a question of truth. And it's not universally shared. I don't believe in a disembodied 'underlying want' that can seek fulfillment. Sentient entities need things and want things, sometimes conflicting things, and seek to resolve those conflicts through the application of ethical rules. As I already mentioned with torture, it's probable that the majority of the human race considers torture a generally bad, undesirable thing, but condones it in certain circumstances. (Or we wouldn't allow it at all, anywhere.)
There may be 0/1 distinctions between correct and incorrect courses of action according to the rules of one ethical system, but come up with a different configuration under the rules of another system. They do not correspond to True/False, Right/Wrong or Black/White with mathematical precision.

Well, that's one long-standing philosophical debate closed! — SophistiCat

I didn't close it by disagreeing on page 1, so it seems rather more robust that you give it credit for.

For instance, is it right, or else good, that mental aberrations occur? — javra

This is not a question of ethics or morality (unless you're questioning the judgment of a god). Illness is a fact. The ethical question is how we ought to treat the sufferer, whether we should most appropriately kill, punish, pity, exorcise, banish or medicate him. The rational, or scientific questions follow from which 'ought' we decided.
It's a social issue. individual behaviour in relation to other people; group behaviour in relation to individuals and other groups.

Ethics is based on well-founded standards of right and wrong that prescribe what humans ought to do, usually in terms of rights, obligations, benefits to society, fairness, or specific virtues.

Is the person's self-cutting neither good nor bad? — javra

Yes.
To me, morality is an issue of individual-in-the-world; a karmic issue, if you like.
Outside of a social context, right and wrong are entirely personal values. If a human suffers an illness, some moral systems give him the right to alleviate his symptoms at the expense of other who are deemed of 'lesser value' - people who can't afford the surgery, poor people who need $1000 more than they need a second kidney, other species, etc.

But in a different sense of the word, who else is technically responsible for the act of self-harm but the individual themselves? — javra

In this case, I'm not sure either that responsibility can attributed, or that harm has been done.
Is scarification morally wrong? It's certainly deemed ethical in their cultures. Is it okay for western people to have tattoos and studs?

But here’s one possible exception to the rule of thumb: a sole castaway on an island with no hope of rescue cuts themselves to relieve stress. Since there’s no interaction between persons, is this action then good strictly on account of it being the personal preference of the individual? I know that various intellectualized answers could be provided, but also believe that in our gut we all sense there’s something wrong with so doing — javra

I would call it a mental aberration rather than a wrong action. This is not an intellectualized answer but my gut reaction: "Poor guy's going bananas over there!" I would wish he didn't, but not blame him for it.
I would, however, blame him if he took his frustration out on small helpless animals by torturing them. In that case I would be making a moral judgment according my own foundational principles/ preference. I wouldn't assume ethics comes into a situation where there are no other humans.

Are you saying the 1958 National Defense Education Act was not a fundamental change? — Athena

Yes, I am. It's not the 'after' picture I disagree with, but the 'before'.

Education in the US was modeled after Athens's education for well-rounded individual growth. — Athena

Where? When? How long? For which children?
Athens is where Socrates was snuffed for his critical thinking seminars? Where only the sons of well-off families could get any education, and where you would never have been allowed to teach? Yes, a similar system was in place in some parts of the United States for some part of the 18th and 19th centuries, available to some white children.

Apprenticeships began in America in the 1600's and was an early form of education. Since coming to the New World, the Puritans were needing skilled workers. These apprenticeships were developed to teach young boys a trade that they would continue into adulthood.

Need we mention the vast differences in church-sponsored education, in racially segregated education, in income levels?
Even 'common' town supported schools were not free, and smaller communities could barely support a single teacher in a one-room school. Then there was the mishmash of Christian schools and private schools of all kinds and various philosophies, some of them specializing in the education of women.

I think we do need to mention child labour:

Forms of child labor, including indentured servitude and child slavery, have existed throughout American history. As industrialization moved workers from farms and home workshops into urban areas and factory work, children were often preferred, because factory owners viewed them as more manageable, cheaper, and less likely to strike.

The National Child Labor Committee’s work to end child labor was combined with efforts to provide free, compulsory education for all children, and culminated in the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, which set federal standards for child labor.

This makes the 1958 reform just another step in 20-year process.

Does the OP endorse the statement "torture is bad"? I should hope so. — SophistiCat

Given the title, that's hard to fathom.

Are locutions such as "torture is bad" truth-apt? — SophistiCat

Of course not. Truth and fact are not identical in common discourse.
Facts: Torture hurts. Torture is a deliberate act. The purpose of torture is to cause pain.
None of those are value assessments.
The controversy over truth-aptness is never over the facts; never about the nature or purpose of torture, but rather about its valuation in terms of human interaction: 1 whether a particular practice fits the category of torture (as distinct from 'enhanced interrogation' or a 'friendly chat') and 2 whether the application of torture is justified in a specific instance, 2a on whom, 2b by whom and 2c which methods and at what intensity.

"Bad" is a large, elastic category of valuation that can contain all kinds of disparate items, according to belief system, personal taste, legal code, life requirement, fraternal obligation, sentiment, philosophy and situation. It's not dependent on fact, but generates its own variable truths.

I am thinking the world wars, fundamentally changed the US attitude about war and this change is expressed in the 1958 National Defense Education Act. — Athena

I say it wasn't a fundamental change but a stage. Their success in the world wars fed their ambition and expanded their scope and thirst for conquest. I say they followed the course of all empires, from smaller to larger to boastfully vast to too big to handle and the next step is too big to survive.
Did technology play a part in that? Of course; it always does. Having muskets put American colonists in a position to massacre Native Americans armed with bows.*
Same in other areas of warfare

In 1882, the U.S. Navy consisted of many outdated ship designs. Over the next decade, Congress approved building multiple modern steel-hulled armored cruisers and battleships, and by around the start of the 20th century had moved from twelfth place in 1870 to fifth place in terms of numbers of ships.

At the ends of WWII, hoovering up German military eggheads plus access to all the British innovations didn't hurt their technological odds, either.

*And double-crossing native allies was a well-established over 300 years before they did in Afghanistan. Also a routine practice for empires: The Spaniards did it in South America; the British did it in India; pretty much every European country screwed over Africa....

Given that it is good to help those in need, I don't see a problem in saying that it is true that it is good to help those in need. — Banno

Nor do I. And we know our own criteria for why that is a reasonable desire. For anyone with a different moral foundation (e.g. "Might makes right" or "Survival of the fittest - as long as fitness is defined by my traits" or " X-god commands") it might seem completely unreasonable. It depends on which of the fundamental truth forms the basis of your world-view.

Your bias on what is important military information discourages me in discussing the military situation with you. I think it is a mistake to believe things are as they always were for the US. — Athena

Likewise.

If you believe there are no moral truths, you must also believe there is no valid reason to want anything. — Leftist

I missed that tit-bit also. How are "moral truth" "valid reason" and desire interdependent? A truth is not moral or immoral; morality is neither true nor false. A reason is valid or invalid according to criteria not stated here and rarely known by anyone other than the reasoner. Desire doesn't wait upon either. Humans want all kinds of illogical, unreasonable and immoral things all the time. Whether they attempt to fulfill those illicit or foolish or contrary desires depends on their own beliefs and criteria.

Question: in light of your own definition of morality / ethics, do you think people invoke morality on their own side of the argument, despite its irrelevance, in order to unfairly strengthen their arguments? — god must be atheist

Regardless of my definition, I know that people invoke morality on their side of an argument, whether its relevant or not, whether they believe it's relevant or not, to strengthen their argument, whether fairly or unfairly, whether they believe it's fairly or unfairly.
People are not always meticulous in their definitions and demarcations of category, nor in their deployment of words and concepts.

Morality is based, however loosely and sloppily, on empathy or its absence.

an individual’s guiding principles and personal values that influence their notion of right and wrong

People may quite readily generalize their own rooted belief to all of "morality" without intending to be unfair in their arguments. If I were pretending to be an uncritical Christian right now, I would fall back on the biblical commandments (a sterling example of non-empathy) as a universal basis for both ethics and morality. The same would be true of anyone who holds an ingrained, internalized world-view.
That still leaves a great many people who use disingenuous reasoning in their arguments. It's only unfair if they're arguing with someone who is both honest and naive enough to assume the other one is.

Ethics are based, rather more firmly, in the practical consequences of transactions. Actual rules apply, organized in systems of thought, with reasoning to support them. They can be misunderstood, misinterpreted and misrepresented, to be sure, but they're verifiable.

One shouldn't confuse explanations for morality being the way it is, and reasons for acting morally - that would be a naturalistic fallacy. — SophistiCat

So the OP question is not about truth anymore again? Biology is not "motivated": it is merely predicated. Nothing in the universe operates without underlying principles. The sciences - indeed, all human inventions, including philosophy - are based on observation of the processes in order to discover the underlying principles.
For example, gravity is one of the principles of physics. Without it, things fall apart. Gravity is thus a necessary requirement ("truth" ) of physics, even though the participants in most physical interactions don't have a brain with which to assess or describe or value it. A truth is neither good nor bad until somebody with the ability to value it recognizes it as necessary, after which that thinking entity will draw inferences from that fact.
The fact itself just is; the system of thought - science, philosophy, religion, morality - use it as a template to evolve and mutate.
Continuity of life is the underlying principle discovered by a branch of science, with its own necessary truths. Whether those truths, or operating principles, become values in the human sense is a matter of human choice, since humans participate in its interactions. The validity of the principle is constant, with or without the observation and articulation of a human agent.

But that (they argue) is a mistake, because for a moral claim to be true, there ultimately needs to be something out in the (real) world that has the property of being good or bad or otherwise morally flavored, and there are no such things. — SophistiCat

There are no such things as regards physics. There are such things as regards biology. For biology to operate, life is a necessity and the sustenance of life is therefore inherently good. A moral claim based on that premise may not universally true, since much of the universe is non-living, but it is true for a class of material entities known as organisms.

Which group if either do you believe are most likely to try to "break free". — Benj96

The heavenly dwellers, hands down. They have the resources, for one thing. For another, as you say, they have time to develop their intellectual capacities and very quickly exhaust any novelty value in their world. Plus - this, for me, is the decisive factor: all of their experience predisposes them to optimism. They have no reason to expect a bad outcome to experimentation.

The hell-dwellers may also try - in the little free time and the little energy they have left over from bare survival - to chip at the dome in hope of improvement, but they are less likely to succeed.
People in difficult circumstances try to escape only if they have some hope of improvement.

If I was to use "bad" in the loose sense, it would be for things such as this: — Down The Rabbit Hole

I will continue to eat meat without an ounce of guilt — I like sushi

Yeah, but that was said to a moron ^^, not mere troll/stupid person. Sushi sets a high intellectual bar, but at least there's raw fish on it.

In everyday life I am happy to use good and bad in the loose sense of what my preference is — Down The Rabbit Hole

When a group that constitutes a community, organization or government shares a belief of some kind - true or false matters not in the slightest!

to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them

- and a decisive majority, or a sufficiently powerful minority of them express a preference, they write that into a constitution upon which the code of law is subsequently based. When a majority of people - or a minority with majority political clout - share a preference that falls within the parameters of the constitution, it's written into law. At any given moment in time, some of the citizens disobey the law and are deemed by fellow citizens to be doing "wrong", and therefore punished. When a majority or substantial minority no longer share that preference, the law is disregarded and eventually challenged; struck off the books or amended.

Value judgements have connection to truth in that value judgements can be correct or incorrect. You can't just randomly decide something actually should be done, or shouldn't be done, and be correct. — Leftist

There is nothing random about the basis on which people decided what is correct and incorrect behaviour. Their opinion is based on a consensus of principles and belief, which in turn are based on the "truths" of physics and biology. How things in the world work and affect one another determine what happens when we take certain actions. What we desire to happen, therefore, determines which of those actions we choose. If we chose the action that produced the desired result, we have chosen correctly. If the result is undesirable, we have chosen incorrectly.

If you enjoyed the experience of torturing people with a hammer and toothpicks, you achieved a desired outcome, and so your choice was correct. However, if the townspeople come after you, chain you to stake and light a fire under your feet, it may amuse them, but is unlikely to please you. Was your decision still correct? It's not about T or F; it's about degree of correctness according to the outcome.

"The community creates moral truths."

I attribute this argument to Michael and Vera Mont.
It was not explicitly stated that the community creates moral truths, but that's the implication. — Leftist

That is an incorrect attribution. I neither said nor implied anything about "moral truths" I did explicitly say the opposite: that truth and falsehood are not a function of morality.

Thanks — I like sushi

Any time!

Even the OP asked about people going directly to the slaughterhouse rather than prancing about in a forest with a rifle. — I like sushi

And I responded to that. I don't claim to know or understand the mind-set of people who kill; I can only go by what some of them write on forums.

Hunting is for the romantic and is a necessary part of managing wildlife in some situations. — I like sushi

In situations of humans' own making. Like protecting our livestock that's grazing on land we took from the forest, from predators we have deprived of hunting ground, by hunting the predators, and then protecting our crops and grazing land by hunting down the herbivores that would have been kept in check by the predators we killed. Man, the manager.

But what if at a butcher you had a holding pen. And had to kill the animal yourself. The butcher would then prepare the meat for you to take home. — Benj96

Just the fun and none of the work? Cool! How did the animal get into the pen? Where was it before, and in what conditions? Killing is the very least of what we do to animals - it's more a blessed release than a harm. I've lived on farms and been there for the whole process. On a small family farm, it's all intimate, from the hatching or farrowing, through daily feeding and mucking out, to the butchering and processing. I've rendered pig-fat and washed out intestines for sausage. (There's a fun job for the kids!) I didn't do the killing. After the first time we had a professional in for the pigs, my brother resolved, never again. The next year, he shot them himself: one bullet between the eyes, fall over like a log, no running around and screaming.

I did not like any of it, but it was a hellova lot nicer that the gathering up the 8,000 10-week-olf chickens our neighbour had raised in one big dark room of a barn, packed in so tight, the only way they could try to get away was climbing on top of each other, trampling to death a few at the bottom. Acceptable financial losses, to be cleaned and frozen by the farmer for his own use. This was a small, one-man operation; he hired local teenagers, on piece-work at crating time. Imagine that on industrial scale. Chicken-wranglers go a little mental.

And that's [that many meat-eaters care to hunt] the kernel that vegans hang their argument on. — Benj96

I don't think it is. It's not the killing they object to, it's the cruelty.

"We shouldn’t be cruel to animals, i.e. we shouldn’t harm animals unnecessarily.

This principle is common sense, and it’s also contained in our animal protection laws, which testifies to its being generally accepted."
They simply extend it from dogs and horses to include cattle, pigs and fowls.
"Animals often suffer terribly as a result of overbreeding, from dreadful conditions on farms, during transportation and in the slaughterhouse. Studies show that stunning fails regularly. The egg industry painfully gasses all male chicks right after they hatch."
It doesn't mention the cage size or de-beaking.

but I have no male friends I can think of, past or present, that would shy away from it. — I like sushi

Interesting. I wonder why that is. — Benj96

Probably because most of them have not actually done it and experienced the mess and the smell or had to skin and gut anything. But then, many have served in the armed forces - women too, now - and been inured to violent death.

I will continue to eat meat without an ounce of guilt and scoff at those who simply regurgitate swaddle they saw on some twitter/youtube/instagram horror show of manipulation misinformation born out of boredom and attention-seeking arm waving hysteria. — I like sushi

Well, good for you! No glib generalizing or stereotyping there!

Moral claim: "I wish to cause the least harm to the greatest number of people possible".

What is wrong with that moral claim? — Benj96

Quantity over quality. Similar to mistaking sound for substance. ie. "I would prefer to destroy the least amount of schools as opposed to the most amount of brothels because destroying buildings is generally considered immoral therefore it is the moral choice to make", etc. — Outlander

The comparison is ridiculous. Deliberately?

I never needed a salary to teach, I needed a salary to live. — universeness

That, right there, is my vindication for the advocacy of zero employment! Everybody should be able to do what they love, and I'm quite sure, given the opportunity - everybody would find some work to love. With the basic needs guaranteed, we would have a great many more teachers (You must have some among your acquaintance who quit for lack of support, unreasonable clerical demands or just plain burnout... though, in Finland, probably not so many as get disgusted with the low pay and constant abuse to which American teachers are subjected.), and some who have a particular talent and desire to help slow students and special needs students, and children with exceptionalities of every kind. Because all children are exceptional - and all children are interesting - and interacting with them is rewarding.

But do we not kill more animals through the easily justified demand of conveniently buying a pack of burgers say, in the supermarket. — Benj96

Those are manufactured animals, designed and produced for the meat market, treated as commodities their. They won't go extinct unless humans stop breeding them.

Many meat-eaters,
[Not including I like sushi, who must have been talking about farm animals, which was unclear to me at the time]
claim that hunting for our food is natural and noble and all that guff. So they buy a hunting license, binoculars, devices that make a sound like the animal's call, skinning knives and high-powered rifles with infra red scopes, dress up in padded camo gear and water-proof boots, drive their SUV's out on the well-paved highway to some remnant of forest and shoot an animal or bird that's got no defense and no place to hide. Hunting is a luxury for privileged citizens of the rich countries and a daily chore for a few natives in remote jungles that haven't been bulldozed yet. It's not an option available to the vast majority of humans.

Meanwhile, many rural citizens of both rich and poor countries do kill their own livestock - which has been specially bred for that purpose over hundreds of generations. The animal in question is tame, docile and captive; requires no stamina or courage or skill to dispatch. The prosperous farmer or his wife routinely choose a victim for supper and chop off its (not his or her: these animals are objects) head. Prosperous independent farmers grow scarcer as land grows more expensive and mortgage rates shoot up. The poor farmer only kills his non-saleable livestock for special occasions and in exceptional circumstances. (Like Tevye says in Fiddler on the Roof, "When a poor man eats a chicken, one of them is sick”)

Yes, there are different ways and reasons to kill one's own food. Even a homeless man in the park may treat himself to the odd pigeon, squirrel or lost cat. Is it better than eating mass-produced meat? I don't know. It's more direct, more efficient, to eliminate middle-men, packaging and transport. It's probably less wasteful and may be less cruel. I know that when I had to choose between killing chickens and not eating chicken, I chose the latter. I know it's less messy.

Therefore, you have no logical reason to stop me from hammering a toothpick under your fingernail. — Leftist

I don't need a logical reason; I need a bigger hammer and a 2" box nail. That's one way logic has been applied throughout history. It's an obviously destructive way, which, taken to its predictable conclusion will lead to the extinction of a species.

Another reason that someone - not necessarily the victim - might stop you is that our shared community has rules of behaviour based a philosophy or world-view on some fundamental principles. That' too, is the basis of all legal codes, which are enacted to stabilize a society and keep internal conflict within manageable limits.

Acceptance and rejection of human behaviours are not about about "truth", internal or external. They're about co-existence.

I think the difference between you and me on this issue is one of emphasis, not primarily substance. — T Clark

That may well be the case.

I would happily pay extra to kill the animal I eat because I find it more upsetting not knowing how the animal I am eating died. — I like sushi

That' too, can only happen in a country where some people are rich enough to buy that luxury. If 8 billion of us started hunting for our dinner, we wouldn't have many dinners before all the animals were gone.

Unfortunately, I can not copy and paste the charts of US military spending — Athena

I didn't ask about spending. I asked about involvement. https://freakonometrics.hypotheses.org/50473 15 or so years of peace since independence. And that doesn't include land disputes, water disputes, incursions into Mexican territory, cattlemen vs sheep-men, black ops, "advisory roles", clandestine arming of hostile factions and coups, missile-rattling that didn't break into a shooting war...
America was never about family and God! It's always been about wealth, power and conflict.

The spending boondoggles are just capitalism cashing in on militarism. What would you expect? When money's there for the taking, they'll take it.

And I offer this evidence that the US was not interested in being the military power it is today... — Athena

That's right. Not at first. The ambitions grew with the successes; since the Monroe Doctrine, their scope and reach kept growing until they were a World Power, Big Four, Policeman of the World, NATO boss, The West, the top banana. That's expensive. Especially when you start losing.

How did the capitalists break the system? — Athena

They kept speculating on the stock market until they created a Great Depression.

I think our economy goes up and down in relation to the supply of oil and its demand... — Athena

Do you really? How did demand for oil cause the 1929 market crash?

Well, whatever the truth of that, teaching children as if it were still 1955 just won't get them through automation, pandemic, population displacement and climate change.

The point I've been trying to make is that each community, each school system, should have input in deciding what is and isn't taught in its own schools; what is and isn't included in its library. — T Clark

Yes, I understand that. But if poorly educated people live in a town, their choice of material is limited by their knowledge, and their children will never be able to compete with the children of a more prosperous, better-educated community, and so the prevailing caste system is reinforced. That is also the result of segregating schools and ghettoizing cities. It could work better if there were a high academic standard (with concomitant funding and teacher training) of core subjects like grammar, math, science, history and geography, peripheral ones like civics, music, health, physical education, art, literature, comparative culture and religion, which individual families or entire communities could choose for their children. If they all came out of middle school literate and numerate, they'd have the basic tools to learn more.

I still think person to person, teacher to student, contact is needed for true learning. — T Clark

Yes, I fully agree that 's an integral part of the learning experience, just as contact with peers is an integral part of the socialization process. I'm only proposing that it alternate with solitary study (computer-aided homework) and take place in different settings and with a variety of teachers, as well as different cohorts for each activity, rather than the same little flock (with their same pecking order), presided over by the same adult (with his or her same competence level and preconceptions) in all subjects.

Now back to Roosevelt and the New Deal. Hoover and Roosevelt worked together to give us a fascist form of government. That is leaving property in the hands of private owners, but regulating industry. — Athena

Not until after the capitalists broke all their toys and a millions of lives. I don't think they could have nationalized industry - or very much else - given the popular mind-set. Obviously, what call fascism is not quite congruent with my definition.

We are as focused on war as the Prussians who lived for the love of war as much as the US lived for the love of God and family. — Athena

When was this? In which decades of its existence was the US not engaged in any armed conflict?

Their power has been in decline since the days of the first nations, otherwise you would still be ruled by a foreign King Charles II. — universeness

Charles III. I quite like him, actually, but he can't control the tories in his own country any more than he could here, and the tories are controlled by moneyed patrons. Of course it's the same elite - they just call themselves CEO instead of OBE and maybe they did their thieving through different methods - the top 0.01% who own 50% of everything, including governments and information.
On the larger scale, of course all of them will disappear.

What I meant was that what either of us prefers doesn't matter. It's the community's values that should be taken into account. — T Clark

Yes, I understand that. What I don't know is who or what controls the community.
Having a comprehensive public school curriculum doesn't hamper parents in teaching their children about values, relationships and social behaviour. By the time children enroll in Gr 1, their personalities are already established; the parents and early caregivers know how best to handle the emotional part of their interactions with the world.

Another thought. I think any centralized, standardized education program will be subject to political and social pressure to conform to a particular vision of what education should be. That's already a problem with regular school systems. — T Clark

Of course, as is also the case with each locally administered system: it's designed on some philosophical basis; some central idea of the purpose of educating children. Hence the need for democracy without too much corruption and voter suppression, so that a true majority of the people decide. The only difference is that with no set standards, the quality and content will vary from place to place, so that in one state or province or county the graduates of public school will have a much better chance at higher education, higher achievement and a better living, while another region may be doomed to generations of economic and cultural stagnation.

As for distance education, the proposal I considered was not simply an isolated child sitting in front of a screen, as many students did under quarantine, but something far more sophisticated:

They don't attend school but they do still get together physically in groups, when they can, for the purposes of live debate, physical education etc. They visit hospitals, charity orgs, parks, museums etc. The cities become their school grounds so to speak. At home, they are taught via Virtual reality systems, augmented reality systems and just by networking with software and live teacher/pupil conferencing — universeness

I would add a few more outdoor and creative activities, but I think some version of this flexible arrangement would serve children's far better than sitting in plastic chair all day long.

Better to plan for a better future than to mourn the bad behaviours of the past or present. — universeness

"We" propose; "they" dispose. There is nothing to stop you from planning. I have a plan for education reform that I devised forty years ago, and it still hasn't been adopted. What would motivate them - the same elite that's still in possession of the power and wealth - to implement your plan?

Do you think we could create a very high quality, economically viable, reliable, balanced social and academic, virtual reality, home based education system, that would do the heavy lifting in nurturing all the children in the world from year 1 to year 21? I think we probably could. — universeness

We could. But "we" don't want to.
If all we cared about was the welfare and education of our young, we didn't have to wait for virtual reality or computers; we could always have treated our children better than we did. We had lots of choices (and proposed models, and examples) other than the kinds of school we instituted over the centuries. They served and still serve a political, ideological, economic social agenda that isn't about suiting education to children but molding children to the needs of the elite.

I agree with the level of complexity you cite within the issues you raise but I think the solution may lie in some kind of AI/expert systems, which will help humans deal with such complexity and will indeed allow the kind of nuanced, individualised approach, which will remove the chance of personal human prejudices being applied, which cause unjust and imbalanced actions. — universeness

Like the one I suggested in the UN hub of internet traffic? I suppose something of the kind could work in legal systems regarding published material, too... after the the world government is established, and central regulating agency has programmed its mega-computer to deal with all of it... So, we just have to wait out the collapse and resurrection if civilization.

Sorry, I left a post that i had thought had been pertinent, but it was not; I talked about the issue of morality vs empathy. Apologies. — god must be atheist

I don't know what you have to apologize for! Did you delete it? I must have missed it the first time - and, looking back through the thread just now, I can't find it. Morality and empathy are important issues. Even if I can't exactly see how see how they fit into the problem of state censorship, I would be interested.