Is the idea here that all my knowledge is interconnected, and I therefore have no way to label the lockers, other than simply label them all "knowledge"?

There seems to be some basic misunderstanding between the two of us on what consent *is*. Not on the definition, because I have no issue with the definitions you provided, but on how the definition is applied to practical cases.

I can consent by walking up to someone and saying "please do X".

My consent can be implied if I say "please to Y", and I know that in order to do Y, X needs to be done first.

It can also be implied if I say "please do Y", and either X or Z lead to Y, but X is more in line with my known interests.

In any case, my consent is linked to my intention. Consent is an intentional act, and implied consent needs to conserve that intentionality, either by reference to another intention I do actually have, or by reference to an intention I would presumably have formed, had I been aware of the options.

You might ask why intentionality needs to be conserved. My answer would be that by consenting, you waive rights. Since only you can waive your rights, this waiver needs to be attributable to you as a subject. And the way to do that is via your intentions.

If you disagree with this on a fundamental level, we need to have an entirely different discussion on the fundamentals of self, action, responsibility etc. before we can continue here.

Now, assuming you do not disagree that consent needs to be linked to intention:
If you do not intent to have a child, and do in fact hope or assume that the sex will not lead to pregnancy, then you do not consent, implicitly or otherwise, to the consequences of that pregnancy. To assume you implicitly consented by having sex would ignore your actual intentions and replace them with the opposite.

If, on the other hand, you do intent to get pregnant, or at least accept that result as an acceptable outcome, then you could be said to have implicitly consented to the consequences of that pregnancy.

So there is a case to be made on the basis of implied consent, but only for intentional pregnancies.

The reasoning here is that unpredictable or extremely unlikely outcomes of an act of free will are not actually expressions of that will.
— Echarmion

because ...... yet again you need to support the reasons behind statements like that. Give an example of where it would apply. As it stands it is just an opinion - — Rank Amateur

I did not expect that statement to be controversial. You are familiar with the term "butterfly effect", I assume? I think it's fairly obvious that you cannot be responsible for every possible outcome of your actions. That would turn responsibility into mere causality.

As a matter of practicality, you cannot expect me to give you a full argument from first principles for every single statement I make. It'd take entire books worth of text. I would ask you, instead, to note when you have a fundamental disagreement. We can then try to establish the closest common ground and work from there.

but your wrote... — Rank Amateur

I avoided using the term responsibility in the bits you quoted on purpose, though I cannot fault you for not knowing that. I don't think financial burdens need to be based on responsibility. Society needs to distribute burdens somehow, and sometimes this means that a financial burden ends up with someone who is not strictly responsible for it's creation. I know this is not a full argument. If you are really interested we could discuss it at length as it's own topic.

I agree.

but in the what would be the right thing to do " give blood" - I vote yes. Give a kidney - I say no.

How about a 9 month blood transfusion - that only you can do, to save the life you put in danger ? — Rank Amateur

I think the fact that we feel the need to differentiate between a single blood transfusion, a long term transfusion and donation of a kidney already establishes that responsibility for the pregnancy is not sufficient to completely overcome any interest the mother has in her bodily autonomy.

I think the argument can be made that, regardless of morality, it can never be a legal obligation to provide your body to others. But this is just my opinion at this point, to establish it as an argument we'd have to talk about the difference of morality and legality and that is a thread in it's own right.

In the realm of morality, I think in order to progress at this stage, we'd need to establish just how much responsibility sex entails. I don't think having protected sex is negligent. Unprotected sex, maybe, but it's probably not "running a red light during rush hour" negligent.

I don't see where you get the premise that it would be a different universe. Anyway, "A changes to B" means the same thing as "A changes to B", and whatever universe your referring to is irrelevant unless you allow for violation of the law of identity.. — Metaphysician Undercover

Admittedly, my wording was imprecise at best. What I mean is this: Events in the universe are connected, the way we perceive this connection is as cause and effect. Any change that happens will propagate through the entire universe eventually. You can never have the same change again because the first change is already up and gone, having changed the universe. In order to do the exact same thing again, you'd need to recreate the exact universe that change happened in. But even if this were possible, it would preclude the notion of time "travel" because you'd have to somehow get out of the universe before it was recreated.

But it seems like this approach can not account for sentimental value, or can it?

And I don't think you can get around a judgement of some kind. You still need a mental operation that takes the knowledge of possible futures and transfers this into a statement of value.

not sure I stopped responding. Again you denied the concept of implied consent - out of hand. — Rank Amateur

I did no such thing. Implied consent is a valid concept. I disagreed with your application of the concept.

You give no reason at all why, it is manufactured, that attempts to avoid relieve you of responsibility, or why awareness is not sufficient. You just state they are. It is not just you, but this seems rather normal on here. Without any reasons why or supporting those points, they are just your opinions - which is fine. But it just boils down to - your argument is wrong because I don't believe it. — Rank Amateur

The reasons are right in the bit you quoted, and I have expanded on them several times. I can try again: Implied consent is not imposed consent. The intent must be actually implied by either the interests of the person whose consent you try to establish, or their actions. Corresponding to that, if the declared intent of a person is to avoid a certain scenario, this rules out implied consent. Consent is an intentional act, it's giving permission. You cannot reduce it to merely being aware of a possibility.

This is again all based on the assumption that you use the common, approximately legal definition of consent. If by implied consent you mean something significantly different, I'd ask you to provide an explanation.

Yet again, one more declaration that an act of free will does not make you responsible - with no support of the idea, acknowledgement of where it does or where it does not - and why the difference. — Rank Amateur

The reasoning here is that unpredictable or extremely unlikely outcomes of an act of free will are not actually expressions of that will.

So my base argument asks does the sex provide some obligation on the use of the mothers body - this above is just a long way to say NO, because i say so. Once again - just one more declarative sentence - without support. Just opinion — Rank Amateur

Your argument was explicitly based on the notion of consent. If you want to establish the moral obligation some other way, you need to actually make that argument. I cannot respond to arguments in your head.

However, when it came to the child support question - you seem quite willing to assign the father responsibility for his action. seemingly based on differentiation between financial support and the use of the woman's body as below — Rank Amateur

It's odd that you arrive at this conclusion given that I have explicitly stated that it's not based on responsibility.

Which still is just saying, yet again, that Rank you are wrong because I say so. And for good measure your example is unrelated because i say so.

I am not trying to be a jerk, but it just turns into twitter if we just share unsupported opinions. You can and should attack my position, and I make that easier by giving you the basis of the belief. So we can logically argue the concepts. See if the concepts apply uniformly across other scenarios or not, and if not why. — Rank Amateur

The issue I have with your "style", for lack of a better word, is that it seems to me you don't stick to one specific line of argument. You have alternatively used either responsibility or consent as the basis for your argument, but those are different concepts. I don't see how you can switch from one to the other without changing the entire structure of your argument.

He grants, that the free act of having sex establishes a responsibility for the existence of the fetus, it does not, however establish a responsibility of the dependence of the fetus on the woman's body. The though experiment is, a doctor saves my life today, 2 years later I develop Parkinson's. I sue the surgeon for support, because if he had not saved my life, I would not have gotten ill. — Rank Amateur

This seems close to my position, though I don't think the thought experiment is a great way to illustrate the point.

My problem with this argument is, by granting the parents are responsible for the existence, and since not responsible for the dependence and can deny the use of her body on this rational. We are right back to where we usually get in the abortion discussion. Some action that most people would consider wrong, to a born human, is somehow not wrong in an un-born human. — Rank Amateur

Is it wrong to deny a born human usage of your body? Let's say you cause a car accident by being negligent, which leads to a severe injury of another person. It seems fairly straightforward that you are responsible for the injuries. Are you morally obligated to donate blood to the injured person? donate a kidney? I don't think the answer is always yes regardless of circumstance.

Your premise is that time is change. So "was" in the sense of "past time" is meaningless by that premise. You have nothing to differentiate past change from future change. All we have is either A is five feet to the right of B, or A is not five feet to the right of B. And either of these can be changed through time, which is change.

If you want to introduce a premise which states that something which has occurred in the past cannot be changed, then you need to allow that time is more than just change. You need a premise which gives past changes special status over future changes, as being unchangeable. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't think you need a notion of "past change" in order to hold that when you change 1)A to B, 2)B to A and then 3) A to B again 1) is not identical to 3), unless the state you change is the state of the entire universe. Because under that condition, 1) happens in a different universe from 3), and so the full descriptions of the states would not be identical. If you did change the entire state of the universe, then you would time travel, but since this presumably includes your internal state, you wouldn't notice.

1 Does our universe owe its form to the properties that were inherent in the ‘primeval atom’? — Jacob-B

Someone with a better background in physics can probably answer this with more certainty than I can, but so far as I am aware the answer for empirical reality is yes.

2. Could there have been other ‘inputs’ post the Big Bang and unconnected to it that shaped the
universe? — Jacob-B

It would beg the question where those inputs are supposedly from. In any event, this wouldn't make the universe any less deterministic.

I've already given them, haven't I? — S

Not that I can see, or are you saying you gave them earlier in the thread?

So, in some type of summary, To the question I proposed, although you seem to believe in the concept of an implied consent, you point is it does not apply to pre birth, because it seems your view is bodily integrity is a stronger claim. — Rank Amateur

No, my answer to the question you initially proposed is that implied consent cannot be established in those circumstances. Since you stopped responding to any of the arguments on that point, I had assumed you dropped it.

My answer to your other, unrelated, question of why child support is a moral obligation while carrying a child to term is not is what you quoted.

What's an obligation? I tend not to find much use for that word. Is it that she should behave in a certain way: a way which I judge to be moral? It comes from me and my emotions and my reasoning, which forms a judgement. If I'm right, which naturally I think I am, then naturally I think that she should act in accordance with what I judge to be right. She's obligated to act in accordance with what I judge to be right, I suppose you could say. — S

An obligation means you should behave a certain way, yes. I use the term to signify that the mother should behave that way regardless of her personal feelings on the matter. I am aware that the judgement comes "from your reasoning", but what is that reasoning? If you reasoned there must be reasons, and I'd like to know what they are.

Thank you for elaborating. Would I mischaracterise your position if I summed it up as: A mother has a moral obligation to carry a child to term, unless doing so entails an significant net risk (as compared to termination of the pregnancy)?

I leave the details of what significant risks are out because it's not related to my follow up question. If you don't disagree with my summary, my question is this: Where does this obligation come from? And to whom is the mother obligated?

In general we follow those with support, so the person you are talking to can address it. — Rank Amateur

This is honestly confusing to me. Can you not address the answer I gave?

And as a reminder, the necessary base assumption for the sake of argument is the fetus is a moral entity. It is a conflict of claims on bodily autonomy in this argument.

If you don't want to participate in that line of logic because you can't grand the concession for sake of the argument, I am 100% fine with that.

So, back to the argument if, as you say you are the parents have an obligation to the child by nature of the act of having sex, why does that obligation not extend pre birth, again, for the sake of this argument the fetus is something with moral standing. — Rank Amateur

Because the obligation is not absolute or all encompassing. There is an obligation to support the child, but that obligation does not extend to your bodily integrity. You have asked why, before, and my answer would be that your body is the only connection to the outside world you, as a consciousness, have, and is therefore central to your freedom. As such, it is strongly protected.

because ??? — Rank Amateur

I am not going to be able to fully derive a system of moral philosophy right here. If I ever do that, perhaps you can buy it as a book. But I can try to do a very rough sketch:

Morality is the set of rules that allows for the greatest practical self-actualization of interacting subjects (or, more simply, the greatest practical freedom). Life has the highest moral weight because it's the sine qua non of any self actualization. Your body is the part of the outside world most closely associated with your self, so it has significant moral weight. Wealth is comparatively ephemeral. It is a general tool for many forms of self actualization, but it's also the product of social interaction, so it's already entangled with the interests of others and thus has only limited moral weight.

Except that it isn't in some cases. It's not morally justified in any case where the pregnant woman is consciously aware of pursuing an abortion on an immoral basis. — S

What is an immoral basis for pursuing an abortion? If you have already discussed that, I might have overlooked it, the thread is long.

and the difference between that and, the taking care of the material needs before birth ? Again, an assumption of the argument is the fetus is a moral entity. — Rank Amateur

Financial interests don't have the same moral weight as the integrity of life and limb.

actually what I argued was. by her action of free will, she was responsible for the possible outcomes of that action. So to put back in your example. Between the mother and the fetus, the only one who made an act of free will was the mother. The fetus was the innocent. It was just becoming a fetus. Like your innocent person just walking down the block.

And yes, i completely agree with your concept of bodily autonomy - that is the nature of the question - does sex imply consent to the possible outcome. Obvioulsy the world right now says no. And it could be right, but i don't think the question is without merit. — Rank Amateur

You are jumping between two unrelated concepts here. Responsibility is a relation between a subject and an event. Consent is a relation between two subjects. Responsibility establishes whether or not the subject is the author of the event. Consent establishes the permissions the subjects have concerning each other.

An act of free will does not make you responsible for all possible outcomes of that act. But even if we ignore the details and assume that the mother is responsible for the resulting pregnancy, this does not impact her right to bodily autonomy. In order to overcome bodily autonomy, you need consent.

In that sense, your question is not without merit, or your initial question had merit, because it explicitly based it's argument on consent. In your latest posts, however, you seem to have gotten no closer to actually establish consent, implied or otherwise.

Whether or not my example with the robber convinces you, you still need to show how the consent is implied.

are you trying to say that the woman was not fully aware that sex can cause pregnancy? That last sentence of yours, at least as i see it now, makes no sense at all. — Rank Amateur

No, I am saying awareness of a risk is not the same as consent. Consent is granting a permission, it requires not just awareness but also intent.

why ?? — Rank Amateur

Because the parents are the ones most closely associated to the creation of the child. Given that a child has certain material needs in order to develop, who else is supposed to shoulder this burden if not the parents?

I have no background in mathematics, but the first step in turning a statement into a mathematical formula would be to express it as a deduction in formal logic.

That said, unless the premise is that the clues are indistinguishable from random physical events, would not the voice of God literally telling you what your purpose in life is constitute pretty solid evidence?

I think you are looking at this from the wrong point of view. In your example the robber is the woman and the fetus is innocent walking down the street. — Rank Amateur

That does not make sense to me. Your initial argument was that the mother implicitly consented to the use of her body by the fetus. That implies that you accept the notion of bodily autonomy, which holds that no other person has a right to use my body, or parts of it, without consent. Since the fetus is using the body of the mother, it is doing something that is not generally permissible, like the robber in my example.

If it were the other way around, any consent of the mother, implied or otherwise, would be irrelevant.

because it does not require the deliberate of even accidental activity of a 3rd party. If the woman and man have sex, there is some probability - solely due to their actions alone - that they may become pregnant. — Rank Amateur

That still doesn't explain how the consent is implied though. Implied consent still needs to be actually established by the facts. The goal is to approximate a hypothetical state of mind, not to enforce a predetermined result. You need to establish that the person in question, if they had been fully aware of all facts, would have consented. This is not the case for unwanted pregnancies just as it is not the case for car accidents. Whether or not you hit a tree or another car isn't relevant.

so after all that, should the Dad be required to pay child support ?? — Rank Amateur

Yes.

My response would be that the robbery is the action of another. You can't implicitly consent to someone else's action. — Rank Amateur

No, if we are using the legal definitions of the term, at least approximately, then you can implicitly consent to someone elses actions. That's actually the main practical application of the notion of implied consent, for things like life-saving surgery. Given the way you framed your argument, it also seems to me you effectively consider the fetus another person.

In the case of the robbery, there are 2 acts of free will, one walking down the street, and the robber's to rob them. If I flip your logic to the robber it goes like this - I am a robber it is what I do, I work this street - there is some probability that some innocent person will walk down it, if they do I rob them. I am not responsible, because they walked down the street. — Rank Amateur

I am not entirely sure what you are saying here, but consent and responsibility aren't correlated in the way you seem to imply. The responsibility of the person acting for the consequences of that action are unrelated to whether or not the person that is acted upon has consented. You can be responsible for moral or otherwise permissible actions, the question just doesn't usually come up.

So there is some room for argument on granting or not granting that assumption. In the case o, for lack of a better word " accidents", - your robber, car driver etc" I would argue that assuming the risk, if needed it not a permission for the accident. I would not make the same case for sex. — Rank Amateur

Could you elaborate on why you would exclude an unwanted pregnancy from the list of "accidents"?

Not sure I understand the difference i those 2 points, seems to be saying the exact same thing twice, using different words. What am I missing ? — Rank Amateur

What I was trying to say is that there are different levels of justification necessary for the outcomes. In order for someone else to have "access" (to use a very general term) to your body, consent is necessary. In order to be held criminally accountable, you need to be guilty. In order to be asked to shoulder the financial burdens resulting from a risk, it can be sufficient that you are the person most closely associated with the risk, e.g. because you derived some kind of benefit from the action that caused the risk. Provided that there is no other actor who is more responsible.

The details will differ according to the specific laws, but here is another example: If you build a house, and an earthquake then damages the house to such an extend that it is a danger to the neighbors or passersby, you can be obligated to have the house torn down, at your expense. You did not consent to the earthquake and are not responsible for it, yet you still have to shoulder the costs because it's your house.

An interesting angle. The consent seems manufactured though. You cannot implicitly consent to a result you explicitly try to avoid. Having sex entails a non-zero chance of pregnancy, but awareness of a possibility is not sufficient to establish consent, implied or otherwise. To use an absurd example: Walking down a dark street might entail a non-zero chance of being robbed, but I do not implicitly consent to that outcome just by taking the risk.

Since you referenced child support, the justification here is a little different, I think. It's not that the father implicitly consented to paying child support in the event of a child being born. It's that society defers the financial burden created by the child on the person who is responsible for creating the risk in the first place. Neither consent nor guilt (in a legal sense) are required.

I think an important question would be what we are trying to protect when we protect cultures.

Are we protecting merely individual rights? In this case "classical" moral philosophy ought to be the tool to arbitrate disputes.

Are we protecting some collection or cultural expression? But that would be merely museum pieces, that could be preserved, but not something that is in need of protection from oppression. In that sense, the only value of diversify would be the knowledge embodied by different cultures, but that doesn't require the culture to still be practised.

Or is culture supposed to be a living entity apart from the individuals that make up the culture? If so, it seems to me there ought to be some attribute of a culture that entities it so a special consideration beyond just the consideration of it's individual members. I have no idea what that might be though. I am sceptical towards the concept that cultures have some sort of inherent value because the consequences seem to clash with individual morality.

If identity politics is just collective bargaining by individuals, we ought to be able to resolve conflicts by referring to the morals governing the interaction of individuals. That isn't easy, but it's not a new problem.

The answer to this will depend on what you think you can know, and of course how.

There are those opinions where the answer is obvious. Having blue as your favorite color or liking one sports team over another is a purely subjective preference and unrelated to knowledge. But you are probably wondering about opinions as beliefs about the world, I.e. something you are of the opinion that X is true or will happen.

For the realm of empirical knowledge, it would depend on what theory of science you ascribe to. A Bayesian would probably argue that since all statements about empirical reality can be expressed by probability, having an opinion or belief is only quantitatively different from having knowledge. I don't know enough about the current state of the discussion to say whether there are theories that allow two competing theories to have equal standing pending further evidence. In that case there would be room for a genuine opinion.

In other fields, it depends on whether or not knowledge is possible, and what it means. In general terms I would say that as long as there is a single, true answer to a question, there can be no opinion on the matter that is qualitatively different from knowledge. Calling it an opinion is then purely a statement about your access to the relevant information, not a statement about the claim itself.

I'll second @Joshs here. Value is not an inherent attribute of an object, it's a relation. All value is dependent on the frame of reference, as you put it. Objects that seem to have inherent value appear that way only because by growing up in a society, we absorb certain value judgements.

I get your point. I think I would agree that there is a qualitative difference between needing a specific amount of resources and wanting an unlimited, or arbitrarily high, amount.

I wonder though, if a society or an individual can ever fully exist in one stare or another. Perhaps I am coming at this from too much of a layman's psychology angle, but it seems to me that some desires do inherently have thresholds while others do not.

Take the desire for food. What is the threshold? Is it just the strictly necessary amount of calories and trace elements? Even a sustenance farmer, who is, I think, undoubtedly in a "threshold" mode of living, will place some value on taste. If an unexpected windfall happens, or the village has a feast, they might eat more than is necessary. But it doesn't seem very useful to say that everyone who is not starving is already "maximising" their desire for food. On the other hand, even someone well off in an industrialized country does not desire arbitrarily high amounts of food. They might overeat, or eat unhealthy foods, but they won't be celebrating feasts every day.

Other desires, like social status or material security don't seem to have threshold, even in a society with very low material wealth. Other desires will take precedence most or all the time, but is there a natural point at which the desire to be more accepted, more famous, more loved turns from a "need" to a "want"?

You are oversimplifying the argument if you reduce it to a pyramid of suffering with humans at the top.

If you want to make moral judgements, the first step is to figure out what organisms or enties in general should be considered as moral subjects. You can only do that by making a decision based on the immanent, that is observable, attributes of the entities around you.

Whether or not you hold that there is more than one type of moral subject or whether moral considerations can apply to entities that are not subjects, you are going to have to base your categories on available evidence. This is necessarily anthropocentric, since the human perspective is all we are privy to. That doesn't make it arbitrary though.

If you argue that empirical evidence is an insufficient basis for moral judgments, moral judgements are impossible. To use an example: we assume, based on available evidence, that humans can be rendered unconscious by injecting certain substances, and in that state don't feel pain. It would be absurd to argue that because we don't have access to their internal perspective while the drugs are in effect, they might feel terrible pain and therefore such procedures are immoral.

I wonder whether there is a qualitative difference between "fighting to survive" and "fighting to thrive"? Aren't both just attempts to fulfill your needs, starting with the most basic ones?

And if social tensions are caused by the interaction of these kinds of societies, what are the consequences? What does this model predict?

You do realize you are arguing against morality or ethics existing as anything other than mere feelings and preferences? That you are a human and deserve certain rights is based on an "untestable belief", namely that you are in fact like me. If I feel that this isn't the case, I should not worry about the consequences my actions have for you.

This is a self defeating attitude in practice because you have an interest in being treated like a human by others. You do not, yourself, want to be subject to random whims of preference. If, hypothetically, an alien race catalogued life on earth and categorized which species can be freely consumed and which cannot, you would have an interest that this is done according to the best evidence available to those aliens. You would not want them to choose at random.

But, we do have a different mode of teaching morals to children. We don't hand out fines or throw them into jail. You are incorrectly assuming that "punishment" is entirely described as "negative consequence". Not all consequences are the same, nor do they follow the same logic. Again punitive justice is qualitatively different from rehabilitative justice.

But I still observe the objects in my present. Either we are referring to an objective present, in which case all information I currently observe refers to an objective past, or we are referring to my subjective present, in which case I can observe objects in my present.

Thats already inherent in the notion of "observation" isn't it? Or are you arguing that gaining any information is impossible?

But "children" is a very wide term. A 3-year-old might be ignorant of morals. But what about someone who is 8? 12?

If you define punishment as "any negative outcome", then sure discipline often includes punishment. But the main goal with children is to teach them, and so you will select different methods.

You can make the argument that rehabilitative justice treats criminals like children, that is actually one of the core criticisms against it, though the reasoning is a bit different. There is, however, also the theory of punitive justice which holds that criminals should be punished only according to their personal guilt, not to change their behavior. The punishment then takes on a very different character.

Well the obvious first answer is that you are not supposed to "punish" children, you are supposed to discipline them.

The second answer is that, from the perspective of rehabilitative justice, both punishments have the same goal: to change future behavior.

Apart from that, how do you conclude that children are always wholly innocent, and criminals are always depraved and evil? Are "innocent" and "evil" even meaningful attributes to apply to a person in their entirety?

It is unknowable, yes. The term is not meaningless though, because the transcendent is an area where you can make neither positive or negative claims. It represents the limits of human knowledge.